Archival Tape – the sounds of people walking through bushland.

CHLOE:

I was invited by Tanya Plibersek to meet her at the Malabar Headland in eastern Sydney…

Archival Tape – Chloe Hooper:

“Tanya, is this a regular walk you do?”

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“Yeah I really like this walk…I haven’t done it for a couple of months now…”

CHLOE:

…Which is an ancient Indigenous meeting ground. It's a very beautiful stretch of the coastline.

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“You just feel like you're a million miles from the city as soon as you get around this corner here… I love bushwalking, generally, but I particularly like bushwalking near the ocean…”

CHLOE:

It's a walk that Tanya likes to do regularly, and she is a fitness devotee who believes it's very important to stay in good shape, physically and mentally so as to be up to the job.

Archival Tape – Chloe Hooper:

“So you didn't put your hand up for this portfolio?”

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“No. I kind of expected to keep Education and Women, but I'm delighted to have it. I mean, I think we expected Terri Butler to win her seat…”

CHLOE:

So we'd been walking for a while before I put it to Plibersek that there is a narrative that her appointment to this portfolio was in fact a political kneecapping.

Archival Tape – Chloe Hooper:

“There's a narrative that this was a political kneecapping, Tanya”

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek, laughing:

“Well…”

CHLOE:

And her response was immediate, and she didn't miss a beat, and she said…

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“I'm so grateful to be a Cabinet minister in a Labor government. It's so much more than I ever thought I would achieve in my career ever, being a member of Parliament…”

CHLOE:

And she said, the first day I walked into Parliament House as a staffer, I just thought all my dreams had come true. And there's no way on God's earth that I would ever be churlish about being a Cabinet minister in a Labor government. I tried again and I asked her…

Archival Tape – Chloe Hooper:

“So is it more the case that Albanese has picked someone who may be even more capable than him to run the most difficult portfolio?”

CHLOE:

And at that point, Plibersek almost separated herself from me physically on the track even further. I mean, she was a fast walker, so I was already having trouble keeping up and she answered, “I am not going to comment on that”.

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“I’m not gonna comment on that …”

CHLOE:

I got the very clear sense that this minister is not interested in drama. She wants to get the job done and it's a hell of a job.

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“It’s lovely to talk to you again…”

RUBY:

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

Tanya Plibersek is arguably Labor's most high-profile female politician. Once described as the next female Prime Minister, she rose through the ranks to become deputy leader at one point, and was most recently the party’s education spokesperson.

But Labor’s election to power after almost a decade in Opposition has had unexpected consequences for Plibersek - she’s found herself in a new portfolio, facing a new challenge. And it’s a monumental one: she’s now the Minister for the Environment and Water. In that role, she’s responsible for steering Australia’s response to unfolding environmental catastrophes.

Today, writer and contributor to The Monthly Chloe Hooper takes us inside how Tanya Plibersek found herself here, and what she plans to do about it.

It’s Monday, September 5.

RUBY:

Chloe, I think a good place to start is with the story of how Tanya Plibersek became a politician. Why did she choose Labor and what's her journey up through the ranks of the party been like?

CHLOE:

Well, Tanya Plibersek is the child of Slovenian immigrants and she is very frank that her parents’ experience in their homeland was one of homelessness, hunger, poverty and they, particularly her mother, really had a difficult journey to make it to Australia and to start a new life.

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“And also, you know, it's only one generation between me and hunger and poverty and homelessness. And I think, uh, a lot of my generation of migrant kids feel that same sense that you've got to work hard and take the opportunities that come your way…”

CHLOE:

Tanya Plibersek was a very serious and diligent child by her own admission and she was always very interested in politics. And politics was a dinner table conversation. She compares herself to other children of immigrants who have a strong sense of wanting to give back, but also of wanting to make something of themselves.

