Interview with Sally Sara, ABC Radio National Breakfast

SALLY SARA, HOST: The Federal Government says environmental approvals for thousands of new homes have been fast-tracked in the past two months as it races to address housing shortages. Meanwhile, major reforms to environment laws are expected to be introduced by the end of this year, with the Government trying to find consensus with conservation groups and industry. Senator Murray Watt is the Minister for Environment and Water and joins me now. Minister, welcome back to Breakfast.

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: G'day Sally. Good to be with you again.

SALLY SARA: We'll come to housing in a moment. On reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, in May you told me it was your priority to pass the reforms. Can it be achieved by the end of the year?

MURRAY WATT: That will certainly be our aim, Sally. Of course, any piece of legislation requires the support of the Senate, and the art in all this is making sure that we can get the support of either or both the Coalition and the Greens parties. So ultimately, it will be a matter for those parties to decide if they're prepared to support reforms to laws that everyone understands are broken. Whether it be the mining industry, the property development industry, environmental groups, everyone acknowledges that our current environment laws aren't working for our environment and they're certainly not working for business. And that's why we will be trying very hard to pass these laws as quickly as we can. I've said publicly that we'll be introducing the laws to the parliament this side of Christmas. We'd like to pass them as soon as we can because every day we delay in passing these reforms is a day the environment suffers, and it's a day that business is waiting to get certainty, so there's lots of incentive for both of those sides of Parliament to get behind these reforms.

SALLY SARA: Who have you been meeting with in order to try and land these reforms?

MURRAY WATT: We've been consulting round the clock, Sally, since I started in this role in mid-May. I think I'm up to over 70 meetings and roundtables personally with everyone from the Minerals Council through to the Business Council, through to the NFF, through to property development sectors and, of course, a range of key environment groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, WWF. My Department has done even more meetings on top of the ones that I've done and that, of course, follows years of consultation that have occurred before I took on this role following Graeme Samuel's review that was handed down five years ago. What I've said from the very beginning is that I want to build the broadest possible coalition of support for these laws. Everyone can agree that the laws are broken. Everyone can agree that we need laws that deliver stronger environmental protections, quicker approval processes and more transparency. And I guess what we're down to now is detail, making sure that we can deliver a bill to the Parliament that has very widespread support. And as I say, I think it would be a brave Coalition or Greens that decide to stand in the way of laws that have widespread support from everyone who is relying on them to work.

SALLY SARA: Have you had assurances from the Coalition or the Greens as to whether they will work with the Government to get these reforms passed?

MURRAY WATT: I've now met a couple of times with both the Shadow Environment Minister, Angie Bell, and with the Greens Environment Spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young. All of those meetings have been, I think, quite positive and constructive. You know, I wouldn't want to say that we're about to do a deal with anyone. There's obviously more work to be done, but again, I think there's a lot of frustration that everyone can feel, whether it be from those who love our spectacular environment or those who want to simply get an approval for their project done. I think both the Coalition and the Greens have heard that message. And I think politically, I would like to think that both the Coalition and the Greens learned a lesson from the last election and the last term where they both paid a very significant political price for being seen to obstruct progress that was being put forward by the government. So I'm hoping to see a change of heart from both of them when we get to the debate later in the year.

SALLY SARA: Well, let's talk about electoral consequences. You've walked away from reforms in the past because of WA's concerns. Post-election, are those pressures alleviated now?

MURRAY WATT: I think I'd probably dispute, to begin with, your statement that we walked away from those laws. There's obviously a very different version of events in terms of what happened last term. But look, I've made very clear that dealing with the Western Australian Government, along with every other state government, is a priority here. Even when we pass these laws, and I'm confident that we will, they will require the support and participation of state governments, so their interests are important. They manage a lot of the environmental processes and potentially would do more as a result of these reforms. I've made, I think I'm up to three different trips to WA since coming into the role, possibly more, to meet with the Premier, meet with the mining industry, meet with conservation groups in WA. Of course these laws had a lot of interest in WA, but I've similarly met with people and pretty much every state environment minister around the country. So we won't be seeking to satisfy one group or another. I genuinely think that it's possible to come up with a balanced set of laws that deliver both for the environment and for business, and the sort of comment that I'm hearing back from stakeholders give me some hope that we can do that.

