Is this Labor's biggest test yet?

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Jules and Jez here, and every week on Not Stupid, we chat about the news in your feeds.

As well as the weird stuff in the zeitgeist that just makes us go, eh?

White House said, it's just getting weird at this point.

It's like, at this point?

Yeah, we've been here for a while, buddy.

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As the corridors of parliament swing back to life this week, the Albanese government is muscling up for a fight on its key environmental reform bill.

Labor says it will work with the Greens or the Coalition to just get the legislation passed, but both sides have been dragging their feet, raising objections.

It comes as the report's lead author Graham Samuel has accused the opposition of standing in the way of the legislation.

So is this shaping up to be the biggest parliamentary test for the second term of the Albanese government?

So far, I reckon it looks like it.

Welcome to politics now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis.

And I'm Jacob Griever.

Good to have you in the studio, PK.

You can't stay away, can you?

You love this building.

Yeah, I love my sitting weeks here in Canberra, actually.

I think I've just been...

You've been tripping over all the bogong moths that are infesting us again.

Can you explain that to people?

No one would even understand what you're talking about, unless they're Canberrans.

Yeah, look, every year, this time of year, the Bogong moths come down out of the high country.

I don't know what part of their cycle, like, are they breeding or whatever, but you get like these infestations.

Infestation is the right word.

It used to be a lot worse back in the 90s when the building was new.

And the problem was it's a big, big, bright light on the hill.

So the moths all flock to the building.

I think they've sort of changed the lighting a little bit.

So it's not as bad as it used to be.

Yeah, but for visitors, it all freaks them out.

I used to find, because I lived here for a decade, I used to find it under like pieces of paper on my desk, bogon moths.

Don't leave any wool.

That and magpies are my Canberra kind of trigger points.

So let's press pause on my trigger points and talk about boom, boom, another trigger.

Oh, God, did I just do that?

This

EPBC reform legislation so back story five years ago Graham Samuel who was the ACCC boss but was commissioned by what a coinky dinky the and then Environment Minister Susan Lee to look at the laws and propose changes propose changes that were you know better for business to streamline things but also better for the environment he did that no one's really done much work on it since.

The government absolutely dragged their feet, and I'm talking the Albanese government, didn't pass it in the last term, even though they were meant to, so they don't get off scot-free here.

Now they're poised to do it, but this is getting ugly already.

Why has it gone off the rails a little, Jacob?

Actually, I don't know that it has gone off the rails.

We can go into the details of why I think that down the track.

I think actually this is part of the posturing that always happens when you have one of these types of really difficult bills.

As you said, they struggled in the first term.

They made it part of their 2022 election commitment to make an EPA, an independent watchdog.

They announced it on the Friday before the election in 2022.

So it's not like something that they told lots of Australians about for months and months and months.

They did it literally the morning before.

Sort of on the down line.

Do you feel down low vibes?

Yeah, it was definitely, oh dear, we're in trouble here.

The Greens are threatening some of our seats, including Terry Butler, Butler, who was the then shadow environment spokesperson, who lost her seat.

And so it felt like a rearguard thing.

Suddenly the following Monday, Labor's in power.

The Prime Minister gives the job to his rival, Tanya Plibasek, who sort of then had to make it her thing.

She probably let it go too long.

There was consensus between business and environment groups that this was something that was very important and had to get done.

Then it dragged on and on and on.

And it was then, they tried to rush it through at the very end.

If you remember almost a year ago, they had one of those days where there was 30 or 40 pieces of legislation went through.

This was the one they couldn't quite get out the door.

And the reason was as the Greens were negotiating with the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister pulled the rug out on it.

Remember at the time, Roger Cook, the WA Premier, was very much worried about it.

He also had an election around the corner.

The PM hasn't had an election around the corner.

So they killed it.

We're now back.

Both of those men that I've just mentioned have very, very strong political mandates, big, big majorities, and the Prime Minister wants to get this done.

He does not want this to drag on into a sixth, seventh, eighth year.

So they've really accelerated their timeline.

And part of the reason is they've realised the planning system, the approval system, the overlap between states and federals is killing projects, whether it's renewable projects, wind, solar, what have you.

Yeah, a whole range range of stuff.

Whether it's critical minerals, it's killing everything.

It's an insane system.

It's an insane system.

The cost of the duplication is enormous and the time.

Critical minerals can take up to 20 years from when you discover it to when you develop it in this country.

That's a sort of quick summary.

So we are here in the...

back in the fulcrum of this debate and the reason it feels like it's doomed or sometimes feels like it's going off the rails is it's really hard.

You are balancing environmental protection with development.

It's the oldest, hardest thing to balance.

