The Point Live: Aukus in trouble with Sth Korea deal, environmental laws bring less transparency. As it happened.

This is not going to be good for Australia for the reasons Allan has laid out a little earlier. Here is what the PM had to say about it:

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the US President has confirmed a green light to transferring the nuclear technology needed to South Korea to enable them to build nuclear-powered submarines. Given our enormous investment in AUKUS, does this concern you in any way and do you agree with the summary that many are taking from this, that South Korea is actually being given a higher level of secret US nuclear technology than we’ll receive under AUKUS?
 
PRIME MINISTER: No, in a word. To put it clearly. These bilateral arrangements are a matter for the United States and Korea. The arrangements that Australia has entered into with the United States and the United Kingdom are in our national interest, they will provide for Australia to have access to that technology. And that’s a very positive thing.
 
JOURNALIST: But just following up on that, the US Defence Secretary said it was highly doubtful the US would be able to sustain AUKUS while also helping the South Koreans get nuclear. So, given this announcement by President Trump, do you think there are potential implications for AUKUS?
 
PRIME MINISTER: No. I think President Trump’s comments couldn’t have been clearer and they were very clear last week in the White House. They’ve been clear ever since. President Trump has made very explicit his not just support for AUKUS, but indeed the bringing forward of the timetable, if that is possible.
 

(The US can not deliver the submarines at any time)

JOURNALIST: But you won’t be attending, just to confirm?
 
PRIME MINISTER:

I didn’t say that. I very clearly didn’t say that. We’re working through those issues. We’ll be represented. We make announcements at the appropriate time.

To the questions:

JOURNALIST: What would positive outcome between the US and China look like to you and to Australia?
 
PRIME MINISTER:

The world has an interest in economic activity. We live in a globalised world and with a global economy. We want to see less tension in trade and we want to see a positive outcome going forward. We want countries to work together. That’s something that we have worked very strongly on. We have, if you look just at the last few years, when we came to government, the economic relationship with our major trading partner had a range of impediments. Those impediments have been removed. That means jobs for Australians, particularly in our regions, in our agricultural sector, but also in our services sector as well. We obviously also want to see a reduction in tension around the world. And the United States and China have an important role as the two major economies and the two major powers that exist in our region and right around the globe.
 

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, did Mr Trump personally invite you to that dinner last night? How did you receive the invitation?
 
PRIME MINISTER:

We received the invitation in the usual way and we engaged very constructively. And I was very pleased to accept the invitation last night and it was a great honour for Australia to be invited. It’s not the usual thing for such a small, intimate dinner, as it was last night to occur, but a real opportunity and one that I was very pleased to accept.
 

JOURNALIST: Can you confirm whether or not you’ll attend next week’s COP Leaders’ Summit in Brazil? And if you’re not going, does that risk sending a signal that Australia is not serious about its bid to host?
 
PRIME MINISTER: Not at all. I’m sometimes amused by the contradictory messages from Australian media saying I should do more international travel, but when I do, say I should do less. We will work out our itinerary. Australia will be represented there. Parliament is sitting next week. This is the first full week of Parliament I’ve missed in 30 years, almost, of representation. And so obviously, this week is a leaders’ level meeting, but we take COP very seriously. We are advocating to host COP at the end of next year. We’re working through those issues.

The transcript is out from Albanese’s press conference in South Korea:

Last night, we had a terrific informal dinner hosted by the President of Korea with the President of the United States, President Trump, as the special guest. But it was an opportunity, for around about two hours, to have a discussion with four of the Five Eyes countries, with the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, in addition to our neighbours here in Asia in Korea, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam. It was an opportunity to once again have a discussion with President Trump about the successful meeting that we had just a week ago to reinforce the support for AUKUS, the support for our defence and security relationship, but also our support for the critical minerals and rare earths arrangements that have been put in place. And to strengthen the economic relationship that we have with not just with the United States, but with our region here as well. It was a real opportunity to develop relationships further with leaders from those seven other countries and a really positive initiative from the President of Korea, who I will have a bilateral meeting with later today.

In addition to that, today I’ll visit POSCO. POSCO is Australia’s biggest commercial partner. Just last year, this mind boggling figure, $18.2 billion of Australian exports from one company, POSCO, right here in Korea. I visited POSCO’s operations in Australia that by and large are around the regions in Western Australia, in Townsville, in Victoria. These are an important commercial relationship that we have and I’ll be meeting with the CEO and the Chairman today at their major facilities, watching the import of Australian value. And what that is, that represents Australian jobs and Australian economic activity. That’s my focus of international engagement. We live in a globalised world. These relationships are important for our economy and for jobs. They of course are also important for our security and for peace in the region as well.

Today, there will be an important meeting, as we speak, will commence soon, if it hasn’t already, between President Trump and President Xi. We welcome the meeting of the world’s two largest and most powerful countries and economies. We are optimistic about a positive outcome. I’ve had the opportunity now to have a discussion with President Trump as well as with Premier Li of China in just the last few days, and it has been an opportunity for me to engage with them. These are important relationships for Australia.

Murray Watt says he will refuse projects likely to cause the extinction of a species under new nature laws. But when he had the opportunity to prevent the likely extinction of Maugean skate, he changed existing laws to protect the foreign owned salmon industry in Tasmania, not the skate.

