Breaking: Greens agree to nature laws deal
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Labor has struck a deal with the Greens to overhaul federal environmental protection laws on parliament’s final sitting day of the year, ending a five-year struggle to deliver on Graeme Samuel’s blueprint to fix the broken system.
The Greens have agreed to support Labor’s re-write of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act after securing further concessions from the government amid tense and prolonged negotiations.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is announcing the deal at a press conference in Parliament House.
The deal will clear the path for Labor to ram the legislation through the Senate on Thursday, handing Albanese a major political win to end 2025.
Albanese became actively involved in the final stages of negotiations, speaking directly with his Greens counterpart, Larissa Waters, in a bid to resolve a weeks-long standoff.
The Labor-Greens deal will sideline Sussan Ley’s Coalition, which refused to yield on their demands for more business-friendly concessions in exchange for supporting the legislation.
Key events
What are some of the other elements that have been negotiated?
Greens leader Larissa Waters says the negotiated deal will make it illegal for a minister to tick off a project with an “unacceptable impact”.
Waters also says the deal will stop the fast tracking of more coal and gas projects from being approved.
On native forest logging, she says the practice has been exempt from environmental laws for 25 years, but that will finally end under the new bill.
At the moment, the minister’s got complete discretion to tick off on whatever destruction they would like to tick off on, and these changes will put in place some fetters on that discretion and will make it illegal for the Minister to tick off on an unacceptable impact. That is an improvement. It’s not everything, but it is a step forward … we are very, very proud that we were able to stop the fast tracking of coal and gas. That was an absolute red line for us, and that was a real possibility for this parliament to pass laws that would have allowed coal and gas to be approved within 30 days. That is not acceptable
‘Negotiations were tough’, Hanson-Young says
Well that deal was certainly “very close”, as Sarah Hanson-Young told ABC TV this morning, and she’s now celebrating the win for the Greens alongside leader Larissa Waters.
The Greens have secured major concessions from the government to protect native forests from logging. The PM has said those protections will be sunsetted in to help the industry.
Hanson-Young tells reporters at parliament the negotiations with the government were “tough” but the minor party “managed to deliver some tough blows”.
This has been a tough negotiation … We’ve put a stop to the fossil fuel industry getting fast track and easy access to environmental approvals. When this piece of legislation was first tabled by the government, Chevron, BHP, the fossil fuel industry were cheering. They wanted it rammed through with the anti-climate Coalition.
Watt says Coalition were a ‘shambles’ on environment negotiations
The environment minister, Murray Watt, says the Coalition is in a “shambles” but that there would have been benefits to doing a deal with the opposition.
He’s asked whether he believes the reforms will be enduring if the Coalition win government in the future, having not supported the passage of these current laws.
There were some benefits in being able to reach a deal with the Coalition in terms of the enduring nature of the reforms. But as all of you can see every single day, the Coalition is a shambles, and they’ve been a shambles on these negotiations as well. So you can’t strike a deal with someone who doesn’t know what they want.
But more broadly, I have great confidence that we’ve ended up delivering an enduring set of reforms by working with the Greens, because we have not only delivered wins for the environment, but also for business. So that gives me confidence that these laws will work for both the environment and for business.
PM says offer to negotiate environment bill with Ley ‘wasn’t taken up’
Anthony Albanese says he offered to meet with the opposition leader, Sussan Ley, to negotiate the bill.
The Coalition has said publicly that they were not “in a rush” to make a deal and would not support the bill in its current form. Albanese directly thanks Greens leader Larissa Waters and Sarah Hanson-Young, and Jonathon Duniam from the Coalition, and says he “offered to meet with Sussan Ley, and that wasn’t taken up, that offer, by the Coalition”.
Albanese tells reporters the Greens have been “mature” and “constructive” in their negotiations with the government.
He also confirms he has spoken to the WA premier, Roger Cook (who pushed Albanese to drop the previous environmental reforms during the last parliament).
The Coalition did put forward a range of amendments. Now, some of those were straight from the business community … the problem that we had with the Coalition was that their final letters had in it, and there are other things to come. Now parliament stops today, you can’t the day before parliament say, ‘oh, well, we got some other things, but we can’t tell you what they are yet’.
