It wasn’t the laws that were too weak to stop those projects, it was the ministers

If one of your kids wants to go to the beach for summer holidays and the other wants to go bushwalking would a mountain biking holiday be proof that you got the balance right? Welcome to the topsy-turvy land of Labor logic, where legislation that disappoints everyone must be a step in the right direction.

Like a donut, there is nothing in the centre of Australian politics. The fact that the Greens want to stop native forest logging and the Nationals want to speed up land clearing by farmers is not proof that any legislation Labor drafts must fit in the “sensible centre.”

Back when Tanya Plibersek was an optimistic new Environment Minister in the Albanese Government’s first term she was full of big promises. When she launched her Threatened Species Action Plan she stated:

“The Action Plan has ambitious targets, which include preventing any new extinctions of plants and animals.”

And went on to declare:

“I will not shy away from difficult problems or accept environmental decline and extinction as inevitable.”

But while we will never know for sure if Plibersek was serious at the time, we do know for certain that her Cabinet and her Prime Minister had net-zero interest in putting the protection of endangered species ahead of the profits of polluters.

There is no doubt the environmental protection laws that Plibersek and Murray Watt inherited are out of date and unambitious. They were, after all, introduced by the Howard Government. But weak as they are, those laws were strong enough to protect the endangered Maugean Skate from the worst of the salmon farms. Indeed, it was the supposedly excessive strength of those Howard-era laws that led Labor and the Coalition to weaken them to ensure salmon farms, rather than the critically endangered skate, would thrive. To be clear, when it came time to protecting a vulnerable species, even John Howard’s environmental laws were too strong for Tanya Plibersek.

Howard’s laws were also strong enough to let Labor block Woodside’s enormous North West Shelf gas expansion if Plibersek or Watt had wanted to. It wasn’t the laws that were too weak to stop those projects, it was the ministers.

Which brings me back to the Labor logic that if both the Coalition and the Greens think their latest draft environment laws are bad, they must be great. It’s true that, as Minister Plibersek said in 2023, we are experiencing an extinction crisis; it’s true that Graeme Samuel’s review for the Liberals found the current laws aren’t working; and it’s true the climate crisis is far worse now than in 1999 when the EPBC was passed.

Let’s not forget that Tanya Plibersek and Sarah Hanson-Young had a deal to create an EPA last year, only for the Prime Minister to stomp on it after pressure from the mining industry. Does anyone believe the new proposal will be stronger?

Let’s not forget that Anthony Albanese, back when he was shadow climate minister, was adamant that our environmental laws needed a “climate trigger” to stop new fossil-fuel projects. Does anyone think climate change is less dangerous now?

And let’s not forget that right now Australia is still subsidising native forest logging in ecosystems that house some of our most endangered species. How can we protect species if we won’t protect the places they live?

After Labor spiked its own EPBC deal with the Greens in 2024, watered down protections for the salmon industry, and delayed the North West Shelf decision, it went on to win a thumping majority. Well done. But now, with the Coalition in disarray and a third term almost guaranteed, Labor is proposing to weaken the laws even further, and that is not the Greens or Coalition’s fault.

Some say power corrupts, but I prefer Robert Caro’s dictum that power reveals. Albanese once said his job was to fight Tories and to add a climate trigger — now he does neither.

There’s not much the rest of us can do between elections if the Prime Minister is determined to prioritise polluters over the environment, but in a democracy there is plenty our local MPs can do, in particular if they share their voters concerns they can speak up — in the party room, to the PM, or, if that fails, in public.

It was no accident that Labor postponed the North West Shelf decision until after the election, but even hiding the truth didn’t save everyone: in the once safe seat of Fremantle, Josh Wilson’s margin plummeted from 17% To 0.7% and likewise in the once ultra safe seat of Bean in the ACT, David Smith’s collapsed from 13% to 0.3%.

And does anyone think Labor would have won Melbourne from Adam Bandt if it had been honest about its love of gas expansion?

Like Tanya Plibersek — and the backbenchers now on razor-thin margins — the Prime Minister knows voters didn’t want the North West Shelf approved and that they do want, and expect, stronger environmental laws, not faster gas approvals. He’s betting that by 2028, people will forget the North West Shelf and EPBC backflips, but it would be a brave backbencher willing to make that same bet.