Albanese intervenes to scupper Plibersek’s negotiations with the Greens

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has intervened to scupper a deal with the Greens over environmental reform that Labor promised at the last election, addressing business concerns but circumventing his Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.

This masthead has been told the prime minister did not want a Labor-Greens environment deal that could be weaponised by the federal opposition and the resources sector before the next election, and lead to a potential scare campaign.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s talks were undercut by the prime minister’s intervention.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

With that in mind, Albanese made a political call to put the deal Plibersek negotiated with the Greens on ice. The legislation is not expected to be passed before February next year, when parliament is due to return, unless the Greens capitulate on the final sitting day of 2024 and abandon all the concessions they had sought.

Independent Senator David Pocock moved on Wednesday night to try to change the prime minister’s mind after an extraordinary Senate vote to suspend Victorian independent Lidia Thorpe from the chamber for a day.

Pocock told the prime minister’s office that they would need his vote on key bills to be passed on Thursday because they could not rely on Thorpe – and that his condition was that Albanese put the Environmental Protection Agency back on the agenda.

Confirming Albanese’s concern that a Labor-Greens deal could be weaponised by the opposition, Coalition environment spokesman Jonathan Duniam said: “Tanya Plibersek’s proposed Federal EPA is an anti-jobs bureaucracy that will duplicate state and federal environmental processes”.

Plibersek had been negotiating with Greens environment spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young for months and was close to striking a deal to create Australia’s first national environment protection agency on Tuesday night – confident enough that journalists had been briefed about an imminent breakthrough.

But then Albanese contacted the Greens that night to advise there would be no deal, according to sources familiar with the negotiations who were not authorised to speak publicly.

The stoush shows Albanese’s determination to get Labor’s agenda through parliament this week without doing deals with the Greens as this masthead reported on Monday, capitalising on the minor party’s back-down on its year-long opposition to the government’s housing reforms.

It is a major blow to Plibersek, one of the highest-profile ministers in Albanese’s cabinet but one who is considered a long-term rival to Albanese within the Labor Party’s left faction and one-time leadership contender.

There is deep anger within Labor at the Greens – who have supported the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency for years – for not agreeing to the creation of the agency months ago.

One Labor source said the Greens had wanted to extract more concessions “but they overplayed their hand and they will get nothing now. They bear a shit-tonne of responsibility for this”.

But a member of the cabinet criticised Albanese for going over Plibersek’s head and killing the deal, arguing Plibersek had simply been pursuing reforms that Labor had promised before the last election.

The prime minister’s intervention follows warnings that the EPA would be a controversial reform before a federal election, due by May next year, because of an industry campaign against the new powers.

Credit: Cartoon: Matt Golding

A national environment protection agency would enforce nature regulations and could hand out heavy fines.

Representatives from the Minerals Council of Australia, the Western Australia mining industry, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Forest Products Association are among the industry groups opposed to the EPA.

Labor committed to creating national environment standards and the agency during the 2022 election campaign. The government needed Greens support in the Senate to pass the legislation, given the Coalition was opposed to the bill.

Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said the government had walked away from a potential deal.

“The prime minister has been bullied by the mining and logging lobby again. [Mining magnate] Gina Rinehart and the logging lobby seem to have more influence than the rest of the country,” Hanson-Young said.

The Greens had agreed to drop their demands for a “climate trigger” law to block fossil fuel projects and a crackdown on the forestry industry.

While the deal has been shelved, Plibersek said the bill remains open to a vote.

“The bills are listed in the Senate. The Coalition, the Greens and other senators can support them at any time,” Plibersek said. The prime minister’s office declined to comment.

Western Australia Premier Roger Cook said he would not detail his private conversations, but confirmed that he had expressed concerns about the deal with the Greens to the government.

“I reiterated the Western Australian government’s point of view that the nature positive laws in their current form, should not be progressed,” Cook said.

“It was going to disadvantage Western Australian industry. It was going to be a risk to Western Australian jobs, and so that was obviously a point of concern for us.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton foreshadowed a clash over the resources sector at the election, warning that the government’s environment agenda would harm mining and in September declared: “a Dutton Coalition government will be the best friend that the mining and resources sector in Australia will ever have.”

Kelly O’Shannassy, chief executive of one of the nation’s largest environmental groups, the Australian Conservation Foundation, criticised the influence of industry groups over environmental reform.

“It would be completely unacceptable if vested interests were able to snap their fingers and get politicians to do their bidding,” O’Shannassy said.

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