I must say that the Greens showed maturity in that they arranged the things that they wanted, they didn’t get the range of things we put forward that I said were not negotiable.
Today a ‘landmark day’: Albanese
Albanese is emphatic the deal will be good for business, and he thanks both the Greens and the Coalition for negotiating with the government.
This is a landmark day for the environment in this country. 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 improve productivity.
The environment minister, Murray Watt, joins the PM and also says the deal is a good one for business and will drive faster approvals and rejections of projects to provide more certainty.
These reforms do respond to the major requests of the business community, which are all designed to speed up decision-making and lift productivity by giving business faster yeses and faster nos. So these reforms include a new streamlined assessment pathway to significantly reduce the timeframe for proponents who provide sufficient information upfront, new and improved bilateral agreements with states and territories to remove duplication for the assessment and approval of projects.
Environment laws will pass the Senate today, PM says
Speaking to reporters in Parliament House, Anthony Albanese says the reforms – five years after they were first recommended by Graeme Samuel – “will be passed by the Senate today.”
The PM is unveiling some of the concessions made to the Greens – including key sticking points on native forests that the minor party was pushing for.
Albanese says the government will remove the exemption for high-risk land clearing and will set up a fund for forests.
The new laws will also require large emitting projects to disclose their carbon emissions.
We are removing and sunsetting the exemption from the EPBC Act for high-risk land clearing and regional forest agreements so they comply with the same rules and standards as other industries.
My government will establish a $300m forestry growth fund to deliver a bigger forestry industry that supports more secure jobs, better pay and high-value output.
We will require proponents of large emitting projects to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and their emission reduction plans. We will maintain federal approval of water trigger on coal and gas projects, because the water table in areas like the Murray-Darling Basin obviously goes across state boundaries, and therefore the water trigger is absolutely essential.
Breaking: Greens agree to nature laws deal
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Labor has struck a deal with the Greens to overhaul federal environmental protection laws on parliament’s final sitting day of the year, ending a five-year struggle to deliver on Graeme Samuel’s blueprint to fix the broken system.
The Greens have agreed to support Labor’s re-write of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act after securing further concessions from the government amid tense and prolonged negotiations.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is announcing the deal at a press conference in Parliament House.
The deal will clear the path for Labor to ram the legislation through the Senate on Thursday, handing Albanese a major political win to end 2025.
Albanese became actively involved in the final stages of negotiations, speaking directly with his Greens counterpart, Larissa Waters, in a bid to resolve a weeks-long standoff.
The Labor-Greens deal will sideline Sussan Ley’s Coalition, which refused to yield on their demands for more business-friendly concessions in exchange for supporting the legislation.
Gallagher says Labor not enforcing ‘budget cut’ of 5%
Katy Gallagher says there’s been “misunderstanding” around the government’s push for departments to find savings in their budgets.
The public service minister tells the ABC it’s “not about job losses” or budget cuts.
Labor has had to defend itself over its request for departments to reprioritise their budgets, but Gallagher says it’s not a “budget cut” of 5%.
I think that there’s been a bit of misunderstanding about what’s going on here. We are certainly having since we with came to government, been seeking savings for the budget.
We have asked departments to have a look at their lowest priority – essentially their lowest 5% of what their business is and have a think about whether or not they need to keep doing all those things. It’s really about fiscal discipline. There’s been no instruction to cut budgets by 5%. Or that we are cutting budgets by 5%. That’s just simply incorrect … it’s not about job losses and it’s not about budget cuts.
Katy Gallagher says Labor has made ‘substantial progress’ on environment laws deal
Cabinet minister Katy Gallagher is up on the ABC and says the government has made “substantial progress” in making a deal on its environment laws.
A moment ago, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said her party is “very close” to a deal.
Speaking to News Breakfast, Gallagher says there’ll be more to say later this morning.
We’ve made substantial progress, including progress overnight and there will be more to say about that later this morning. We’re very keen to get these bills done and make sure that we’ve got them in place and got the right time to get them up and started.
