Labor strikes deal with Greens on nature laws overhaul amid criticism ‘dirty deal’ being ‘rammed through’

A major overhaul of federal environment protection laws has been rushed through the Senate under a deal between Labor and the Greens, ending a five-year struggle to deliver on Graeme Samuel’s blueprint to fix the broken system. The legislation passed the upper house after 7pm on Thursday, handing Anthony Albanese a major political win on the final sitting day of the parliamentary year. The bill will return to the lower house at 9am on Friday morning to be rubber-stamped before it becomes law. The Coalition voted against what Sussan Ley described as a “dirty deal” that would drive up energy prices, although one of her colleagues, the pro-nature senator Andrew McLachlan, crossed the floor to back Labor’s bill. The independent senator, David Pocock, was alarmed the nature laws were “rammed through with almost no time for scrutiny” by the Senate and said the government’s deal with the Greens fell short in several areas, although he ultimately supported them. The prime minister announced at 8am on Thursday that the government had struck a deal with the Greens to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act after offering a raft of concessions. Related: Seven ways Australia’s nature laws are changing after Labor’s deal with the Greens “This is a landmark day for the environment in this country,” Albanese said. “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.” Inspired by Samuel’s 2020 review of the EPBC Act, the bill promises to better protect nature through new environmental standards while also speeding up project assessments. It will also establish a new environmental protection agency – a Labor election promise at the past two federal ballots. After negotiations with the Greens, Albanese said the government had agreed to subject native forest logging to national environment standards in 18 months’ time, halving the timeframe it proposed in its original offer to the minor party. The prime minister also said the government was setting up a $300m fund for the forestry industry to support jobs and to fund equipment to modernise the industry. “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,” he said. “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.” Under the deal with the Greens, Labor also agreed to prevent the fast-tracking of coal and gas projects, keep the so-called “water trigger” in the hands of the commonwealth and ensure the federal minister can step in to approve projects even after decision-making responsibilities are devolved to state governments. ‘Strong and lengthy negotiations’ The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, said after “strong and lengthy negotiations” the package “improves our environmental laws”. “It takes us forward with new protections for native forests. It takes us forward with protection from land clearing, and importantly, it stops coal and gas from being approved within 30 days, which is what the government’s original bill proposed,” she said. Waters said removing the fast-track option for fossil fuel projects was “sadly” the only concession the government was prepared to make on climate change. The laws will require proponents of big-polluting projects to submit their projected greenhouse gas emissions as part of the assessment process. However, decision makers would not be able consider those climate impacts when deciding whether to approve or reject it. “The government refused to include climate considerations in the act, and that is why we need greens in Parliament, and that is what we will keep fighting for,” she said. Pocock said that while the package represented an improvement on the existing laws, there were serious shortcomings, including a new provision that would allow the environment minister to make “rulings” about how environmental standards or other elements of the laws should be applied to proponents, actions or industries. He said this “sets a dangerous unprecedented extension of executive power for the environment minister of the day and unjustifiably reduces the role of the judiciary”. Ley said the deal would put pressure on Australian households. “What is very clear from the reaction so far to the dirty deal done by the Labor party with the Greens, a deal that was not necessary to conclude today or this year, what is absolutely clear is this going to put energy prices up,” she said. Later on Thursday she told the ABC she didn’t think Labor ever wanted to do a deal with the Coalition. “We actually thought it was looking OK and then everything went quiet as it often does and it’s a bit like, you know, when the relationship goes quiet and you know that someone else has been included and you have been excluded.” Samuel, the former competition watchdog who led the 2020 review of the laws, told the ABC the Coalition “manoeuvred themselves into irrelevance on this matter” and had been unable to sit down and negotiate with Murray Watt on what “central amendments” they wanted. The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, said the removal of the effective exemption for native forest logging covered by regional forest agreements within the next 18 months “will deliver a blow to the logging industry, who now know that Australians just aren’t going to cop the destruction of our beautiful native forests”. In an olive branch to industry, the government agreed to address concerns about two pro-nature provisions; a new “unacceptable impact” definition that could rule-out projects and a “net gain” test that is supposed to force developers to make up for damage and deliver an overall benefit for the environment. While the the Coalition wanted those changes, it also demanded a long list of other concessions – including to constrain the power of the EPA – that the government would not accept. Ley, who as environment minister in the Morrison government commissioned the Samuel review, claimed the “dirty deal” would drive up energy prices. “It will provide further pressure on electricity bills for struggling households and families … the Greens party has always been at war with gas,” she said. The government was still open to a deal with either party as late as early Wednesday evening as it rushed to meet a self-imposed deadline of passing the legislation before the summer break. Albanese became actively involved in the final stages of negotiations, meeting with his Greens counterpart Waters twice on Wednesday in a bid to resolve a weeks-long standoff. Related: Labor’s nature law overhaul contains wins – but we should watch for gremlins in the details | Adam Morton Albanese did not hold a similar leader-to-leader talk with Ley. The prime minister praised the “maturity” of Waters and Hanson-Young during discussions. Albanese said he had offered to meet with Ley to discuss the environmental legislation but that the Coalition had not been as open to negotiations as the Greens were. He said they had flagged more amendments they wanted for their support, beyond the demands they had raised publicly. Labor’s Senate manager, Katy Gallagher, said the government would pass 10 bills through the Senate on Thursday – the last scheduled day of parliament for 2025 – after reaching agreement with the Greens, including the environmental laws as well as a $50m funding boost to the ABC.