James Campbell: Is Tanya Plibersek a ditz or dissident?
Is Tanya Plibersek out of her depth or fuming with the PM? That is the question doing the rounds after the Environment Minister appeared to blow up her own legislation earlier in the week.
James Campbell
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Is Tanya Plibersek a ditz or a dissident?
That is the question doing the rounds after the Environment Minister appeared to blow up her own legislation earlier this week by telling the Minerals Council of Australia she was prepared to do a deal with the Greens to get it passed.
For those have who not been following this drama – this is the Readers’ Digest version of the story so far.
Just before the last election Labor promised that if elected it would create a federal EPA whose powers would be confined to enforcing conservation laws and collecting data on the plight of the nation’s wildlife.
By December 2022 when Plibersek released her Nature Positive Plan intended to rewrite Commonwealth environmental protection laws these proposed powers had grown to include issuing ‘stop work’ orders and levying fines and penalties.
Surprisingly however this wasn’t what had the mining industry and the Coalition – especially the Nats – freaked out.
No, the bit that had them in a tizz was the proposal to give the EPA responsibility for assessing and approving decisions for new projects rather than the current situation which gives these powers to the Environment Minister and her department.
Fast forward to May this year and almost 18 months after it was meant to be tabled, Plibersek finally released her draft legislation which to the dismay of the mining industry severely limited the powers of the minister to overrule the bureaucrats of EPA.
Why did it take so long? It’s fair to say opinions differ. The Coalition view is that aside from campaigning for the Voice, Plibersek didn’t do much work last year. To this end they point to stakeholder complaints that it can be devilishly difficult to get a meeting with her and even when she does grant an audience she can appear disengaged.
This a view I have also heard expressed from people inside the mining industry.
In other words, they think she’s lazy and out of her depth.
The alternative, much more interesting view, expressed by Labor insiders, some of whom have known her a long time, is that Plibersek’s behaviour since she was removed from the education portfolio after the last election is not so much a sulk as a giant f*** you to Anthony Albanese.
It is no secret in Canberra that Albanese and Plibersek hate each other and have done so for years, if not decades.
Hailing from the same faction and sharing adjoining electorates the pair were always likely to rub up against each other, but observers say the antipathy between them runs much deeper than can be explained by mere rivalry.
Friends of Plibersek say they are convinced that after the 2022 election win Albo toyed with dumping her from the ministry altogether and was only dissuaded from it because he feared she might quit and cause a by-election in a seat Labor was likely to lose to the Greens.
Instead, he dumped her into the environment portfolio where according to complaints from this office relayed to the mining industry, she has engaged in a campaign of “deliberate underperformance”.
Naturally, her friends put it slightly differently with one rejecting the above characterisation while admitting she has been on a “managed go slow” and “work-to-rule with overtime bans”.
Which brings us to where we are today where in order to pass the bill Labor needs the support of either the Greens or the Coalition.
Until this week the expectation was the government was far more interested in a deal with the latter than the former.
To that end on a trip to WA last week Albo reportedly told the miners the new agency powers wouldn’t go much past enforcement of the current environmental laws.
The government had also told the opposition it was prepared to dump the assessment powers.
The reason they would prefer a deal with the Coalition is obvious – it will inoculate them against a scare campaign from the mining industry which could do real damage, especially in WA.
Which is why when Plibersek turned up at Minerals Week on Wednesday and told them she was open to a deal with Greens all hell broke loose – particularly because that would mean caving to their demand that all projects be considered for their climate change impact, something the mining industry has made clear would have the effect of killing off any new investment.
Within hours the legislation had been pulled from the senate program.
Will we see it again? Unclear.
While coalition sources say they sense the keenness for a deal has increased, their leader appears to have no interest in reaching an accommodation.
It might be of course that Plibersek’s implicit threat to the miners “get Peter Dutton to do a deal or I’ll do one with Sarah Hanson-Young” was simply a negotiation tactic gone wrong.
But given the longevity of her experience, it’s hard not suspect she knew exactly what she was doing, and exactly how much face it would cause the Prime Minister to lose with the miners.
Ditz or dissident? That is the question.
James Campbell is a Herald Sun columnist
Originally published as James Campbell: Is Tanya Plibersek a ditz or dissident?
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