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“A lot of first-generation Australians have that real desire to give something back to the community. They see, you know, how grateful - I always felt my parents were very grateful for, you know, being able to come here and live safely…”

CHLOE:

She joined the Labor Party at 15 because she was passionate about Aboriginal land rights and believed that the best way of supporting the movement was through political change. She then quit the party a couple of years later over the mining of uranium and she felt very strongly that it should not be mined or sold to the French for atomic testing in the South Pacific. She rejoined a few years later, believing that throwing rocks from the outside was not going to actually be a way to enact political change. In 1998, aged 28, she was elected to the House of Representatives.

RUBY:

And we know that she's had leadership ambitions. She's put her hand up in the past. What can you tell me about that?

CHLOE:

Well, Tanya Plibersek and Anthony Albanese are both from the New South Wales ‘Left’ and I guess it's easier to be friends when less is at stake. And for a very long time, the New South Wales Labor Party was ruled by the right and and now that this has switched around, it appears that the two consider themselves rivals.

Archival Tape – Bill Shorten:

“I'm very pleased to announce to you all the new deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party, Tanya Plibersek. She is a remarkable Australian.”

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“I don't think that there are many countries in the world where someone whose parents came here with nothing but a suitcase each could ever aspire to being a member of Parliament and let alone taking on this responsibility that my colleagues have entrusted me with. Thank you all.”

CHLOE:

In a factional deal, Tanya Plibersek was named Bill Shorten's deputy when he took over as leader and in an uneasy peace held while Anthony Albanese led a kind of ‘shadow’ Shadow Opposition Leadership Office. When Shorten lost the 2019 election, Plibersek briefly put up her hand and challenged Albanese for leader. She realised she didn't have the numbers and withdrew.

Archival Tape – Reporter:

“And while all signs pointed to an announcement of her candidacy today, those plans quickly changed when Labor's deputy ruled herself out in a statement saying - ‘I am overwhelmed by the confidence my colleagues, the union movement and Labor Party members have placed in me. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their support. But now is not my time’.”

RUBY:

Ok - and the winner of that leadership battle, was of course Anthony Albanese, who then went on to win the election. And when that happened – Tanya Plibersek unexpectedly became Environment Minister….

Archival Tape – Host:

“Please welcome Tanya Plibersek. “

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“As part of my statutory duty as minister, I am publicly releasing the 2021 State of the Environment Report…”

RUBY:

And one of her first actions in that portfolio was to publicly release the State of the Environment report at the National Press Club. And that report, it’s a pretty worrying portrait of the destruction of the country around us isn’t it?

CHLOE:

I think that's right. The State of the Environment report does not make for happy reading…

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“While it's a confronting read, Australians deserve the truth. We deserve to know that Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent.”

CHLOE:

It's a five year report that is written by Australia's pre-eminent scientists, and it describes in 2500 words an extremely distressing picture…

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“We need to know that the Murray-Darling fell to its lowest water level on record in 2019 and that for the first time Australia now has more foreign plant species than native ones. Individually, every one of these revelations is dreadful”

CHLOE:

…of mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, experiencing a plague of marine plastic and marine animals killed by fishing gear on an industrial scale…

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“Overall the state and trend of the environment in Australia are poor and deteriorating, with abrupt changes in ecological systems being recorded in the past five years and it's downhill from there…”

CHLOE:

…And we are one of the world's deforestation hotspots, with more than 90% of forests being cleared, never being assessed under our environmental laws; laws which are fundamentally broken…

Archival Tape – Tanya Plibersek:

“When you change the government, you change the country after a lost decade. After a decade of going backwards, we can't waste another minute. Thank you.”

CHLOE:

I think that for Plibersek and her team entering the Environment portfolio and getting this welcome gift probably underscored just how existentially serious this work is. I think there was probably some grief while actually coming to terms with the breadth of the work that needs to be done.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Chloe, there’s no doubt that the Environment portfolio presents a huge challenge. How does Tanya Plibersek plan to meet that? What sense did you get from her about how she might go about trying to solve the problems that are facing her as Environment and Water minister, at a time when we are living on the edge of rolling environmental and ecological disasters?

