Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Australia has a new Environment Minister and he's got a
Speaker 1: big job ahead of him fixing the country's broken environment laws.
Speaker 1: He takes over from Tania Plibasek, who was famously thwarted
Speaker 1: by the Prime Minister when she tried to fix them.
Speaker 1: But even before he starts on that, Murray Watt has
Speaker 1: another decision to make about whether he will let Woodside
Speaker 1: extend their Northwest Shelf gas project out to twenty seventy,
Speaker 1: which will allow them to open new gas fields and
Speaker 1: detonate a carbon bomb into the atmosphere worth ten times
Speaker 1: our current annual emissions. Today National correspondent for the Saturday Paper,
Speaker 1: Mike Second on Murray Watt, his plans for the environment
Speaker 1: and the big decision he has to make. It's Monday
Speaker 1: twenty six Myke, Australia has a new Environment Minister, Murray
Speaker 1: What what's he like?
Speaker 2: Well, he's competent. I think you would say that's the
Speaker 2: first thing. He seems to be a very competent bloke
Speaker 2: and as a result of that he's come to be
Speaker 2: seen as sort of one of the government's foremost fixes
Speaker 2: you know, they give him the hard jobs because he's
Speaker 2: prepared to take on powerful, even dangerous vested interests. So
Speaker 2: you know, as Agriculture Minister, he took on the farming
Speaker 2: lobby and he steered through parliament legislation ending the live
Speaker 2: sheep export trade. When he was Minister for Employment Workplace Relations,
Speaker 2: he pushed through laws cracking down on corruption in the
Speaker 2: construction industry. You know, that involved biking gangs and the CFMU,
Speaker 2: and he did that over the objections of the CFMU itself,
Speaker 2: but also you know, other unions with strong links to
Speaker 2: the Labor Party. And I might add he was given
Speaker 2: extra police protection at the time because it was considered
Speaker 2: to be an actually physically dangerous position that he was in.
Speaker 3: His behavior as abhorrent and something that needs to be
Speaker 3: stamped out. The overwhelming majority of the union movement in
Speaker 3: Australia is appalled by these allegations, just as your viewers
Speaker 3: are as well. I think people are sick and tired
Speaker 3: of this behavior occurring. They want to see action, and
Speaker 3: that's exactly what they'll get from me and from the
Speaker 3: Albanese government.
Speaker 2: Now, though I think he confronts an even more intractable,
Speaker 2: if less physically dangerous problem, which is reforming Australia's main
Speaker 2: national environment law, the EPBC Act. And I think the
Speaker 2: fact that he has been appointed to do the job
Speaker 2: is the fact that the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanizi he
Speaker 2: wants this sorted.
Speaker 1: How's his appointment being received by various stakeholders in his
Speaker 1: new portfolio area.
Speaker 2: Well, Bob Brown, sort of farther figure of the greens
Speaker 2: around the country, he was very strongly anti Murray Watt.
Speaker 2: He thought that he was coming in to do a
Speaker 2: hatchet job. He called it a kick in the guts
Speaker 2: for nature. The Minerals Council, on the other hand, representing
Speaker 2: the mining industry, released one of those kind of boiler
Speaker 2: plate we welcome the new appointee sort of media releases.
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of people on both sides
Speaker 2: of the debate are just tired of things being bogged
Speaker 2: down unstalled. On the environment front, It's probably fair to
Speaker 2: say there are some intractably anti environment elements of the
Speaker 2: resources industry who don't want anything to happen, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot on the industry side as well as the
Speaker 2: environment side, who just want to get As Luisa Waters
Speaker 2: might say, just want to get shit done, you know, right,
Speaker 2: and he takes over from Tenure Plebersek, who famously got
Speaker 2: very close to a deal with the.
Speaker 1: Greens to fix our environmental laws before Anthony Albanezi famously intervened,
Speaker 1: So can you tell me about these laws and why
Speaker 1: they are not working well?
Speaker 2: The major laws call the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation
Speaker 2: Act EPBC Act, and it was legislated way back in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine by the Howard government and it's been
Speaker 2: reviewed a couple of times since then. To quote the
Speaker 2: prominent businessman, former a Triple C chairman, Graham Samuel, who
Speaker 2: undertook one of those reviews, EPBC Act has been quote
Speaker 2: an abysmal failure unquote.
Speaker 4: The important thing is this is that we've got the
Speaker 4: State of the Environment Report. We've got my own views
Speaker 4: expressed in the review, which followed extensive consultation, extensive right
Speaker 4: around Australia, and clearly the environment is not being well served,
Speaker 4: in fact not being served at all properly by the
Speaker 4: current laws.
