Allegations that the former Western Australian premier Mark McGowan put pressure on the independent Environmental Protection Authority to withdraw climate guidelines opposed by gas companies are evidence of the fossil fuel industry’s “ownership” of the state, senior figures say.
Carmen Lawrence, another former Labor premier, said McGowan’s alleged behaviour four years ago, if true, was “certainly improper”, “ethically questionable” and “illustrated the power that fossil fuels have to influence the government” in the state.
Bill Hare, the Perth-based head of the global non-profit organisation Climate Analytics, said it showed decision-making in WA was “captured” by oil and gas interests.
“I don’t think it’s well understood on the east coast,” Hare said. “It seems quite apparent that the state capture is fairly well complete, and at least de facto supported by the federal government.”
After more than four years of silence on the issue, the former chairman of the EPA, Tom Hatton, has revealed details of an allegedly contentious phone conversation he had with McGowan in March 2019.
The EPA had just released guidelines that suggested new and expanding fossil fuel projects in the state should have to buy enough carbon credits to offset 100% of their onsite greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon offsetting to justify fossil fuel development is contentious but the guidelines were meant to address the state’s skyrocketing CO2 pollution, which increased by 21% between 2005 and the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In an interview with the ABC last month, Hatton said McGowan had told him there had not been enough consultation with industry and the public over the guidelines and put pressure on him to withdraw them.
He said the premier’s call was “unprecedented” in the EPA’s 50-year history. The government can choose not to follow the authority’s guidelines but the state Environmental Protection Act makes clear the authority and its chair are independent from any direction by the state environment minister. It does not mention the premier.
McGowan’s call followed a wave of criticism from the gas industry, which argued the guidelines would impose unreasonable costs on fossil fuel developments, and the West Australian newspaper, which attacked the EPA over several days, including publishing a page-one headline saying its board members were “out of their mines”.
The then premier distanced the government from the guidelines the day after they were released, saying on the ABC that they went “a bit far” and major investors had already raised concerns about what it would mean for the viability of future projects. He said there needed to be a national solution to dealing with industrial emissions and the state would “work with individual projects about offsetting opportunities”.
“Of course, I have to create jobs and that is my number one priority,” McGowan said.
Last week Hatton told Guardian Australia he had not been prepared for the backlash and was surprised McGowan had called him directly. He said the 2019 conversation was short and direct, allegedly leading to the premier saying: “I want you to withdraw the guidelines.”
McGowan acknowledged at the time that he had spoken to Hatton and supported the decision to withdraw the guidelines but denied he put pressure on Hatton. McGowan did not respond to requests for comment last week or to the ABC last month.
Since McGowan left parliament in June, it has been announced he would take on roles with the resources companies BHP and Mineral Resources and had joined the consultancy firm Bondi Partners as a senior adviser. Bondi Partners is led by the former Coalition treasurer Joe Hockey.
Hatton said he “had compassion” for the former premier in the 2019 phone call as McGowan may have found himself in a challenging position given “the strident approach and resistance from industry”.
“There is a view that industry is important to the state’s economy,” Hatton said. “I can understand why he felt he needed to take the concerns of some of those companies seriously.” But he said he believed the phone call was “extraordinary”.
“I think it was inappropriate and certainly did not respect the statutory independence of the EPA.”
Hatton said after McGowan’s call he had about an hour to call the four other EPA board members and decide a course of action. “It was very stressful and very pressured,” he said.
Lawrence, who was WA premier from 1990 to 1993 and later a federal health minister, said the EPA’s draft guidelines had been “steady and sensible” and alleged that McGowan had forced the authority to withdraw them “because Woodside and Chevron didn’t like it”.
“That particular set of circumstances illustrated the power that fossil fuels have to influence the government,” Lawrence said.
“It happened in a nanosecond practically and it directly involved the premier, not just the minister. I don’t know if it’s unprecedented but it’s certainly improper. It’s certainly ethically questionable whether a body that is set up to arbitrate on this matter should be subjected to that interference.”
