The instrument turns two statutory concepts into operational terms: revocation and adoption of recovery plans. The instrument deploys the term "revoke" in relation to one named recovery plan and the term "adopt" in relation to multiple state-produced documents. The instrument expressly treats the listed state documents as "recovery plans" for the listed threatened species and ecological communities. The relevant statutory hooks are displayed in the instrument: subsection 33(3) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901, which is invoked for the revocation act, and subsection 269A(7) of the EPBC Act, which is invoked for the adoption act. The instrument therefore operates at the intersection of administrative delegation, the federal register/registration process, and the legal category "recovery plan" within the EPBC Act architecture.

The main concepts in play within the instrument are:

• Recovery plan status: The instrument expressly "adopt[s] as recovery plans" the state documents listed. That phrase confers the legal character of "recovery plan" under the EPBC Act onto those documents. The instrument does not reproduce the content of those documents, but the adoption makes the identified documents the operative recovery plans for the listed entities specified opposite each document in the tables.

• Revocation of a prior federal recovery plan: The instrument makes a discrete revocation of Milne, Hutchinson and Clarke (2000) for the Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard Tiliqua adelaidensis. The revocation is executed under the Acts Interpretation Act power indicated.

• Delegated decision-making and registration: The decision is taken by a named delegate of the Minister, and the instrument ties commencement to registration on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments. Thus, the administrative mechanics are explicit: a delegate signs, the instrument is to be registered, and coming-into-force is defined by registration.

• Inter-jurisdictional adoption: The instrument explicitly adopts recovery plans made by State agencies (listed as the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage; Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management; South Australian Department of Environment and Natural Resources; Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment; and Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation). The documents retain their state authorship and titles as cited in the tables.

Because the instrument does not reproduce the substance of the plans it adopts, the reader must consult those documents to see measures, targets, roles, responsibilities, timelines, budgets or specific actions. The instrument’s legal effect, as shown in the text, is the conferral of recovery-plan status on the listed state documents and the revocation of the single identified federal plan.

The instrument directly affects the listed threatened species and ecological communities named in its schedules and the specific recovery-plan documents adopted. The species and ecological communities named in the instrument are those opposite the cited recovery plan entries in the six state groupings. For clarity, the instrument lists by jurisdiction:

• New South Wales: Prasophyllum affine (Jervis Bay leek-orchid and other common names); Syzygium paniculatum (magenta lilly pilly and other common names).

• Queensland: Erythrotriorchis radiatus (red goshawk).

• South Australia: Iron-grass natural temperate grassland of South Australia (ecological community); Tiliqua adelaidensis (pygmy blue-tongue lizard, Adelaide blue-tongue lizard).

• Tasmania: Acanthiza pusilla archibaldi (King Island Brown Thornbill) and Acanthornis magna greeniana (King Island Scrubtit) as grouped in the King Island Biodiversity Management Plan.

• Western Australia: Caladenia procera (Carbunup king spider orchid); Sedgelands in Holocene dune swales of the southern Swan Coastal Plain (ecological community); Bettongia penicillata ogilbyi (woylie).

Beyond the taxa and communities themselves, the instrument will have practical salience for parties whose activities intersect with those species or communities. The instrument itself does not list regulated persons, permit-holders, landowners, industry sectors, or agencies required to act. It does, however, convert the cited state documents into recovery plans under the EPBC Act, which makes those documents the federal recovery plans for the listed taxa and communities identified. For any person, public authority, corporation, landowner or developer seeking to understand regulatory consequences, the operative recovery plans are now the state-authored documents cited in the instrument (once the instrument is registered and comes into force).

The instrument also affects administrative actors. It names state agencies and their outputs as the documents adopted; by doing so it ties federal recovery-plan status to state-produced documents, which has administrative implications for which documents federal decision-makers will consult. The instrument is signed by a Commonwealth delegate, which means the department’s delegate has exercised the ministerial power to adopt and revoke recovery plans in this instance. The instrument does not make explicit any funding, operational responsibilities or division of implementation tasks between Commonwealth and States. Those matters, if present, would need to be sought in the text of the adopted state recovery plans themselves.

Finally, the single expressly revoked federal recovery plan (Milne et al., 2000 for Tiliqua adelaidensis) is taken out of the set of recovery plans "in force under the EPBC Act" by the instrument; parties relying on that older federal document for regulatory or compliance guidance should note its revocation in favour of the South Australian Recovery Plan adopted here (Duffy, Pound and How, 2012), as recorded in the instrument.

The instrument is concise and narrowly focused on adoption and revocation; it does not itself create freestanding duties, rights, penalties, or compliance pathways beyond the act of making those state documents the "recovery plans" for the named taxa and communities. The operative legal language in the instrument is "hereby adopt as recovery plans for the listed threatened species and ecological communities specified below, the respective plans made by [States]" which performs a legal classification function. The instrument does not specify substantive duties, rights, funding commitments, or enforcement protocols in its text.

Consequently, the practical duties and rights that will be relevant to stakeholders are contained in the adopted documents, not in the instrument. Each adopted plan is a separate document prepared by a state agency or authors identified in the tables; those documents will contain management actions, priorities, recommended measures, timelines and, possibly, assignment of implementation responsibilities. The instrument identifies the titles, authorship and publishing authorities of those documents, which is the information a practitioner needs to retrieve the correct plan and examine the provisions that may create duties (for example, actions recommended for land managers, threats to be managed, or roles of agencies).

The instrument also creates an explicit administrative right for the named state documents to be treated as recovery plans under the EPBC Act, by adopting them under subsection 269A(7). That right is conferred on the documents themselves: they are to be regarded as recovery plans for the species or ecological communities identified opposite each plan in the instrument. The instrument does not further articulate what that legal status entails; to determine legal effects (for example whether the plans can be cited in Commonwealth decision-making, or whether they give rise to specific obligations), a reader must consult the EPBC Act (which is referenced) and the content of the adopted plans.

Administrative procedure rights implicated by the instrument include the delegate’s authority to make and revoke instruments and the requirement that the instrument be registered to trigger commencement: the instrument confirms that the adopted plans "will come into force on the day after this instrument is registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments." That procedural timing is a key legal fact for parties seeking to know when the state documents obtain recovery-plan status under the EPBC Act.

In short, the instrument confers plan status on specific state documents and removes a named prior federal plan, but it does not itself set out duties or rights beyond that classificatory action. To identify substantive duties and rights that affect behaviour, stakeholders must obtain and inspect the adopted recovery plans themselves.

The instrument contains no penalty provisions, enforcement mechanisms, or sanctions. It is a registerable instrument that records revocation and adoption of recovery plans; it does not purport to create offences, impose fines, or set out enforcement processes. The only procedural enforcement-type mechanism apparent in the text is the use of registration on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments as the trigger for commencement: "The adopted recovery plans will come into force on the day after this instrument is registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments." That statement establishes the administrative timing for the instrument’s legal effect, but it does not create enforcement powers.

Because the instrument does not itself provide enforcement measures, any penalties, compliance mechanisms, or enforcement processes that apply to the conduct directed by or governed by the adopted recovery plans would be found either in the EPBC Act operative provisions or in the content of the adopted state recovery plans. The instrument references subsection 269A(7) of the EPBC Act as its authority for adoption, which indicates the legal framework that sits outside the instrument, but the instrument itself does not articulate what enforcement consequences flow from a document having recovery-plan status.

Practically, a practitioner should not look to this instrument for details on sanctions or compliance tools. If a client needs to understand enforcement risk connected to the state documents now adopted as recovery plans, the correct next steps are: (1) consult the EPBC Act provisions that govern recovery plans (the instrument cites s 269A(7) as the adoption hook); and (2) read the text of each adopted recovery plan to see if the plan includes performance targets, recommended regulatory responses or triggers for action that might feed into enforcement decisions by agencies. But neither of these substantive enforcement features is within the instrument itself.

The instrument situates itself explicitly in relation to two statutes by textual reference. First, the revocation of the specific federal recovery plan is undertaken pursuant to subsection 33(3) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901. Second, the adoption of state documents as recovery plans is undertaken "under subsection 269A(7) of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999." Those citations anchor the instrument to a statutory architecture beyond the instrument’s text.

Interactional features evidenced in the instrument include:

• Federal recognition of state documents: By adopting state-made recovery plans as recovery plans under the EPBC Act, the instrument creates a point of intersection between state-produced management documents and federal statutory instruments. The state documents retain their authorship and titles, but their legal character is altered by the instrument: they are adopted as recovery plans "for the listed threatened species and ecological communities specified below."

• Replacement within the EPBC architecture: The instrument expressly revokes a previously in-force federal recovery plan (Milne et al., 2000) for the Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard. That revocation is a direct interaction with the EPBC Act’s existing set of recovery plans: the instrument removes one plan from the set of recovery plans previously "in force under the EPBC Act" and imports a state plan in its place (Duffy, Pound and How, 2012), as listed in the South Australian entries.

• Registration as a commencement mechanism: The instrument ties legal effect to registration on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments. That procedure is the administrative interface between the instrument and the federal regulatory record-keeping regime. The adoption only acquires operative status after registration, which interacts with any procedural requirements in other statutes for notice, publication or review.