Speaker 2: They don't mention climate and quite clearly, you know we've
Speaker 2: got an extinction crisis in this country, so clearly they're
Speaker 2: not fulfilling their role of protecting the environment. Like I said,
Speaker 2: they've been a couple of reviews. First one was back
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine, then the Samuel Review in
Speaker 2: October twenty nineteen, and the report that came back was damning.
Speaker 2: It just called for a radical Overhall said the Act
Speaker 2: wasn't fit for purpose. It recommended thirty eight changes that
Speaker 2: included legally binding national standards to protect wildlife, critical habitats,
Speaker 2: heritage sites, independent oversight from a body or bodies, an
Speaker 2: enforcement of those standards. It called for the prioritization of
Speaker 2: indigenous engagement and the protection of cultural heritage. It called
Speaker 2: for better data collection, and it called for reform of
Speaker 2: the environmental offsets regime, which frankly does not adequately protect
Speaker 2: critical habitat from development. That was the report. Nothing came
Speaker 2: of it. So it's been a long time that reform
Speaker 2: has been promised and not been delivered, you know. I
Speaker 2: spoke to Kelly Oshannessy from the Australian Conservation Foundation. She
Speaker 2: made exactly that point. She said, reform has been promised
Speaker 2: and not delivered for a decade and a half now
Speaker 2: and now, of course with the appointment Murray, what it's
Speaker 2: been promised again.
Speaker 1: Okay, So has he going about that so far?
Speaker 2: Well, bear in mind, of course he's only had his
Speaker 2: feet under the desk for what two weeks now, but
Speaker 2: it's been something a whirlwind of consultation, which I guess
Speaker 2: is a good sign. No sooner to get the job
Speaker 2: than he jetted off to Western Australia and the West
Speaker 2: Australian government, a labor government, was the one that had stop,
Speaker 2: I mean, the previous reform effort by a Tania Plibersik. Famously,
Speaker 2: Roger Cook, the Premiere of Western Australia, intervened and as
Speaker 2: a result of that, Albanezi told the Greens that there
Speaker 2: was going to be no deal with Tania Plibersick. So
Speaker 2: I spoke to Murray while he was over in WA
Speaker 2: and he said that for those very reasons, he'd wanted
Speaker 2: to make Western Australia his first trip, and he pointed
Speaker 2: out that he has some major decisions about pending projects
Speaker 2: over there, but his main job, as he sees it,
Speaker 2: is to get the law changes through. He's been meeting
Speaker 2: with a lot of people. He met with Roger Cook,
Speaker 2: He's met with various state members whose responsibilities overlap with
Speaker 2: his He's met with mining groups, he's met with business groups,
Speaker 2: He's met with environment advocates and First Nations organizations. It's
Speaker 2: quite impressive how many different people he's spoken to you.
Speaker 2: The way he put it, he said he's deliberately meeting
Speaker 2: with everyone that he can because he genuinely wants to
Speaker 2: know all points of view before he makes a call
Speaker 2: on the reforms.
Speaker 1: Perhaps that's a.
Speaker 2: Good sign, but of course how he comes to be
Speaker 2: judged will depend not just on whether he can land
Speaker 2: these reforms, but on another big decision that he has
Speaker 2: to make imminently, long before he gets around to legislating
Speaker 2: the EPBC changes.
Speaker 1: After the break Murray Watt's first big test. Mike Murray
Speaker 1: Watt is tasked with fixing Australia's environment laws. But before that,
Speaker 1: he's got a big decision to make, which will tell
Speaker 1: us about his priorities. Tell me about that decision. Well.
Speaker 2: He has committed himself to making a call by the
Speaker 2: end of this month on a proposal to extend the
Speaker 2: life of Woodside Energy's Northwest Shelf fossil gas project out
Speaker 2: to twenty seventy. If he waves it through, he effectively
Speaker 2: detonates what Callioshannessy calls a carbon bomb.
Speaker 5: So what we expect the government to do is to
Speaker 5: say that they aren't going to extend the gas factory
Speaker 5: from twenty thirty to twenty seventy, which is the request
Speaker 5: from Woodside that they see a future that is clean
Speaker 5: and a country that's powered with renewables, and they're going
Speaker 5: to drive that transition, and they're.
Speaker 2: Going to according to their state government's COIs, the consequence
Speaker 2: will be the release of the equivalent of around four
Speaker 2: point three billion with a b tons of carbon dioxide
Speaker 2: into the atmosphere. That's roughly ten times Australia's current annual
Speaker 2: total emissions.
