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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Bob Brown, the founding leader of The Greens, is ready to make a plea to Tanya Plibersek: stand up in cabinet and be a voice against coal and gas.

While the party he used to lead are locked in a tense battle with the Labor party today over the Safeguard Mechanism, Brown says he believes Tanya Plibersek could actually be the best environment minister Australia has ever had – she just needs the support of the prime minister.

Today, former leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown, on the promise of this environment minister and why it’s at risk.

It’s Monday, March 20.

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RUBY:

So Bob, I know that you've been considering the question of how Tanya Plibersek is performing as Labor's Environment Minister. Before we talk about the challenges that she's facing and the decisions that she's making, I just wonder if you could tell me, in your opinion, what is it that makes a good Environment Minister? What's important to consider here?

BOB:

A good environment minister is a minister who goes into Cabinet fighting for the environment. As simple as that.

The majority of Australians these days, they're ready to go. They want environmental action, not least young Australians, who voted in droves for the Greens, the Teals, and Labor, at the last election, and away from the Morrison Conservatives.

But so often we have ministers for the environment who think it's their job to shepherd other ministers rather than to go in there, sleeves rolled up and say, “I'm here to protect and enhance, and where possible, renew Australia's natural environment.” That's what the people want and I'm their representative in Cabinet.

RUBY:

And so if we look at what Tanya Plibersek has said and done as she enters the environment portfolio, what can we tell about how she does think about this role, how she approaches it, and what she thinks should be prioritised?

BOB:

Well, a month after she was inducted as Minister for the Environment at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s request, and with her acceptance, she gave a great speech at the National Press Club in Canberra.

Archival tape – National Press Club of Australia:

“Please welcome Tanya Plibersek.”

BOB:

It was one of the most illuminating and exciting speeches for environmentalists to ever hear come from the mouth of a National Environment Minister.

Archival tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“At the same time as I've been seeing some of the most beautiful places on earth, I've been reading the data that tells me that these places are under threat. If we continue on the trajectory that we are on, the precious places, landscapes, animals, and plants that we think of when we think of home may not be here for our kids and grandkids.”

BOB:

She outlined the threats there are to the environment from the history of Australia as having the worst mammal extinction rate of any country in the world.

Archival tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“We deserve to know that Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent.”

BOB:

The bushfires that had caused massive ecological damage.

Archival tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“That summer was terrifying for anyone who lived through it.”

BOB:

The bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, and so on.

Archival tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“Individually, every one of these revelations is dreadful, but it's only when you think about the cumulative impact that you begin to get the full picture of environmental decline.”

BOB:

And then she went on to explain that climate change is an overarching threat to environments right around the world, and not least Australia.

Archival tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“This disturbing list is made worse by climate change. Global warming multiplies environmental pressures everywhere.”

BOB:

And she concluded that section of the speech by pointing out that Australians had just voted to change government, because they wanted people who were going to take action on the environment. And to quote Tanya, she said, “When you change the government, you change the country.”

Archival tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“And after a lost decade, after a decade of going backwards, we can't waste another minute. Thank you.”

BOB:

So she had, in a way, thrown down the gauntlet to her Labor colleagues on the environment and said, “Let's go.” But it hasn't turned out quite as exciting as we expected.

RUBY:

Okay, so it sounds like listening to that initial speech at the Press Club, you had a sense of, I suppose, hope about the agenda that she might pursue as environment minister. In terms of being able to pursue that agenda. How critical is the relationship between the Environment Minister — so in this case, Tanya Plibersek — and the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese?

BOB:

Well, I was in the Senate for 16 years up until 2012. And so I knew both Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek as formidable ministers, because they were in the House of Representatives. I was in the Senate and I quite liked both of them and saw them both as progressive. Anthony Albanese says that they are good friends, because both from Sydney, both from the left of the Labor Party. And I thought, “here's an arrangement that's really going to be very exciting” because if you are going to be successful as Minister for anything, you need your Prime Minister behind you.

The expectation was very high.

Nevertheless, the first major decision that Tanya Plibersek made just before that Press Club speech, was to back her Labor colleagues in Perth, and allow the bulldozers to go into the Gelorup woodlands that's just 70 hectares. It's a small patch of woodlands next to Bunbury, and Main Roads wanted to put a bypass of the city of Bunbury, south of Perth, through those woodlands; they had alternatives. But in went the bulldozers under the authority of Tanya Plibersek. It was shocking.

Well if we've got a minister for the environment who is really concerned about this extinction catastrophe that's overtaking the world, and not least Australia, she will protect the Gelorup woodlands.

She has the power to do that. She has the authority to do that. She has the responsibility under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to do it. All that's missing there is the political will, and the backing of the Prime Minister, and Anthony Albanese has been nowhere to be seen on that.

RUBY:

Does that suggest to you that Plibersek's biggest challenge here actually comes from within the party?

BOB:

I'm beginning to think she's isolated.

Anthony Albanese is right behind the Minister for Resources, Madeleine King, when on the day she became minister she announced the go ahead for one of the most polluting fossil fuel enterprises Australia's ever seen, which is the Scarborough Gas Field in Western Australia.

Archival tape – Madeleine King:

“If Woodside are prepared, and they are prepared and have guaranteed the State Government to implement the appropriate offsets for the development of the Scarborough gas field, then we support that because it absolutely fits within our ambitions for net zero emissions by 2050 as well.”

BOB:

And you know that's that was announced. Albanese backs it up, and here she was Tanya Plibersek sidelined, while Madeleine King with the backing of the Prime Minister ticking off the first major environmental decision of this new government on one of the worst carbon emitters Australia has ever produced.

