Interview with Patricia Karvelas, ABC Afternoon Briefing

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Environment Minister, Murray Watt, is my first guest this afternoon. Minister, welcome to the program.

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: G'day PK, good to be with you.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: The relationship with China was being stabilised under your Government. Are we moving to a new phase now? How would you describe the new phase we're getting into?

MURRAY WATT: Look, I'll leave it for other commentators to come up with the sort of word to describe it, but you're right, we have put a huge amount of energy over the last three years into stabilising the relationship. In my time as the Agriculture Minister, I saw the benefits of that flowing through to Australian farmers, and of course the relationship trade wise goes well beyond that.
I think it's a really healthy thing that we now have Australia's relationship with China restored to a degree that we can talk about the difficult issues that exist in our relationship, because there are some, but in the meantime we can also have very productive and positive trade links for both countries. I think that's a really good thing. We've said that we do want to continue strengthening this relationship, we can see the enormous benefits to Australia in building that trade relationship, diversifying it into other products as well. So it's a really good thing. I think that that relationship has stabilised, and we can have those difficult conversations while focusing on the positives as well.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: There was also language from the Government for a long time that we were over reliant on China. If we want to increase trade with China, are we getting into that territory again?

MURRAY WATT: I think it will always be a good thing for Australian exporters to diversify our markets. Again, my experience in the agriculture portfolio showed me that there are risks if you overly concentrate on one market, whether it be China or any other. We did make a big effort over that period of time to diversify our markets particularly for our agricultural exports, and we'll continue to do that, whether it be for agriculture or other exports as well. But at the same time, you know, we all know that China is continuing to grow, its middle class is continuing to grow each and every year, so there is an opportunity for more trade to go into China at the same time as we are diversifying our markets and searching new opportunities as well.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Fortescue boss, Andrew Forrest, said   he's on the delegation, as you well know   that security becomes a distraction. Does it? Is it a distraction?

MURRAY WATT: Well, I think it's one of the factors that we have to deal with this in relationship. You will have seen the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister say many times that we will cooperate with China where we can, and we'll disagree where we must, and we'll always stand up for our national interests. And you know, there's no surprise, not exactly a secret that from time to time there are security tensions with China, but by having that mature relationship that we've been able to develop, that allows the opportunity to talk about these issues sensibly rather than the style of discussion that we saw before. So it is a fact that there are security tensions with China. We'll continue to speak up for Australia's interests when they arise, and we've made the point, and Minister Wong has made the point, that we want to see a region where no one power dominates, and no one is dominated. That's what we'll be working towards. But in the meantime, we can seize those massive trade opportunities. And I guess the point I've often made, and others have as well, and is that Australia is not unique in having a challenging and complex relationship with China. If you look at countries like Japan and South Korea, they have extremely successful trading relationships with China while also having security concerns. They manage to deal with that relationship in a mature way, and that's what we've been able to do as well.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: But tomorrow our Prime Minister meets with the Chinese President, Xi Jinping. Some thorny issues inevitably will come up. We know that the Chinese want to raise the Port of Darwin with us, Prime Minister's sticking to his guns on that issue. But will he raise - this being the Prime Minister - the circumnavigation of Australia which we saw not that long ago?

MURRAY WATT: Well, I think the Prime Minister's been pretty careful in his media statements to not spell out in detail every point that he's going to raise President Xi, and that's a polite way to approach those meetings, but he's also said that he will be raising security matters, trade matters, human rights matters, and what we can also be confident of is that everything he raises he'll be doing so with a view to Australia's national interest. So, you know, I'll leave it for the Prime Minister to describe exactly what issues he describes in those meetings, but we will be certainly raising a number of security issues.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: That's interesting. OK, I want to raise a couple of things in your own portfolio. It would be an absolute waste to have the Environment Minister here without asking some questions about some things you're working on.

MURRAY WATT: Sure.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: In 2019, then Environment Minister, you'll know the name, 'cause she's now the Leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley, appointed Graeme Samuel as an expert panellist, basically, to review the Environment Act. A year later the Samuel Review came back with what was a really damning report, called for a big overhaul, as you know. You've been consulting on changes. Have you reached out to the Opposition now officially, Sussan Ley, who herself was across these issues, to do a deal?

MURRAY WATT: I've certainly been in touch with the new Shadow Environment Minister, Angie Bell, just in a very general sense, and we'll be meeting shortly to start talking about these reforms, as I will be with the Greens Party. I've said consistently that we are open to passing legislation with the support of either - or both - the Opposition or the Greens. We'll be seeking the broadest possible level of support both inside the Parliament and outside for these reforms.

And you're right, it's interesting that Sussan Ley, now the Opposition Leader, was the Environment Minister when Graeme Samuel handed down his review and his blueprint for these reforms. I noticed that Sussan Ley was doing a press conference in Western Australia today criticising our Government for failing to pass these reforms. Well, of course, she was the Environment Minister when this blueprint came down, and she didn't do a lot about those reforms herself, but I would hope-

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Well, so far, you'd have to say that both sides of politics have failed to get any legislation through. When are you going to have legislation ready to go to put to the Parliament?

MURRAY WATT: Well, for starters, I'd acknowledge the work of Tanya Plibersek in this portfolio in the last term, where she did begin the job of these reforms and managed to secure what was known as the first stage, or the first tranche of these reforms, and we all know it's history now that unfortunately we were not able to pass the bill for the second stage of those reforms. What I've said already is that I think it's important that we take this opportunity post election to pass a broader set of reforms than what was contained in the Bill we introduced before the election.

The feedback I've had from a range of stakeholders is that one of the reasons we weren't able to build the support that we needed for that Bill before the election was that there were a range of other issues that people wanted to see resolved before they would agree to the terms of that Bill, and so I think we're through an election now, we should take an opportunity to resolve some of those issues and put together a much more comprehensive package. That will of course take a bit of time. If you're trying to do a broader bill it will take a bit longer than the bill that was in place beforehand. But we all acknowledge we've got to get these reforms done as quickly as we can. I think we do have a window post election with a government returned with a strong mandate, hopefully with a more reasonable Senate than we had last term to make some change. You know, Graeme Samuel found five years ago that our environmental laws aren't working for the environment and they're not working for business, and every year we let that go on, there's more damage to the environment and more damage to business. So hopefully we can reach a sensible conclusion before long.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: The centrepiece of the initial reforms were new environmental standards - they were missing though in last year's proposal that clearly fell over. It sparked a lot of criticism that you were across. The EPA was basically going to end up, you know, dealing with the same laws. Where's that at now? Have you decided that that be part of it? Is that what you're talking about in terms of broader laws?

MURRAY WATT: Certainly what I've said since the election is that we remain committed to introducing and creating a new Federal EPA. That's something we've taken now to two elections, and we've been endorsed twice for that proposal. We haven't yet settled the exact form of the EPA, exactly what its powers are-

PATRICIA KARVELAS: How about the new standards that go with that?

MURRAY WATT: And the standards   certainly there's been a lot of work done, but they haven't been finalised at this point either, of course it's only been a couple of months since the election, but work is well underway. I mean the way I think about this is that we do want to see much more streamlined approvals processes for industry to be able to get more certainty, to be able to have faster approvals than what they have at the moment, but that, of course, has got to be subject to strong environmental standards to make sure that we're actually improving the natural environment rather than worsening it, and that's exactly what Graeme Samuel recommended in his review as well.

So that's the kind of principles that we're working towards. There's a bit of work yet to be done to define exactly what those standards are, to work out exactly what kind of activities just won't be permitted in certain areas, what level of impact is appropriate, what level of offsets need to be made. That's the kind of detailed work that we've now got underway. But as I say, what I'm aiming to do is to come up with a package that has got broad support from industry, from environmental groups, and hopefully then within the Parliament as well.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Should a future EPA have the power to approve major resource projects instead of the minister?

MURRAY WATT: Well, again, this is one of the key issues that's been discussed at the moment, and it's a little early for me to have reached a position on that-

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Are you close? I mean you must be, because the ministerial discretion is highly controversial - is it time to take the power away from the minister?

MURRAY WATT: Well, one of the things I guess I've learned in this portfolio since taking it on, PK, is that the overwhelming majority of decisions and approvals under the current environmental law are actually taken by the department. There's a very small number that end up coming before the minister of the day; they tend to be the most contentious ones, but there's a range of other approvals that end up being undertaken by departmental officials under delegation from the minister. So I guess I'm just making the point that it's a relatively narrow number that are currently made by the minister.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: But they are the most controversial?

MURRAY WATT: They are.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: So should they be taken out of the minister's hands?

MURRAY WATT: Again, it won't surprise you to hear that there are strong views on either side of that debate, you know, from the mining industry's perspective and industry more broadly, they feel uncomfortable having those decisions left with the department, the environmental organisations feel uncomfortable not having a minister to be able to be held to account and not allowing the department to make some decisions as well. It's a little too early to be able to say exactly where we'll land on that, but you've hit on one of the most contentious issues, and I hope that we'll be able to resolve it soon.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: OK. You say the recent World Heritage Listing of an ancient Indigenous rock art site will not influence the Government's final decision about the extension of the North West gas project, for instance. How can those things not all be linked though, Minister?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah I guess the technical answer to that, PK, is that the decision of the World Heritage Committee over the weekend - which we of course welcome and supported - was to award World Heritage Listing to a particular site, the Murujuga Cultural Landscape. That won't have retrospective application, but the important connection to the current Australian environmental legislation is that one of the matters that triggers an Environment Minister or department to get involved in a project approval, is if a particular project may have a detrimental impact on a World Heritage listed property. So now that this is World Heritage listed it does gain extra protection under the environmental legislation. So really what it means in practical terms is that should there, in the future, be an application for some kind of industrial development that would have a detrimental impact on that rock art and on that landscape, then that would need to be considered by the minister of the day. The area that will be protected in this particular landscape now is three times as large as what is currently protected under the existing legislation, so there's broader and greater protection for this landscape. It's something we supported, and to those people who said that this would weaken the protections for that site, it's actually the complete opposite; it's more greatly protected now than it was, and that's why - well, one of the reasons - why we were very supportive of this nomination.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Now I must ask you this final question. It's your previous portfolio, but you were the Employment Minister, and the thuggery of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union, the CFMEU, has according to the Queensland Government cost taxpayers an additional 22 million on just one project alone, and the Queensland Government - the Premier, David Crisafulli - has made this claim: he's announced the Queensland Government's going to launch a Commission of Inquiry into allegations of a culture of violence within the state branch. Do you support that move?

MURRAY WATT: Yes, I support the move, as does the Queensland Labor Opposition. I mean we took a decision as a Federal Government that the most effective thing we could do was rather than having another Royal Commission was to take action and put in place a process to see the CFMEU go into administration. It's already resulted in changes with a number of officials being kicked out of the CFMEU, as should have occurred. And I know the administrator has got plans for further reform of the organisation. The report into the Queensland branch came out while I was overseas through the week, but I certainly had a look at it, and you know, I think it really confirmed the need for serious change in the CFMEU. The kind of violence that clearly was going on in Queensland, along with the corruption and criminality that we saw in other states was unacceptable, it was a blight on the union movement as a whole, which is why the ACTU supported action being taken.

The only thing I'd say about the Queensland inquiry is I think it's important that it doesn't end up being used as a political witch-hunt against the former Labor Government. There have been some comments made by current Queensland Government Ministers which make me concerned that that's one of their motivations. If this ends up being an inquiry that results in reform to the union and in better behaviour and less misconduct and less criminality, that's a good thing. If it ends up being used as a show trial against political figures, I think the public would question the benefit of that.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Thank you so much for joining us, Minister.

MURRAY WATT: Thanks, PK.