Speaker 1: So it's a huge new source of emissions. How does
Speaker 1: that square with the government's and net zero emissions commitment.
Speaker 2: It depends on how you look at it. I guess
Speaker 2: you would say. The WA government approved the extension at
Speaker 2: the end of last year after a long and convoluted
Speaker 2: assessment process, on the basis that the domestic emissions, that is,
Speaker 2: the amount of gas released in this country as a
Speaker 2: result of the project being extended, would be phased down
Speaker 2: to zero by twenty fifty, in large part through the
Speaker 2: purchase of carbon offsets, but still it would release one
Speaker 2: hundred forty million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in its lifetime,
Speaker 2: which is a lot, but it's dwarfed by the hymn
Speaker 2: out of greenhouse gas that would result from the burning
Speaker 2: of that gas overseas. The waepa's approval document calculated that
Speaker 2: that would be about eighty million tons every year out
Speaker 2: to twenty seventy hence the astronomical total of four point
Speaker 2: three billion tons. As to how it fits with our
Speaker 2: climate commitments, well, the wa and federal governments take the
Speaker 2: view that emissions generated outside Australia from the burning of
Speaker 2: our fossil fuel exports are not a consideration, and there's
Speaker 2: some justification for this because under the Paris Agreement, emissions
Speaker 2: are accounted for according to where the fossil fuels are burnt,
Speaker 2: not where their mind, The distinction that they make between
Speaker 2: emissions produced by burning Australian fossil fuels domestically and abroad
Speaker 2: is obviously artificial, right because carbon dioxide doesn't respect national boundaries.
Speaker 2: You know, it warms the planet just as much whether
Speaker 2: it's burnt here or somewhere else, and has the same
Speaker 2: effect on nature, and as Oshannessy says, it's an increasingly
Speaker 2: litigious area and at some point, she says, they're going
Speaker 2: to win that in a court of law. But be
Speaker 2: that as it may, you know, it's not going to
Speaker 2: have any impact on a decision due by May thirty
Speaker 2: one on the extension of the Northwest Shelf project.
Speaker 1: So when you spoke to Marie what about this, what
Speaker 1: did he have to say?
Speaker 2: Well, what, politely but firmly refused to talk about it,
Speaker 2: you know, notwithstanding the fact that it's of enormous interest
Speaker 2: to the resources industry, to environmentalists and of course to
Speaker 2: the media like us. In fact, he said he had
Speaker 2: explicitly said to people in meetings that he could not
Speaker 2: discuss that because he considered that to be improper. So
Speaker 2: he hadn't met with the West Australian Conservation Council, for example,
Speaker 2: or with Woodside, because each of them had big stakes
Speaker 2: applications on the decision, so he didn't think it was appropriate.
Speaker 2: In fact, you know, I said, well, maybe you can
Speaker 2: just outline for me, you know, what you think of
Speaker 2: the pros and cons of one side or the other,
Speaker 2: and he wouldn't even do that. He did tacitly. I
Speaker 2: guess you would say acknowledge one big con when I
Speaker 2: raised it, and that is that the Burret Peninsula, which
Speaker 2: is where the woodside gas hub sits, also happens to
Speaker 2: be right in the middle of probably the world's largest
Speaker 2: collection of ancient rock art. There's more than a million petroglyphs,
Speaker 2: maybe two million, and accurate accounting is yet to be done,
Speaker 2: stretching over an area of thirty seven thousand hectares, some
Speaker 2: of them forty thousand years or more old. They're called
Speaker 2: the Mujuga petroglyphs. And the thing is they're rapidly being
Speaker 2: degraded by emissions from this woodside plant, particularly nitrogen oxides
Speaker 2: and what they call volatile organic compounds.
Speaker 1: So are there any moves to protect or safeguard these petroglyphs.