So Scarborough, followed by the massacre of the Gelorup Woodlands, are deeply troubling. Then more recently, just last month, we had a promising sign, where Tanya Plibersek stopped Clive Palmer's central Queensland coal mine because it would directly affect the Great Barrier Reef. But just after that, signed off on this extension of Santos's gas wells — more than 100 new gas wells — further west in Queensland.

That’s all to make more profit for Santos as Scarborough will for Woodside.

But that's not her job. It's the job for the Minister for Mines, Madeline King. She can get in there and bat for them. But Tanya Plibersek should come out fighting, and that includes, on the overriding consideration of climate change.

And the question is, where is our champion of the environment? Where is the most important and powerful environmentalist in the country? And that's Tanya Plibersek.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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Archival tape – Chris Bowen:

“Now Mr Speaker I’ll tell you what I will guarantee, I guarantee that the safeguard mechanism reforms that we are putting in place will put Australian industries in the best possible position to make the most of the decarbonisation occurring around the world.”

RUBY:

Bob, we’ve been talking about Tanya Plibersek and what she could be doing on climate. But we do actually have a specific Minister for Climate Change, Chris Bowen. And, at the moment he’s in negotiations between Labor and The Greens on the safeguard mechanism. And the Greens are saying that they won’t support Labor’s version of the mechanism unless Labor promises no more new coal and gas projects. So while this isn’t exactly her portfolio, do you think Tanya Plibersek should be making her voice heard on this?

BOB:

Well, first of all, it is her portfolio. Chris Bowen might have it in name, but she was quite right at the Press Club. It's the overarching threat to habitats which has endangered species both in the ocean and on the land. And it is her job to defend the environment and it is her job to take on Chris Bowen.

Archival tape – Chris Bowen:

“What I'm trying to do as the Minister, what the Government's doing, is reducing emissions from all our big emitters as a whole. New, old, existing, proposed, industrial…”

BOB:

Albanese's given Chris Bowen the portfolio of climate change. Excuse me, because Chris Bowen supports more coal mines and more gas wells.

Archival tape – Chris Bowen:

“Now the Greens are focusing on one particular element, new resources. They can do that. That's okay, but I'm doing something a bit different here. This is the biggest chance parliament has had in more than a decade to actually get a sensible framework to reduce emissions from all our big emitters.”

BOB:

It just doesn't figure, if you have a scientific basis on the cause of climate change, global warming, this existential threat to life on this planet, including our own species of Homo sapiens, it just doesn't add up.

And she would be very well placed if she was out there now batting for the position put forward by Adam Bandt and The Greens, and some of the teals, that we should have no more coal mines or gas fracking in this country. Because they are such a disastrous threat to every future Australian's well-being, economic as well as environmental.

But instead of that, when she got asked at the Press Club, “well, what about these coal mines and gas fracking and the fact that's being exported and burnt elsewhere?” She got away with the clever diversion of saying, “Well, no we're responsible for the direct emissions from here in Australia.” You know, primary school kids can think straighter than that. That’s not so when you dig up the coal and you export it or the gas, you freeze it and export it. You're responsible for it. You're the other point of origin. Tanya knows that, but she's taking a Labor line. She needs to take an environmental line instead.

RUBY:

But does this all come back to who has the backing of the Prime Minister? Which of the three Ministers in this case - Bowen, King, or Plibersek who ultimately has the support of Anthony Albanese? Is this really a question of what Anthony Albanese wants when it comes to the environment?

BOB:

That's critical, absolutely critical. Anthony Albanese is effectively the most powerful person to protect Australia's environment. So we need two things here. We need a minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, batting for the environment, not for on balance whether this industry's going to make more money than the environment's worth or whatever. She's got to be in there batting for the environment and for the communities right around this country, not least Indigenous communities, who are fighting to protect their environments. But together with that, to be successful in cabinet, she needs to be able to have the Prime Minister on her side, and the liaison between these two friends — Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek — needs to be very close, and they need to be able to influence the Cabinet colleagues.

The public is a marvellous template at the moment. It wants action, and the ministers got them onside. What she needs to do is take the action and if cabinet turns her down, she can come out of cabinet and say, “I did my best.” but she's got to be fighting for it beforehand out there in the public, standing with the people.

RUBY:

It sounds like you think that Plibersek now has a choice between, I suppose, the type of politician she wants to be. Whether that's someone who falls into line with the rest of the party or someone who takes the responsibilities of her portfolio in the most serious way possible.

BOB:

Not just the responsibility of her portfolio. It's the hopes and aspirations of most of the 25-26 million Australians.

And when you get to young people, for example, I recently saw a polling result I never thought I'd see, where 90% of young people — this is voters under 24 — want the end of logging of Australia's native forests. And look, here's a gift to Tanya Plibersek and Anthony Albanese.

They're going to have to get some real runs on the board for the environment before the next election. I don't mean sometime next decade or sometime next century, but in the coming 12 months to end this carnage of all the rare and endangered birds, and animals, and insects in our forests as their forests are destroyed and burnt for no good purpose for the rest of the Australian population.

RUBY:

Bob, thank you so much for your time.

BOB:

Thank you for yours.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Former US president Donald Trump says he believes he will be arrested on Tuesday, posting on his social media network, he encouraged his supporters to quote: “Protest, take our nation back!”

Trump, who is currently leading opinion polls in the Republican primary to be the presidential nominee in 2024, is under criminal investigation in New York state.

The case relates to a $130,000 payment received by Stormy Daniels in the lead up to the 2016 campaign.

AND

Interest rates in Australia will need to remain high until at least 2024, and growth will remain sluggish, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.

In the latest interim report on the world economic outlook, the OECD said inflation will remain high in Australia at 5.1 per cent this year before falling back to regular levels next year.

I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am, see you tomorrow.

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