Why Tanya Plibersek is ‘absolutely prepared to put the blowtorch on Peter Dutton’

How does Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek host a global summit to promote a “nature positive” agenda while rebuffing bitter attacks on her record from the Greens, as well as the opposition?

She goes on the attack, branding the Greens and the opposition as extremists.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek will host the Global Nature Positive Summit from Monday – but is under pressure to deliver environment reforms promised in 2022.Credit: Oscar Colman

“The idea that you would ever get the people who are associated with the Greens political party saying ‘oh, the government’s doing a good thing, they’ve made real progress here’; it’s fanciful,” Plibersek said.

Environmental issues will be a major issue for many voters at the election, Plibersek said, and she is confident the government’s “mature” approach can win the day.

Labor’s election commitment to create a national EPA has stalled – with the Greens and opposition refusing to pass draft laws in their current form – and Plibersek’s promise of comprehensive reform to national laws has been delayed until the next term of government.

The Greens are scathing of her record in the portfolio, but Plibersek dismissed the minor party’s criticism as “a political campaign against the Labor Party”.

“They’d rather fight us than the Liberals. Whether it’s extreme Greens, or the extreme climate deniers in the Coalition, extremism is an enemy of progress on the environment.”

Hundreds of international environmental experts, bureaucrats and leading advocates will convene in Sydney on Monday for the Global Nature Positive Summit. It’s a major event on the political calendar, and it turns the spotlight on Plibersek’s portfolio. She told this masthead that neither the Greens nor the opposition could be trusted on the environment.

“You can’t have the climate deniers in the Coalition calling the shots,” she said.

“I’m absolutely prepared to put the blowtorch on Peter Dutton. He has an anti-environment agenda. He really needs to consider what this means for Liberals in urban marginal seats that they have to hold or win to have even a chance of forming government.”

It wasn’t always destined to be so difficult.

Plibersek is a popular and prominent figure in a political movement which has declared its intent to act to repair Australia’s battered environmental estate.

Her early rhetoric inspired hope. In her first major address at the National Press Club she excoriated the previous Coalition government’s record and declared: “It’s well past time we get to work.”

Australia’s environment is a miracle of evolution. More than 80 per cent of Australia’s nearly 400 mammal species, from the furry greater glider that sails through treetops to the egg-laying, poisonous platypus, are found nowhere else.

But nature is in crisis, with massive losses of habitat and booming feral species populations.

A southern greater glider in Tallaganda National Park in NSW.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Australia has lost the most mammals of any continent. The 39 mammal species that have disappeared since 1788 represent 38 per cent of the world’s lost mammals.

Plibersek said that the public purse cannot alone reverse this trend: “We’re going to need other sources of income, including philanthropy and business investment.”

Plibersek soon made what some dubbed a brave commitment to end Australia’s long line of species extinctions. By December 2022 she had secured hosting privileges for Monday’s summit to “drive investment in nature and strengthen activities to protect and repair our environment”.

Also that year, she committed to creating national environmental standards that would rule out damage to critical habitats, including revoking a carve out from federal law that shields logging operations from federal oversight.

Platypus are among many species found only in Australia.

But next week’s global summit will be held during a parliamentary sitting week when it is likely legislation to create the EPA will fail to pass – legislation which includes powers to greenlight or block development applications and the ability to impose big fines on companies who don’t comply with nature laws.

Critics claim Plibersek has little to show for her ambition, but she says the government has an enviable record of boosting environmental protections and renewable energy growth.

“What we try to do as a government is make sure that sensible development and environmental protection can coexist,” she said.

“We have legislated a safeguard mechanism [to cap greenhouse gases from the nation’s largest polluters] that the Greens and the [independent] teals supported because it is bringing down pollution in Australia.

“We set a trajectory to net zero by 2050, with 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. There will be some people at the margins who argue that’s not fast enough. I get that, but we now have a legislative mechanism to get to net zero carbon emissions – and that’s huge progress.”

Kelly O’Shannessy, chief executive of one of the nation’s largest environmental groups, the Australian Conservation Foundation, is alive to the difficult politics facing the government but is frustrated nonetheless.

The bill to create an EPA was halted after public pressure from the mining industry, following which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared his government would not agree to the Greens’ demand to create a “climate trigger” law, which would allow the government to block fossil fuel projects.

“It’s terribly embarrassing for Australia to host a global nature positive summit and not have passed our nature positive laws, and also to be a world leader in extinction, a world leader in the export of coal and gas, and therefore fossil carbon emissions,” O’Shannessy said.

“The government has just approved another three coal mines. That’s over a billion tons of carbon pollution. We are a global carbon bomb, because we have so much fossil fuels, and we dig them up and export them.”

Conservation groups are even staging a protest at the summit against the Albanese government’s “hypocritical” stance on fossil fuels, like its future gas strategy to promote new sources of the fuel and recent approval of three coal mines.

There will be no such protest from the Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN), the biggest grouping in the party’s membership across the country, but national co-convener Felicity Wade said the government must deliver the reforms it had promised.

“LEAN members are the heart and soul of the party, they are the people who doorknock, hand out and support local members,” Wade said.

“Three-hundred and seventy Labor branches supported LEAN’s call to address land clearing and native forest logging.

“Ending the loss of nature is the heart of ‘nature positive’. The national policy platform reflects this majority priority, but we are still waiting for concrete action.”

Wade said the government was making “real progress” on the switch from a fossil fuel-based economy to clean renewables, but warned Albanese had failed to showcase his achievements and extend the gains to nature protections.

“The future gas strategy was an unforced error that caused distress across our membership. In 10 years I haven’t seen Labor people so rattled and confused,” she said.

“To date the prime minister has only spoken about the economy, but the opportunity is still there for him to deliver efficiency and clarity for business, as well as concrete outcomes for the environment.”

Plibersek is adamant the global summit can generate some momentum to help bridge the gap between the government’s record on climate policy and its environmental agenda.

“The world took a long time to get on board with net zero [emissions],” she said.

“Climate change is still a work in progress, but I think we’re seeing a much faster acknowledgement that biodiversity loss is a real threat and that countries and businesses need to do what they can to turn around their negative impacts on nature.”

The summit will include discussions about Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures – a global reform push from governments, businesses and NGOs to create revenue streams for environmental investments.

The complicated reform will seek to establish a set of rules for business and finance to report their activities that harm nature – like industrial development or mining – and make investments to repair the damage.

“Ordinary people are asking, when businesses claim that they’re doing something good for the environment, is it really?” Plibersek said.

“We’re looking at how we really recognise and reward businesses that are genuinely doing the right thing and what sort of frameworks we need to make sure that’s verifiable and transparent.”

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