Sussan Ley wants one-on-one with Anthony Albanese to sort environment law overhaul deal

Sussan Ley has declared she wants to meet Anthony Albanese one-on-one to sort out a deal on the environmental law overhaul.

The Opposition Leader accused Environment Minister Murray Watt of having “failed miserably” in negotiations after he only sent the technical wording of amendments to the Coalition minutes before its party room meeting on Tuesday morning.

He’s also sent a separate set of amendments to the Greens.

Both sides say they continue to be in active discussions with the Government, which wants to pass the legislation this week and has told Lower House MPs to stay back on Friday morning in anticipation of late-night Senate amendments.

Ms Ley said it appeared Senator Watt was “in search of a political fix” rather than real legislative reform given he was willing to do two completely different deals.

“I am happy to discuss this personally, leader-to-leader, with the Prime Minister,” she said.

“In fact, you know what? I’ll meet with Anthony Albanese every week for the next eight weeks to work through this detailed 1500 pages of legislation, in the importance of getting it right.”

Earlier, the Coalition party room endorsed the shadow cabinet’s decision to give license to shadow environment minister Angie Bell to strike a deal with the Government on the legislation.

Senior shadow cabinet colleague Jonno Duniam, who held the environment portfolio last term, is leading negotiations in the Senate.

To seal a deal with the Coalition, Labor is offering to keep existing streamlined pathways, put a 14-day time limit on stop work orders, add an explanation that the maximum penalties should only apply to the most egregious breaches, and either give the minister the power to make directions to the head of the new EPA or to allow for their sacking if their performance in unsatisfactory.

These meet four of the seven changes the Coalition wants – with notable outstanding items the definitions of “unacceptable impacts” and “net gain”, which industry worries are too ambiguous.

The Coalition has told the Government it wants to see one overarching definition of “unacceptable impacts”, but so far hasn’t offered its own preferred wording.

“It’s not our job to write the government’s legislation,” Ms Ley said.

But Senator Watt said his difficulty was knowing what the Opposition actually wanted when it couldn’t spell out specifics.

“One of the problems that we’ve had with the negotiations with the Coalition all the way along is the fact that they haven’t been able to focus on what they want, because they’ve obviously been focusing on their internals,” he told Sky News.

“We’re now at a point where I’ve got multiple people from the Coalition seeking to negotiate with me, rather than one… Every time I meet with them, there are new amendments that are added to the list.

“Last week, I was given the final seven list that they wanted, and the very next day, I got 17 more amendments. I mean, if you want to talk about mismanaging a process, they might want to have a look in the mirror.”

To the Greens, Senator Watt has offered a range of limits to fast-tracking or overriding approvals of fossil fuel projects, requiring States to show they can do assessments under Federal laws before being allowed to do approvals too, and giving the Federal Minister to declare that a project being assessed by the States needs Commonwealth approval.

The party says it’s taking his proposals in good spirits but a deal isn’t there yet.