And now the government is misleading UNESCO by saying the species is recovering when its own advice says it’s not possible to make such conclusions: Labor misleads UNESCO to protect destructive industrial salmon farms – The Australia Institute

Ed Husic was out on this very early from within the Labor caucus. Why? Well, there is nothing stopping it from being used whenever a government decides it needs to pass a project:

157L Grounds for grant of national interest exemption

(1) Before granting a national interest exemption for an action from a provision of Part 3 or this Chapter, the Minister must be satisfied that:

…

(c) it is in the national interest that the provision not apply to the taking of the action by the person to whom the exemption is to apply.

…

(3) In determining the national interest for the purposes of a provision of this Division, the Minister may consider:

(a) Australia’s defence or security; or

(b) a national emergency, including an emergency to which a national emergency declaration (within the meaning of the National Emergency Declaration Act 2020) relates.

This does not limit the matters the Minister may consider.

Oh, look at Watt what just popped up in the enviro law notices portal…proposal to expand NSW’s biggest coal mine:

This means that around the time that the enviro law re-boot is ready to be voted on next year, Minister Watt will be needing to make a decision on a disastrously big thermal coal mine.

This mine also employed Ernst and Young (EY) to do their economic assessment, just like the Tahmoor mine that has just gone broke.

Holly asked: At face value this looks a lot like the dumped amendment from the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Legislation Amendment (Safety and Other Measures) Act 2024, is it basically the same thing?

Greg Jericho looked into it and says:

This is a very good pick up, Holly.

Having a read of those bits in the OPGGS Bill that got kicked out, it was about the Minister  for Resources being able to override the Minister for the Environment for setting approvals rules including First Nations consultation for offshore gas projects; this appears to be essentially saying the Minister for the Environment can ignore the EPBC Act if they think the Minister for Resources in approving a project under the OPGGS Bill has already provided the same protection as the EPBC Act.  

So, it does thus feel a little bit of a backdoor way of getting the same thing of giving precedence to the Resources Minister.

This part of the Environment Protection Reform Bill explanatory memorandum is generating rather a lot of interest (As Amy has noted):

National interest approval

The Samuel Review recommended that the EPBC Act should include a specific power for the Minister to exercise discretion in rare circumstances to make a decision that is inconsistent with the national environmental standards, where it is demonstrably in the public interest and with a clearly articulated statement of reasons. The Reform Bill would provide an approval mechanism that responds to this recommendation for designated projects that the Minister considers to be in the national interest to be approved even if they do not meet the requirements of the EPBC Act. However, such actions will only be able to be approved so far as any such inconsistency is reasonably necessary for the action to result in the outcome the Minister has decided is in the national interest. 

So what is “national interest”? Basically, whatever the minister thinks. Which given the recent (long) history of Australian politics is not a good sign.

On ABC RN Breakfast tried to make it sound like it would be exception and rare… but not necessarily so. He suggested when asked if he’d be happy for an LNP minister to have this power he said:

“Governments of the day should, in very rare circumstances, have the ability when something is in the national interest to approve a project proceeding, even if it doesn’t meet the usual environmental standards.”

Ok, but what are we talking about? He continued “What we’ve said in the bill is to try to give a flavour of the types of projects that we’re talking about would be most likely defence or security projects, actions that may be undertaken in responding to a natural disaster. We have made the point that that should be rarely used, that there’s got to be transparency with the minister of the day issuing a statement of reasons justifying why they’ve done that. And just to be clear, that decision to approve a project in the national interest would occur after a full assessment was done.”

Oh, goody a full assessment – like the one that led to the North West Shelf Extension being approved.

And here’s the thing about “defence” projects. The government – led by Resources Minister Madeleine King has very much linked approval of new gas projects to national and internation security. Earlier this month she told Sky News that:

“Australian LNG has a vital role in the energy security of Japan but also in Korea. It plays its part in Singapore and in Malaysia and also in China. So what we know is energy security is what – is the underlying reason for prosperity in a region. So that energy security is what leads to peace and prosperity in our region.”

She and others in government at the Australia-Japan Business Cooperation Committee conference also earlier this month talked up how (as the AFR put it) “Australian gas keeps the peace in Indo-Pacific”

So, excuse me for being a bit sceptical that the line about national security will not be abused.

Q: I wanted to ask about the national interest provision. Would a Minister be able to exercise that provision to approve housing, energy, critical mineral projects that otherwise wouldn’t comply with environmental standards?

Murray Watt:

What the bill itself says is that it directs, the kind of examples or the situations in which those matters could occur are more related to defence and national security matters, national emergencies, there’s got to be a really high bar before people can actually, before a minister can intervene and approve a project not withstanding its environmental impacts. I would expect they’d be the types of things that would occur, rarely exercised, explained with a statement of reasons. And this is something Graeme Samuel recommended. He recognised elected governments should have the ability in rare situations to make a decision that is inconsistent with those national standards.

Q: Still technically possible?

Watt:

I’m not going to give hypotheticals about the kind of situations they could be used. I think the bill in referring to those types of matters around defence and national security and national emergencies gives you a good indication. You don’t have concerns it could be exercised for other projects? I’m not going to speculate about the kind of projects they would be used for. They’re the kind of things we’ve got in mind.

OK, so that is what Watt has in mind. But let’s take critical minerals, with 80% of potential projects sitting on Indigenous land. We have already seen the critical minerals deal with the United States linked to national security by the resources minister. And so while Watt is saying the provision could be used for ‘national security’ you have a prime example of what that means, right there.

Indigenous land? Environmental concerns? Doesn’t matter – national interest provision can over-ride it all.