It is because you're trying to sell two sometimes inherently contradictory messages, which is good for business, fast results, you know, we're going to get things up and running, but oh no, we're going to protect the environment and you know, species preservation.

Well, actually, sometimes those two things are at odds.

And so, and also, I should have mentioned also housing.

You know, we've been, we've talked on this podcast about housing.

The approvals with housing is really, really complicated.

But every time you open up a big block of land, you're killing, sometimes you're killing koala habitat or some other kind of habitat that degrades the overall wealth of the nation, the natural wealth of the nation.

So the government's pushing on an agenda to try and get this done by the end of the year.

They're going to introduce legislation this week on Thursday.

The Senate...

Will it, won't it, do an inquiry?

How long will it be?

Will it be one of those snap ones or a longer month-long thing?

Don't know.

That'll depend on the the deal that the government manages to do with the Senate.

And this is the fork in the road for the government.

It can go with the coalition, which business wants, would much prefer the government talked to the coalition.

or it can go with the Greens.

And the environment movement, obviously, would prefer that's where the negotiations go.

And you can already see the consequences of it going either way.

The consequences and a very different outcome.

And a potentially a different outcome.

So what it seems to me, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but is that the government's preference still is that the deal is with the coalition and that's for,

you know, the reasons of trying to keep sweet with people like the WA Premier.

Sweet in areas where, of course, development and jobs are...

And a lot of the unions?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, you are right to make that point too.

Yeah, it's not just that sort of macro.

There's kind of lots of players here.

So they do want a deal with the coalition.

So what's happened with the coalition?

Because I mentioned Susan Lee receiving the report.

Graham Samuel came on afternoon briefing on Friday and really, I thought, was very un-himself.

And he knew he was, like backstory.

I could tell he was a man who'd thought very heavily about intervening into this in a way.

In a political debate.

Yeah, because he doesn't want to be political.

He is not political.

He's just a business guy who, you know, but wanted to stick the boot to the coalition to put pressure on them, clearly.

And he carries weight because of who he is and the fact that he's the original author of the report but he made this pointed comment which is why I want to get you on this about how Susan Lee was very into his report when she received it now she couldn't get it through the Morrison government right but she was into it i.e hint hint nudge nudge what's he telling you that she says something privately but now as opposition leader is she being pushed around by her party room which is kind of the existential question of the coalition at the moment and it's her existential question as well.

And look, my interpretation of what he was saying to you was he's trying to shame the coalition into not blocking this.

Peter Dutton in the last term, the reason that this thing fell apart at the last minute between the Greens and the government was because the coalition had ruled itself out a lot earlier.

And Peter Dutton was the reason

he didn't want to go down that road.

It's not his kind of stuff.

It's not his cup of tea.

He didn't see a political benefit in that.

You have a situation where this problem continues to exist.

The environment's falling apart.

It's not, you know, the experts in this space will tell you it is catastrophic, the habitat and species loss that we're seeing in this country.

And so

I think Graham Samuels is an important voice.

He's saying to the coalition, look, get on with it.

This is the third time this government has a massive majority.

It has the sort of imprimatur to get this done.

Stop standing in the way of it.

I don't know whether he thinks it should be with the Greens as an alternative or not.

I don't think that necessarily bother him too much.

The difference being that the Greens have other demands, including an end to native logging of forests, and that will be a political touch point in New South Wales and Tasmania, where that still exists.

If they go with the Greens, there is also a very active environmental lobby inside the Labor Party

which would feel uncomfortable about a deal that's done just with the coalition.

So I think that point you make is a very powerful one.

There is a lot of pressure, I think, on the coalition because,

you know they lost so embarrassingly at the last election and some of the messages were on climate, environment, these sorts of issues.

So for them to be so bitterly divided on it is embarrassing for them, right?

For the Greens, they seemed so obstructionist that it did damage to them, particularly, I mean, Adam Bant's not in the parliament anymore, as I wrote in my piece this morning, like there's a reason some of this stuff happened.

So yes, for these players, it's a problem, but your point is for the government.

So what they deliver will be highly scrutinised if they sell out the environment and the greens are able to

land that message in the environment like in in the kind of inner city yeah like the the seats like they lost i suspect even in some of those coastal seats where people are very concerned about the decline in the environmental standards around the life that they live i think australia is a place which is

you know, naturally incredible and people value that here.

Right.

Right.

So there is a particular, I think, mindset in this country.

Obviously, it's on a spectrum.

Not everyone feels the same way about everything.

But for Labor to look like it's selling out the environment is dangerous for Labour.

Equally, for Labor not to be able to land a deal full stop, right, if this gets pushed out, you start getting into territory of what?

So you've got a thumping majority, but you can't work this parliament, right?

And so famously, of course, Gillard was very good at getting legislation through, but couldn't manage her internals.