CHLOE:

I mean, one thing that she needs to deal with as quickly as possible is reforming the.. Australia's environmental laws and The Samuel's Report was handed down last year which calls for urgent action. And she has committed to responding to this report by the end of the year. And she sees that there is a once-in-a-generation chance to frame these laws. The scale of what she is looking at and the reforms that need to be made are just so huge. So, the detail across forestry, across the reef, across recycling, across obviously, you know, the Murray-Darling is, is so great and the Murray-Darling Basin is our food bowl. And this seems to be not really just the drop of poison in the chalice, but the gigalitres of poison. And yet again, the fact that the Environment Ministry is seen as a poisoned chalice really shows the extent to which Labor are probably still grappling within their own ranks about how serious the Environment Ministry is to their success as a government.

RUBY:

Mmm That's extremely interesting because you would think, given what happened in this election and the way that people voted for climate action, for changes to the way that we conceive of environmental policy - it’s interesting that this portfolio might not be seen as the most important one a minister could hold…

CHLOE:

I think the huge challenge for Tanya Plibersek is to change the way the environment is seen in politics generally, to put it back at the centre of governance. There is some brilliant work being done regarding this overseas and I think that they are trying to import that kind of thinking into the way that they account for how our economy is functioning.

RUBY:

And the picture you’re painting of Plibersek is someone who is studious, committed to working through the various policies and the detail of her portfolio. But can you tell me any more about what she is like as a person, after spending the time that you did with her?

CHLOE:

Well, I think that is very right. And one of the things that struck me about Plibersek is that she is a very keen reader of fiction and much has been made in the past about her love for Jane Austen. And I had a moment of thinking, ‘I'm not going to ask about Jane Austen, I'm not going to ask about Jane Austen…’

RUBY:

Too predictable.

CHLOE:

I broke. I broke. And I asked about Jane Austen. And I think that the thing about Jane Austen and Tanya Plibersek is that Plibersek believes very keenly in honour and she believes in the kind of hidden morality of the choices that we make and that it's important to do the right thing regardless of whether anybody is is watching you and how you behave when there isn't a journalist trotting after you with a recorder in her hand is the sort of true measure of of a person.

RUBY:

Mhm. The idea of honour is interesting to think about in this context because I imagine it's going to be extremely difficult to continue to feel that way when you're faced with these complex environmental decisions. How do you measure what honour is in that context - when you’re weighing up how - and how much to save of our environment?

CHLOE:

Well, that's right. And I mean, there are a number of moral struggles that confront her in terms of approving gas projects, which as we transition to cleaner energy, may be necessary to keep people warm. And I think that her team would argue that this is about equity, that there are a lot of people who actually can't afford solar panels. And why while we are still transitioning to cleaner energy, how we keep people warm is a moral issue. And yet, you know, we're also looking down the barrel at extinction at a rate that is devastating. I also think there's an issue around what she is able to achieve, her ambitions and what will be the will of her party. Because the truth is, this portfolio needs her methodical, diligent, strategic approach. But we need urgent environmental action as a country now.

RUBY:

That's the challenge that faces her and. And us, I suppose.

CHLOE:

And us.

RUBY:

Chloe, thank you so much for your time.

CHLOE:

Thank you. Ruby.

RUBY:

You can read Chloe Hooper’s essay on Tanya Plibersek in The Monthly magazine and online.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

The Greens have called on the RBA not to raise interest rates again before the October budget.

Senator Nick McKim said the RBA governor, quote: “can’t turn around and smash homeowners and renters with rate increases to deal with inflation that they are not causing, while their wages are going backwards in real terms.”

And…

NASA was unable to launch the new Artemis I Moon rocket for a second time on Saturday – and could now be delayed until mid-October.

The rocket was designed to send astronauts and their equipment back to the Moon after an absence of 50 years.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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