Answer in order
The department’s own three questions, one at a time, with your place kept between sittings.
Built for Australian landholders
Be ready.
Keep the record.
VegSafe helps landholders complete and keep the EPBC self-assessments the law now requires.
Queensland and South Australia to begin with.
One obligation
Done properly
Five years
The retention period
Your decision
Nothing is reported
Every device
Phone, tablet or computer
Why it exists
The law changed. There was no transition period, and nothing prompts anyone to act.
Changes that commenced on 1 December 2025 narrowed the section 43B continuing use exemption. It no longer applies where land has not been cleared in the past 15 years, or within 50 metres of a Great Barrier Reef catchment watercourse, wetland or drainage line.
Where an activity is not exempt and protected matters may be present, the assessment has to be made in writing and kept for five years. Nothing is lodged and nothing falls due — the record simply has to exist, and be producible years later if the department asks.
What it does
From the question
to the record.
VegSafe follows the department’s published guidance, keeps the evidence together, and holds the whole thing as one document.
Bring the evidence
Reads your Protected Matters Search Tool report, so nobody retypes twenty-five species names, and keeps photographs with their date and location intact.
Record the reasoning
What you ruled out, and why. Surveys, reports and expert advice sit with the answers they support.
Keep it ready
Holds the record for the five-year retention period, and exports the lot as a single document.
What it does not do
Worth reading
before you sign up.
Not after.
It has no connection to the department
Nothing you record here is sent to DCCEEW or to any other regulator. There is no departmental login and no reporting link. If the department asks to see your assessment, you produce it yourself.
It does not decide
VegSafe organises your own self-assessment and restates your answers against the published guidance. The decision to proceed, or to refer, stays with you — the Act places it there.
It is not legal or ecological advice
Where a referral looks likely, it points you to a qualified ecologist and to the department’s free pre-referral meeting.
It does not cover state approvals
State regimes are separate. VegSafe signposts them, and reminds you that a state exemption is not an EPBC exemption.
Who it is for
People who
work the land.
Graziers and farmers, and the agronomists and ecologists who work with them. A consultant can be invited to a single assessment for a set period — they add surveys, reports and advice, and the decision stays with the landholder.
- Landholders
- Agronomists
- Ecologists
Pricing
Being finalised.
VegSafe is a subscription, because what you are really paying for is somebody keeping the questions current as the law changes — and it changed once already, without warning.
Start a record