‘We are very close’ on environment bill, Hanson-Young says
Hanson-Young says she’s feeling more positive about a deal on the environment bill than she was at the start of the week.
The Greens senator does sound pretty positive, saying her party is “very close” to a deal with the government on the environment protection and biodiversity conservation bills.
It’s not there yet, she says, but it could be very soon – and by very soon, the government is hopeful that will be today. Hanson-Young tells ABC News Breakfast:
I don’t expect that we will get everything we want. We’re just trying one last time [on the basis] that I wanted more protections for our forests, and protections for climate, of course.
If we can get movement on those issues, I’ve always said that I’m up for helping the government improve these laws. We’re not there yet. But I’m feeling more positive than I was at the beginning of the week.
Greens sceptical of social media ban for under 16s
Sarah Hanson-Young (who’s also the Greens’ environment spokesperson) says she’s concerned the government’s social media ban won’t “keep our kids safe in the ways that we really want”.
The senator tells ABC News Breakfast she’s been pushing the government to force social media companies to make their spaces safer for everyone – and particularly young people.
The concerns that children will get around the ban are widespread and the government has acknowledged it won’t be foolproof.
There’s no requirements on them to create a space that doesn’t have harmful content … That doesn’t target them with advertising.
For those kids who just decide – oh, well we might not be on Instagram or Snapchat, but go over to somewhere else that hasn’t been designated – it’s those darker corners of the internet that I’m worried about.
Ley won’t reveal whether she would support extension of energy subsidies
Like Anthony Albanese’s Medicare card, Sussan Ley’s bringing her “Affordable Energy Plan” booklet around with her (she held it up a few times in question time yesterday), and it’s with her again on the Today show this morning.
The Coalition has been challenged to explain exactly how their plan would reduce energy prices in the short and long term.
Yesterday, at the Press Club, Ted O’Brien said prices would drop because there would be a lower spend on transmission lines needed to connect renewables projects.
So far, experts have raised question about the plan, and the government has pointed to evidence that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy generation.
Ley says:
Our affordable energy plan, and I’m just going to reach for it now because it’s never far away, is all about bringing prices down for households and families. It’s about affordable energy first. And if you looked at those inflation figures yesterday, you would see that by far the highest one is actually energy gone up by 40%.
The government has said it will soon make a decision on whether or not to extend its current program subsidising power bills. Asked if Ley would support an extension, she won’t say, only that she would “consider it in the normal way”.
Australians don’t want the government to subsidise their power bill. They want cheaper power bills … But the critical thing here is this is not the solution to the problem.
Shadow treasurer declines to say where spending should be cut
The shadow treasurer, Ted O’Brien, is back at the mic this morning, after his National Press Club address yesterday, telling the government to reduce its spending. But he won’t say exactly where the opposition would cut either.
Speaking to ABC’s AM program, O’Brien says he’d bring back fiscal rules that would put a roof on government spending, that would require any spending to have equivalent “offsets”.
Where would those come from? Fringe tax benefits for EVs is one (which he also said at the NPC yesterday that he doesn’t support), but he won’t reveal any other substantial cuts.
If you want to spend more money over here, well, you’ve got to find savings over there. And that’s the responsibility of the government. This government hasn’t done that, it hasn’t found savings.
It’s about finding offsets. If I had to find an offset today, I would go immediately to the government’s fringe benefits tax carve-outs for electric vehicles. It’s costing about five times more than what the government estimated, and it is unfair.
O’Brien has also blamed government spending for the rise in inflation, which the Labor has pushed back on, and said it’s not been an issue brought up by the Reserve Bank.
Australia records largest annual drop in emissions outside pandemic
Australia has recorded its biggest drop in carbon emissions in a financial year outside of the Covid-19 pandemic – with pollution falling 2.2% in the year to June.
The government has released data this morning showing a reduction of 9.9m tonnes of carbon dioxide over the year. In the same timeframe, 437.5m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions were recorded, 28.5% below 2005 levels.
Labor’s 2030 target is to reduce emissions by 43% on 2005 levels.
Preliminary data from the government also shows a reduction of 2.8% on 2005 levels in the year to September 2025.