• No express cross-reference to state law responsibilities or funding: The instrument adopts state documents but does not state how the plans interact with state legislative or regulatory duties, or how responsibilities are to be shared between Commonwealth and States. The state documents themselves may include statements about implementation, but the instrument neither reproduces those statements nor stipulates any change to state powers or budgets.

Because the instrument is limited to adoption and revocation, it does not itself purport to alter statutory prohibitions or authorisations in other laws. The practical interplay between the new recovery-plan status and statutory decision-making (for example, how a recovery plan factors into administrative decisions under the EPBC Act, or into state planning approvals) is not spelled out in this text; those questions must be answered by reading the EPBC Act provisions cited and the adopted recovery plans themselves. The instrument therefore operates as a classification device that reassigns which documents are the official recovery plans under the EPBC Act, and in that way interacts with any other legal or administrative processes that require reference to the set of federal recovery plans.

This instrument itself is an amending administrative instrument in the sense that it revokes one recovery plan and adds eleven others to the set of recovery plans "in force under the EPBC Act." The text records a single revocation: the Milne, Hutchinson and Clarke (2000) Recovery Plan for the Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard Tiliqua adelaidensis is expressly revoked. That is the only explicit revocation recorded in the instrument.

The remainder of the amendment action is additive: the instrument "hereby adopt[s] as recovery plans" the named state documents, with the instrument listing the titles, authors, and publishing bodies for each plan. The listed adopted plans were prepared in the years indicated in the table entries (for example, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (2011 and 2012), Department of Environment and Resource Management 2012, Department of Environment and Natural Resources 2012, Threatened Species Section (2012), Department of Environment and Conservation (2011) and Yeatman & Groom (2012)). The instrument is dated 6 July 2012 and, importantly, it fixes commencement to the day after registration on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments; the instrument will therefore be entered into the statutory register as the operative instrument that effects these amendments to the set of recovery plans.

The instrument does not refer to any prior amending instruments, nor does it indicate a schedule of future amendment. It is a standalone instrument performing a discrete set of revocation/adoption actions. Any later amendment history (such as subsequent revocations, replacements or updates to these plans) is not contained in this text and would need to be traced through the Federal Register and the EPBC Act instrument register.

For practitioners tracking the status of recovery plans, the concrete historical facts recorded here are: (1) the federal Milne et al. (2000) recovery plan for Tiliqua adelaidensis is revoked by this instrument; (2) the listed state documents are adopted as recovery plans, becoming the operative recovery plans for the named taxa and ecological communities on commencement; and (3) the instrument is dated 6 July 2012 and commences the day after Federal Register registration. Those three items are the amendment-history events embedded in this document.

The instrument itself contains no reference to litigation, judicial review proceedings, court orders, or tribunal determinations. It does not record any legal challenges to prior recovery plans or to the adoption of state documents as recovery plans. Therefore, within the four corners of this instrument, there is no litigation history to report.

If a practitioner requires information on whether any of the adopted plans or the revocation has been the subject of litigation, stocktake or judicial review, that material will need to be sought outside this instrument: (1) by searching court and tribunal records for any proceedings referencing the specific recovery plans named here; (2) by checking administrative-review records; and (3) by reviewing the Federal Register and departmental records for any notices of challenge or review. The instrument itself makes no assertion that it has been litigated and includes no information on legal challenges.

For present purposes, and as recorded in the instrument, the legal record is limited to the administrative act of revocation and the administrative act of adoption by the delegate; any litigation history is not contained in the instrument and cannot be inferred from it.

Several practical traps for practitioners and clients arise from the instrument’s form and limited content.

• Commencement is registration-dependent. The instrument states that the adopted recovery plans "will come into force on the day after this instrument is registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments." That means the instrument’s date (6 July 2012) is not necessarily the commencement date. For compliance and timeline calculations, the actual registration date must be checked on the Federal Register, and the operative plans only take effect the day after that registration.

• Revocation affects reliance on earlier documents. The instrument revokes Milne et al. (2000) for the Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard. Anyone relying on that 2000 federal recovery plan for compliance, permitting, planning or mitigation must note its explicit revocation and switch attention to the newly adopted South Australian plan (Duffy, Pound & How, 2012) as the operative recovery plan under the EPBC Act once the instrument has commenced.

• Adopted plans retain state authorship and may contain differing formats, priority-setting methods and implementation arrangements. Because the instrument adopts state documents verbatim as recovery plans, the form and content of each plan will reflect the state agency’s drafting approach. Practitioners should not assume uniformity across the adopted plans; to understand duties, timelines and responsible parties, the original state documents must be read.

