The Point Live: Australia missing emissions targets, Nationals pretend to care Barnaby Joyce's has left the Nationals. As it happened.

The EPBC is a planning instrument and while this bill is stronger with the Greens’ amendments, it will not secure a safe climate and protect biodiversity. 

The most important contribution Australia can make to stabilising our climate is committing to no new gas and no new coal. It’s time for Resources Minister Madeleine King, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to plan for a fossil fuel phase out. 

Last week, in the Brazilian city of Belém, Australia and 23 other countries committed to a transition away from fossil fuels.

Our parliament’s work to live up to that commitment begins now. 

Australia Institute research shows that Australia is currently expanding fossil fuels, with 94 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline.

Around 130 environment groups also expressed their concern about Labor’s proposed national environment law reforms, in an open letter to the Federal Government published in several newspapers across the country.

“Nearly a fifth of Australia’s domestic emissions now come from exporting fossil fuels overseas, nothing in this new act will change that,” said Leanne Minshull, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.

“We know, through the National Climate Risk Assessment, Australia is facing devastating environmental and economic consequences as a result of climate change – and fossil fuels are the cause.” 

Just a small thing, but the prime minister and the most of the government when speaking on the environment laws always say it’s ‘a good deal for business and the environment’, or it ‘strikes the right balance for business and the environment’ – business is always first. Always.

That tends to tell you the order of importance in how someone is thinking of a subject. Business is more important than the environment. It has always been thus with governments – the only thing that trumps the economy is national security.

So what are the reforms in a nutshell?

The legislation gives the federal government more control over state approvals for projects with environmental impacts, while also streamlining mining approval processes. Before the Greens got involved, this included ‘go and no go zones’ which could fast track projects, including coal and gas.

Coal and gas will now be in the same track they have always been – fossil fuel projects won’t be approved any faster than they are currently, but they also won’t be approved any slower (or stopped, which is what is really needed)

The water trigger remains in the legislation, which is something the mining industry wanted out. The water trigger means that if a project (in this case gas) significantly impacts a water supply or basin, then the project has to be rejected (in theory). So that trigger won’t be scraped, which means there are still ways to challenge gas projects. That’s a status quo situation.

Forestry is back on the agenda, with the first steps to ending it in Australia. That’s still a way off given how this government responds, but it will mean that there is something to fight for. With the exemptions now to end in 18 months, instead of three years, that comes before the election, which means there is something environment groups can fight for.

And the minister retains the power to step in to stop an approved project, which was important because ministers also have to way up public expectations in a way that statutory bodies don’t. But again, retaining a power that exists that Labor wanted to scrap.

That’s it in a nutshell. These laws are not for the environment and certainly not for the climate, but they are not as bad as they could have been, and that is a small win in 2025.

What comes next? The actual fight. Seems like environment groups, Labor members and the public know enough about what is actually going on to at least be willing to drag the government to have it. There is always hope, but hope without action is fruitless.

Greenpeace also agrees – environment laws are now done – but what will the government do about the climate

David Ritter, CEO at Greenpeace Australia Pacific said in a statement:

The agreement announced today secures a significant improvement on the broken laws that for too long failed to deliver credible environmental protection. There will be trees that will stand, wildlife that will survive and ecosystems that may flourish again because of this.

These reforms will remove exemptions that have allowed unchecked bulldozing of Australia’s forests. Australia is a global deforestation hotspot, and this is a big and important step forward in ending this rampant destruction. The Albanese Government now has the opportunity to model forest protection to the world by ending and reversing deforestation by 2030, a promise Australia made in 2022 as part of global climate talks in Glasgow.

Removing the risk of fast-tracking coal and gas projects is also welcome. But the big sting in the tail is that the legislation still fails to address the enormous climate harm to nature from these sorts of projects. It still leaves the door open for the heedless expansion of coal and gas—major drivers of worsening bushfires, floods, and other climate disasters that destroy ecosystems and harm species.

There will be lots of work to do to ensure these revised laws protect and restore nature. This includes making the proposed national environmental standards as strong as possible, funding and setting up the EPA to succeed, and ensuring the biodiversity offset system is not abused by big developers. Greenpeace also maintains the firm position that the Federal Government should be the final decision-maker on project approvals.

Environmental protection laws have one job: to protect the environment. Significant progress on nature protection signalled in the agreement today is very welcome, but must be followed up by strong implementation and ending the expansion of fossil fuels.”

The Greens have sent out their official lines on the environment law deal:

The Greens have negotiated significant wins to protect forests and stop Labor’s fast-track for coal and gas; and with the EPBC now better than the status quo, will support the passage of the package through the Senate this week.

Labor’s first draft was a wish list for corporate environmental destruction: it would have gutted Australia’s environment laws, given corporations the green light for new coal and gas projects in as little as 30 days, and introduced new loopholes to an already weak Act. 

While Labor had clearly hoped to pass a bill on behalf of big corporations, the Greens held firm during negotiations on protections for nature and the climate – boosted by community opposition to a bill that took us backwards. 

