EDITORIAL: Tanya Plibersek’s Nature Positive ultimatum backfires

If you believe the Government’s line that the reason its Nature Positive legislation was yanked from the Senate notice paper was because it was important to debate its Future Made in Australia laws first, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in purchasing.

The truth is that Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has made such a colossal hash of the negotiations to get its promised environmental regulator up that it had no choice but to kick the can down the road a bit.

The delay will grant the Government a few days of breathing space. But it’s expected to be back on the notice paper next week, which means Ms Plibersek needs to make a breakthrough in negotiations ASAP.

That’ll be tricky. Ms Plibersek’s high-risk strategy of threatening to do a deal with the Greens to get the legislation over the line has blown up in her face spectacularly.

The Greens are insisting on the inclusion of a “climate trigger”, a mechanism that would automatically block projects based on their estimated pollution. The Greens also want a commitment to end native forest logging included in the legislation.

It’s provoked a furious reaction from the business community, with Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black saying such a compromise would imperil critical minerals and green energy projects.

The ferocity of the backlash has apparently caught Ms Plibersek and the Government by surprise. It shouldn’t have. The business community has been clear since day one that a climate trigger was an absolute no-go.

By Ms Plibersek’s own admission, a climate trigger is unnecessary because emissions are already covered through Labor’s safeguard mechanism reforms introduced last year.

And yet the Government is willing to risk allowing the Greens to hold the country’s economy to ransom.

Labor must find a way to strike a sensible deal. Anything less has the potential to devastate the economy.

The Greens have made it clear they’re not interested in a sensible solution. A concession to their outrageous demand for a climate trigger must be off the table.

Anthony Albanese is reportedly desperate to get the deal done and has offered to strip the EPA back to being a compliance-only model in order to do so.

If Ms Plibersek’s strategy in threatening to negotiate with the Greens was to pressure the Coalition into returning to the table, it was a phenomenally stupid one.

Peter Dutton now holds all the cards, and his instinct is to block and delay. It’s in the Opposition Leader’s political interest to leave the Government to flounder, exposing their impotence on the issue.

But the Coalition must also consider the impact that approach will have on the nation. Miners have already pleaded with the Opposition to agree to the Government’s proposal for a stripped-back EPA, cutting the Greens out of negotiations entirely. It mightn’t be in the Opposition’s political interest, but it is in the national interest.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore