Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Anthony Albernezi was triumphant on Friday as he talked up
Speaker 1: the government's passing of dozens of bills through the Parliament,
Speaker 1: but there was one key piece of environmental legislation set
Speaker 1: to sail through that he personally stopped right at the
Speaker 1: last minute, with no heads up for one of his
Speaker 1: most senior ministers, the Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plever
Speaker 1: sec The decision by the Prime Minister puts mining interests
Speaker 1: and the hope of votes in Western Australia ahead of
Speaker 1: a deal that source to say he had already approved. Today.
Speaker 1: National correspondent for the Saturday paper Mirk Secam and why
Speaker 1: Alberanezi did it and whether it's the green till end
Speaker 1: up winning out. It's Tuesday, December three, Mike, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us. There was a rush of bills passed last week.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me what went through?
Speaker 2: Well, thirty one bills on Thursday and forty five over
Speaker 2: the week. Among them some key pieces of Labour's housing legislation,
Speaker 2: including its Bill to Rent bill. They're twenty two billion
Speaker 2: dollar Future Made in Australia package.
Speaker 3: What we're doing is getting things done.
Speaker 2: And in a press conference on Friday, the Prime Minister
Speaker 2: Anthony Albanez, he talked up the government's success in getting
Speaker 2: the legislation through.
Speaker 4: If we listened and we engaged, we had our amendments
Speaker 4: ready to go to make a difference to people's lives,
Speaker 4: so cracking down on supermarkets.
Speaker 2: Watching the Parliament, actually, I was reminded of a quote
Speaker 2: by the great Irish actor Richard Harris, you know, perhaps
Speaker 2: most famous for playing Marcus Aurelius and in Gladiator, and
Speaker 2: he once observed that the defining characteristic of a successful
Speaker 2: politician was selective cowardice. And apart from all the stuff
Speaker 2: that passed, there were also some startling examples in my
Speaker 2: view of selective cowardice last week.
Speaker 1: How so well.
Speaker 2: For one, there was Labour's adoption of a suite of
Speaker 2: draconian measures against immigrants.
Speaker 4: Other things, they create powers for the Australian government to
Speaker 4: pay third countries to receive non citizens and give new
Speaker 4: powers to search for drugs and confiscate phones in detention.
Speaker 4: Advocates say the laws are heartless and deplorable.
Speaker 2: This was quite clearly put forward in an attempt to
Speaker 2: prevent the Conservative parties from portraying them as weak on
Speaker 2: the issue. And I might add that when he announced
Speaker 2: the Coalition would support Labour's bills, the Shadow Immigration Minister
Speaker 2: Dan Tien boasted that his side of politics was quite
Speaker 2: basically running the immigration system from opposition, and I think
Speaker 2: that he's pretty right. But perhaps the most clear cut
Speaker 2: example is, in my view, related to environment policy. The
Speaker 2: government had a chance to get its so called Nature
Speaker 2: Positive package of environmental legislation, which was promised at the
Speaker 2: last election and had long been subject of difficult negotiations
Speaker 2: with the Greens and anothers on the Senate crossbench. The
Speaker 2: Government had the chance to get that wave through the
Speaker 2: Greens and Labour's Environment Minister Taniel Plubsecud reached a deal,
Speaker 2: but the Prime Minister blew it up because he was
Speaker 2: scared of the response from the mining industry, from the
Speaker 2: logging industry, and above all from the West Australian Labor government.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about that, yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure. The history of it goes back to before the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two election. Labour promised to fix Australia's environment laws,
Speaker 2: which they said and which most people who know about
Speaker 2: them said were inadequate. There was even a template to
Speaker 2: work from. There'd been an independent expert review of the
Speaker 2: Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act EPBC ACT presented to
Speaker 2: the former Liberal Environment Minister Susan Lee in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: and it painted a very bleak picture of the state
Speaker 2: of Australia's natural environment and it recommended comprehensive reforms to
Speaker 2: environmental law and regulation. Anyway, Lee sat on it for
Speaker 2: three months before releasing it and then didn't follow it through.
Speaker 2: So Labour promised to do better, and in December twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two it formally responded with something called the Nature
Speaker 2: Positive Plan, which picked up most of the changes that
Speaker 2: had been recommended in that expert review, the so called
Speaker 2: Samuel Review.
Speaker 5: Our government is getting on with our goal of delivering
Speaker 5: a nature positive Australia. A nature positive Australia which means
Speaker 5: protecting more of our natural environment through our kids and
Speaker 5: our grandkids to enjoy, protecting more of what's what's precious,
Speaker 5: repairing more of what's damaged, and managing nature better for
Speaker 5: the future.
Speaker 2: So central to the plan was the establishment of an
Speaker 2: independent environmental protection Agency, and when she introduced the bills
Speaker 2: in May Plebisek called the new body the heart of
Speaker 2: the reforms, a tough cop on the beat that would
Speaker 2: be able to issue stop work orders to prevent serious
Speaker 2: environmental damage.