Speaker 2: Well, there's certainly recommendations that there should be. The WAEPA
Speaker 2: said that if an extension was to be granted to
Speaker 2: the project, it should be conditional on woodside cutting those
Speaker 2: emissions by at least forty percent by twenty thirty and
Speaker 2: then more. But that's not enough, says O'shannessy, and she
Speaker 2: notes that the traditional owners are opposed to the extension
Speaker 2: of the project. She referred to it as a slow
Speaker 2: moving duke and gorge, you know, referencing Rio Tinto's destruction
Speaker 2: of those ancient rock shelters back in twenty twenty, because
Speaker 2: you know, it's undeniable. This rock art is being degraded
Speaker 2: by the pollution from the plant. Furthermore, the Australian government
Speaker 2: itself has recognized the global importance of this what they
Speaker 2: call the Murojuga cultural landscape. In January twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: they nominated it for inscription on the World Heritage List
Speaker 2: and a decision on that is due to be made
Speaker 2: by UNESCO's World Heritage Committee in July. And so you know,
Speaker 2: Murray what sort of tacitly admitted that this was a
Speaker 2: big consideration because he said that the government remained quote
Speaker 2: absolutely committed to protecting this World Heritage listing because it
Speaker 2: was a quote very special and important place and will
Speaker 2: know soon enough whether Murray what decides to down on
Speaker 2: the side of jobs, mining company profits and government tax
Speaker 2: revenues or on the side of ancient culture and the
Speaker 2: global climate. The portense don't look particularly good, as O'shannessi says,
Speaker 2: and as I think history would dictate. So if he
Speaker 2: grants that extension, O'shannessy says, it will be devastating.
Speaker 6: Nowhere else in the world has this amazing cultural feature
Speaker 6: that is at Murojuga, which is also up for World
Speaker 6: Heritage listing, and the Northwest Self decision is right next door.
Speaker 6: It's producing acid rain and it is destroying the rock
Speaker 6: art and that is scientific proof.
Speaker 1: And following Mike, what sense do you have from Murray
Speaker 1: Water about how he thinks of himself in the role
Speaker 1: of Australias Environment Minister.
Speaker 2: Well, he talked to me about his childhood, you know,
Speaker 2: bushwalking and camping with his family as a younger man,
Speaker 2: and he said he hoped to do more of it
Speaker 2: in the future. He said also that he had seen
Speaker 2: the consequences of climate change close up through his previous
Speaker 2: ministerial jobs in emergency management and agriculture, which are both
Speaker 2: very effective by climate change. Most importantly, I think he
Speaker 2: is genuinely committed to making the EPBC Act fit for purpose.
Speaker 2: And he told me, and I'll quote him, I do
Speaker 2: see this role as being, if you like, guardian of
Speaker 2: Australia's natural environment while also having responsibility for facilitating sustainable development,
Speaker 2: given my role in granting or rejecting approvals, so he
Speaker 2: knows that he's a bit of stride a bar by
Speaker 2: a fence. Kelleyoshannessy from his Stralian Conservation Foundation still thinks
Speaker 2: he's a good appointment. The way she sees it, we
Speaker 2: do need a serious reformer and by all accounts that's
Speaker 2: what Murray Watt is. Interestingly, she also says that even
Speaker 2: if he approves this Northwest Shelf extension, it won't really
Speaker 2: be on him because it's the Labor Party's policy to
Speaker 2: support fossil fuels and that's just the way it is.
Speaker 2: I suspect though that won't stop the ACF and other
Speaker 2: green groups laying into him if and when he does
Speaker 2: tick it off. But for his part, what has shown
Speaker 2: throughout his career that he's prepared to wear the opprobrium
Speaker 2: in this portfolio as he has in his previous jobs,
Speaker 2: because that is the lot of a political fixer. He said,
Speaker 2: every decision I make, I know that I'm going to
Speaker 2: be making some people unhappy, which every way I go,
Speaker 2: and he said, that's just the role.
Speaker 1: Mike, thank you for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks Daniel.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, today, nine children have been killed
Speaker 1: in an Israeli air struck that hit the home of
Speaker 1: a doctor in Gaza who was on duty at the time.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ala Al Najar is a pediatric specialist who was
Speaker 1: treating victims of other attacks in the hospital when she
Speaker 1: received the news that nine out of her ten children
Speaker 1: had been killed. The oldest child was reportedly nine years old.
Speaker 1: One of the doctor's children and her husband were also
Speaker 1: injured but survived. Israel's military said its aircraft had struck
Speaker 1: a number of suspects in carn Unis on Friday and
Speaker 1: was reviewing the claim that harm had been done to
Speaker 1: uninvolved citizens. And Deputy leader of the National's Kevin Hogan
Speaker 1: says David Little Proud has the support and respect of
Speaker 1: his party. Little Proud walked away from the coalition last week,
Speaker 1: but is now back in talks with Liberal leader Susan
Speaker 1: Lee about restarting the partnership. While speculation over whether David
Speaker 1: Little Proud should remain leader has begun, Little as he
Speaker 1: doesn't care if he loses his job because he was
Speaker 1: enacting the wishes of the majority of his party group.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening,