Doorstop, Canberra

MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER, MURRAY WATT: Well, thanks very much for being here today. I've just come out of a very productive first meeting with a broad range of stakeholders about starting the next steps in delivering the government's reforms to Australia's national environment laws. There's obviously a lot more work to be done after today's meeting, but today was an important first step in achieving an important national priority to reform our environmental laws, which everyone participating in today's meeting recognised are not working for the environment, not working for business and not working for the Australian people. The truth is that these laws are out of date, they were passed by this Parliament about 25 years ago. They're not adequately protecting the environment, they're not delivering for business in terms of certainty and timeliness of approvals, and they're not delivering to the Australian community either, which is why we so desperately need to see these reforms passed.

You will have seen that we assembled a very broad range of stakeholders today. People from environmental organisations, from mining groups, from business groups, the renewable energy sector, First Nations communities, the Urban Development sector, all sorts of groups who have a direct interest in seeing these reforms passed and have put a lot of work in already to see that job done. And I think it was important to get a broad range of people together with different perspectives on these issues, because the truth is that we're only going to pass these reforms and solve this challenge by working together. You will have seen that's a bit of an approach that our government is keen to take on delivering a number of national priorities. The Treasurer talked to you all yesterday about working together as a country to solve our productivity challenge and that's the kind of approach that we want to take when it comes to these reforms to our environmental laws as well. Everyone participating today acknowledged that they're not going to get 100% of what they want, that there's going to need to be some give and take and some compromise, and I thought the meeting was conducted in a very healthy, respectful spirit with people being really open to listening to different perspectives and considering that in terms of forming their own positions.

I thought it might just be worth taking you quickly through a few things where there was broad agreement across the participants today. The first, as I say, is that our current environmental laws aren't working and desperately need reform. Everyone accepted that this is an urgent task for the country and the Parliament. You will have seen previously that I've said I want to get these reforms passed in the first half of this term and everyone participating in today's meeting agreed that we should be working to that kind of timeframe. There's broad agreement that there are really three pillars to this reform process. Firstly, it's much stronger environmental protections than what we have at the moment. Secondly, much faster and more efficient approval processes for business. And thirdly, much more transparency and integrity around decision making when it comes to environmental decisions. There was also broad agreement that these reforms don't operate in isolation. Passing these reforms are vital to us achieving a number of other national priorities that we have both as a government and as a country. We need to pass these laws to be able to deliver the homes that Australians need, to become the renewable energy superpower that we know Australia can become, to deliver our Future Made in Australia agenda, to meet the productivity challenge that we have as a country to achieve the aspirations of First Nations people in our country, to achieve the energy security that our country needs, and most importantly, to deliver the environmental protection that Australia's spectacular, unique natural environment deserves.

In terms of outcomes today, of course, there's a lot more work to be done to get into the detail. And there'll be further consultation occurring both with the group I assembled today, but with the community more broadly. But it's clear that there is broad support from this diverse range of stakeholders for developing new strong national environmental standards, as was recommended by Graeme Samuel in his review five years ago. There's broad support for the concept of regional planning, so to earmark areas with lower environmental impacts where approvals can be fast tracked, but also to identify areas where development should be limited or not allowed to proceed at all, there's broad support for more efficient processes to get approvals through more quickly and provide business with more certainty. There's broad support for reforming the offsets regime, which is designed to protect nature as development occurs, and there's broad support for providing much clearer and more reliable data for governments, for industry and environmental organisations to rely on, as decision making unfolds. So, as I say, a long way to go yet, lots more work to be done and everyone's agreed to be very cooperative, constructive and to really put their shoulder to the wheel because we all know that delivering these reforms are important for Australia and to achieving a range of our national priorities. Happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST: Minister Watt, a couple of those pillars you talked about, weighting stronger protection versus a better approvals process, that sounds on face value like two potentially different challenges where, you know, business they want to get things through, there's a bit of frustration for some time with ‘green tape’. So how do you weigh those two challenges between stronger protections but also making sure that business can still proceed in a faster way?

MINISTER WATT: Yeah, look, I don't see these as either-or propositions and more importantly, nor did anyone in the room today. We can achieve stronger national environmental standards, while also giving business more certainty and faster approval processes than what they have at the moment. Some of the comments that I heard this morning were that by having much clearer national environmental standards that actually gives business more certainty at the start of a process about the kind of developments that are going to be approved and the kind of developments that aren't. So, we actually see these things going hand in hand and that by having national environmental standards, you can actually have those faster approval processes, and again, that's exactly what Graeme Samuel recommended five years ago.

JOURNALIST: Minister, on national standards, you've mentioned a broad consensus, which is quite encouraging for a reform agenda. I'm just wondering, are you willing to pass the laws to create an EPA without national standards, given how contentious they have been in the past? Or are you ambitious or, dare I even say, committed to getting national standards through in the first half of this term?