Holding firm with community support, the Greens negotiated wins that include:

• Ending decades-long exemptions for forestry destruction in 18 months,
• Removing the ability for coal and gas projects to use fast-tracked approvals or the ‘national interest loophole’,
• Powers to stop illegal land clearing,
• Saving the Water Trigger,
• Ensuring the Federal Minister can always step in to protect the environment.

Despite significant wins for nature, the bill is still woefully short of what the climate needs – with Labor’s refusal to take meaningful climate action showing that the coal and gas lobby still runs both major parties. 

Labor has pointedly refused to support a climate trigger, despite majority public support and strong evidence in Inquiry, preventing the Environment Minister from considering climate damage when approving projects.

However, with three coal and gas fast-tracks removed, and the government clearly captured by corporations, this deal prevents fossil fuel giants from winding back these loopholes via agreement with the Coalition.

The latest emissions data confirms that Australia is very much not on track for its weak 2030 targets – even after you include dodgy land-use data and accept the major historical adjustments that have been applied to get Australia much closer to its target.

To the extent real emissions reductions have occurred, much of it is linked to reductions in industrial output, including a noticeable decrease in coal and gas exports, which is not systemic or policy-driven and could be reversed easily.

The new 2035 target of a 62% reduction requires even steeper cuts, starting today.

Labor needs to accelerate coal-power phase-out, kill the loopholes in vehicle standards and cut offsets from the Safeguard mechanism, all as basic ground-level starters to get back on track to enact real, deep, socially beneficial cuts to carbon pollution.

Emissions from their first quarter since elected onwards, for both Albanese and Morrison 

If you exclude land-use data, this is the first time Australia’s emissions are actually below 2005 levels. Hooray!!

There have been only very minor changes to the safeguard-related sectors since enacting the scheme…..if you squint really hard you can see a slight downwards trend that was in place prior to the scheme’s establishment 

An illustration of what a huge percentage of the progress to 43% so far comes entirely from revisions to data 

The laws will be passed today (head back to the house for amendments and then done) which means the proposed Friday sitting day is off the table. Huzzah. No one seems happier about that than Anthony Albanese.

Photo: Mike Bowers

Anthony Albanese is very happy (photo by Mike Bowers)

All of this means we won’t have to sit tomorrow which is a win for us all! But there are not too many wins in there for the environment.

Coal and gas mine approvals have been taken out of the fast track.

Which is great because it means that coal and gas won’t be approved any faster, but they also won’t be approved any slower.

It is also the first time that we have seen a bit of the business community carved out – everything else in the fast track remains, but coal and gas is out on its own (but will still be approved as normal)

Anthony Albanese:

The key measures in the Government’s amended bill are: for the first time Australia will have a national Environment Protection Agency, a strong independent regulator with a clear focus on ensuring better compliance with and stronger enforcement of Australia’s new environmental laws. In another first, Australia will have national environmental standards to ensure clear, strong guidelines to protect the environment.

There will be higher penalties for the most significant breaches of environmental law, as well as environment protection orders for use in urgent circumstances to prevent and respond to major contraventions of the law.

We are removing and sunsetting the exemption from the EPBC Act for high-risk land-clearing and regional forestry agreements so they comply with the same rules and standards as other industries.

To complement this, today we are announcing that my government will establish a $300 million forestry growth fund to deliver a bigger forestry industry that supports more secure jobs, better pay and high-value output.

The timber fibre strategy developed with industry outlines how the forestry sector is increasingly relying on plantation timber which provides opportunities to improve the sustainability of the industry and move up the value chain for timber products. This is about using science and evidence to prove all forestry in Australia is undertaken at the highest standard.

The Government is backing forestry and timber workers through our Forest Growth Fund that will invest in new equipment and facilities to enable industry modernisation and reprocessing.

Things like re-tooling of timber mills that is so important for the industry going forward. We will require proponents of large emitting projects to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and their emission reduction plans.

We will maintain federal approval of water trigger on coal and gas projects because the water table in areas like the Murray-Darling Basin obviously goes across state boundaries, and therefore the water trigger is absolutely essential.

We will respond to the business community’s main demand and that was we need to better define unacceptable impacts that were in the bill that passed the House of Representatives, to give more certainty to business and we will deliver that today.

We will clarify net gain as well to provide more certainty going forward. We will have stop-work orders limited to 14 days, with the potential for the minister to deliver an additional 14 days, should it be deemed to be appropriate. We will allow the extension as well of not controlled action decision decisions which has lapsed.

For example, if you had a not-controlled action such as a road to a particular project that hadn’t yet been approved because it was subject to assessment, then that could be extended so that a common-sense approach was taken. We will introduce all of these key measures to speed up decision-making for business and the community which Minister Watt will go through. This is a landmark day for the environment in this country. It is also a good day for business in this country by providing more certainty, reducing delays and making sure that we get better outcomes and improved productivity.

As expected, Anthony Albanese is announcing a deal has been made with the Greens for the environment laws.

He says they are “good for the environment and business” which OK. But it’s not a climate bill. And it is not going to do enough for coal and gas. That’s not the fault of the Greens – there was a lot the government wouldn’t budge on, but it’s not as bad as when the Coalition was pretending to negotiate.