Green light
Labor has ended a five-year stalemate on Australia’s environmental protections, sealing a deal with the Greens to overhaul national protections on the last sitting day of the year.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spent the final sitting week of 2024 in a mad dash, personally intervening to scrap a deal with the Greens over the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC).
What a difference a year makes.
On Thursday, the last sitting day of 2025, Albanese praised the Greens for their “maturity” in negotiations as he announced a revamped EPBC Act would pass that afternoon.
“This is a landmark day for the environment in this country,” he told reporters.
Albanese’s intervention last November was driven by politics, not policy. With Peter Dutton edging ominously closer to the Lodge, the prime minister was wary of environmental laws becoming a weapon during the election campaign.
