Environment Minister Murray Watt denies capitulating to Woodside over decades-long North West Shelf extension

The Federal Environment Minister has defended his decision to let Woodside Energy’s flagship project run for decades longer, denying he was captive to the energy giant’s wishes as it downplayed the operation’s impact.

Murray Watt gave the green light in September to extending the North West Shelf joint venture in WA’s Pilbara until 2070, a decision now being challenged by Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of Australian Rock Art.

The activist groups outlined concerns about the Karratha gas plant’s emissions on climate change and the Burrup Peninsula’s ancient Aboriginal petroglyphs in Melbourne’s Federal Court earlier this week, and it was the Minister’s turn to respond on Friday.

While ACF argued long negotiations between Senator Watt’s department and Woodside — including reams of emails and texts — gave rise to perceptions of apprehended bias, his barrister Stephen Lloyd SC said the evidence showed there was none.

The Minister knew the department was having those discussions over three months as conditions on the approval were thrashed out, Mr Lloyd said.

“We’re not saying the minister was ignorant of that, but so what? We say that’s entirely proper under the Act,” the barrister said.

“The Act envisages that a proponent and a department might need to reflect upon alternative sets of conditions ... there’s no reason why anybody would think there’s anything wrong with it.”

The ACF had not clearly enunciated why a lay observer might think the Minister had a closed mind to the detriments of the project, Mr Lloyd said.

“The facts are so clearly that the minister had an open mind,” he said.

“I’m not saying he didn’t have a view that this actually would be good, and that there would be benefits flowing from it.

“But the evidence shows that he was concerned that there should be more protection than Western Australia was giving, more protection than Woodside had offered.

“And the Minister attended one of those meetings ... I don’t accept the Minister knew what was in all the emails or the text messages ... and we think the text messages are innocuous.”

In its written submissions, Woodside noted exchanges including one reading “We got there!” lacked formality and suggested a familiarity between the parties during intense negotiations, but insisted they did not give rise to any inference of bias.

Mr Lloyd revealed the company tried to suggest earlier conditions imposed by the WA Environmental Protection Authority would suffice and no more were needed.

“My client said ‘No, we think we can go further than that’ ...

“There’s really no basis to suggest that my client capitulated to Woodside. My client found impacts that they denied.

“I mean, Woodside’s position was that their air emissions don’t have any effect on the petroglyphs, and my client didn’t accept that.”

Closing submissions began on Friday afternoon.