Mining groups lobbied PM to weaken environment reforms, documents show

Mining giants including Hancock Prospecting and Rio Tinto lobbied the Albanese government to weaken national environmental reforms, warning the government’s “nature positive plan” could cost billions of dollars in lost investment and tens of thousands of jobs in Western Australia alone.

Documents released under freedom of information laws show a consortium of mining interests – including Hancock Prospecting boss Garry Korte and Simon Trott, the chief executive of Rio Tinto’s iron ore division – wrote to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in March, asking him to personally intervene in the environment laws’ drafting process.

Hancock Prospecting CEO Garry Korte pictured with Gina Rinehart.

They also sought early consultation on the complete reforms package before legislation is introduced into parliament.

Several of the signatories – who describe themselves as members of the WA state government and industry peak bodies – requested their names and organisations be redacted from the documents released publicly.

The consortium said they contacted the prime minister after they “received little to no feedback” after reaching out to federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and other cabinet ministers. The letter was obtained by Greenpeace under FOI laws and has been seen by this masthead.

The consortium said that “unrealistic” offset requirements should not place a “disproportionate burden” on the mining sector, which would “further disincentivise investment in Australia”.

Environmental offsets are when governments impose requirements on developers to account for the detrimental impacts of their projects by making it up for it elsewhere. An example would be mandating a mining company purchase forested land under a conservation covenant if its operations would remove similar habitat elsewhere.

“Regrettably, we are deeply concerned the Nature Positive Plan … will lead to greater uncertainty for business, heightened risk of third-party intervention, approval delays and, fundamentally, material land and resource sterilisation.”

The letter also warned against a climate trigger that would require new projects to be assessed if a certain level of annual carbon emissions were generated by a project.

While the government has said it does not plan to introduce a climate change “trigger” for project assessments, the consortium argued this position would be undermined if reforms included provisions to consider a project’s impact on global warming.

Simon Trott, chief executive of Rio Tinto iron ore, was one mining executive who sought changes to environment laws.

These issues raised by the miners will not be included in reforms currently before parliament and there is no timeline for their resolution.

Plibersek promised in December 2022 to bring a full suite of reform to environmental laws, dubbed the “nature positive plan”, to parliament by the end of 2023.

But after public opposition from the resources sector, Plibersek is set to pursue the reforms in tranches.

The first tranche has been completed and the second, to create an Environment Protection Agency to handle development decisions and enforce regulations, was introduced as a bill to federal parliament on May 29, and is subject to a Senate inquiry.

The third stage will involve offsets and consideration of climate impacts.

Western Australia Premier Roger Cook on April 4 publicly raised concerns about Plibersek’s nature-positive reforms and called for them to be further delayed.

“Any reforms would have a disproportionate impact here because of the nature of our economy, and the WA resources sector has made it clear that they want more detail and comprehensive consultation on these reforms,” Cook said.

A spokesperson for Plibersek said the government began looking at delivering the reform in tranches last year, months before the prime minister’s office was contacted by Hancock and Rio Tinto.

Internal correspondence between Plibersek and her department, released under freedom of information laws, shows they were developing plans to split the reform into tranches in January.

Greenpeace has begun an appeal process to seek full disclosure of the full list of consortium members.

The organisation’s head of nature, Glenn Walker, said the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act reform was the most important legislation in a generation, and the public deserved to know who had lobbied the government over the reforms.

“The concern is that this is how politics works in Australia,” Walker said. “The prime minister should urgently clarify what’s happened here.”

Walker said the new EPA “won’t have any teeth” until the full tranche of reforms is released. Plibersek has refused to be drawn on when that will occur.

In their letter to the prime minister, Korte, Trott and their counterparts argued the new environment laws would “further disincentivise investment in Australia” and argued the references to climate change should be removed from the act.

A spokesperson for Hancock said while the government had responded to its request for further consultation on reform, the “key concerns raised in the letter currently remain unresolved”.

A Rio Tinto spokesperson said future reforms should “drive both stronger environmental and heritage protections and more efficient approvals processes”.

A spokesperson for the Albanese government rejected the suggestion the miners’ letter had influenced the government’s policy to pursue the reform in tranches.

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