ABC AM interview with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

SUBJECTS: State of the Environment Report, climate change, Environmental Protection Authority
 
KIM LANDERS, HOST: Good morning, and welcome to AM. I’m Kim Landers. Climate change, mining, pollution, invasive species and habitat loss – they’re all being blamed for Australia’s environment being in a poor and deteriorating state. A five-yearly report handed to the Morrison Government last year but never released is now being made public. It documents a litany of problems, including an eight per cent increase in the number of species listed as threatened since 2016 and how there are more non-native plant species in Australia than native ones. Kelly O’Shanassy is the chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
 
KELLY O’SHANASSY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONSERVATION FOUNDATION: So, our laws are failing us. We often say you can drive a logging truck through the laws they’re so weak, but our new government has said they’ll reform those laws and improve them. That’s what we need to do pretty quickly; otherwise, these endangered species will go extinct, and they’ll do that in our lifetime.
 
LANDERS: The Federal Environment Minister is Tanya Plibersek and we spoke earlier.
 
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: It says that, overall, the state of the environment is bad, it’s getting worse and the laws and the systems that we have in place to protect the environment aren’t working. If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to end up with a degraded environment, unproductive farmland, oceans polluted with plastic, threatened species becoming extinct. It is a very disturbing read.
 
LANDERS: The report is oozing with the effects of climate change. You’re going to be faced with potentially dozens of assessments of big coal and gas projects. If you approve them, won’t you be exacerbating all of the problems that are documented in this report?
 
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, climate change is one of the stories that comes through on every page of this report, and it is obvious from the report that climate change is worsening our environment. It’s putting pressure on the reef. It’s putting pressure on the giant kelp forests in the southern oceans. It’s drying up our rivers. It’s drying up our land. And so, one of the first acts of the Albanese Labor Government when Parliament resumes will be to legislate for more ambitious climate change action, and I’m very proud of that. That will be very important in turning around this story.
 
LANDERS: But are you worried about having to approve a project which could be contributing to climate change?
 
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I’ll approve every project according to the law. That’s my responsibility as the Environment and Water Minister –
 
LANDERS: Well, you mentioned, just on that issue about the law, the Greens, for example, are saying that there should be a requirement under law to assess the impacts of new coal and gas mines, for example, on climate change. They’re calling it a climate trigger. Do you think it needs to be enshrined in law?
 
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we will be looking at our environmental laws. Professor Graeme Samuel did a very substantial review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act for the previous Government. He did that two years ago. He got a lot of agreement from environmental groups, from industry, about the sort of directions that we should see in Australia. I think it is important to consider that review, those recommendations, in the first place. We do need to change our laws. If we stick with what we’re doing now, we’ll keep getting the same results, which is an environment in crisis and getting worse.
 
LANDERS: So, what’s the big change to the environment laws that you’d like to see?
 
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I will be making comments about this in my speech at lunchtime, so I won’t be pre empting that. And I also would say this: changing our environment laws is a big job. It’s a complex job. A lot of progress has been made in the past under the leadership of Professor Graeme Samuel, bringing together environment groups and industry, business, environmentalists, scientists and First Nations people to talk about the sort of directions we should take. I’m going to start with that sense of cooperation that was achieved and actually never utilised by the previous government.
 
LANDERS: Before the election, Labor promised to set up an Environmental Protection Authority, for example, and that was one of the recommendations that came from that Samuel review about a new independent body. What form is the EPA going to take and when will it be up and running?
 
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, again, six weeks into the job, I’m not going to pre empt the final form of a new Environmental Protection Agency but I can tell you what we’ve got doesn’t work because the laws are inadequate, the data is inadequate – what we know about the environment, and we keep collecting the same information and not using it effectively. And also, when people do the wrong thing, if they deliberately do the wrong thing, in many cases, there haven’t been the resources to actually take them to a task. So, a new EPA will be part of addressing some of these fundamental flaws in our laws and our processes.
 
LANDERS: Will it be done in the first term?
 
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I’m going to consult very widely before putting a date on when I want to see an EPA up and running but I would anticipate that we will be looking at new environmental laws next year.
 
LANDERS: Let’s talk about money. The report says there’s insufficient investment to match the scale of the challenge. Given the warnings that we’re hearing about the state of the budget, are you being going to be able to secure more money?
 
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, one of the first acts of the Abbott Government was to cut funding to the Environment Department by about 40 per cent, and the consequence of that was not just worse environmental protection. It was an absolute break on proper consideration of development applications. So, you know, all sorts of projects were held up for months at a time, mistakes made in assessments, because there simply wasn’t the staff in the Department of the Environment to do the job properly. Of course, we need to turn that around. We need better environmental protections, and we need faster decisions on major projects.
We’ve already said, as well as making sure that those resources are there in the department, that we’ll increase the funding to restore the Great Barrier Reef, for example, an extra $1.2 billion to do that. We’ve set aside about a quarter of $1 billion for threatened species. There are a range of areas where we’ve made very substantial commitments of additional funds because, like I say, if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’re going to keep getting the same results.
 
LANDERS: Minister, thank you very much for speaking with AM.
 
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thank you.

LANDERS: Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.