Doorstop, Parliament House

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Today is a very important day when it comes to protecting Australia's environment and opening up our processes to deliver the homes, renewable energy that Australia needs. Today, we will be introducing the Environmental Protection Reform Bill to the House of Representatives to commence the debate on what will prove to be a historic set of reforms about protecting Australia's environment and, as I say, opening up our processes to deliver the homes, renewables, and other projects that Australia needs.

Today is five years to the day since Graeme Samuel delivered his review of the existing legislation to then-Environment Minister Sussan Ley. Five years since that review was handed down and still this Parliament has not been able to pass reforms to deliver on his recommendations. Over those five years we've been going round and round in circles with different parties and different interest groups demanding more and more and more, and the net result has been that we haven't been able to get these reforms passed in any form.

Over that five years, we've seen our environment continue to go backwards. We've seen housing, renewables and other projects strangled in red tape at a time that we desperately need them delivered. So now is the time to get moving on these reforms. Really, passing these reforms has to be done now. It is now or never. We need to get moving and that's why we need to pass these reforms this year before Parliament rises.

Happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST: Have you heard anything more from the Coalition since Sussan’s letter requesting to split the bill, has there been any update on what they’re wanting?

MURRAY WATT: Well, what I've heard since Sussan Ley sent that silly letter to the Prime Minister saying that we should split the bill, is that even business groups don't support doing so. She put forward this idea that we should only proceed at this point in time with the matters that business groups want to see delivered, such as streamlining our approvals. But even business groups have been out there saying it was a silly idea, and they recognise that we've got to pass a balanced package that delivers for both the environment and for business because that's the way that we will have enduring, lasting reform that delivers for the environment and for business.

Since that time, I have met again with Angie Bell, the Shadow Minister for Environment, I think that’s the fifth or sixth time that I've met her and I've met a similar number of times with the Greens Spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young. So, we're at a stage where both the Coalition and the Greens are flagging issues that they would want to see dealt with in order to pass the legislation. We haven't seen any draft amendments yet, that’s understandable, people will be still working on that at the moment. But we'll work our way through this and I've always said that we're open to passing this bill with the support of either the Coalition or the Greens. If either side sets ridiculous demands for us, then we've got another option to pass these laws. My purpose in this is to pass these laws as quickly as we can and deliver a balanced package that delivers for both the environment and for business.

JOURNALIST: Murray, your colleague Ed Husic raised some concerns about the national interest test. He said he had some issues around how maybe a future minister, perhaps not yourself, but a future minister might use those powers in future to approve projects that shouldn’t be approved and so forth. Will there be any sort of rules, safeguards, limitation to how that power will be used?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, well as it has been reported, Ed raised those matters in our caucus as well, and that's his right to raise those concerns. What I've said both to Ed, the caucus, and to the to the public is firstly that this suggestion of an approval power for a minister in a national interest situation comes directly from Graeme Samuel's report. What he said is that an elected government should have the ability, in rare circumstances, in the national interest, to be able to make a decision to approve a project after it's been assessed if it doesn't meet all of the usual environmental standards.

Graeme Samuel also said that that decision needs to be accompanied by a statement of reasons setting out why that decision was made and what environmental impacts that decision would have. So as with much of this Bill, we've simply followed the recommendations that Graeme Samuel put forward, and as I say, we expect this to be a very rarely used power. In the Bill itself, we've pointed to the types of decisions that this might involve and mostly relating to defence or national security or natural disaster situations. And ultimately it would be up to any minister to be able to justify their decision to the public.

JOURNALIST: Quite a big stack of notes you've got there on this reform. Do you not think something that is that thick needs to go to a Senate inquiry? We've been speaking to David Pocock this morning, he says something like this shouldn’t be rushed. Given how much is just in your hand there do you agree with that?

MURRAY WATT: I’m sure there will be a Senate inquiry, I mean, it's up to the Senate to determine whether it wants to have an inquiry and how long that should be. We will be seeking a Senate inquiry that reports back to the Parliament at the beginning of the final sitting week, so that we do have the opportunity to pass that. That's nearly a month-long Senate inquiry for people to work their way through the bill. But I'd also point out that this follows not only the intensive consultation that I've undertaken since taking on this role. I’m now up to about 100 meetings that I've personally done with stakeholders, the Coalition, the Greens, independents about the bill. And based on those meetings, we've then formulated policy positions which have been reflected in this legislation. So, for those who've been involved in these discussions, then they're quite familiar with the concepts that are being reflected in the bill.

