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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Daniel James, this is 7am.

Australia has a new environment minister – and he’s got a big job ahead of him - fixing the country’s broken environment laws.

He takes over from Tanya Plibersek who was famously thwarted by the prime minister when she tried to fix them.

But even before he starts on that, Murray Watt has another decision to make.

About whether he’ll let Woodside extend their North West Shelf gas project out to 2070 – which will allow them to open new gas fields – and detonate a “carbon bomb” into the atmosphere worth 10 times our current annual emissions.

Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper Mike Seccombe on Murray Watt – his plans for the environment – and the big decision he has to make.

It’s Monday, May 26.

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DANIEL:

Mike, Australia has a new Environment Minister, Murray Watt. What's he like?

MIKE:

Well, he's competent. I think you would say that's the first thing. He seems to be a very competent bloke. And as a result of that, he has come to be seen as sort of one of the government's foremost fixers. They give him the hard jobs because he's prepared to take on powerful, even dangerous vested interests. So, as Agriculture Minister, he took on the farming lobby and he steered through Parliament legislation ending the live sheep export trade. When he was Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, he pushed through laws cracking down on corruption in the construction industry that involved bikie gangs and the CFMEU. And he did that over the objections of the CFMEU itself, but also other unions with strong links to the Labor Party. And I might add, he was given extra police protection at the time because it was considered to be an actually physically dangerous position that he was in.

Audio excerpt – Murray Watt:

“We regard this behaviour as abhorrent and something that needs to be stamped out. The overwhelming majority of the union movement in Australia is appalled by these allegations, just as your viewers are as well. I think people are sick and tired of this behaviour occurring. They want to see action and that's exactly what they'll get from me from the Albanese government.”

MIKE:

Now, though, I think he confronts an even more intractable, if less physically dangerous problem, which is reforming Australia's main national environment law, the EPBC Act. And I think the fact that he has been appointed to do the job is a fact that the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, he wants this sorted.

DANIEL:

How has his appointment been received by various stakeholders in his new portfolio area?

MIKE:

Well, Bob Brown, sort of father figure of the greens around the country, he was very strongly anti Murray Watt he thought that he was coming in to do a hatchet job. He called it a kick in the guts for nature.

The Minerals Council, on the other hand, representing the mining industry, you know, released one of those kind of boilerplate, we welcome the new appointee sort of media releases. But I think... a lot of people on both sides of the debate are just tired of things being bogged down and stalled on the environment front. It's probably fair to say there are some intractably anti-environment elements of the resources industry who don't want anything to happen. But there's a lot on the industry side as well as the environment side who just want to get, as Larissa Waters might say, just want to, get shit done. You know.

DANIEL:

Right, and he takes over from Tanya Plibersek who famously got very close to a deal with the Greens to fix our environmental laws before Anthony Albanese famously intervened. So can you tell me about these laws and why they are not working?

MIKE:

Well, the major law is called the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, EPBC Act. And it was legislated way back in 1999 by the Howard government.

And it's been reviewed a couple of times since then. To quote the prominent businessman, former ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel, who undertook one of those reviews, EPBC Act has been. Quote, an abysmal failure, unquote.

Audio excerpt – Graeme Samuel:

“The important thing is this is that we've got the state of the environment report, we've got my own views expressed in the review, which followed extensive consultation, extensive right around Australia. And clearly, the environment is not being well served, in fact, it's not being served at all properly by the current laws.”

MIKE:

They don't mention climate and quite clearly, you know, we've got an extinction crisis in this country. So clearly, they're not fulfilling their role of protecting the environment.

So like I said, there've been a couple of reviews. First one was back in 2009, then the Samuel review in October 2019. And the report that came back was damning. It just called for a radical overhaul, said the Act wasn't fit for purpose. It recommended 38 changes that included legally binding national standards to protect wildlife, critical habitats, heritage sites, independent oversight from a body or bodies, and enforcement of those standards. It called for the prioritisation of indigenous engagement and the protection of cultural heritage. It called for better data collection, and it called for reform of the environmental offsets regime, which frankly does not adequately protect critical habitat from development. That was the report. Nothing came of it.

So it's been a long time that reform has been promised and not been delivered. I spoke to Kelly O'Shaughnessy from the Australian Conservation Foundation. She made exactly that point. She said, reform has been promised and not delivered for a decade and a half now. And now, of course, with the appointment of Murray Watt it's been promised again.

