I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven Am. Murray. Watt has talked a big game about fixing our environment laws by the end of the year, but this week the government's attempt to do that fell apart, with Greens and Coalition senators refusing the back to changes. At the same time, Labour faced a dramatic revolt in the Senate over its refusal to release a secret report meant to fix the culture of cronyism and Jobs for Mats have
a campaign on restoring integrity to government. Labor is now facing a Senate demanding that I live up to that promise. Today Press Gallery journalist Karen Middleton on why it's so hard to fix our environment laws and whether the government's hubris is getting in the way of its promise for greater transparency. It's Saturday, November one, Karen. The government was hoping to get its environmental reforms passed by the end of this year, with the Environment Minister saying it's now or never.
Now is the best opportunity to pass a balanced set of laws in the spirit of the Samuel Review that are firmly in the national interest. Put simply, it's now or never.
So is it never?
What's an excellent question.
It's not looking great simply because the other parties have now gained up on the government to send this off to a Senate inquiry. It's been extended to March of next year, so it makes it very difficult to get the legislation through the Parliament before then unless the Minister Murray what can negotiate an outcome with one or other parties that then withdraws the support for the Senate inquiry somehow.
But that's a lot to get done with only like sitting week left between now and the end of the year. So you have to say the chances of it getting through by a year's end are pretty slim.
We hear a lot about the environmental laws, but can you just briefly explain what it is that the government's trying to reform.
Well, the government has made the point and I think the one thing everyone agrees on is that the laws as they stand are not working for anyone much.
The current laws are broken. We know our current environment laws aren't working for the environment, they're not working for business, they're not working for the community, and it's high time that we got them changed.
The laws are trying to navigate that problem, make it less complicated for approving projects for industry that are important for the economy, but making sure that those projects don't cause serious.
Harm to the environment, and of course where the balance should be is the great big question.
So as it stands at the moment, neither the Coalition or the Greens want to support the bill in its current form. Do we know any details as to what each of them want to change.
Well, I guess it extends from those separate arguments. For example, the Greens wanted the inclusion of what's called a climate trigger, which is a provision that every proposed development has to be assessed for its impact on climate change and emissions. Now the government is not going forward with that proposal, and that is something that industry is very strongly opposed.
But what they currently have proposed is at least requiring these development projects to indicate their impact on emissions, so not have a trigger per se, but do have a reporting requirement. So that's the sort of proposed compromise thus far.
And of course on the industry side, they're very concerned that there will be too much ground seeded to protecting the environment that will make their operations in a range of different sectors unworkable, and their big concern at the moment is that there's too much red tape, that too much too much regulation, and that it makes it too difficult to operate as large scale businesses in Australia unless
some kind of different balance is struck. So will the government be more inclined to go for a deal with the Greens or with the coalition?
Well, that's a big question.
I think they probably prefer to have a deal with the Coalition simply because they've enjoyed holding the Greens at bay and not giving the Greens a victory. The Greens being in their same general center left space in the political landscape. But at the moment the Greens are probably closer to where the government wants to be than the Coalition.
What have you made of the way Susan Lee has handled negotiations on this, Well, this is.
A tricky one for her because she was the Environment Minister in government when Graham Samuel hand it down his report, and now of course she's leading the opposition, and she's leading an opposition that is split on matters relating to the environment in the broad sense and particularly in relation to climate change and energy and all of these things
are interlocked. The oppositions initially suggested the government should split the bill and kind of deal with the development part of it and then the environment part of it separately. So we want to see the bill split so we can streamline approvals and we can improve environmental protections separately. And but even big business is saying via organizations like the Business Council of Australia that they're not keen on that, but they just want this dealt with this distract on
and on. It's a problem, as we've said, if it stays as it is needs fixing, so they don't want that to happen. So Susan Lee's got to manage her traditional constituency both within our own coalition in Parliament and more broadly in the business community. But also it doesn't want to give too much away, so she is in a tricky spot and that I think is motivating some of their hesitations in their negotiating.
Karen Murray Well has really talked up his ability to get these laws through and to get them through this So is this a failure for him as Environment Minister?
Well, I guess some will say that I think it was ambitious to seek you had get it up this year and the government set the parliamentary timetable with not very many sitting weeks. It means that that does hamper the government's ability to get complicated legislation through where negotiation is required. So it's probably a little bit ambitious to suggest it was all definitely going to get through this year.
But Murray Watt has been given the job because he's become the sort of fix it person in the government for political problems and he's a tough negotiator, so we'll see where he gets to. And the Prime Minister's got an eye to Western Australia and Queensland and certainly the business and industry concerns and the basis of those economies there.
He's thinking very much about those.
He won a lot of seats in Western Australia three years ago, he hung on to them at the last election.
He made some more ground politically in Queensland.
So that's what he's got an eye on it, as well as the substance of the policy coming up.
And when we release it and when we release it and we make the responses.
And when we're releasing it the secret report the government is refusing to release. Karen. This week the government faced pressure over report they are refusing to release about the Jobs for Mates culture in Canberra. It all sounds very secret and hush hush. Why is that?
Well, this goes back a couple of years to a private member's bill that one of the independents in the House of Representatives, Sophie Scomps, had put forward. It was legislation that was targeting the practice of appointing friendly people, people either who come from their own political party or who are a j sent to important jobs into bureaucracy
or overseas posts and the like. And Sophie Scomps's bill was the Transparent and Quality Public Appointments Bill, which in short form was also known as the Ending Jobs for Mates Bill. Now, the Government wasn't keen on that and doesn't like private members bills as a rule, governments generally don't and they pick and choose when they let them go forward. The sort of trade off for that was that they undertook to have a review of their own
appointments and that was conducted by Lanelle Briggs. We understand that review finding went back to the government, not that long after, so sort of coming on for two years ago and we haven't seen it.
