Weeks after Plibersek clash, Albanese under pressure from own MPs to pass stalled bill

Labor backbenchers are calling for the urgent passage of contentious green laws that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese scuttled last year after stepping in on talks between Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and the Greens, exposing a rare clash at the top of the Albanese government.

Western Australia’s premier and mining lobby are firmly against the proposed environmental protection agency. The Nature Positive Bill has created a political problem for Albanese in the state where Labor is defending several key seats won in 2022. Labor believes its popularity is holding up better in the west, where the economy is performing well, than in the rest of Australia.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek were at odds over her Nature Positive Bill last year.Credit: Oscar Colman

Labor MP Jerome Laxale said Labor’s environmental record was laudable, but climate change remained the number one issue among voters who spoke to him. Laxale urged his government colleagues to prioritise the election pledge to set up an environmental watchdog.

“Climate change, emissions reduction, that’s what people voted for only three years ago. It’s something that we promised we would do. It’s been in the Senate since July. My message to the government and the crossbench is to get it passed,” he said.

Sally Sitou of the seat of Reid in Sydney said Plibersek’s bill was crucial for protecting natural areas and giving certainty to energy investors, displaying the diverging priorities of environment-focussed Labor MPs from cosmopolitan capital city seats and those from mining states.

Laxale and Sitou are co-patrons of Labor’s Environment Action Network, whose grassroots members have launched a lobbying campaign pressuring Labor MPs to get the bill passed before an election due by May.

“Creating an EPA and building better environment laws sits at the heart of our claim to caring about the natural environment,” said the network’s co-convenor Felicity Wade. “Labor voters expect Labor to deliver a good society where both the economy is facilitated and the environment is protected. We can walk and chew gum.”

“We are very grateful that the prime minister is bringing the legislation back to parliament. This is a chance to pass the EPA, get environmental standards in place, while ensuring we address the concerns of last year by putting good process in place, that includes all stakeholders. It’s up to the crossbench to step up.”

Albanese, in an interview with this masthead earlier this month, said he would continue to speak with crossbenchers and the Greens “but we won’t compromise”, setting up a fresh showdown in parliament as Albanese reiterated the position he took in December when he passed a flurry of bills with Greens support.

“As I said in an article on the front page of the Herald on the Monday of that sitting week [in December]: we will stick to our values,” Albanese said, highlighting potential reluctance to appear to be working on environmental laws with a left-wing minor party regarded as anti-mining.

Like Albanese, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has spent time in WA this week. He claimed the proposed bill would hurt the state’s thriving economy: “I think it’s obvious to all people in this great state, that when you’ve got a prime minister who’s not being open and honest about the environmental plan that they’ve got bringing in, which will crush the mining sector in WA.”

Labor MP Jerome Laxale holds the marginal seat of Bennelong in Sydney.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In November, Plibersek persuaded the Greens to drop a demand for a ban on native forest logging, but the minor party argued that the environment minister should have the power to create environmental standards for individual development projects – for example, to demand developers accept rules that would protect endangered wildlife.

This created what Plibersek and the Greens believed was an in-principle agreement to pass the bill, but later that day Albanese told Greens leader Adam Bandt and senator Sarah Hanson-Young the deal would not proceed, blindsiding Plibersek’s office.

Albanese has since said the bill did not have enough support outside the Greens because senators Jacqui Lambie, Tammy Tyrell and Fatima Payman were not locked in to vote for the legislation, downplaying his intervention.

Plibersek said in a statement on Tuesday: “We’re working to fix John Howard’s broken environment laws so they are better for nature and better for business.”

“The government currently has a Bill before the Senate to establish Australia’s first Federal Environment Protection Agency, and I’d urge every Senator to vote for it.”

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