The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen said:
We are on track to bring down energy bills and meet our climate targets if we stay the course and continue to lift our efforts.
You can read the full story from my colleague, Adam Morton, here:
Krishani Dhanji
Good morning, Krishani Dhanji here with you, thanks to Martin Farrer for getting us started.
It’s the last sitting day of the year – it’s D-day for the government on environment and it needs to make a deal today to pass the laws through the Senate. If it does, there’ll be a very short sitting of the House tomorrow morning to pass the environment laws with the amendments made by the Senate.
Being the final full sitting day, there’s bound to be plenty of action and drama to keep us busy, so grab your coffee and let’s get into it!
UK AI ‘nudify’ company blocks Australian users
Josh Taylor
The eSafety commissioner has said a UK-based company behind three of the most widely used “nudify” deepfake services has blocked Australian users after the company was given a warning by eSafety in September that its services were being used to generate AI child exploitation material.
The regulator hasn’t named the company but correspondence from eSafety obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws reveal it is Itai Tech.
eSafety said the services were receiving about 100,000 visits from Australians per month and were featured in high-profile cases related to the generation of sexual exploitation material of students in Australian schools.
Julie Inman Grant said:
We know ‘nudify’ services have been used to devastating effect in Australian schools and, with this major provider blocking their use by Australians, we believe it will have a tangible impact on the number of Australian school children falling victim to AI-generated child sexual exploitation.
Itai Tech was fined by the UK regulator earlier this month for failing to have age checks on its site and also reportedly blocks UK users from accessing its services.
eSafety said global AI model hosting platform Hugging Face has also changed its terms of service in a bid to prevent its models being used to create child exploitation material, after concerns raised by eSafety.
Cait Kelly
Victoria police re-launch search for body of Samantha Murphy
Victoria police have confirmed they have launched another search for the body of Samantha Murphy, who was last seen alive on 4 February 2024 when she left her home in Ballarat for a morning run.
The search began yesterday and will resume today.
In a statement, police said:
Since February 2024, police have regularly undertaken a range of enquiries and small-scale searches as part of the current investigation.
We are not in a position to supply further specific details of today’s operational activity at this time.
Police ask that members of the public do not attend the search at this time.
As the matter is currently before the court, we are not in a position to comment further about the investigation.
In March last year, Ballarat man Patrick Orren Stephenson was charged with her murder.
Read more here:
Speculation grows over Barnaby Joyce defection to One Nation
Barnaby Joyce could announce that he is quitting the Nationals and defecting to One Nation today, according to reports.
The former Nationals leader said last month that he was considering his future in the party after his relationship with leader David Littleproud broke down, and that he would make a decision over the summer.
But The Australian and Nine newspapers are reporting this morning that he could make an announcement before parliament rises today.
The Australian said it “understands many of his colleagues believe it likely Mr Joyce would make clear his intention on Thursday”.
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, urged Joyce to stay in the party room, however, and said he “can make a contribution”.
Littleproud told Sky News yesterday.
We’ve given him [time and space] to work through where he wants to be.
We want him back into our party room because that’s the contract that he and the people of New England signed, that he was a National party member, and we hope that he comes back in [so] he can make a contribution.
The Sydney Morning Herald claimed last night that Joyce was about to defect to One Nation and reported that he had told the masthead he would have “more to say” today.
The papers said Matt Canavan and Michael McCormack urged Joyce to stay in the Nationals but that Canavan was ready to “take the fight” to Joyce if he joined Pauline Hanson’s party.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live politics blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then Krishani Dhanji will take you through to the end of parliament’s final week of the year.
Barnaby Joyce could announce that he is quitting the Nationals and defecting to One Nation as early as today, according to reports this morning. The former Nationals leader and deputy prime minister said last month he would not stand as a National again in his New England seat and that he would consider his position over the summer. But speculation is mounting that he will reveal his plans today. More coming up.
A UK-based company behind three of the most widely-used “nudify” deepfake services has blocked Australian users after it was warned by Australia’s eSafety watchdog in September that its services were being used to generate AI child exploitation material. We have more details coming up.
