Watt confirms minister will retain project approval power
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Murray Watt has unveiled the scope of the Albanese government’s promised environment protection agency, which confirms the minister will retain the ability to approve projects.
The EPA’s power has been among the most contentious parts of Labor’s planned changes to the EPBC Act, with the Coalition, industry and the Greens wanting the minister, rather than an independent body, accountable for major decisions.
Under the existing model, the environment minister makes decisions on projects either directly or via an official acting under their delegation.
In practice, the minister only personally rules on a small number of significant applications, such as Woodside’s North-West shelf extension and the Robbins Island windfarm, with departmental officials signing off on more than 90% of decisions.
The new regime will be largely the same except that, rather than delegating decisions to a departmental bureaucrat, that responsibility will fall to officials in the new EPA.
The new agency, to be known as the National Environment Protection Agency, will have a range of other functions independent of the minister, including policing nature laws and monitoring compliance with a project’s conditions.
Watt said:
At the past two elections we have committed to establish Australia’s first ever National Environment Protection Agency and we intend to deliver on that promise.
An independent NEPA will have strong compliance and enforcement oversight to better protect our precious environment and ensure those who seek to illegally destroy it pay a high price.
But importantly, the minister of the day would still be ultimately responsible for approval decisions, a move that is backed by all sides of politics.
Updated at 20.13 EDT
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Construction code delays risk pulling the plug on EVs
New homes will not need to be ready to charge electric vehicles after a freeze on the construction code, which some say will stall progress.
Electric vehicle adoption is at risk of stalling in Australia after delays to construction rules that would have made it easier to charge them at home.
The Electric Vehicle Council issued the warning after federal, state and territory ministers met and agreed to delay updates to the National Construction Code.
The updated code, which would have come into effect in 2026, required new-build homes with car parks to feature electrical circuits and outlets ready to support vehicle recharging.
The code’s delay follows discussions about increasing housing supply at the Economic Reform Roundtable in August, and after the federal government announced a 2035 target to reduce emissions by 62 to 70 per cent.
Reaching that environmental target would be difficult without widespread take-up of low-emission cars, Electric Vehicle Council chief executive Julie Delvecchio said, and Australians should be helped to make the switch.
Installing electrical infrastructure needed to recharge vehicles at home would make the transition smoother.
Every home without these provisions will be more expensive to retrofit later, creating unnecessary barriers for Australian families wanting to make the switch to electric vehicles.
This is a missed opportunity to embed practical, low-cost electrification measures into our building standards at a time when urgent action is needed.
A preliminary analysis of the proposed changes noted that increasing a switchboard’s capacity would cost $15 during construction or $600 afterwards, and installing a higher powered circuit would add $350 to costs.
– AAP
PM’s T-shirt catches eye of social media maven
It’s always dangerous for a world leader to catch the attention of popular fashion writer Derek Guy, and the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, made Guy raise an eyebrow after he was photographed wearing a Joy Division band T-shirt while disembarking a plane on his return from the US last week.
The PM wore the comfortable T-shirt for the long journey home from the US after meeting Donald Trump. Australian media had agreed not to run any photos of Albanese actually wearing it. But a photo agency took a photo of the PM on the ground.
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Albanese is a well-known music lover, and the image from Joy Division’s 1979 album Unknown Pleasures is one of music’s instantly recognisable images, with the band forming a Gen X cultural touchstone. Joy Division’s hit Love Will Tear Us Apart topped Triple J’s Hottest 100 in 1989 and 1990.
Updated at 20.47 EDT
Police investigate Melbourne stabbing
Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding a stabbing in Broadmeadows last night.
A man was located with a stab wound on the corner of Kitchener and Goulburn streets about 9.35pm.
The 19-year-old man was taken to hospital with serious injuries.
No arrests have been made at this stage.
Police were called to reports of a brawl nearby and are working to establish whether this incident is linked to the stabbing.
It is understood a group of men, who were armed with machetes, were fighting on Cuthbert and Joffre streets about 9.30pm.
They fled the scene in vehicles before the police arrived.
Police are asking anyone who may have information to contact Crime Stoppers.
Updated at 20.19 EDT
Watt confirms minister will retain project approval powerDan Jervis-Bardy
Murray Watt has unveiled the scope of the Albanese government’s promised environment protection agency, which confirms the minister will retain the ability to approve projects.
The EPA’s power has been among the most contentious parts of Labor’s planned changes to the EPBC Act, with the Coalition, industry and the Greens wanting the minister, rather than an independent body, accountable for major decisions.
Under the existing model, the environment minister makes decisions on projects either directly or via an official acting under their delegation.
In practice, the minister only personally rules on a small number of significant applications, such as Woodside’s North-West shelf extension and the Robbins Island windfarm, with departmental officials signing off on more than 90% of decisions.
The new regime will be largely the same except that, rather than delegating decisions to a departmental bureaucrat, that responsibility will fall to officials in the new EPA.
The new agency, to be known as the National Environment Protection Agency, will have a range of other functions independent of the minister, including policing nature laws and monitoring compliance with a project’s conditions.
Watt said:
At the past two elections we have committed to establish Australia’s first ever National Environment Protection Agency and we intend to deliver on that promise.
An independent NEPA will have strong compliance and enforcement oversight to better protect our precious environment and ensure those who seek to illegally destroy it pay a high price.
But importantly, the minister of the day would still be ultimately responsible for approval decisions, a move that is backed by all sides of politics.
Updated at 20.13 EDT
Watt adamant Labor’s overhaul of nature laws will passDan Jervis-Bardy
The environment minister, Murray Watt, is adamant his planned overhaul of federal nature laws will pass parliament despite neither the Coalition nor the Greens supporting it in its current form.
Watt will introduce legislation to rewrite the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act in the upcoming parliamentary sitting fortnight starting on Monday.
The long-awaited changes – which come five years after Graeme Samuel’s review found the John Howard-era laws were broken – aims to strengthen protections for nature while also speeding up project assessment times.
As reported by Guardian Australia, Labor will need to offer concessions after its two possible partners to get it through the Senate, the Coalition and the Greens, ruled out supporting the laws in their current form.
Speaking on Sky News on Sunday morning, Watt said the government was open to considering amendments, but ruled out adopting the Greens’ call for a “climate trigger” that could block or restrict fossil fuel projects.
People should be under no illusions that we will be passing these laws through the parliament. The only question is how quickly we do it and who we do it with.
Among the Coalition’s concerns, which are shared by industry, is a proposed new definition of an “unacceptable impact” on the environment that would result in a project being immediately refused.
Watt, who was in Uluru, defended the new definition.
The definition of unacceptable impact is about making sure that the national environmental legislation of Australia sets out the types of projects that simply will not get approval.
I mean, if someone wanted to come here to Uluru and start mining right underneath Uluru, we must say no to that kind of thing, and people deserve to know that quickly that they’re going to get a ‘no’.
Updated at 20.00 EDT
Australia must ‘step up to prevent catastrophic and preventable loss of life’ amid Trump cuts, former CDC boss says
Australia must “step up to prevent catastrophic and preventable loss of life” after US funding cuts to national and global health programs and institutions, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
Dr Tom Frieden, who served as director of the CDC until 2017 under Barack Obama, spoke to Guardian Australia about what countries that share close partnerships with the US need to do after a series of executive actions and cuts under Donald Trump.
From day one of his second term in office, the president sought to freeze foreign aid, including dissolving the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
He ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO); proposed a more than 50% reduction in CDC funding; eliminated 2,400 CDC jobs (about 700 of those roles have since been reinstated), and slashed the staff and budgets of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH).
In February, the anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr was appointed as the US secretary of health and human services, despite holding no formal health credentials, and has since pushed vaccine misinformation. Since then, more than US$1bn in funding cuts have been made to Gavi, a global alliance that helps buy vaccines for the world’s poorest children.
The CDC has long been a cornerstone of collaboration, information sharing, expertise and rapid response capacity.
When those systems are dismantled, there can be life-and-death global consequences. The US decision to stop funding Gavi and cut other global health programs is heartbreaking and could cost millions of lives, especially of children.
For more on this story, read the full story from Guardian Australia’s Melissa Davey:
Updated at 19.24 EDT
Trump shadow looms large as PM scales regional summits
World leaders, including Anthony Albanese, will jostle for position at major regional summits as talks between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping take centre stage.
The prime minister is preparing for a week of quiet diplomacy as he attends two crucial international summits where Donald Trump’s tariffs and China’s growing influence in the Pacific will be top of mind for many world leaders.
Albanese will sit down with a number of his counterparts over the coming days at the Asean and Apec summits, held in South Korea and Malaysia, respectively.
Trump is expected to attend both gatherings.
The president plans to sign a trade deal with the Malaysian prime minister, preside over a peace agreement between Cambodia and Thailand and sit down with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
He is expected to speak informally with Albanese after their successful face-to-face meeting at the White House earlier this week, which included the signing of a critical minerals agreement.
– AAP
Updated at 19.12 EDT
Canavan hopes to keep Barnaby Joyce on ‘the team’
On Barnaby Joyce’s suggestion that he might join One Nation, Canavan says the former party leader is a “good mate” and a “free agent”, and that other people have “reached out to him in the last few weeks”.
I’d love to keep him part of the team.
Canavan also signalled his support for Joyce, saying he believes the former leader is still “kicking goals” for the party.
I think he is, David. Because support for net zero is dropping off a cliff. There was a poll just a couple of weeks ago to show that net zero has net zero support, which is a big turnaround in just a few months, and I think that Barnaby played a role in that, and the net zero promise we were made is not delivering and working for the Australian people. Because they’ve seen their power bills go up, and the jobs go offshore, and it’s time to think again about this.
But Canavan says he won’t follow Joyce out the door to One Nation.
It’s got nothing to do with One Nation. I don’t care about One Nation. I care about the thousands of hard-working men and women, many of whom are members of the Liberal-National party who have given me this enormous privilege to serve my country and state, and I’m not going to turn my back on them.
And that’s a wrap.
Updated at 19.02 EDT
Canavan doesn’t ‘give a stuff’ about UN’s energy goals
Canavan is then asked again about a failure to mention issues around land clearing and conservation by farmers or miners.
Canavan: That’s not true. That’s not true. I was part of … I think I worked for Barnaby Joyce at the time, but I was part of a Senate inquiry where we made a recommendation to make sure that coal seem gas facilities were not built on prime agricultural land. I absolutely do not think that mines, coal-seam gas facility and any kind of industrial development should come to the prime agricultural land and also shouldn’t come to there.
Speers: To protect the koalas?
Canavan: So I’m sorry, you’re just not right. I mean, it’s about getting a right balance here, David. We’re out of whack at moment, investing too much in one type of power. And obsessing over it to the extent that we ignore other important values to our countryside. There is a real connection between many Australian and our natural bush, and we’re not even valuing that any more because we’re trying to meet some international goal and please the United Nations. I mean, I don’t give a stuff about the United Nations. I want to protect the Australian bushland.
After some challenges from Speers regarding the unconformable situation, Canavan appears to be now defending koalas from industrial development.
Look, David, I didn’t get into politics to wear a koala suit but I find myself in this strange position now where the Greens groups, the conservation groups aren’t doing that. You don’t see them in the koala suits any more.
However, asked whether he will take a strong stance against the clearing of habitat for new coalmines, Canavan repeats that “it’s just about getting a balance in life.”
Just to be clear, I’m not against all renewable energy. It’s just having the correct balance, and we have got way out of whack as a country at the moment.
Updated at 19.03 EDT
Canavan says new renewable energy builds risk ‘devastation and destruction’ to koala habitat
Asked who would support the construction of new coal production and power generation in Australia, Canavan says he has “spoken to lots of people”, but that is “not going to reveal them on the show.”
Look, the reality is that the Government is involved now, and what I do think should be something that we go back and consider is to a technologically neutral platform, where we allow all sorts of energy to join the race. So maybe coal doesn’t win the race. I’m not necessarily saying that. I’m not saying that we should go and do that, but what we should do is let all types of energy production compete.
Canavan is also asked about his objections to new renewable energy builds, which he says will impact koala habitat – a trope common among anti-wind and anti-solar groups, particularly in parts of Queensland and New South Wales.
Canavan says there has been “devastation and destruction” to the natural environment caused by “large-scale wind projects”. The Senator is then asked why he has never shared similar concerns about the construction of large coalmines, leading to a heated exchange in which he says he is “not against all renewables” and that he does not support building coalmines or LNG projects in “pristine bushland”.
The problem is where the developers are choosing to build these large scale windfarms is in some of the most pristine bush in our country.
Updated at 19.05 EDT
‘All of those people have been wrong’: Canavan rebuts energy experts and farmers
Canavan has accused Treasury, the International Energy Agency and the National Farmers Federation of being “wrong” about the cost of dropping net zero, and that a failure to act today to reduce carbon pollution will cost more tomorrow.
Canavan was asked about statements from each organisation on the need to maintain the targets:
All of those people have been wrong. I don’t know why we’d listen to them. These are the same people … Let’s judge people. I think that we should judge people on their past performance. And all of those organisations got behind modelling and said that by adopting net zero, we’d cut power prices. But adopting it, we’d get cheaper energy in this country. By adopting net zero, we’d attract enormous investment in critical minerals and hydrogen. But that is what we were promised three and four years ago. So I’m not going to take being given quotes from those organisations, which lack any credibility in this debate.
