Anthony Albanese has killed off a potential deal with the Greens to pass the government’s “nature positive” legislation after an intervention by the Western Australia premier, Roger Cook.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Cook said he had spoken to the “highest level” of the federal government on Tuesday to reiterate his view that the bills in their current form “should not be progressed”.
“I’m confident that that particular situation has prevailed,” he said.
“I won’t go into the details of private conversations, but can I just say I’ve had conversations at the highest level of the federal government.”
The prime minister was already disinclined to support the Greens’ compromise deal before Cook added his voice to those opposing it, under pressure from the mining industry and big business, and fearful of federal Labor’s electoral fortunes in WA.
However, negotiations between the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, and the Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, were progressing this week towards a compromise that would have secured necessary support from the minor party and crossbench senators to establish a national environment protection authority.
Guardian Australia has confirmed that negotiations on the bill collapsed on Tuesday night, after the prime minister intervened to rule there should be no acceptance of the Greens’ conditions, meaning the legislation will not pass before parliament rises at the end of the week.
Hanson-Young said the collapse of the negotiations was due to pressure from industry, particularly the WA mining lobby.
“The Greens put a deal on the table and the government has walked away. The prime minister has been bullied by the mining and logging lobby again,” she said.
“The Greens want to get laws that would actually provide some protection for nature but Labor couldn’t even entertain protecting forests and critical habitat in an extinction crisis.”
The government’s legislation would have established two new agencies: an environmental watchdog to manage compliance with national environmental laws and an information agency to manage environmental data.
The bills were a fraction of the reforms the government has committed to as part of an overhaul of Australia’s national environmental laws, which a 2020 statutory review found were failing to protect nature. Earlier this year, the government delayed a broader package of legislation to address the recommendations of that review until after the next election.
Greens and crossbench senators had been seeking a range of amendments to strengthen Australia’s environmental protections in the meantime and had already compromised by dropping a call for a climate trigger.
The amendments sought included integration of climate considerations into the environmental assessment process and closing the effective exemption for native forest logging covered by a regional forest agreement from national environmental laws.
Guardian Australia understands that negotiations this week were moving towards further potential compromises on that position.
Earlier on Wednesday a spokesperson for Plibersek declined to comment on Albanese’s role and pointed to the fact that the legislation remained on the parliamentary notice paper and is not being withdrawn.
“The bills are listed in the Senate. The Coalition, the Greens and other senators can support them at any time,” the spokesperson said.
Western Australia’s peak conservation organisation, the Conservation Council of WA, said it had written to the PM to urge the government to pass the legislation.
The council said it had conducted polling that found a majority of WA voters supported stronger nature laws.
Felicity Wade, the national co-convenor of Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN) said “today is a hard day for true believers, vested interests won”.
“The EPA was an election commitment. It has been in the National Platform since 2018 and is backed by 500 local ALP branches. It is core to our claim of caring about the natural environment,” Wade said.
“The Minister had stared down the Greens. The deal on the table avoided all the contentious stuff, it was sensible regulatory reform. All of it was existing government policy.”
CCWA nature program manager Rhiannon Hardwick said failure to act now risked delaying reforms for years and placing Australia’s climate and biodiversity at greater risk.
“West Australians have been falsely represented on nature protection,” she said.
“West Australians strongly support the protection of nature and real action on climate.”
The Australian Conservation Foundation’s chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, said “an independent EPA [environment protection authority] is desperately needed to take the influence of vested interests out of decision making”.
“The scare campaign run by the resources industry and peak business groups shows how opposed these sectors are to genuinely independent administration of national nature laws,” she said.
