Nature waits as Labor’s environmental wedge hits Coalition

3 hours ago 4

The government’s environment protection reforms are driving a rift between the Coalition and its business allies. They threaten to test the Liberals and Nationals’ fraught relationship. It’s exactly what Labor planned.

But it’s also delaying overdue changes urgently needed to reverse Australia’s woeful environmental record.

Environment Minister Murray Watt will introduce his bill to reform the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act, intended to both speed the grindingly slow project assessment process and enhance protections for nature, to parliament this week.

Details of the reform were dribbled out to stakeholders last week, and Watt increased the pressure on Opposition Leader Sussan Ley with the drip feed of provisions in the bill revealing a “national interest” test to enable the government to approve strategic projects, such as mines, that breach environmental protections.

Given the make-up of the Senate, the government needs support from the Greens, the Coalition or even the Liberals alone to enact legislation.

Ley’s response to the pressure, on Sunday, was to write to Watt with a demand that the bill be split in two and said the opposition would only support “practical measures to streamline approvals”, arguing that the impost of Watt’s new nature protections was too high.

Ley’s concerns for business are a fig leaf covering her obvious fear that the right wing of her party, and the Nationals, could never countenance a deal with Labor to increase checks and balances on miners, property developers and farmer for projects with significant environmental impacts.

The government is targeting the Coalition’s split with its traditional business allies, and is also trying to drive a wedge between urban voters and the Liberals.

Watt maintained the pressure on Ley, saying splitting the bill was a “silly idea”.

“You need to do both and that’s how you get the gains for the environment and for business,” Watt said.

Ley has said the Liberal Party has to win back urban voters with policies that appeal to the centre of the political landscape, after the Coalition’s landslide election loss in May. To coincide with the introduction of Watt’s bill to parliament on Thursday, Labor has launched an advertising campaign to brand the Coalition as anti-environment if they oppose the bill in the Senate. That ups the pressure on the party’s moderates.

The success of Labor’s wedge manoeuvre was on show in Canberra on Monday, when big business rejected Ley’s gambit and called on the opposition to work with the government.

Industry groups have helped kill previous environmental reforms with threats of deep pockets and advertising campaigns. But they recognise that this time Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has listed environment reform as a top priority for this term of parliament, has the political capital to deliver.

Albanese is motivated to bring home an overdue election promise dating back to 2022 and fulfil the top ask of many grassroots members, including the influential Labor Environment Action Network.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said on Monday business wanted the reforms to provide certainty for investors, which means a regime that both sides of the debate can live with.

“A better approach is to have clear environmental protections in the legislation in the same way that we say it’s important to have clear business outcomes in the legislation as well,” Black said.

Black, like the mining lobby working behind closed doors, wants to avoid their nightmare scenario in which the government cuts a deal with the Greens, meaning greater environmental protections and tests for business.

At issue for business groups in the current bill is an “unacceptable impacts” test that could enable the environment minister to veto projects, a requirement to guarantee all damage to nature is offset by investment in environmental protection, and the powers of a new national watchdog to impose fines for breaches.

The new watchdog also worries Nationals members. Farming representative groups fear it could impose fines for land clearing - something that has not to date a major focus of the federal government.

Meanwhile, the nation’s share of mammal extinctions alone is 38 per cent of global losses. There have been consistent losses over the past two hundred years.

But with the government playing politics, the Coalition unlikely to support the reform and the Greens expected to demand a parliamentary inquiry before they list their demands, nature will have to wait.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.