Election 2025: ALP salmon stance forces Greens preference threat, as EPA debate heats up

Bob Brown is on the warpath, the Greens are rethinking preferences to Labor and battle-lines are being drawn over a federal EPA. Who says the environment won’t feature in this election?

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young holds up dead salmon during Senate proceedings.

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Labor’s legislative intervention on salmon farms could cost it Greens preferences, but its election-eve vow to resurrect an Environment Protection Agency may help win-over teals in a hung parliament.

As green groups on Friday vowed to campaign hard against Labor on salmon, Greens senator Nick McKim said the divisive issue could see his party opt not to preference the ALP.

“There is absolute despair at the fact that Labor has joined with the Liberals to facilitate industrial salmon farming and a weakening of our environment laws,” Senator McKim said.

“And I’ve no doubt that sentiment will flow through into the conversations we’re having as a party around preferences.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor Braddon candidate Anne Urquhart visit Tassal salmon pens in Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania. Picture: Pool / NewsWire

Environmentalist and former Greens leader Bob Brown, whose foundation has become a leading activist organisation, flagged a campaign to make Labor pay electorally for its salmon legislation.

“By ramming through protection for the polluting Atlantic salmon companies in Tasmania, both Albanese and Dutton have catapulted the environment back into the headlines,” Mr Brown said.

“You could hear Labor and Coalition votes washing away to the Greens and independents ... It was a Labor-Liberal own goal.

“Albanese and Dutton don’t get it but young Australia won’t vote for their coal mines, gas fracking, native forest logging and polluting industrial fish farms.”

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (Reconsiderations) Amendment, passed this week, retrospectively prevents ministerial review of environmental approvals where an activity has been “ongoing” for five years.

This ends a review of salmon farms in Macquarie Harbour that Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek had under way since November 2023, sparked by low water oxygen impacts on the endangered Maugean skate.

A Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour.

Concern by some within Labor about the amendment was eased when the government flagged the party would, in its next term, make a fresh attempt to reform environment law and introduce an EPA.

Mr Brown dismissed that promise as “hollow”, accusing Anthony Albanese of having “walloped” Labor’s last EPA plan to appease Western Australian mining interests.

However, several teals – who some polls suggest could hold a balance of power after the election – have backed the renewed reform push.

On Friday, Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel said she wanted to see stronger environmental protection laws “underpinned by strong national standards and a federal EPA with meaningful independence from any minister”.

“If re-elected, I’m prepared to negotiate with either major party to deliver real policy outcomes for Australia,” she said. “No single policy promise will determine which party I may support.”

The Liberals are promising ‘balanced’ environmental polices, including on the Murray-Darling Basin. Picture: David Barwell / Balonne Beacon

Coalition environment spokesman Jonno Duniam attacked Labor’s EPA as “an expensive bureaucratic beast” and said a Dutton government would offer a “sensible balance between preserving our natural environment and enabling economic growth”.

“Our policies will be for the benefit of all Australians, from communities in the Murray Darling Basin all the way to the Burrup Peninsula – not designed to simply appease inner-city Greens voters who are blind to the responsible environmental stewardship of our regional industries,” Senator Duniam said.

“We would help Australians to better care for threatened plant and animal species, protect and enhance our land and waterways, and to improve the management of recycling and waste.”

Ms Plibersek said a re-elected Labor government would deliver the promised EPA and environmental law revamp it was unable to get through the Senate this term.

“Next term we will reform environment laws including establishing Australia’s first national EPA and deliver a $250m Saving Aussie Bushland Program to protect another 30 million hectares of bushland – an area bigger than New Zealand,” she said.

 “The choice at the election couldn’t be clearer. Labor who will protect nature, fund essential science, invest in threatened species, and act on climate change. Or the climate deniers and wreckers of the Liberal and National parties.”