Nature Positive: Inside the fight over Labor’s federal EPA

As the sun sets over Canberra on Monday evening, a crowd of high-profile mining executives, industry lobbyists and Federal MPs will start filing into Parliament House’s Great Hall.

The parliamentary dinner is the traditional entree to Minerals Week, an annual showcase of the resources sector in the nation’s capital.

After the clinking of wine glasses and friendly small talk, the conversation will soon turn to a more serious and pressing topic: the fate of the Labor’s Nature Positive Plan.

Miners are fundamentally opposed to the green agenda, fearful it will further delay, if not kill, projects already struggling to get off the ground.

So why, then, are they urging Peter Dutton’s Coalition to cut a deal with Labor to pass a critical piece — a new environmental protection watchdog?

And why is Labor prepared to offer concessions despite the backlash it will unleash from environmentalists and inner-city east coast voters?

The West Australian has spoken to political and industry insiders to piece together the inside story of Labor’s struggle to fix Australia’s broken nature laws.

The months-long fight has exposed tensions inside the party, splits within the Liberals and Nationals, and confirmed the mining industry’s biggest fear — the Greens and a “climate trigger”.

It has also demonstrated the extent to which WA is already defining the election campaign.

A ‘friendless’ Bill

A Senate inquiry report into Tanya Plibersek’s Bill to create a federal Environment Protection Agency is due to be published just hours before Monday night’s dinner.

Debate is scheduled in the upper house on Thursday, although few expect it will be put to a vote.

As it stands, the laws are “friendless”.

There was an initial sense of relief across the industry after Ms Plibersek announced in April she would split the Nature Positive Plan, shelving the contentious national environmental standards but pressing ahead with the new EPA.

However, that subsided once the scale of the agency’s powers was understood.

The watchdog would not just enforce nature laws, as Labor flagged at the 2022 election, but also assess and approve projects.

While the minister would retain the power to “call-in” applications, miners were alarmed that decisions on multibillion-dollar projects could be outsourced to an independent, unaccountable Canberra bureaucrat.

A coalition of WA industry heavyweights — including Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospect and Rio Tinto — had a month earlier called for the agency to be stripped of decision-making powers in a private letter urging Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to intervene to fix Ms Plibersek’s mess.

The lobbying didn’t work, at least initially.

Ms Plibersek introduced legislation to establish the all-powerful EPA, as well as a new environment information body, on May 28.

But it was a three-page document, quietly uploaded to her department’s website the same day, that shifted the political fight.

Triggering fear

The document set out the six focus areas for consultation on the third and most controversial tranche of the Nature Positive Plan.

The Business Council of Australia was alarmed at plans to consider “the interaction between climate and environment laws” after being assured it would be left out.

The BCA — whose members include mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto — quickly equated it with a “climate trigger”, a term commonly used to describe a mechanism that would require decision-makers to consider greenhouse gas emissions when assessing projects.

The Greens and environmental groups have long campaigned for a “climate trigger” as a means to stop new coal and gas.

The Minerals Council of Australia and the Institute of Public Affairs were soon sounding off about the policy, which the conservative think tank estimated would threaten more than $220 billion of investment — including $112 billion in WA.

Around the same time, stakeholders emerged from private talks with Ms Plibersek and staff convinced she was desperate to pass the legislation regardless of whose support was needed.

Industry insiders interpreted this as a signal she was prepared to deal with the Greens and left-wing crossbenchers like David Pocock, just as Labor did to pass its climate targets, safeguard mechanism and “water trigger” for coal mining and unconventional gas projects.

Any Labor-Greens deal on nature laws, business leaders were convinced, would include a climate trigger.

Industry-led by the BCA and MCA — turned its focus to quietly lobbying senior Coalition figures to do a deal with Labor that would sideline the Greens.

With the odds of a Labor-Greens-teal hung Parliament growing, one industry source said miners made a calculation it was better to accept and legislate a watered-down EPA than wait until after the election.

An EPA stripped of all decision-making powers was, according to three industry sources, “palatable”.

“It is all about escaping what could be an inevitability on the other side,” one source said.

While Mr Dutton and senior colleagues publicly raged against the Nature Positive Plan, industry lobbyists believed the Liberals could be turned if a deal could be framed as a humiliating backdown from Labor.

The problem was — and remains — the junior Coalition partner.

A large rump of Nationals MPs refuse to consider anything resembling extra bureaucracy, meaning Liberal shadow environment minister Jonathon Duniam faced a near-impossible task of getting any deal through the Coalition party room.

Ms Plibersek’s ruling that effectively scuttled the $1b McPhillamy’s gold mine, which is located in a regional NSW seat the Nationals are desperate to win, has only hardened their resolve.

Asked if they could accept a drastically pared-back EPA, one senior Nationals MP told The West: “I don’t want a bar of it.

“I think industry has been sold a pup.”

Another said: “I can’t see how we would support it.”

A big concession

The first sign Labor was prepared to give ground came on August 14, when The West revealed Ms Plibersek was open to gutting the EPA to win the Coalition’s support.

On the first day of last week’s WA visit, Mr Albanese confirmed the concession was on the table in an exclusive interview with this masthead.

That he disclosed the offer while in WA was unsurprising given the nation’s economic engine room will be the most affected by the Nature Positive Plan.

It is also the State where the political backlash to a Greens deal would be most severe, potentially putting at risk the seats Labor won in 2022 and weakening an already tenuous grip on majority government.

Mr Albanese mentioned Nature Positive just once more during his four-day trip to WA. Tellingly, he couched it not as an environmental reform but a pro-business policy.

“On issues like Nature Positive reforms and these issues, I’ve said we want to get things done. I want jobs, I want economic activity, and WA is a key to that,” he said.

Premier Roger Cook on Sunday urged the Opposition to work with Labor to pass “sensible environmental protection laws”.

‘As much pain as possible’

Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young confirmed the party was still in negotiations with Labor.

But she made clear that unless the Government was prepared to legislate some form of climate trigger and end native forest logging the party wouldn’t be able to support it.

“The Government came to office promising to act on climate and the environment and all they have offered so far is a betrayal,” Senator Hanson-Young told The West.

Where once Labor was comfortable cutting deals with the Greens on everything from IR to electric cars, senior Coalition and industry sources believe Mr Albanese is now sufficiently spooked at the prospect of losing a swathe of WA seats — and possibly the election — that he no longer wants to be seen dancing with Adam Bandt.

That means the only path runs through the Opposition.

The Coalition leadership is yet to finalise its position but is strongly inclined to resist the industry lobbying and oppose the EPA, leaving Ms Plibersek’s signature Bill to gather dust in the Senate.

“Why would we do a deal?” one Liberal source said.

“Why on earth would we give credibility to Labor’s agenda. At this stage in the electoral cycle, it’s all about causing as much pain as possible.”