With Coalition climate chaos dominating headlines, Labor’s flimsy environmental reforms have flown under the radar
By Amanda McKenzie
While the media pours fuel on the Coalition’s internal climate battle, the Labor government’s once-in-a-generation rewrite of Australia’s national environment law has gone unscrutinised.
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The media is obsessed with the Coalition’s climate implosion. Every day delivers another contradiction, or plot twist, as they fight over climate and energy policy that everyone else settled long ago.
And while the chaos headlines have kept on coming, the Albanese Government is pushing through a once-in-a-generation rewrite of Australia’s national environment law. A rewrite that would let fossil fuel corporations keep pumping out climate pollution from coal and gas that’s cooking the Great Barrier Reef, scorching forests and battering communities from Lismore to the Pilbara.
What we need is sharper scrutiny on what the government is doing right now – not another season of political drama.
First, let’s look at the state of negotiations. The Albanese Government has introduced a bill to overhaul our outdated environment law for the first time in 25 years. To get it through the Senate, it needs the support of either the Greens or the Coalition – and it is actively courting both. Negotiating Australia’s environment law with a political party that’s torched its own climate policy is downright negligence.
This is the same political party that wants to unwind or end all the progress and plans we have for cutting climate pollution in this country. Does that sound like a good partner in shaping the very rules that govern polluting coal and gas projects for decades to come?
Second, let’s look at Labor’s proposed reforms: they don’t require the Minister for the Environment, Murray Watt, to consider climate harm. They don’t require full disclosure of a project’s climate pollution. They don’t test whether a mega-emitter aligns with our climate targets. And they could speed up approvals for even the most-polluting coal, oil, and gas projects. All these climate loopholes would enable fossil fuel companies to keep on polluting, and climate harm to escalate.
Australians know what that means because we’re living it. Marine heatwaves, and six mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef in 10 years. The Black Summer bushfires that killed or displaced 3 billion animals and insects. Supercharged floods tearing through low-lying areas. These are the consequences of decisions made by past governments that pretend climate pollution is someone else’s problem.
For too long, our national environment law has treated climate damage as an afterthought. More than 750 coal, oil and gas projects have been approved under the existing Act. Not one has had its climate pollution properly assessed. Thirty-two have been approved by this government alone. Another 42 are lined up to be approved. If these reforms pass unchanged, that conveyor belt continues.
This isn’t acceptable in other countries. Canada, the UK and the EU all require climate impacts to be assessed before major projects get the green light. Even most of our states require climate assessments before giving the green light. Yet Australia’s federal government wants to keep turning a blind eye.
And all this is flying under the radar while everyone is focused on the fight within the Coalition.
When a government claims it’s protecting the environment while waving through projects that make the crisis worse, people lose trust. That’s evident in the latest national polling on this issue. Seven in 10 Australians want strong climate safeguards in our national environment law, and that’s even higher among young Australians (82%).
So what would a more credible environment law look like?
It would require full disclosure of a project’s climate pollution – including the pollution released when fossil fuels dug up in Australia are burned overseas. It would require the Minister for the Environment to consider climate consequences when assessing a project. Big polluters would need real, verifiable plans showing they can operate within Australia’s climate limits. And the law would fast-track clean energy projects, not fossil fuels.
This is achievable. It’s sensible. It’s backed by experts, communities and young people who deserve a government that is protecting their future.
About the author
Amanda McKenzie
Amanda is a prominent Australian environmental leader and the CEO of the Climate Council, which she co-founded with Professor Tim Flannery in 2013. She previously founded the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and has served on renewable energy expert panels for the Queensland and Northern Territory Governments. Amanda was the founding Chair of the Centre for Australian Progress and is a former Board Director at Plan International Australia and the Whitlam Institute.
Australian people want Australian leadership on this. But our policy settings are shaping up to set a direction that doesnt rank us anywhere near our ambition and vision. Well observed and well writren, thank you, bit now how do we activate something more positive together?