MINISTER WATT: So, you will have seen previously I've made the comment that I believe that we should be aiming for broader reform in this package than what was put to the Parliament before the election. I think it was completely understandable to break down the reform package in the way that it was pre-election because there simply wasn't the time to pass the full extent of those reforms. But we're obviously now through an election, we're at the beginning of a three-year term. There's a very different political climate now in Australia than there was pre-election. And I think it's going to be important to develop things like national environmental standards alongside developing the legislation. The feedback I've received since coming into the role was that one of the reasons many groups were not really prepared to support the bill that was put before the election, was that it left a lot of other questions about things like what the national environmental standards would be, or how the accreditation processes would occur. Now, I can't sit here today and say we will definitely have every word in a national environmental standard drafted by the time we put the bill forward, but I think people do need to have clarity about what those standards are going to look like and a range of other issues around the same time that we are looking to pass legislation.

JOURNALIST: Minister, on a point of clarity, you've said that climate trigger in the EPBC, you don't consider it a good idea because of duplication. Would you prefer to see a climate consideration in the national environmental standards?

MINISTER WATT: Yeah, it's a little too early for me to be committing to particular things in the legislation, and it won't surprise you to hear today that some groups are in favour of climate considerations in the bill and some are not. And that's a good example of one of the issues that we're going need to work through with the different stakeholders in the months ahead. The point I've made is that while the current EPBC laws don't require considerations around climate change, and I guess that reflects the fact that they were drafted 25 years ago, our government has passed laws, particularly the safeguard mechanism that requires heavy emitting industries to cut their emissions 5% a year and get to net zero by 2050. So, it's not accurate for some out there to be claiming that we're not doing anything about the climate change impacts of big projects, we are, we're doing that through the safeguard mechanism. And of course the other point is that the scope 3 emissions, so emissions that are generated when fossil fuels developed in Australia are burned and used overseas, scope 3 emissions are managed under the Paris Agreement that almost every country has signed up to and requires each country to be making efforts to reduce their own emissions that are produced from the use of Australian fossil fuels or Japanese or Korean made cars. It's the same principles. So, my argument is that there are a range of mechanisms already in place, both domestically and internationally to manage the climate impacts of developments, but I recognise there are groups who still want us to go further, there are groups who don't want us to go further, and we'll be listening to that feedback on the way through.

JOURNALIST: Minister, are you approaching these as like starting completely from scratch, and how much of the stuff from the previous performs do you expect to remain in this process?

MINISTER WATT: I made clear today as I have previously, that I don't think we need to go back to square one with these reforms. There's an enormous amount of work being done, both by my predecessor, and the people in the room today, on developing proposed laws, proposed standards and I think we'd be crazy to just chuck that all out the window. You know, we are setting an ambitious timeframe to get this done and I think it makes sense to draw on the work that has been done to date, of course, there's a lot of parts of that have still got to be resolved, and we'll need to do more work on that with stakeholders and the general community. But I do think that we can make use of a lot of the work that's been done so far.

JOURNALIST: You’ve mentioned a lot about, you know, streamlining processes and making sure that the environmental consideration is well founded. Is there any scope for this to be retroactively approved, put on projects that have been approved without perhaps as much foresight?

MINISTER WATT: I wouldn't have thought so. I mean, you know, it's very unusual that that the Parliament passes laws that have retrospective application, that point wasn't raised with me today, and I would see these laws acting prospectively, as occurs with 99% of the laws passed by this Parliament.

JOURNALIST: I suppose, sorry, just in terms of if there are any projects where perhaps there are concerns that it wasn't done with environmental consideration or enough research, would there be a means to [inaudible]?

MINISTER WATT: I mean, there are there are existing processes under the current laws for people to challenge decisions that are made. I'm sure that under these laws there will similarly be processes for people to challenge decisions that are made. We didn't get into a lot of detail about that kind of thing today and that again, that's something that I'll take advice from people on going forward.

JOURNALIST: You've run through a number of areas of agreement or broad agreement, one area of clear disagreement is the scope of the EPA, at this stage, what is your thinking around the powers of the EPA? And then separately, where do stand at the moment on forestry and how that could be regulated?

MINISTER WATT: So, on the federal EPA, you're right, there is disagreement among different parties around what the scope and powers of an EPA should be, and that was certainly articulated today, those points of disagreement. I made very clear at the beginning of the meeting that we remain committed to the creation of a federal EPA. As a government we've taken that to two elections in a row and we won't be walking away from that. We think that a federal EPA can play an important role, including in injecting some more integrity and confidence in the system. I've got an open mind at this early stage about exactly what the scope and exactly what the powers of an EPA would be, I'm keen to listen more to the views that were expressed and that's one of the things that we'll need to work out in the coming months.

On forestry, there was some discussion about forestry today and you know, again, there's different perspectives on this. Of course, forestry is an important industry in many parts of our country. It supports the timber and wood needs of our country. Equally, it can play a really important role in preserving biodiversity and generating carbon credits, there’s all sorts of uses for our forestry industry as time proceeds. Again, we haven't got a firm view about this, we previously made the point in the last term that, as Graeme Samuel recommended, that any national environmental standards should be applied to regional forestry agreements. That remains our position. But it's a little too early for me to say much more about what we would do on forestry.

