The Albanese government will need to cough up major concessions to either the Coalition or the Greens to have any hope of overhauling federal nature laws after the two parties ruled out supporting the current plan.<\/p>\n
The environment minister, Murray Watt, said he was open to working with either side, but wouldn\u2019t speculate about possible changes, leaving the fate of the promised re-write of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act unknown ahead of its introduction to parliament in the upcoming sitting fortnight.<\/p>\n
After weeks of signalling she was open to a deal with Labor, opposition leader Sussan Ley all but ruled out that option on Thursday as she railed against the proposal she dubbed a \u201cred light\u201d for jobs<\/a> and a \u201chandbrake\u201d on investment.<\/p>\n The Greens separately accused Watt of drafting pro-business laws<\/a> that were worse for the environment than the existing John Howard-era, confirming it wouldn\u2019t back the government without changes to directly tackle the climate crisis and native forrest logging.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n It means Watt has no obvious partner to get the legislation through the Senate, diminishing his hopes of passing the laws before Christmas, and raising the prospect that a second attempt to overhaul the EPBC Act could collapse inside 12 months.<\/p>\n Labor was hopeful the Coalition<\/a> would be more likely to endorse the latest iteration given it was Ley, as environment minister in the Morrison government, who commissioned the Samuel review that inspired the changes.<\/p>\n The abrupt shift in position from the opposition leader and her shadow environment minister, Angie Bell, came after private briefings on parts of the legislation revealed details about Labor\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n Among the opposition\u2019s concerns, which were shared by sections of the mining industry, was a new definition for an \u201cunacceptable impact\u201d on the environment, which would trigger immediate refusal of a project.<\/p>\n Ley claimed the laws could risk approvals for critical minerals projects backed under the deal Anthony Albanese signed with Donald Trump<\/a> this week in Washington, including the Alcoa-Sojitz gallium project in Western Australia.<\/p>\n Guardian Australia contacted Alcoa, who was of the view the project would be subject to state \u2013 not federal \u2013 environment laws.<\/p>\n Watt said the suggestion the nature laws could imperil the government\u2019s critical minerals push was \u201ccompletely wrong\u201d and those peddling it were \u201cbeing mischievous\u201d.<\/p>\n The Coalition also included the new requirement for proponents to achieve a \u201cnet gain\u201d for the environment, and bigger penalties for breaches, among a list of grievances with what Bell described as \u201cnature positive 2.0\u201d.<\/p>\n Nature positive was the tagline for the EPBC reforms that Albanese shelved ahead of the May election amid industry and political opposition, including from the Coalition.<\/p>\n Guardian Australia understands shadow cabinet discussed its general position on EPBC reform earlier this month but wasn\u2019t convened before Ley shifted the Coalition\u2019s position on Thursday.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Senior Liberal sources say the opposition will push for concrete measures to guarantee faster project approvals as part of negotiations with the government.<\/p>\n If Labor cannot convince the Coalition, the fate of the EPBC reform \u2013 an election promise at the past two ballots \u2013 rests on landing a deal with the Greens.<\/p>\n The Greens\u2019 environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, was on Thursday afternoon resolute that the party would not support laws that don\u2019t \u201cprotect our forests and protect our climate\u201d.<\/p>\n The legislation will, for the first time, require heavy polluting projects to disclose their emissions, and how they intend to mitigate them, as part of the assessment process.<\/p>\n But it would not force decision-makers to consider the climate impacts, meaning projects such as Woodside\u2019s North-West Shelf extension could still be approved under the new regime.<\/p>\n \u201cOur concern though is that even if they now have to say how much pollution they\u2019re going to create, the minister can\u2019t do anything with that,\u201d Hanson-Young told ABC\u2019s Afternoon Briefing.<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have to consider it before he gives them a tick of approval. And that\u2019s just not fit for today\u2019s world when the environment is under huge stress.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Albanese government will need to cough up major concessions to either the Coalition or the Greens to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-246665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}