But again, I'd also make the point that consultation hasn't just started since I was in the job. Tanya Plibersek did a power of work with these reforms and got a lot of the building blocks in place that we've been able to pick up on and build on top of. And again, these reforms were delivered five years ago. Are people seriously suggesting that we shouldn't take this opportunity, outside an election campaign, to finally deliver recommendations that were provided five years ago and start turning around our environmental decline and start getting moving with approvals on things like housing and renewables?

JOURNALIST: Can you confirm the number of recommendations from the Graeme Samuel review that have been implemented at this stage?

MURRAY WATT: Look, I haven't got the exact number at the top of my head, but the overwhelming majority of recommendations that Graeme Samuel made have been picked up in this bill. And that covers everything from empowering states to make decisions around assessments and approvals while they're subject to national environmental standards. It includes giving a minister power to make national environmental standards, lifting the penalties on wrongdoers. And we've gone a little bit further than Graeme Samuel's report in creating a federal EPA for the first time. So the overwhelming number of Graeme Samuel's recommendations have been picked up here, and that's been a deliberate choice because we wanted to make sure we had a broad and balanced package that delivered those wins for both the environment and for business.

JOURNALIST: Angie Bell this morning said the Coalition is a long way off doing a deal with the government on this bill, is that your interpretation of how your meetings with her has gone?

MURRAY WATT: Look, I think the meetings that I've had with both the Coalition and the Greens show that they wouldn't be prepared to pass the bill that we're introducing today, but I don't think anyone is surprised by that. They'd be pretty poor negotiators if they just folded on day one and decided to support the bill without any changes whatsoever.

We'll keep working with both the Coalition and the Greens to strike an agreement. I would make the point that I think they both paid a political price at the last election for continually blocking and obstructing the government's agenda dealing with issues that Australians wanted to see dealt with. I hope they have learnt the lesson of the last election where they paid a price for blocking and that at least one of them, if not both of them, can work with us to deliver reforms that will deliver for the environment and for business.

JOURNALIST: Minister, can I just clarify on the national interest test, understand that you say this is a recommendation of the Samuel review, but there are serious concerns among environmental groups that, like Josh said earlier, a future minister could potentially overuse this power. Are you open to changing that provision of the bill? Do you share those concerns? Is that something that you are willing to compromise on?

MURRAY WATT: Well, what I've said is that we're at a stage in these negotiations where no one has provided me with an amendment, which is understandable, they're still working their way through it. But I'm open to listening to both the Coalition and the Greens about what changes they would like to see in order to pass this bill. Ultimately, this will come down to whether the Coalition or the Greens are more willing to deliver a bill along the lines of the one that we're introducing today. I don't want to see us emerge from this debate with a bill that only delivers to the environment or only delivers to business. I'm open to listening to what they're seeking, and we'll consider each of their suggestions.

JOURNALIST: Minister, on a different topic, I know you’ve been focused, obviously, on this. But this issue with David Pocock in the Senate yesterday to dramatically extend Question Time in the Senate there. What’s the government planning to respond to on that at the moment? Are you seriously considering taking those Liberal MPs off House committees and so forth?

MURRAY WATT: Look, I haven't been part of those discussions, but I would make the point that what David Pocock did yesterday with the support of the Coalition and the Greens was upend decades of Senate tradition and procedure in a grab for power. It has been that the number of questions that are allocated to government, opposition and crossbenchers in the Senate has been set for decades. And we've now, as a result of a dummy spit from David Pocock, he's decided to upend that in a way that advantages the opposition and the crossbench. So I think he should reflect on his actions. I mean, David Pocock is always in here lecturing the rest of us about the importance of Senate tradition and Senate convention, and he's just gone and chucked the toys out of the cot yesterday. So he should have good, hard think about that.

JOURNALIST: Just back to the environment, Angie Bell has said she’s concerned about the fact that the EPA CEO would not be accountable to you as the Minister. Is that something that you're willing to compromise on?

MURRAY WATT: Well, the truth is that the Coalition don't support a federal EPA at all. They've said that previously. But that is something that we've taken to two elections now and the Australian people have endorsed. And we think it is important to have a strong, independent national EPA to regulate environmental matters and to come down hard on those who do the wrong thing. As I've said, we're open to considering the suggestions that different parties are making. But we do want to make sure that the EPA does have a high level of independence when it comes to using its powers. Ok, might have to leave it at that, thanks all.