JOURNALIST: You’ve said you wanted to have this all wrapped up by the middle of this term, can you give us a bit of a pathway for what the next 18 months looks like from this point onwards?

MINISTER WATT: Yeah. So, I would not expect us to be introducing legislation to this Parliament this side of Christmas, you know, as ambitious as I am for these reforms to pass, it will take a little bit of time for us to work through some of the detail on different provisions. But, you know, one of the things I said to the participants today, is that I think that there is broad agreement to a number of points in these reforms and I took you through them at the beginning, and what I'm keen to do is to settle as early as possible aspects of the overall laws that we can then be getting drafted. What I don't want to do is wait until we've got full agreement on every single package and then ask the drafters to draft legislation. I want us to keep moving through this progressively over the course of this year, so that we're in a position to introduce to Parliament as early as possible in the new year.

JOURNALIST: So as this process progresses, are you hoping to bring this group back together? And did you find that beneficial? And obviously you can't get it through the Senate without support from either the Greens or the Coalition. Are you consulting with them in the early stages of this process?

MINISTER WATT: I would certainly expect to be bringing that kind of group like I had today back together again, but I'm also conscious that there's a whole range of people who’ve got an interest in these reforms who weren't in that meeting today and they've got a right to have their voice heard, as has the Australian public generally. But we will be certainly doing some targeted consultation with some of the groups that we know have a very direct interest in the issues being canvassed. And as I say, you know, there's a lot of consultation that's occurred already around these laws that we can make use of, we've got a fairly clear idea of different groups position on different issues. So, it's about now refining those issues and trying to nail down the finality, rather than starting from the beginning. In terms of the passing the laws through the Parliament. I've said previously and I've repeated today, I'm very open, and our government is very open, to passing these laws with the support of the Coalition or the Greens. You know, whether it's the full Coalition or just the Liberals, that's a matter for them. And I've also made the point that Sussan Ley, the now Liberal Party Leader and Coalition leader, was the Environment Minister Federally, when Graeme Samuel tabled his report five years ago and she was very supportive of those reforms when she was in the environment portfolio. There's a great opportunity for Sussan Ley and her team to demonstrate that they've listened to the Australian people in the recent election, when the Australian people said that they didn't want to see the conservative part of the politics drift off to the extreme right. This is a great opportunity for the Liberals, in particular, to show that they do want to bring their party back more to the centre, be more moderate on an issue of concern to many Australians. Equally for the Greens, they've made some encouraging comments since the election that they want to have a more constructive approach in this Parliament, this would be a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate that they’re serious when they say that.

JOURNALIST: Minister, at the pointy end of the last term of Parliament, negotiations got pretty tense and the WA mining lobby, in particular, got pretty cranky. Are you, you know, it's all [inaudible] now, and first stakeholder meeting has gone well. Are you prepared to have a public spat with vested interest [inaudible] to get your reforms through?

MINISTER WATT: Well, I mean, for starters, what you'll see is that in the meeting today, in addition to a range of environmental, First Nations, and other groups, we had the CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, we had the CEO of the Chamber of Mines and Energy from Western Australia. We had representatives from some of Australia's biggest mining companies like Rio Tinto and BHP. And just like everyone else participating, they've had a very constructive approach and signalled their desire to work with the government and work with other stakeholders to get the best possible package. You know, I'm not naive enough to think that we're going to reach agreement on every single point with every single group, and there will come a time where I, as the Minister, and the government will need to make a call on any issues that remain in dispute. But I want us to try to reach agreement on as many possible aspects of this legislation because I think that, A: it has the best paths of passing the Parliament, that best chance of passing the Parliament that way. But, B: we want to make these laws enduring so that they do provide certainty for everyone in the longer term and the more agreement we can have around the more aspects of the laws, than the more likely they are to stand the test of time.

JOURNALIST: Just to Mike’s point, you know, there was a lot of broad agreement last term, there was a lot of common recognition that things weren't working last term. Things got too hot, too close to an election, it all fell apart. What's different this time that doesn't recreate that scenario?

MINISTER WATT: I think a couple of things. For starters, it's now five years since Graeme Samuel handed down his review, it's only five years until the next 10 yearly review of this law has to occur. And I think that people understand that we've had a lost opportunity in not being able to reach agreement as a country about where these laws go. One of the really important points made inside was that there's an opportunity cost for the nation, for business, for the environment if we don't pass these laws. If we don't pass these laws, then our environment faces more destruction, businesses face more cost and delay in their projects. So, there's an opportunity cost for the country if we don't get moving on this, so I think there is a heightened sense of urgency. But as I say, I think there's a very different political climate now to what there was before the election. The government was returned with a very strong majority and a very clear mandate to get these reforms done. I do think that the Senate should be a bit more workable than it was in the last term of office, but also we all know that in the end these reforms were trying to be finalised a few months before an election, that's not a helpful time for anyone to be passing major reforms. We're now through an election in a very different political climate, a government that has authority and a government that has a lot of goodwill from the people who want to see these laws passed. Thanks everyone.