• The instrument is silent on funding and assignment of implementation responsibility. Adoption does not, within the instrument text, bind any level of government to fund actions identified in the plans. If a client expects that adoption creates an automatic funding stream or transfers operational responsibilities, that expectation is unsupported by this instrument’s text; the instrument does not allocate budgetary responsibility or enforcement authority.

• Taxonomy and common names are used jointly. Each entry lists the scientific name and a selection of common names (for example, Prasophyllum affine followed by "Jervis Bay leek-orchid, Culburra leek-orchid, Kinghorn Point leek-orchid"). For legal clarity, practitioners should rely on the scientific name as listed; however, in practice stakeholders and documents may refer to common names, so cross-referencing is necessary to avoid confusion.

• The instrument imports external content by reference. Because the instrument adopts external state documents, any ambiguities, errors, omissions or claims in those documents become salient under the EPBC Act once adopted. Practitioners should check the adopted documents for internal inconsistencies, as the instrument does not correct or annotate those documents.

• Registration is an administrative step that matters for legal certainty. Some clients may await publication of the new recovery plans in the Federal Register or departmental websites before acting. The instrument’s operative effect is tied to registration, so confirming registration and the precise date of commencement is essential for compliance deadlines.

In short, the crucial "gotchas" are about timing (registration), reliance (revoked federal plan), content heterogeneity (state plans differ), and the absence of express funding or enforcement provisions in the instrument itself. Each of those points is grounded in the text: the instrument adopts state plans, revokes one federal plan, and ties commencement to registration, but does not describe funding, enforcement or content of the adopted plans.

Because the instrument performs classification (revocation/adoption) and does not itself create prescriptive duties, compliance in practice means determining what the adopted recovery plans require and when they take legal effect. A practical compliance checklist for lawyers, environmental consultants, land managers, and regulated entities follows, with actions tied to textual facts in the instrument.

1. Determine the commencement date. The instrument states that the adopted recovery plans "will come into force on the day after this instrument is registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments." Check the Federal Register to obtain the registration date, and treat the day after that registration as the operative commencement date for the adopted plans.

2. Obtain the adopted recovery plans. The instrument lists full titles, authors and publishing agencies for each adopted plan (for example, "NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (2011). National Recovery Plan for the Jervis Bay Leek Orchid (Prasophyllum affine)"). Retrieve the exact documents from the named agencies or their websites, and confirm that the version obtained corresponds exactly to the version cited in the instrument.

3. Replace reliance on the revoked plan where relevant. For the Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard Tiliqua adelaidensis, the instrument revokes Milne et al. (2000). From the instrument’s commencement date, treat the Duffy, Pound & How (2012) South Australian Recovery Plan (as cited) as the operative recovery plan under the EPBC Act for that species. Update compliance materials, permitting advice and client guidance accordingly.

4. Read each adopted document for substantive obligations, recommended actions, and responsible entities. The instrument does not set out plan content; each adopted plan will contain specific objectives, threat abatement actions, timelines and (possibly) responsibilities. Compliance requires extracting any actions that affect third parties (for example, land-management prescriptions, monitoring obligations, or recommended mitigation measures) and advising clients on whether and how those actions influence regulatory decisions under the EPBC Act or state law.

5. Cross-check statutory consequences under the EPBC Act. The instrument cites subsection 269A(7) as its authority for adoption. To understand the legal weight of a recovery plan within the EPBC Act regime, consult the EPBC Act provisions that define the role of recovery plans, how they are used in federal decision-making, and whether they trigger obligations or influence permits, referrals or approvals. The instrument itself does not set those consequences out.

6. Advise clients about funding and implementation roles. Because the instrument does not allocate funding or operational duties, advise clients to look in the adopted plans for statements about implementation funding, responsible agencies, and timelines, and to engage with the named state agencies if implementation actions are expected to involve permits, approvals or cooperative arrangements.

7. Maintain records of document versions and dates. For audit and compliance purposes, record the exact version of each adopted plan and the registration date of the instrument, so that future disputes about which plan was operative at a specific time can be resolved against documentary evidence.

8. Monitor for future changes. The instrument itself does not create an ongoing review or amendment mechanism. Practitioners should monitor the Federal Register and departmental publications for any subsequent instruments that revoke, replace or amend these adopted plans.

Following the instrument’s text, these steps will enable affected parties to determine what practical measures are required. The essential compliance pivot is that the instrument confers federal recovery-plan status on the listed state documents; the substantive obligations and actions that a person must take, or that an agency may impose, will be found within those adopted documents and the EPBC Act framework rather than in this instrument itself. Practitioners should therefore treat this instrument as the administrative key that identifies which state documents now function as recovery plans under the EPBC Act and then work from the adopted plans and EPBC Act to identify duties and compliance steps.