Considering the hornet’s nest Tanya Plibersek has kicked up by hinting the government was open to a deal with the Greens to get its environment legislation passed, it is no surprise that the bills were effectively shunted off the Senate agenda this morning.
But it wasn’t the Environment Minister who pulled the bills; apparently it was a coincidence. But one can only assume the Prime Minister’s Office may have had a hand in it.
The three bills have been listed all week to be brought on in the senate at 10.10am Thursday morning.
Plibersek’s office late Wednesday was even telling business leaders that the government was close to a deal and the bill was imminent in the Senate.
Come Thursday morning, the bill has been suddenly kicked down the road. The explanation offered is that Senate business was rearranged at the last minute to prioritise Albanese’s Future Made in Australia legislation – which will also require a deal with the Greens.
The net effect is that the steam has been vented over the environmental laws for the moment. It won’t come up again until next week, which gives the government time to reconsider.
The problem Plibersek has created for the government is that the Greens are demanding a climate trigger and an end to native forest logging to be included under the remit of an Environment Protection Agency – bill number 2- for any deal to be done.
Hence the furious reaction from the business community, which has warned Anthony Albanese that his economic credibility was on the line if it struck a deal with the Greens.
Albanese is reportedly unhappy about the latest blow-up and the potential for another war on something else that he clearly doesn’t need. Sources say this has been communicated to Plibersek’s office.
His frustrations have also been apparently ventilated to the Business Council of Australia, following its statement to The Australian contained a pretty serious warning that if the government went down the path with the Greens, the government would devastate the economy.
The BCA isn’t the only one hyper-agitated over this mess.
WA Labor Premier Roger Cook and SA Labor premier Peter Malinauskas are also reportedly up in arms about the prospect of a climate trigger and the impacts it would have on new mining projects.
Cook is believed to have quipped privately that “they (the feds) better not be planning to go to an election before us!”
Plibersek has displayed a ham-fisted show of political brinkmanship.
And it is a tactic that could have spectacularly blown up in the government’s face had it not effectively shelved the bill at the last minute.
Considering the hostility that Labor has provoked with the mining community this week, it is bewildering that Labor would seek to prod further. And unnecessarily.
In negotiations with the Coalition, Plibersek agreed to exclude assessments, a climate trigger and confine the new agency to a compliance role only.
It was as close to Coalition policy as you could get and it would have been equally remarkable had Peter Dutton not backed it
But according to Plibersek, the climate consideration is apparently is now back on the table.
This can only mean Plibersek has been double dealing with the Greens to ensure support of her bill.
Not only has this angered business groups, and the miners, it has left Albanese looking impotent and out of the loop, considering he made public assurances that the new EPA would be a compliance only body.
While pandering to the Greens may play well in Plibersek’s seat, it will go down like a lead balloon in Western Australia, which was the State that won Albanese the last election.
One can only assume that Plibersek appears to have been encouraged by Minerals Council of Australia Tania Constable’s call to arms to mining executives on Tuesday to lobby Coalition MPs to support of the bill. This was of course on the basis that the bill didn’t include a climate trigger.
Plibersek obviously thought that applying pressure to the BCA to do the same, under threat that it would otherwise go with the Greens model, was a good idea.
But all that has been achieved is handing Peter Dutton a new reason to oppose it, egged on by the Nats who oppose any legislation that has Plibersek’s signature on it.
This farcical exercise in political naivety has exposed precisely what Labor’s 2019 post-election defeat review warned about.
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