Albanese abandons environmental reforms, focus on donation caps
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The news: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shelved Labor’s plans to pass contentious Nature Positive environmental laws before the election, following opposition from West Australian Premier Roger Cook and parts of the mining industry.
The legislation would have established a federal Environment Protection Agency with powers including stop‐work notices, fines audits and enforcement of environmental laws.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on Friday still expressed hope for a “common sense” solution, though Labor sources told the ABC internal assessments showed no prospect of a deal with the Greens or Coalition.
Albanese conceded on The Conversation’s Politics podcast that there was no “path to success” this term, with the Greens making a fresh demand during the week and the Liberals choosing “an obstructionist path,” he said.
Albanese also flagged the government might cut back its legislation to reform rules covering electoral donations and spending in order to get a deal to pass it.
The context: The proposals were part of Labor’s 2022 election environmental platform and were originally backed by the Business Council of Australia, the ABC noted.
The move follows a reported personal promise from the prime minister to Cook, as the Labor premier faces a state election on March 8, less than five weeks away.
What they said: “I can’t see that [Nature Positive bill) has a path to success. So, at this stage I can’t say that we won’t be proceeding with it this term. There simply isn’t a majority.”
On political donations and election spending: "What I would say is that we are looking to get reform through. Now whether that is a bigger, broader reform or whether it needs to be narrowed down, we’ll wait and see."
"But we’re very serious about the reform which would lower the donation declarations, that would put a cap on donations, a cap on expenditure, that would lead to more transparency as well. It’s an important part of supporting our democracy."
"We see overseas, and we’ve seen people like Clive Palmer here spend over $100 million on a campaign. That’s a distortion of democracy – if one person can spend that much money to try to influence an election and we don’t find out all of that information till much later on.”
The sources: The Conversation, ABC