DANIEL:

Okay, so how's he going about that so far?

MIKE:

Well, bear in mind, of course, he's only had his feet under the desk for what, two weeks now. But it's been something of a whirlwind of consultation, which I guess is a good sign. No sooner did he get the job, then he jetted off to Western Australia. And the West Australian government, a Labor government, was the one that had stymied the previous reform effort by Tanya Plibersek. Famously, Roger Cook, the premier of Western Australia intervened and as a result of that Albanese told the Greens that there was going to be no deal with Tanya Plibersek.

So I spoke to Murray while he was over in WA and he said that for those very reasons he'd wanted to make Western Australia his first trip. And he pointed out that, you know, he has some major decisions about pending projects over there, but his main job, as he sees it, is to get the law changes through. He's been meeting with a lot of people. He met with Roger Cook. He's met with various state members whose responsibilities overlap with his. He's met with mining groups. He's met with business groups. He's meant with environment advocates and First Nations organisations. It's quite impressive how many different people he's spoken to.

MIKE:

So the way he put it, he said he's deliberately meeting with everyone that he can because he genuinely wants to know all points of view before he makes a call on the reforms. Perhaps that's a good sign, but of course, how he comes to be judged will depend. Not just on whether he can land these reforms, but on another big decision that he has to make imminently, long before he gets around to legislating the EPBC changes.

DANIEL:

After the break - Murray Watt’s first big test.

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DANIEL:

Mike Murray Watt is tasked with fixing Australia's environment laws but before that he's got a big decision to make which will tell us about his priorities. Tell me about that decision.

MIKE:

Well, he has committed himself to making a call by the end of this month on a proposal to extend the life of Woodside Energy's North West Shelf fossil gas project out to 2070. If he waves it through, he effectively detonates what Kelly O'Shaughnessy calls a carbon bomb.

Audio excerpt – Kelly O'Shaughnessy:

“So what we expect the government to do is to say that they aren't going to extend this gas factory from 2030 to 2070, which is the request from Woodside, that they see a future that is clean and a country that's powered with renewables and they're going to drive that transition.”

MIKE:

According to the state government's EIS. The consequence will be the release of the equivalent of around 4.3 billion, with a B, tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's roughly 10 times Australia's current annual total emissions.

DANIEL:

So it's a huge new source of emissions. How does that square with the government's net zero emissions commitment?

MIKE:

It depends on how you look at it, I guess you would say. The WA government approved the extension at the end of last year, after a long and convoluted assessment process, on the basis that the domestic emissions, that is the amount of gas released in this country as a result of the project being extended, would be phased down to zero by 2050. In large part through the purchase of carbon offsets. But still, it would release 140 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in its lifetime, which is a lot, but it's dwarfed by the amount of greenhouse gas that would result from the burning of that gas overseas.

The WAEPA's approval document calculated that that would be about 80 million tonnes every year out to 2070, hence the astronomical total of 4.3 billion tonnes. As to how it fits with our climate commitments, well, the WA and federal governments take the view that emissions generated outside Australia from the burning of our fossil fuel exports are not a consideration. And there's some justification for this because under the Paris Agreement, emissions are accounted for according to where the fossil fuels are burnt, not where they're mined.

The distinction that they make between emissions produced by burning Australian fossil fuels domestically and abroad is, you know, obviously artificial, right? Because carbon dioxide doesn't respect national boundaries. You know, it warms the planet just as much whether it's burnt here or somewhere else and has the same effect on nature. And as O'Shaughnessy says, it's an increasingly litigious area. And at some point, she says, they're going to win that in a court of law. But be that as it may, you know, it's not going to have any impact on a decision due by May 31 on the extension of the Northwest Shelf Project.

DANIEL:

So when you spoke to Murray Watt about this, what did he have to say?

MIKE:

Well, Watt politely but firmly refused to talk about it, notwithstanding the fact that it's of enormous interest to the resources industry, to environmentalists, and of course to the media like us. In fact, he said he had explicitly said to people in meetings that he could not discuss that because he considered that to be improper. So he hadn't met with the West Australian Conservation Council, for example, or with Woodside because each of them had big stakes, applications in on the decision. So he didn't think it was appropriate. In fact I said, well, maybe you can just outline for me what you think are the pros and cons of one side or the other and he wouldn't even do that.