Canavan was also asked about the need for modelling to work out what the cost would be of abandoning the pursuit of net zero policies. An argument ensued.
As I say, the score board is very clear. The lived reality of net zero is clear. It is not working for the Australian people. Sure, there’s a role for modelling, but the old saying is also true that if you ask an economist how to open a can of tuna, they’ll say – let’s assume that we have a can opener. So you got to be careful.
Updated at 19.08 EDT
Canavan stumbles in exchange over cost to drop net zero target
Canavan appears to struggle when asked what the cost of dropping net zero would be to Australia. Here is the start of the exchange:
Speers: I take that point, but I guess the big question is: do you know what it would cost Australia to drop the net zero target?
Canavan: There has been … Sorry, just to be clear. What was that last bit?
Speers: What would it cost Australia to drop the net zero target? What’s the cost?
Canavan: There’s obviously in that question, there’s a cost of if the calculation, the cost of getting to net zero. Because the cost of dropping it is the benefit of avoiding those costs.
Speers: No, it’s really not the question. [CROSS-TALK] The question is, if we drop the target now, do we lose investment? Do we lose opportunities? What’s the cost of abandoning the target right now?
Canavan: Right, OK, OK. Well, sorry, I mean, you can ask the question that you like, and I’ll answer it the way that I like. It’s very clear that the cost of not doing something is avoiding the cost of doing it. That’s pretty common sense.
And we know from a group called Net Zero Australia, which is a consortium of the University of Queensland, the University of Melbourne and Princeton University – all people who support a net zero objective, I may say, they put the estimated cost of reaching net zero in Australia at $7-9tn, getting close to $300,000 per Australian.
That’s obviously an enormous, enormous cost. And you have to wonder why we would pay that cost in just one generation.
Updated at 18.39 EDT
Canavan to ‘present work’ on net zero review to Coalition this week
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan won’t say whether his much-anticipated review into how his party should approach policies to lower carbon pollution to zero by 2050 is complete.
Canavan is speaking to the ABC Insiders host, David Speers, where he has been asked three times if the report is complete, saying only “there’s been a lot of work been done on it.”
The senator was also asked whether he would present the report on Monday. He said only that he would “present work” this week.
I’ll present work as I have been doing the last few weeks, but you probably have bosses or had bosses over your career. Sometimes, when you present something, they tell you – that’s not good enough, go back and do some more work. So that may very well happen tomorrow as well.
Canavan said he had spoken with “businesses, economists, unions”, “green activist groups on the investment side just last week” and “some conservation groups”.
I pretty much live and breathe and sleep net zero.
Updated at 18.33 EDT
Matt Canavan on Insiders
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan will speak to ABC Insiders host David Speers this morning.
Environment minister Murray Watt was also doing the rounds with an appearance on Sky News.
We will bring you the latest as it happens.
Updated at 18.10 EDT
Natasha May
Government says home battery program increased capacity by more than 50% in four months
The Albanese government has announced its “Cheaper Home Batteries” program has reached a milestone of 100,000 installations across households and small businesses, helping cut power bills.
It says that, in less than four months, the 2GWh of storage provided has increased home battery capacity across Australia by more than 50%, including in Western Sydney, Ipswich, Geelong, Lismore, Mount Barker and Beaudesert.
The minister for climate change and energy, Chris Bowen, is holding a press conference at 10am in Rouse Hill, an outer Sydney suburb in attorney-general Michelle Rowland’s electorate Greenway, where nearly 1,000 households have installed a battery. Ahead of that, Bowen said:
Australia is a solar nation – with the highest rate of rooftop solar anywhere in the world. Our program takes the next step, delivering a game changer for household bills.
This is what delivering a fairer and more reliable energy system looks like; practical action that cuts bills and cuts emissions for good.
Rowland said:
In Greenway alone, almost a thousand households are already part of this change, showing that practical, affordable clean energy is happening right here in our local community.
Updated at 18.28 EDT
Good Morning
And welcome to another Sunday Guardian live blog.
Climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen has declared Australia a “solar nation” after 100,000 households and small businesses have signed up to a government program to help install home batteries. The government says there has been a 50% jump in home battery capacity within four months of the program starting.
Anthony Albanese is on his way to Asia for two international summits at which Donald Trump is expected to make an appearance. The prime minister will head to South Korea and Malaysia to attend the Asean and Apec summits amid growing concerns about Chinese activity in the Pacific.
I’m Royce Kurmelovs and I’ll be taking the blog through the day.
With that, let’s get started …