Lawrence has been involved in environmental campaigning since leaving politics, including as president of the Conservation Council of Western Australia. She said it was widely known there had been a “revolving door” between government offices, the gas industry and Seven West Media, which owns the Seven Network and the West Australian, Perth’s only daily newspaper, and is a strong supporter of fossil fuel and resources industries.
Prominent examples include the former state treasurer and Aboriginal affairs minister Ben Wyatt, who joined the boards of Woodside and Rio Tinto shortly after leaving politics in 2021. McGowan’s chief of staff of nine years, Guy Houston, left in June 2021 for a job with the Seven West Media chairman, Kerry Stokes, and had previously worked as an adviser to Chevron.
Four of the past five WA premiers have had staff who have also worked for the oil and gas industry group, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (now Australian Energy Producers). There is no suggestion that Wyatt, Houston or others acted improperly by making these career moves.
Lawrence said the extent of the WA government’s relationship with Woodside, in particular, was evident in the new premier Roger Cook’s strong support of the company after activists from the group Disrupt Burrup Hub were arrested at a protest outside the home of the company chief executive, Meg O’Neill, in August.
Cook said the protesters were extremists who had sought to terrorise O’Neill and her family in their home and he described Woodside as a great company that underpinned the standard of living in WA.
“What is it about people’s obsession with Woodside?” he said. “The suggestion that we should just somehow switch off the tap to gas as some sort of utopian exercise of moving to a green energy future is just, quite frankly, rubbish.”
Lawrence said Cook’s comments about Woodside had been “very disappointing”.
“Sometimes it looks like ownership of the government by Woodside, to be frank,” she said. “They’re defending the company but they’re not defending the rest of us from climate change.”
Escalating climate protests in WA, and the response from police, the government and Woodside, is the focus of a Four Corners investigation due to air on the ABC on Monday. Activists have accused authorities and industry of working together to suppress peaceful protest.
Cook’s office did not respond directly to Lawrence’s and Hare’s comments and referred Guardian Australia to a media conference held by the premier shortly after the ABC aired its interview with Hatton.
The premier told reporters there had been a “lot of outrage” when the guidelines were published because they were inconsistent with what was discussed in consultation between industry leaders and the EPA.
He said the government “had a view about that and expressed it to the
EPA” but the authority had acted independently when it decided to withdraw the guidelines and continue to consult with industry on how to reduce emissions. He said the EPA was “the master of its own destiny but it doesn’t work in a vacuum”.
Asked if it called into question the EPA’s independence, if it was true that a quick phone call from the then premier could lead to a change in the authority’s position, Cook said: “Not at all.”
“These issues obviously always have to be navigated, and we all want to get on to a pathway of net zero by 2050, but the pathway we have chosen is one of working with industry to understand their needs, the investment that’s required and the regulation that’s required. That’s a much better way to approach it.”
Prof Alex Gardner, a natural resources and environmental lawyer at the University of Western Australia, said he believed McGowan’s alleged actions were inappropriate and the government had “better channels available under the act to engage with the EPA”. He thought the process was “not legally optimal” but agreed the authority should have consulted on emissions guidelines.
Woodside plans significant escalation of its gas export operations in northern WA, including expanding one gas processing facility and extending the life of another until 2070.
Its development of the Scarborough gasfield, which activists have described as a “carbon bomb” due to the vast emissions that would result after the gas was shipped and burned overseas, hit a snag last month when the federal court found the company’s seismic testing plan had been incorrectly approved. The company hopes to also win approval for and develop the Browse gasfield to the north-east of Scarborough.
Analysts said the decision to withdraw the EPA’s 2019 proposal had a cost to the planet. Piers Verstegen, from Safe Climate Solutions, calculated it could lead to 11 developments releasing at least an extra 300m tonnes of CO2 – equivalent to about three years of emissions from Australia’s transport fleet.
Hatton said he believed the EPA’s stance had prompted change in the state despite the 2019 guidelines being withdrawn and later replaced.
The Cook government last month started consultation on a plan to legislate a net zero target for 2050 but confirmed WA would remain the only Australian state without a 2030 emissions reduction target. It planned to set a goal for 2035.
