Interview with Daniel James, 7am Podcast

DANIEL JAMES, HOST: Murray Watt has a big job. As Federal Environment Minister, he has been handpicked by Albanese to fix Australia's old and broken environment laws. It was a brief his predecessor, Tanya Plibersek, failed to achieve, with mining interests in Western Australia claiming success when a deal with the Greens was dashed by the PM at the last minute. So, what will be different this time? And how does the Minister square green lighting new fossil fuel projects with his Government being elected to combat climate change? Today, Environment Minister Murray Watt on Australia's broken laws, and why he said yes to Woodside.

Minister, thanks for speaking with me. One of your first acts as Environment Minister was to improve the extension of Woodside's North West Shelf Project out to 2070, effectively adding four billion tonnes of climate pollution or a decade of emissions. Do you think that decision was in line with what people of Australia elected your Government to do?

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Look, I really welcome the opportunity to explain what the basis of that decision was and what it wasn't. I understand that when that decision was made there were many people who looked at it and questioned how we could be approving a project like that when you're thinking about greenhouse emissions and climate change.

But the decision I was required to make under Australia's environmental law was; what would the impact of extending that gas plant be on the rock art? I've been at a little bit of a disadvantage, I guess, in that what I've done so far is issue a proposed decision, but I haven't been in a position to talk publicly about the conditions that I attached to that decision. But what I did say at the time was that I had imposed a number of strong conditions, particularly in relation to air emission levels and what impact they would have on the rock art.

I can understand why people looked at that decision and wondered, why wasn't I taking into account climate change or greenhouse emissions or other things. But under the Act, the decision I had to make was about the impact of the rock art. The only other thing I'd say, though - and again, this probably hasn't been ventilated as much as it should be - is that people shouldn't fear that we are making decisions about those kinds of projects without something being done regarding their emissions levels.

And you might remember, in our first term our Government strengthened what's known as the safeguard mechanism. And that's a policy, which requires the heaviest emitting projects in the country - whether it be coal mines, smelters other industrial development - they're required to reduce their emissions every single year, their greenhouse emissions. And this project is already subject to that requirement. So, leaving aside what I've made a decision about regarding the rock art, this project is already required to reduce its greenhouse emissions by five per cent a year, and to reach net zero by 2050.

So, I guess the way we're trying to come at these things is, make the decisions under environmental law that need to be made, applying the law and, at the same time in parallel, deal with the greenhouse emissions through the safeguards mechanism and other policies that we've got in place.

DANIEL JAMES: You've talked about the safeguard mechanism, but those rules only apply to emissions from drilling floor and processing gas at the time, not emissions from when the fuel is actually burned, whether that's here or overseas. Numerous climate bodies have pointed out the inadequacy of the safeguard mechanism in curbing emissions. Is it a way for the Government to look like it's acting while allowing the fossil fuel industry to continue?

MURRAY WATT: I guess this gets us into that debate about scope one, scope two, scope three emissions, which risks getting into a bit too much jargon at this time of the morning. But I guess the way the world has approached dealing with climate change and greenhouse emissions, particularly through the Paris Agreement, is to say that every country who's a signatory to that agreement needs to reduce the emissions that it emits in their own country. And what that means is that we're responsible as a country for the emissions emitted in Australia, and that picks up things like the direct emissions from a plant like this or from a coal mine in its operation, or from the cars that we drive, all of those kinds of things.

And then, when it comes to the emissions generated from products that we produce and sell overseas, those emissions need to be managed by the country that buys those products and burns that fuel. And one way of thinking about it is that, for all of those cars that Australians buy and use that are made in Japan or South Korea, the emissions that come from those cars get counted towards our emissions budget here in Australia, not Japan's and Korea's. And similarly, the emissions that are generated from gas or coal that we export are counted against the budgets for emissions of those countries, not against ours.

I guess it's one of the reasons why, as a Government, we've taken so many steps to try to reduce the emissions we are producing, you know, through our own burning of fossil fuels here in Australia. And we're working with other countries and welcome them doing the same in their own countries as well.

