Federal election 2025: Albanese pledges to start from scratch on new Nature Positive laws

Anthony Albanese has promised he’ll start from scratch with an overhaul of environmental laws and the role of an independent Federal watchdog after declaring the Nature Positive legislation was “off the table”.

The Prime Minister dumped the second tranche of the controversial laws, which would have established a Federal environmental protection agency, after the Coalition and Greens refused to back it in the Senate.

The Greens and crossbenchers including David Pocock were close to a deal with Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to pass the legislation before Mr Albanese stepped in after intense lobbying from the WA Government and resources sector.

Standing with WA Premier Roger Cook in Perth on Saturday, Mr Albanese said “of course” his plan was to start from scratch on new environmental laws.

“They’re not on the table. They’re off the table,” he said of the previous Nature Positive laws.

Earlier, Ms Plibersek told the ABC she was sad the Greens and Liberals hadn’t backed the establishment of an EPA “with strong new powers and penalties, new environmental data, it would have had transparency, the world-first definition of nature positive”.

“The Greens never agreed to back the law reform that we proposed,” she said.

The original proposal was for an independent agency with the powers to approve projects, impose conditions and enforce them.

Mr Albanese watered this down in September in a bid to appease concerned miners in WA, saying it would be a compliance-only watchdog — but still wasn’t able to win support.

He avoided questions on Saturday about what powers the revamped agency would have or whether the Government would combine it with an overhaul of the approvals processes and laws instead of keeping the two tranches decoupled, as with the failed Nature Positive push.

“We do need a national EPA as was identified by the review that was commissioned by the former Liberal government,” he said.

“We’ll sit down with the industry, and we’ll sit down with environmental groups … We have something to work from.

“People want a national EPA, because the Howard government’s legislation is not fit for purpose. We’ll get it right.”

Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA head Rebecca Tomkinson confirmed the Prime Minister had had discussions with her about the environmental overhaul and believed he had heeded the industry’s disquiet.

“We did discuss the importance of consultation and that the piece that really let the process down last time was there wasn’t an open and transparent discussion with all stakeholders,” she told The Nightly.

The CME does not believe there is a need for a standalone Federal EPA, or that any such agency should be limited to compliance and regulation, stepping in only where State bodies were failing.

“Everyone is acknowledging that it is essential to enable industry to accelerate its activity and what we need is clear policy changes in IR, in environment, in approvals to ensure we deliver that,” Ms Tomkinson said.