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The federal Labor government looks set to abolish the modest “Nature Positive” reforms to climate law that it suggested during its first term. Meanwhile, it claims it has a mandate for climate action, but giving Murray Watt — “Mr Fix It” — the environment portfolio sends the opposite signal.

Watts’ first assignment has been to rule in favour of Woodside’s mega-expansion of its North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, prolonging operation to 2070. Woodside aims to process gas from the Browse gas field, underneath Scott Reef.

It is a part of Woodside’s controversial Burrup Hub LNG export project, already under construction. Watts made the decision on May 28.

The WA government last December. 

The Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority recommended last August that Woodside’s Browse Basin expansion is “unacceptable”. It is now seeking additional public comment on , which gives Watt the wiggle room to approve. .

(CCWA) says Burrup Hub would be the most polluting project ever delivered and produce some of the world’s dirtiest LNG. It estimated more than 6 billion tonnes of carbon pollution, with “profound implications for the global climate across generations”.

CCWA said Woodside’s bid for 50 new wells extracting oil and gas from under the Scott Reef off the Kimberley coast would “break” Australia’s climate commitments and “undermine international national climate goals”. It would risk the health of local communities and workers from industrial pollution.

It would cause permanent damage to the Burrup Peninsula (Murujuga), the most extensive collection of , which is one of the reasons First Nations communities have already opposed the project. CCWA warned it would open up WA to large-scale fracking and an onshore gas industry, which would “put groundwater, communities, and agriculture at risk”.

The said Australia is making progress on carbon pollution cuts, but Woodside’s gas project would produce 88 million tonnes of climate pollution each year, completely undermining the effort. It said the International Energy Agency projects a huge uptake of renewables, meaning that nearly a quarter of all LNG would not be needed by 2030.

Watt and Adani

Watt likely landed the environment portfolio because of his record as a fixer for the corporate class. He was a chief of staff to former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who gave Adani (now called Bravus Mining & Resources) permission in 2010 for its controversial mega coal mine in the Galilee Basin.

Apart from the wrongheadedness of opening new coal mines in a climate emergency, the circumstances were also very murky: Bligh’s partner had acted as a consultant for Adani. Despite a huge community campaign against Adani, she gave preliminary approval in 2014, with the Coalition government rubber-stamping it months later. The legal and community-led battles continued but, eventually, Adani got its way in 2019, opening up the Galilee Basin for more coal mining.

While Watt says his decision on Woodside will be “based on the science and the evidence”, Labor says of any renewable energy transition plan, as well as coal. Former minister Tanya Plibersek has  or expansions since May 2022.

he will re-craft Plibersek’s “something for everyone” “nature positive” proposals as part of its overhaul of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act).

Those reforms included establishing , which would issue permits, undertake compliance and assess development proposals, and setting up a head of .

Plibersek’s EPA proposal gave it additional powers as an environmental regulator, as recommended by Professor Graeme Samuel, who was commissioned to lead the .

More than 30,000 scientists, law experts and community members made submissions to this review, which set out a road map to protect wildlife and “natural treasures” and ensure First Nations communities have a say in decisions. Samuel wanted legally binding federal environment standards that would oblige state governments to fall into line. He also called for an end to native forest logging, with improved data and information systems.

While Plibersek all of Samuel’s recommendations, her proposed new EPA would have the power to issue “stop-work” orders to prevent serious environmental damage and proactively audit business.

Her view that the EPA would “have the capability and capacity to be a modern national environmental regulator”, with new powers and penalties to restore “public accountability and trust”, won support from the Greens, but not the WA premier, who seems to have had a role in scuttling her reforms just before the federal election campaign.

EPA review

Watt was asked by the Guardian if a new EPA would have the power to veto new fossil fuel projects, but he would not comment.

Labor has already ruled out banning native forest logging. It also has no plans to add a “climate trigger” to the EPBC Act, which would apply to new projects emitting more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent scope 1 emissions in a year. Watt said the “safeguard mechanism” already does that job, but it only applies to projects emitting more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.

Labor claims it supports net zero by 2050, but that is only on the premise that the Paris agreement does not calculate emissions from coal or gas exports burned overseas. It is waiting for advice from the Climate Change Authority before committing to an interim 2035 target, which it has to make as a signatory to the Paris agreement. Neither the 2035 or the 2050 target have to be legislated, meaning parliament does not get to scrutinise them.

Meanwhile, as record rains cut power and isolate communities in the Hunter and mid-north coast of NSW, , a Research Fellow in flood modelling and assessment at The Australian National University, said the floods are linked to climate change.

The “marked increase in both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events” provides “compelling evidence of the growing influence of climate change on regional rainfall patterns”, she said.

“These events demonstrate that our understanding of flood probability — based on past hydrological studies — is no longer adequate in the face of present-day climate realities.”

[This article was updated on May 29.]

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Marine life at Scott Reef, Western Australia. Image: Alex Westover and Wendy Mitchell/Greenpeace