DANIEL JAMES: If we just stick with Woodside for one moment, in particular, the Murujuga cultural landscape. This is an area that was recently granted World Heritage status by UNESCO. Is it possible to protect these petroglyphs from Woodside emissions.

MURRAY WATT: We think it is, and more importantly, that's what the scientific evidence tells us. You may have seen that I participated in securing that nomination of the Murujuga Cultural Landscape to get it World Heritage Listing. Which is a fantastic thing, not just for Western Australia but, of course, the traditional owners that land who led that nomination.

And what the scientific evidence told us was that the emissions being created by projects there now are unlikely to be having an impact on that rock art. There certainly has been, it would seem, an impact from previous industrial activity. There was a pretty dirty power station operating there at one point in time, and it's quite likely that the emissions from that power station were having an impact. Thankfully, that's not happening anymore and companies that are operating other facilities in that area, I know have been forced and have decided to reduce their emissions themselves.

So, the emissions that we're seeing at the moment do not appear to be causing an impact on the rock art. But yeah, we're confident that the measures that are being put in place and any conditions that I attached to these sorts of approvals will be able to do that.

DANIEL JAMES: But isn't there significant disagreement in the scientific and expert evidence around the protection of the petroglyphs?

MURRAY WATT: There are different views about this, I'll acknowledge that. And you may have seen that, at the time of the proposed decision on the North West Shelf Project, there were some experts and academics who suggested that there would be an impact. I don't want to get into sort of insulting different people's qualifications, but the reality is that the geological and engineering experts who are best qualified to measure these sorts of impacts were clear.

DANIEL JAMES: Right now, you're working on new federal environmental laws. This has been a long time coming. Can you just explain why they need fixing?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah. This is probably my biggest priority in this portfolio and, as you say, there's been a lot of talk for a long time about fixing these laws. If you like, the blueprint that we're working towards for these reforms is the review and recommendations that were provided by Professor Graeme Samuel for the former government nearly five years ago.

And what Graeme found in his report was that our current national environmental laws are, fundamentally, broken. They're not working for the environment and they're not working for business either in the sense that we've got a very cumbersome process in place to get projects assessed and approved. So, it's sort of failing in both ways.

And so, what we want to do is put in place environmental laws that are contemporary. This Act is nearly 20 years- I think probably over 20 years old, and doesn't meet the moment in terms of what we need. And what we want to do is put in place some laws that do work for the environment and do work for business. And we think you can achieve both of those things.

DANIEL JAMES: You've taken over the portfolio from Tanya Plibersek who got very close to a deal with the Greens regarding Australia's environmental laws, before Anthony Albanese stopped them from going ahead. It's been widely reported that was to help Labor electorally in WA. So, how have you reshaped the laws to, finally, be able to get them through?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, I mean, I've obviously seen that suggestion reported. I wouldn't necessarily agree that that's what happened, but let's leave that to the side - that's ancient history. Look, I think I really respect the effort that Tanya put into these reforms, along with the incredible other achievements she had as the Environment Minister. But yeah, I think everyone was disappointed that we weren't able to secure agreement to those changes before the election.

I think your question was, how am I going about it differently and, sort of, what makes me feel that things will be different? I guess, in the early discussions I was having with stakeholders, after becoming the Minister, it was clear to me that our chance of getting a bill through the Senate, with the broadest possible coalition of support for it outside the Parliament, would be to try to deal with a broad range of issues, rather than break it up as we had attempted to do before.

And so what that means in practical terms is that, the way I see these reforms is that they're built on three pillars. Firstly, stronger environmental protections. Secondly, quicker and more efficient approvals processes. And thirdly, more transparency when it comes to environmental decisions. And what I'm finding, talking to stakeholders, is that people do support that broader approach where we try to deal with a full range of issues rather than dealing with some and with people having reservations about what might yet be coming.