He did tacitly, I guess you would say, acknowledge one big con when I raised it, and that is that the Burrup Peninsula, which is where the Woodside Gas Hub sits, also happens to be right in the middle of probably the world's largest collection of ancient rock art. There's more than a million petroglyphs, maybe two million, you know, and accurate accounting is yet to be done, stretching over an area of 37,000 hectares, some of them 40,000 years or more old. They're called the Murujuga petroglyphs.

And the thing is, they're rapidly being degraded by emissions from this woodside plant, particularly nitrogen oxides and what they call volatile organic compounds.

DANIEL:

So are there any moves to protect or safeguard these petroglyphs?

MIKE:

Well, there's certainly recommendations that there should be. The WAEPA said that if an extension was to be granted to the project, it should be conditional on Woodside cutting those emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2030 and then more. But that's not enough, says O'Shaughnessy. And she notes that the traditional owners are opposed to the extension of the project. She referred to it as a slow moving Juukan Gorge, You know, referencing Rio Tinto's destruction of those ancient rock shelters back in 2020. Because it's undeniable, this rock art is being degraded by the pollution from the plant.

Furthermore, the Australian government itself has recognised the global importance of this, what they call the Murujuga Cultural Landscape.

In January 2023, they nominated it for inscription on the World Heritage List, and a decision on that is due to be made by UNESCO's World Heritage Committee in July. And so Murray Watt sort of tacitly admitted that this was a big consideration because he said that the Government remained quote, absolutely committed to protecting this World Heritage listing, because it was a quote, very special and important place. And we'll know soon enough whether Murray Watt decides to come down on the side of, you know, jobs, mining company profits and government tax revenues, or on the site of ancient culture and the global climate. The portents don't look particularly good, as O'Shaughnessy says, and as I think history would dictate. So if he grants that extension, O'Shaughnessy says, it will be devastating.

Audio excerpt – Kelly O'Shaughnessy:

“Nowhere else in the world has this amazing cultural feature that is at Murujuga, which is also up for World Heritage listing. And the Northwest Shelf decision is right next door. It's producing acid rain and it is destroying the rock art and that is scientific proof.”

DANIEL:

And finally Mike, what sense do you have from Murray Watt about how he thinks of himself in the role of Australia's Environment Minister?

MIKE:

Well, he talked to me about his childhood, bushwalking and camping with his family as a younger man. And he said he hoped to do more of it in the future. He said also that he had seen the consequences of climate change close up through his previous ministerial jobs in emergency management and agriculture, which are both very affected by climate change. Most importantly, I think he is genuinely committed to making the EPBC Act fit for purpose. And he told me, and I'll quote him, I do see this role as being, if you like, guardian of Australia's natural environment while also having responsibility for facilitating sustainable development given my role in granting or rejecting approvals. So he knows that he's a bit astride a barbed wire fence. Kelly O'Shaughnessy from the Australian Conservation Foundation still thinks he's a good appointment. The way she sees it, we do need a serious reformer. And by all accounts, that's what Murray Watt is.

Interestingly, she also says that even if he approves this Northwest Shelf Extension, it won't really be on him because it's the Labor Party's policy to support fossil fuels. And that's just the way it is. I suspect that that won't stop the ACF and other green groups laying into him if and when he does tick it off.

But for his part, Watt has shown throughout his career that he's prepared to wear the opprobrium in this portfolio as he has in his previous jobs, because that is the lot of a political fixer. He said, every decision I make, I know that I'm going to be making some people unhappy, whichever way I go. And he said, that's just the role.

DANIEL:

Mike, thank you for your time.

MIKE:

Thanks Daniel.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today…

Nine children have been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit the home of a doctor in Gaza who was on duty at the time.

Dr Alaa al-Najjar is a paediatric specialist who was treating victims of other attacks in hospital when she received the news that nine out of her ten children had been killed. The oldest child was reportedly nine years old.

One of the doctor’s children and her husband were also injured but survived.

Israel's military said its aircraft had struck "a number of suspects" in Khan Younis on Friday, and was reviewing the claim that harm had been done to uninvolved citizens.

And,

Deputy leader of the Nationals Kevin Hogan says David Littleproud has the support and respect of his party.

Littleproud walked away from the Coalition last week but is now back in talks with Liberal leader Sussan Ley about restarting the partnership.

While speculation over whether David Littleproud should remain leader has begun, Littleproud says he doesn't care if he loses his job because he was enacting the wishes of the majority of his party room.

I’m Daniel James, this is 7am, thanks for listening.

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