Saxon Davidson: Budget shows Anthony Albanese to take back Roger Cook’s political gift on nature positive

They say timing is everything in politics. In February, prior to the State election, Premier Roger Cook led the charge to have the Federal Government’s economy-destroying Nature Positive agenda halted so as not to have it undermine his re-election chances. Many Labor hard-heads agreed, and the Albanese Government’s plan was shelved. Fast forward less than two months, and a sinister announcement was buried deep in an otherwise business-as-usual Federal Budget: the Government is reviving its anti-WA nature positive plan. The Budget confirms the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is preparing to spend $786 million to deliver this agenda next year, in addition to the $767 million the department spent this year. This was hidden within the environment portfolio Budget statement and, unsurprisingly, was not trumpeted in the main Budget papers. This development might come as a surprise to those who, late last year, saw the Prime Minister go over Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s head by appearing to abandon the three nature-positive bills that were before the Parliament. Critical to this apparent policy shift was the direct lobbying by the West, from the business community to Mr Cook, who correctly asserted that nature positive would bury WA’s productive mining sector in red and green tape. The end objective of the nature positive agenda is to “protect and conserve 30 per cent of Australia’s landmass and 30 per cent of Australia’s marine areas by 2030”. In addition to the departmental cost, the Budget also committed $262m over the next five years to meet that goal – a figure that is dwarfed by the immense lost economic opportunities. This plan will, in practice, result in the prohibition of economic and social development in 30 per cent of Australia. This is particularly daunting for WA, as locking up 30 per cent of land and sea would, without question, jeopardise the viability of agriculture, and gas, iron ore, nickel, or gold projects. The nature positive agenda also includes the creation of a Federal environmental protection agency. As well as duplicating the regulations already applied by state-based EPAs, the proposed Federal EPA would be given approval powers over projects, according to the original EPA bill. This means that approval decisions over projects that are the foundation of WA’s economy would be made by a Canberra-based bureaucrat who is unelected and unaccountable to any voter anywhere, let alone WA voters. Predictably, this agency will be bloated. Analysis by the Institute of Public Affairs of the expense and scope of state-based EPAs concluded that a duplicate Federal body will cost taxpayers $1.8 billion per year and will employ approximately 4,760 bureaucrats after it is established and operating at full capacity. The Federal EPA was one of the initiatives abandoned by the Government last year, but the Prime Minister has now explicitly recommitted to establishing the Federal EPA after the upcoming election. With the next Federal election potentially returning a hung parliament, the delivery of the nature positive agenda will no doubt see the Greens’ economically destructive “climate trigger” used as a bargaining chip in any negotiations to cobble together a minority government. The climate trigger is a Greens’ article of faith which would require any project to be subject to a Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act approval process should it be expected to emit over a prescribed level of annual carbon emissions. The inclusion of the climate trigger was one of the demands The Greens made last year in exchange for passing the three nature positive bills, and do not expect that demand to go away should The Greens be needed for nature positive to pass both the lower and upper houses of Parliament. The inclusion of a climate trigger would be disastrous for the Australian, and specifically the WA, economy. Research by the IPA revealed that the introduction of a climate trigger would threaten more than $227 billion in potential investment in the Australian economy, with $111 billion of that being in WA. With the handing down of Tuesday night’s budget, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has reneged on a deal he made with the people of Western Australia, expanding the Canberra bubble with yet another bureaucracy and sacrificing WA’s critical industries in the process. This is more than just duplicitous politics; it has revealed who the Albanese government sees as their true constituents, and unfortunately, it means they are more interested in the fashionable causes of inner-city voters on the east coast than the future of WA businesses and families. Saxon Davidson is a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs