{"id":250265,"date":"2025-10-25T07:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T07:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/250265\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T07:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T07:08:11","slug":"sussan-ley-is-labors-best-bet-on-environmental-laws-as-deal-with-greens-carries-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/250265\/","title":{"rendered":"Sussan Ley is Labor’s best bet on environmental laws as deal with Greens carries risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Murray Watt is doing his best Weekend at Bernie’s impression, frantically hoisting and waving a limp Coalition arm at Sarah Hanson-Young.<\/p>\n

Look, they’re still alive and kicking! Rearing to do a deal with the government on high-stakes long-overdue environmental protections.<\/p>\n

A valiant attempt by Watt to keep the Greens from expanding their log of claims over his reforms.<\/p>\n

If the Coalition is indeed the living corpse it is so often accused of being, Watt and his boss Anthony Albanese will have little choice but to sit down with the Greens, a party they often seem to loathe even more than the Liberals, and do a deal.<\/p>\n

Until we get proof of life, there’s a solid chance that’s what will happen.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Murray Watt is doing his best Weekend at Bernie’s impression, frantically hoisting and waving a limp Coalition arm at Sarah Hanson-Young. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)<\/p>\n

A deal with Ley preferred<\/p>\n

Of course the Coalition might yet come to Watt’s assistance and pass his rebranded “Environment Protection Reform Bill” \u2014 a modest messaging improvement on the doomed “Nature Positive” framing that Tanya Plibersek attempted to sell.<\/p>\n

A deal with a re-animated Sussan Ley is Labor’s preferred pathway.<\/p>\n

It’s also the hope of business and mining interests, who fear the consequences of laws amended by the Greens.<\/p>\n

Coalition sours over proposed environment laws<\/a><\/p>\n

The mood within the Coalition sours on the government’s proposed rewrite of Australia’s “broken” environment laws, just days after parts of the legislation were shared with stakeholders.<\/p>\n

Set for introduction in the lower house on Thursday, and subject to Caucus approval on Tuesday, the government is raising expectations it can get its bill through the Senate before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

That would mean getting it into the Senate in the second week of the coming fortnight, potentially setting up a month-long inquiry ahead of final passage in late November.<\/p>\n

That’s the government’s current plan, and it’s ambitious given the complexity and sensitivities involved in a bill balancing so many political, economic and environmental trade-offs.<\/p>\n

But this is the third attempt in five years to overhaul John Howard’s quarter-century-old national environmental laws, which pretty much everyone agrees are broken.<\/p>\n

Habitat and species loss is worsening at an alarming rate. Biodiversity, according to the experts, faces catastrophic decline.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the current laws \u2014 enshrined in the 1999 Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act \u2014 create too much duplication across state environmental regimes, slowing and stymieing approvals for resources projects, housing and vital infrastructure.<\/p>\n

They also fail to give bureaucrats sufficient power to punish wrongdoing or monitor projects causing damage.<\/p>\n

Loading…Labor-Greens package carries risks<\/p>\n

This week’s barnstorming White House deal between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump to invest billions in Australian critical minerals projects has lit a fire under the need to remove those roadblocks as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

Also, green energy and renewables projects currently dominate the list of unresolved cases awaiting federal environmental approvals.<\/p>\n

Albanese came very close to a deal on nature laws with Hanson-Young almost a year ago, but it fell apart under pressure from pro-resources campaigners and WA Premier Roger Cook.<\/p>\n

Some things have changed since then. Cook and particularly Albanese have powerful political majorities and banished oppositions.<\/p>\n

The Greens have also been damaged by the last election, losing their leader Adam Bandt at the May election, stung by the charge of prioritising short-term political posturing over outcomes.<\/p>\n

Through it all, Hanson-Young has consistently played a smart strategic hand, keeping the door open to Watt while making it clear her support and the support of the Greens partyroom will come at a cost, including an end to native forest logging.<\/p>\n

While it would keep Albanese’s young and left-leaning backbench happier, a Labor-Greens environmental reform package would come with risks, triggering plenty of teeth gnashing from miners and resources players. Cook’s reaction is also playing in Albanese’s mind.<\/p>\n

But the mining industry will have to wear a share of the blame if it can’t convince the Coalition to cut a deal with the government.<\/p>\n

Loading\u00a0Net zero looms for Coalition<\/p>\n

The tensions are finely balanced. Some mining groups prominently swung their weight behind Peter Dutton, only to be left badly offside when Labor wiped the electoral clock.<\/p>\n

A big question is whether the Coalition will give Ley the keys to do a deal in good faith with Labor.<\/p>\n

Ley was the Coalition’s environment minister who commissioned the 2020 Graeme Samuel review into nature laws, which now form the basis of Watt’s bill.<\/p>\n

She has a personal understanding of the need for reform.<\/p>\n

If they do back her, she might eke out a solid policy win and demonstrate to voters that the Coalition is still a constructive political movement driven by pragmatism and delivery.<\/p>\n

‘Climate trigger’ formally ruled out of environment laws<\/a><\/p>\n

A “climate trigger” that could be used to block coal and gas projects has been formally excluded from the government’s overhaul of Australia’s environment laws, minister Murray Watt confirms.<\/p>\n

Dutton wouldn’t have a bar of Plibersek’s nature reforms. Ley could break that mould and score a “team Australia” win.<\/p>\n

But the omens are not positive. Ley is on thin ice, struggling to cut through, surrounded by sharks on her own side.<\/p>\n

She’s been unlucky, but also prone to missteps such as this week’s ill-judged attack on Kevin Rudd after Trump’s tongue-in-cheek take-down of Australia’s US ambassador.<\/p>\n

She failed to read the bigger success of the prime minister’s meeting, leaving her \u2014 in the words of Liberal Senator Jane Hume \u2014 looking a “little churlish”.<\/p>\n

The episode has wounded Ley’s internal credibility and has in turn pushed Coalition MPs and staffers further into a deepening funk of despair.<\/p>\n

Net zero is the issue that looms like no other over Ley’s immediate future.<\/p>\n

The coming week \u2014 with two partyroom meetings scheduled for Liberals and Nationals to discuss whether to dump the commitment \u2014 presents a febrile environment.<\/p>\n

There is a much dry political tinder beneath Ley’s feet.<\/p>\n

For leaders in trouble, it can be the smallest silliest mistakes that set off the flames.<\/p>\n

Think Kim Beazley, who in 2006 confused Australian TV entertainer Rove McManus with White House advisor Karl Rove. Rudd won the Labor leadership a few months later.<\/p>\n

With a Coalition suffering problems this big, Murray Watt will need to keep waving those arms at the Greens.<\/p>\n

Jacob Greber is political editor of ABC’s 7.30 program.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Murray Watt is doing his best Weekend at Bernie’s impression, frantically hoisting and waving a limp Coalition arm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[33820,192,133564,9746,136400,35869,116385,136401,79,66526,76345],"class_list":{"0":"post-250265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-anthony-albanese","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-environment-protection-and-biodiversity-conservation-act","11":"tag-law","12":"tag-law-reform","13":"tag-murray-watt","14":"tag-net-zero","15":"tag-sarah-hanson-young","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-sussan-ley","18":"tag-tanya-plibersek"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250265","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=250265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}