Speaker 5: This is an exciting Australia first and it delivers on
Speaker 5: an important, an important promise that we made during the
Speaker 5: election to have a strong independent APA, a tough pop
Speaker 5: on the beat that is operating at arms stakes from government.
Speaker 2: The proposed legislation included potential finds of up to seven
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty million dollars or prison for up to
Speaker 2: seven years for the most serious intentional breaches of environmental law,
Speaker 2: but the Liberal National Parties wouldn't support it, and the
Speaker 2: Greens insisted that they would neither unless they got into
Speaker 2: it something called a climate trigger, whereby greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 2: of proposed projects would be factored into the Environment Minister's
Speaker 2: final decision. And this, I must say was not a
Speaker 2: particularly new idea. Alberzi himself had argued for this when
Speaker 2: he was the shadow Environment Minister almost twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: but nothing came of it. So anyway, if we fast
Speaker 2: forward to this week, Albanese into our Prime Minister. He's
Speaker 2: not only opposed to the climate trigger, but has spent
Speaker 2: months public liberating the Greens for obstructionism, for advocating essentially
Speaker 2: a policy that he used to champion. So anyway, there'd
Speaker 2: been this long, long standoff between Labor and the Greens
Speaker 2: over this package of bills which were reforming our environment
Speaker 2: protection laws. Then the week before last we got a breakthrough.
Speaker 2: Tanya Plibersek, the Minister, and the Green spokesperson Sarah Hanson
Speaker 2: Young had finally reached an agreement that would have allowed
Speaker 2: it to go through the Senate. The Greens dropped their
Speaker 2: calls for a climate trigger and they said they would
Speaker 2: support the government's legislation package if the government agreed to
Speaker 2: act on native forest logging. Both sides were happy with it.
Speaker 2: And what happened then, confirmed to me by people on
Speaker 2: both sides of the negotiation, both Labor and the Greens,
Speaker 2: is that the deal was struck Tuesday morning. It was
Speaker 2: in writing. It went to Alberanizi, who, as I was told,
Speaker 2: okayed it. Plibbersecond Hands and Young were preparing statements announcing
Speaker 2: the breakthrough for release on Wednesday morning. Everything looked like,
Speaker 2: you know, it was going and then late on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: Alberanzi reversed his position and canned the whole agreement. What's more,
Speaker 2: the Greens re informed the deal was off before plebisk was,
Speaker 2: which was an extraordinary slap in the face for a
Speaker 2: very senior labor minister.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break Alberese's cowardice on environmental reform
Speaker 1: and what it means for ranker in the government's ranks.
Speaker 1: Markey spoken to people on both sides of this deal.
Speaker 1: Tell me what pussure you formed about why Albanzi killed it?
Speaker 2: Well, there's no mystery about it. Frankly, the Labor Premier
Speaker 2: of Western Australia, Roger Cook, actually claimed responsibility for it himself.
Speaker 2: At a press conference last Wednesday, Cook said that he
Speaker 2: had spoken at the quote highest level unquote to share
Speaker 2: his view that the bills should not be progressed, so
Speaker 2: pretty clearly his intervention had a lot to do with it.
Speaker 2: Even before the Premier came out and said that. According
Speaker 2: to West Australian media, his Minister for Mines and Petroleum
Speaker 2: Dave Michael, told around two hundred mining industry figures that
Speaker 2: the WA government had been assured there would be nodeal
Speaker 2: so anyway to put it simply, this was a triumph
Speaker 2: of electoral politics over policy, and the reason for that
Speaker 2: is that Western Australia has not historically been a strong
Speaker 2: state for federal labor, but in the twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: election it picked up nine seats in the West, so
Speaker 2: it was a very strong result and essentially the West
Speaker 2: was the state that propelled labor in the government. So
Speaker 2: labor doesn't want to upset people in the West. Powerful
Speaker 2: mining interests own most of the West's media, and one
Speaker 2: might say they effectively owned both major political parties too,
Speaker 2: So really this was indeed an active, selective cowardice on
Speaker 2: Albanese's part.
Speaker 1: How did Tenya Plebasik respond to the way Alberanuzi handled this.
Speaker 1: You can imagine she'd be quite annoyed by it all.
Speaker 2: Well, want to imagine she was. But Plibisek is a
Speaker 2: pro right, she's a stoic. She's not stuck her head
Speaker 2: up and said that she was screwed over and she's angry.
Speaker 2: But other people have been saying it for her, I
Speaker 2: might add Sarah Hanson Young clearly is also furious about it.
Speaker 2: She lays the blame squallion LB and easy I.
Speaker 3: Walk out of the room, of course, and before we
Speaker 3: know it. The front page of The Australian, the West
Speaker 3: Australian and virtually every newspaper the next morning was saying
Speaker 3: that the business lobby, the miners and the loggers had
Speaker 3: convinced the Prime Minister to dump these laws. I mean,
Speaker 3: you don't have to take my word for it. You
Speaker 3: take the word of that crowing.