The other thing I think that's really changed, of course, is the political climate in Australia. We're now through the election. We've obviously got a large majority in the House of Representatives. I think that there's a level of goodwill across the community towards working with the Government to get this done. So, you know, I wouldn't want to pretend that everything is resolved. This will be one of those bills that continues being negotiated until the minute it's passed. But I find that there is a lot of goodwill there, whether you're an environmental group or a mining company, to making change. Because, you know, the alternative we have is to stick with the laws that we've got at the moment, and they're not working for anyone.

DANIEL JAMES: Yeah, if we talk about the evolution of this change, Minister, Tanya Plibersek's original plan was to include mandatory consideration of climate change in environmental planning. Are the new laws going to be a watered down version of what your Government had originally planned?

MURRAY WATT: Well, the issue of what we do around climate change in this legislation is something that we're still consulting on, and we haven't reached a final decision on that. There's probably half a dozen issues, I would say - this being one of them - where there's still strong feelings on both sides of it and we've got to try and hammer out some sort of an arrangement.

Really, what I said to you before, I think, was that we do see Graeme Samuel's report as a bit of a blueprint for these reforms. And if you have a look at what he said on this point, he explicitly ruled out and didn't recommend what's become known as a climate trigger. And what he recommended was that project proponents, whether they be mining companies or property developers, whoever they might be, should be required to disclose the emissions that their project will create and provide what's known as an abatement plan, so a plan to reduce their emissions, as a condition of their application and a condition of approval.

And I would say, at this point in time, the Government leaning more towards that than a climate trigger. And this sort of comes back to the earlier discussion we were having about the North West Shelf Project which is, what Graeme said, was, of course, reducing emissions matters a lot and it matters for the environment. But the Government has chosen to pursue that through a range of climate-related measures like the safeguards mechanism, like our legislative targets to reduce emissions, like our new standards to reduce emissions from cars - a whole range of measures that we've done in the climate side of things. And his view was that it didn't really make a lot of sense to duplicate those kind of requirements in our environmental legislation.

One of the aims of this legislation, from the point of view of quicker approvals, is to reduce the level of duplication we have in the system between states and the Federal Government. And if one of the objectives of this legislation is to reduce duplication, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to duplicate things that we're doing in the climate space in this act as well.

DANIEL JAMES: Minister, South Australia is currently experiencing a huge algal bloom, which has caused significant and devastating loss of some of Australia's rarest marine life. And that was caused, of course, by the fact the ocean's temperature is rising, which is caused by climate change, which is caused by the fossil fuel industry. Your Government continues to approve fossil fuel projects. So, is that going to change in the future? Or are we going to see the Government continue to greenlight fossil fuel projects?

MURRAY WATT: Well, first, can I say, you know, I absolutely acknowledge the total devastation of the marine environment in a large part of South Australia from this algal bloom. And you would have seen I've been down there twice myself. The Prime Minister's been down to inspect it and we're jointly funding a package of support with the South Australian Government. But, unfortunately, no one knows for sure how long this is going to go for, and that's why we need to keep working on the impacts of it.

You know, you would be aware that our Government doesn't have policy of stopping coal and gas projects from happening. What we've chosen to do was to participate through that Paris Agreement process with a range of other countries around the world to agree to reduce our own emissions, particularly here at home. You'd be aware that, before too long, we will see Chris Bowen as the Climate Change Minister come forward with new emissions reduction targets, which will be more ambitious than what we've got at the moment.

So, you know, I think, in the end, what we've committed to is a policy of reaching net zero by 2050. Now, I respect the fact that there are people listening to this program who would like to see us stop fossil fuel production, not approve any more of those sorts of projects. The position we've taken is to reach net zero and, yeah, what that means is increasing our effort to reduce the emissions that we're causing here, where we are ploughing as much effort as we can into expanding our renewable energy sources here. So, you know, I can assure your listeners that we do not only take climate change seriously but want to do our bit as part of the world to reduce our emissions by undertaking all of those kinds of things as well.

DANIEL JAMES: Minister, thank you so much for coming on 7am.

MURRAY WATT: No worries, Daniel. Good to talk.