Anthony Albanese insists Labor’s plans to establish a national environmental watchdog are still on the table after he quashed a deal with the Greens in parliament’s final sitting week.
Last-minute negotiations between the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, and the Greens senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, were overruled by the prime minister on Tuesday after he spoke with the Western Australian premier, Roger Cook.
Plans to pass Labor’s key election promise to create two new agencies – an environmental protection agency to manage compliance with national laws and an information agency to manage environmental data – have been put on hold.
Albanese said the government still planned to move forward with the changes but indicated it would not concede on Labor’s “values” with crossbenchers.
“It’s our intention to proceed with them, but we’ll proceed with them on the basis of our values that we put forward,” he said on ABC’s Insiders.
“We will hold to our values. We won’t allow any tail to wag the dog.”
Guardian Australia reported this week the deal with the Greens included a framework for new national environmental standards applicable to regional forest agreements. The minor party had conceded on their demands for an agreement to end native forest logging.
Plibersek had struck a draft deal in writing with both the Greens and independent senator David Pocock for the bill’s passing before Albanese vetoed it hours later in a private meeting with Hanson-Young, Adam Bandt and finance minister, Katy Gallagher.
Albanese, who earlier this week said he was the deal’s “negotiator”, denied seeing the draft agreement letter, adding “that wasn’t a letter from me”.
“There is no one in the Greens that says that I agreed to it because it wasn’t [agreed to]. We were negotiating across the parliament with the Coalition, all the crossbenchers, a range of measures. Things that we didn’t have agreement on were put aside. That was one of them,” he said.
“I was there and we know things that were put aside and in the agreements that were done between myself as the prime minister and the minor parties across the board. We agreed on most things, but on some things we didn’t.”
Despite Plibersek’s absence in the meeting, the prime minister said he spoke to her “directly” before informing the Greens there was no deal.
“All of our ministers were informed the whole way through,” Albanese said, adding the discussions would have “taken up 10 to 15 minutes total”.
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On Thursday, Plibersek said the events were “disappointing” but added the bill would return to the Senate in February and she hoped it would have support to pass.
Cook held a press conference on Wednesday, after the deal had been scuppered the night before, revealing his role in killing off the environmental reforms.
“I won’t go into the details of private conversations, but can I just say I’ve had conversations at the highest level of the federal government,” Cook said.
The Western Australian premier said he had met with Plibersek months earlier with a “unity Western Australian ticket” comprising of Rebecca Tomkinson, the chief executive of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s top boss.
Hanson-Young blamed the collapse of the negotiations on pressure from industry, particularly the WA mining lobby.
“The Greens put a deal on the table and the government has walked away. The prime minister has been bullied by the mining and logging lobby again,” she said.
Pocock told ABC Plibersek had been “really keen to get this through the parliament”.