Speaker 2: But the most concerning thing I think is the internal descent.
Speaker 2: Felicity Wade, who's the co convener of the Labor Environment
Speaker 2: Action Network, stressed that the EPA that Albanizi had killed
Speaker 2: off was an election commitment and had been in the
Speaker 2: national platform since twenty eighteen, and that was backed by
Speaker 2: five hundred local ALP branches and that it was, as
Speaker 2: she put, a core to their claim of caring for
Speaker 2: the natural environment. So Felicity Wade was furious. I spoke
Speaker 2: to her and she was really angry, and so are
Speaker 2: a lot of other people in the party.
Speaker 1: So how do you think this has going to player
Speaker 1: for Alberdez given it sounds like it was merely an
Speaker 1: electoral calculation.
Speaker 2: Well, look that waits to be seen, you know, but
Speaker 2: you'd have to think it will damage labor with environmentally
Speaker 2: concerned voters and it will help the Greens, and everything
Speaker 2: that helps the Greens increases the chances that Labor will
Speaker 2: not command a majority after the next election. You know,
Speaker 2: we keep hearing from the pundits and sophologists looking at
Speaker 2: the state of things that we're probably heading towards a
Speaker 2: hung parliament in which neither Labor nor the Coalition can
Speaker 2: govern alone. And that makes the Labour Greens dynamic particularly interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, for most of this term, Labour has sought
Speaker 2: to portray the Greens as being obstructionist and being part
Speaker 2: of a nolition with the Liberal and National parties, but
Speaker 2: that's changed recently. The Greens have become much more accommodating
Speaker 2: of the government's agenda. Some read this shift as evidence
Speaker 2: that the Greens had realized there was a growing perception
Speaker 2: that they were indeed obstructionist and were too often voting
Speaker 2: with the Coalition arties against Labor, and that this was
Speaker 2: hurting them. I spoke to Adam Band about this, though,
Speaker 2: and he puts a pretty strong countercase. He points out
Speaker 2: that the Greens have finished this year with more seats
Speaker 2: in parliaments across Australia than they started the year sure,
Speaker 2: they'd underperformed at a couple of recent elections, notably in
Speaker 2: Queens and the Act, but not by much. And he
Speaker 2: also points to the fact that they're still doing very
Speaker 2: well in opinion polls. And it's true. There was an
Speaker 2: analysis by Guardian Australia early this month which factored in
Speaker 2: all the major polls and found the Greens were sitting
Speaker 2: on thirteen point four percent of the first preference vote,
Speaker 2: which was up from twelve point three percent at the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two election. By comparison, the same Guardian poll
Speaker 2: found that Labor was down more than five points, the
Speaker 2: Coalition was up two point two and the independents were
Speaker 2: also up. So while the Greens aren't happy about this
Speaker 2: move from Melbourne Easy and they think that ultimately fighting
Speaker 2: between the Greens and Labor only benefits the coalition, it's
Speaker 2: clear they're trying to pressure the government for outcomes they want,
Speaker 2: but they ultimately believe that when push comes to shove,
Speaker 2: it's time to work together because that's in their overall
Speaker 2: best interest. What the Greens want is a minority Labor government,
Speaker 2: in which case the balance of power will fall to
Speaker 2: them and probably some minor party and independent people who
Speaker 2: also are very environmentally concerned, you know, the so called
Speaker 2: teals and things that there will be much more leverage
Speaker 2: in the new parliament if that happens for them to
Speaker 2: get their way. What he doesn't want is what he
Speaker 2: calls the Trumpian Dutton opposition to win the election. So anyway,
Speaker 2: it was a very interesting week in Parliament. The fact
Speaker 2: that Labor managed to pass such a huge bunch of
Speaker 2: legislation at the last minute shows what can happen when
Speaker 2: it works together with the Greens and the minor players.
Speaker 2: The embarrassment suffered by Labor and the environment stuff shows
Speaker 2: how badly it can go when they don't work together.
Speaker 1: Mark, thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks Lodan.
Speaker 1: Also in the years, today, Joe Biden has signed a
Speaker 1: pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, in one of his
Speaker 1: last acts as President of the United States. Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: will be spared a prison sentence for federal felony, gun
Speaker 1: and tax convictions. President Biden had previously ruled out intervening
Speaker 1: in the case, but in a statement, he said he
Speaker 1: believes politics had infected his son's treatment and that he
Speaker 1: hopes Americans will understand why father and president would come
Speaker 1: to this decision, a military personnel found guilty or sexual
Speaker 1: offenses will be expelled. According to the government's response to
Speaker 1: the Royal Commission in Defense and Veteran Suicide, there will
Speaker 1: also be a new formal inquiry into military sexual violence
Speaker 1: in the Australian Defense Force, with a scope and timing
Speaker 1: still to be determined. The government has accepted most of
Speaker 1: the Royal Commissions one hundred and twenty two findings, three
Speaker 1: months since the report was released. I'm Daniel James. This
Speaker 1: is seven am. See you tomorrow.