SALLY SARA: Following the election, you said you hadn't decided whether you would take Tanya Plibersek's approach of trying to reform the Act in stages or look to legislate the reforms altogether. Have you decided now?

MURRAY WATT: Where I've got to on this, Sally, is that, again, our best chance of passing these laws is by having a broader bill that deals with a broader range of reforms than what we attempted prior to the election. Some of the feedback that I received after coming into the role was that one of the reasons that some stakeholders weren't particularly supportive of the bill we introduced before the election was that some of the key issues they were concerned about weren't included in that bill.

So what we're essentially trying to do now is put together what were previously thought of as the second and third stages of Graeme Samuel's reforms. We're going to try and do that in one lot because I think we've got one shot at this. No one has been able to pass these reforms for five years. I've made the point before that Sussan Ley was the environment minister in the Morrison Government when Graeme Samuel tabled his report. That's a long time ago. We've been arguing about these laws ever since and meanwhile the environment has suffered, and projects are getting held up. So I think, as I say, we've got one shot to do it right and the broader the bill, I think the better.

SALLY SARA: You're listening to Radio National Breakfast and you're hearing from the Minister for Environment and Water, Murray Watt. On housing, the Government has given environmental approval for more than 4,600 new homes since August. How exactly are you accelerating these approvals from your side?

MURRAY WATT: Yeah, it's really pleasing to see that some of the work that we're doing to really focus our resources and sharpen our processes on national priorities like housing is starting to bear fruit. As you say, Sally, since August alone, we've been able to approve over 4,600 homes in most states in the country. Some of those projects had been waiting for approval since 2018. Not all of them that long, but some of them go back several years. And what we've been attempting to do within the Department is really focus our effort on some of these major priorities for the country, like building more homes. That number, just to give you a comparison, is over three times as many homes as was approved in the same period last year. And importantly, we're making sure that we do that without sacrificing environmental standards.

You know, these houses are being approved under legislation that has the words environment protection in the title. And what we want to be able to do is find ways to get projects moving while also protecting our environment. One of the major reforms that we intend to include in the bill that we'll be introducing later this year is improvements to regional planning, where we can be doing the work upfront with state governments and proponents and environment groups in particular regions to identify what I've been calling the go zones and the no-go zones. Where are the areas that have really significant environmental issues that we shouldn't develop? And where are the issues that there will be minimal or no environmental impacts that we can prioritise developments?

So these are some of the things that we're trying to do to get these projects moving because, of course, we know that Australians need more homes and we want to get in and build them as quickly as we can.

SALLY SARA: Minister, if you've managed to fast-track this process within a matter of months, why has this only been done by the Government well into the second term in government?

MURRAY WATT: Well, I think that everyone understands that the need for housing has become more acute over the last few years, Sally. You know, we obviously came out of a period of Coalition Government that didn't invest in public housing, that actually ripped resources out of the environment, the department, to make it harder and slower to approve projects. In our first term, under my predecessor, Tanya Plibersek, the Government invested more resources in approval - in the public servants that need to make these approval decisions. But we've made some further steps in the last few months to really sharpen those processes further. We're doing similar work when it comes to renewable energy being another important national priority -

SALLY SARA: You've had Treasury advice earlier this year that the government at this rate won't reach its 1.2 million new homes target. Then last week the RBA Governor said she doesn't expect to see any progress on housing supply in the next two years. What more do you need to do?

MURRAY WATT: Passing reforms to our environment laws would be a very good start in terms of getting some of these homes built. What we're doing at the moment is doing everything we possibly can under the current laws by, you know, as I said, really focusing our resources within the Department on some of these priority areas like housing. But if we can reform our laws to make it quicker to get approvals done, not as cumbersome processes, without sacrificing the environment, that will also help substantially in delivering the homes, the renewable energy, the critical minerals developments, some of those national priorities that are currently being held up by very cumbersome laws.

SALLY SARA: Minister, thank you for your time this morning.

MURRAY WATT: No worries, Sally.