So, as you just said, there's clearly a lot of people who want to know what's in the report, But can you take me back to why we needed the report in the first place. I mean, what was the cronyism It was looking to stamp out what kind of mates and what kind of jobs are we talking about here?
Well often seeing bureaucratic jobs otherwise. Recent one you might note was the appointment of Stephen Jones too. I think it's the OECD job overseas as Australia's ambassador. Now Stephen Jones was Assistant Treasurer. He's a long time labor MP, he retired from politics and now he's got that job. So that's the kind of thing as an example that gets the cross bench upset and suggests that there are other people that might be worthy of such jobs.
All those appointments may well have been based on merit, but it does make you suspicious when they've been sitting on this report for two years and won't release it.
People like Senator David Pocock, the Independent from the Act makes the point that these people, people like Stephen Jones and others may well be the best person for the job.
They may have all the qualifications.
It may well be a merit based process, but the process isn't transparent and so that's not good for public trust. Australians deserved to know how decisions are being made and how we can fix a system that too often rewards
connections over competence. We don't know, you know why it is officially that the Government hasn't released that report, but you've got to assume there might be some things in it that are not good in terms of maybe suggesting there is a little bit much of this kind of thing going on.
And this year she got quite heated in the Senate this week, Karen, can you tell me how it played out?
Well?
What we've seen in the Senate at the end of this last sitting period was a battle of wills and parliamentary tactics. On Wednesday, those opposition parties and cross benches ganged up to use their numbers combined to force the Government to extend the Thursday question time by an extra half an hour and allow five more questions from non government senators to put extra pressure on the government to make the point that they weren't going to take this lightly.
Thanks very much, Deputy President. I take great pleasure, well maybe not actually in moving this motion today, because it highlights a very significant problem that we have in this country and then we have here in this Parliament, and that is with a government that is unwilling to be compliant with the orders of this chamber. Is with the government that is not willing to be upfront and transparent with the Australian people.
In response, on the Thursday, the government not only allowed the extra half hour, which was a ruling of the Senate, but they then used their powers in the Parliament to make question time on and on and on their own. Senators jumped up and said, well, hang on, we deserve extra time as well, so we're going to ask our questions.
Thank you.
I seek leave to ask a question on behalf of the beautiful state of Tasmania regarding the nutrition workforce.
Is they granted? Is not granted the Senator Brown.
Order?
And then they used procedural motions and the light to drag.
Question time on for an interminable three and a half hour on the longest we've seen in very long time. So that's the sort of game plan we're getting to in the Parliament, and that tells you that the government was determined not to just acquiesce.
There is some politicking going on here too.
The protagonists in the Senate on this point are David Pocock and Katie Galaho, the Minister. Now they both come from the Act, they're both senators contesting the same space. And Katie Gallaho isn't a big fan of David Pocock, who's appeared on the scene two elections ago, was reelected and has captured some of the vote that used to
be a Labor vote in the Senate. So there's a bit of personal animus going on and agenda going on here under the surface, as well as the broader political argument about whether the government should be keeping such things secret or not. And the government has declared this a
cabinet document, so it's not allowed to be released. And there are shouts of hypocrisy from the other side because under the previous government the Labor Party in opposition were furious that the Morrison government did that, very frequently.
Sending all very Shakespearean Karen, how damaging do you think this could be for the government, because they were elected on a platform of integrity and transparency. We have a knack that seemingly does nothing. They're also clamping down on freedom of information requests and now we have a secret report about jobs are made that the government won't release. Can they really hand on hearts? They've done anything to restore transparency and people's faith in government?
Well, they have done some things.
I mean, we saw the ridiculous and alarming multiple ministries issue with Scott Morrison that was exposed when later it was in government about how Scott Morrison secretly took on responsibility for all kinds.
Of portfolios that nobody knew about.
They've made changes to ensure that that doesn't happen, that that is much more transparent. Having said that, what you just outlined is very true, and they are doing a lot that seems to run counter to the retoric of transparency in aco ability.
How bad will it be?
Well, it depends a little bit on whether all of these incremental issues end up forming a picture in the minds of the public.
You know, are people very interested in freedom of information.
While we in the media are people who are politically engaged. Are the broader population not so much? Do they care much about reports? For jobs for the boys.
Maybe not.
Do they care about all the shenanigans in parliament, probably not. But if opposition parties and independents can start to form a picture of the government in the minds of the people as not doing what it said or not standing up for what it said, it would then I think
that does become a problem. And there's always a risk for a government that's one with a very big majority, as this government has, of getting a bit arrogant and complacent, and all of these things can come together and cause a problem for a government as it faces the next election. So we'll see whether the government can side step all of these and downplay them enough for them not to be a problem.
But I think they'd be wise to.
Be vigilant about them and start to ensure that that impression is not one that's formed.
Karen, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for having me.
This week, we learned that the government has begun deporting people to Novu. It's the government's solution to a High Court ruling that found out was against the law to hold people indefinitely in immigration attention. The deal with Naru is worth billions of dollars and is set to last for thirty years, but it raises a lot of questions which we're going to get into tomorrow. Seven Am is
a daily show from Solstice Media. It's made by Adigus Bastow, Chris Danegate, Daniel James, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcvee, Travis Evans and Zodnfecho. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Gin of Envelope Bodier. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. See you tomorrow.