Plibersek embarrassed by her national environment laws go-slow

Today’s revelations that Tanya Plibersek’s flagged changes to national environmental laws have been delayed by at least another year should be regarded as yet another case of embarrassing incompetence from the Albanese Government.

Revealed as part of correspondence with the Greens, this delay breaks numerous Labor promises that the new environmental laws would be completed by the end of 2023.

As part of her response to the Samuel Review last year, she explicitly said that her new laws “would be prepared in the first six months of 2023” and that the exposure draft would be “introduced into Parliament before the end of 2023”.

Today’s news will also create even more uncertainty among stakeholders, many of whom are already highly frustrated by Ms Plibersek’s inability to drive sensible and balanced reforms. Numerous stakeholders, including the Opposition, have not even been consulted by the Minister about her specific legislative changes.

This means increased uncertainty for both the environmental movement and the business community, and will have a chilling effect on investment.

This additional 12 month delay also makes a complete lie of much of Ms Plibersek’s rhetoric as Minister about her desire to make urgent and sweeping changes to the EPBC Act.

As recently as last week, Ms Plibersek was even incredibly trying to present the impression that she was “two months ahead of schedule”. In a matter of days, that has been shown to be another falsehood.

It should be remembered that the former Coalition Government had actually completed much of the necessary work on these national environmental reforms way back in January 2021, at the time of the release of our own response to the Samuel Review. Ms Plibersek is therefore now running at least three-and-a-half years behind the Coalition’s schedule.

The basic reality is that Ms Plibersek has spent far more time distracted by other personal priorities – including pushing for a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament – than on the core issues in her portfolios.