This government's actually been better at managing themselves, but

parliament is a bigger problem for them.

I think that's right.

I think Murray Watt is also handling it very differently to his predecessors.

He's moving fast.

He's moving against resistance, which says, you can't possibly do it this quick.

We can't possibly draft legislation this quick.

It's too complicated.

We need more time, which is what some in the Liberal Party want.

And there was an attempt to split this into two pieces of legislation, as in do the bid up front that would streamline approvals and help help mining companies and critical minerals companies and renewables companies do let's do that really really quickly and then we'll do the standards that we need these rules to adhere to which is wild isn't it that you would split it look that was actually what was tried plibisec tried to do it and Lee tried to do it.

Both of those attempts failed.

When they tried to break these things apart into bite-sized chunks is the logic.

You just end up dragging out the pain.

And the government has zero interest in going down that road again as far as I can see.

So it's not holistic reform.

It's not just, oh, we'll just do the processing bit.

They're called environment laws, guys.

Like there's a reason that they exist.

Yeah.

They've rebranded it.

They've stopped calling it nature positive.

They're now calling it environmental protection law.

So it feels like Murray Watt's keeping everyone in the tent at this point.

All the interested parties, the environmental groups, the business groups.

He's got them all in the room.

He's still talking to them.

None of them have,

so to speak, you know, spat the dummy and thrown the toys out of the cot.

And I think that's quite important at this phase.

And you look at key groups.

So, of course, there are some parts of business that have raised objections, and the coalition is kind of attaching itself to that.

But a group like, which is incredibly powerful and representative of big business, the Business Council of Australia.

So Brian Black has already spoken.

We're recording this Monday.

And basically, like, not a fan of splitting it, not a fan of

going slow this must be putting some pressure on I think that's right yeah you you add all those together they're they're under and if if it does go to the green greens as the negotiating partner to get it through the blame's kind of a little bit on the coalition here for this business could justifiably say well you know where where were you we needed you to step up here at this point what's your view on the rush because I understand

the the critique that to just see legislation, like, yeah, you can have ideas, but then to drip feed and then not see the full legislation and then say, oh, you've got to pass it in two weeks or three sitting weeks.

That's...

Come on, that's a bit cheeky, isn't it?

I actually don't see as big of a problem with that because the issues that we're talking about,

we've been debating them ad nauseum now for years.

It's just this is a new version of holding that all together, whatever the nuance is either way.

It's not new stuff.

Can I just say, this is a really interesting timing of all of this.

The Prime Minister's not in the country.

He's at a couple of really big global meetings this week.

It's unusual for Parliament to be on while he's not around, I think.

But it also shows the confidence, doesn't it?

Well, yeah.

One man's confidence is another man's arrogance, maybe.

I don't want to say that word because I don't think it's justified, but some people will be accusing him of that.

They will.

It seems to me, okay, like he spent a lot of time overseas, hasn't he?

No one would be grunting.

For good reasons yeah he also went on an overseas holiday that was a week you know I think people deserve holidays but he did do that it's been just a bit of time not on Australian shores and now this as well during parliamentary sitting week elbow airbus vision is something they have to be alert to I think so I don't have a problem with the Prime Minister travelling I think he has to travel that's part of the job like represents the country

but to schedule parliament while you're away but what will be interesting to see for people like us who are obsessed with what's next always is the way the parliament looks.

You know, the posturing, don't you recognize that?

Who's at the dispatch?

Oh, Jim Chalmers is a bit bruised at the moment after he got rolled on superannuation.

You've got people really positioning.

There's a lot of talk in the Labour Party about who's the next generation.

Now, people like that will want to impress, you know, that they can actually get some runs on the board this week.

Am I right?

I think so.

Tony Burke, everyone watching him, Richard Miles watching him.

There's probably a whole bunch of other ones who fancy themselves as well.

And so, yeah, they have an opportunity to perform in front of their peers

when the boss is away.

There's always extra duties that then open up when the PM's not around.

Extra duties in your acting Prime Minister roles.

Look, I want to take you to the curious case of a man called Barnaby Joyce, a man who loves a microphone and a camera like no one I've ever seen.

And I say this as a self-declared lover of a microphone and a camera.

You recognize a fellow.

Oh, I can see them a mile off.

What on earth is going on?

So he's not in the Nationals party room.

What's going on?

So Barnaby, yeah, I mean, we talked about Barnaby a week ago and I'm sort of part of me's dying inside that we have to do it again a week later, but that's that's his talent, keeping himself in the spotlight.

As you say, he will not sit in the party room, even though, by the way, the party room is now currently actively having a debate about whether to drop net zero, which is his big thing.

So that's a weird thing that he's not in the room for that.

But he's also then, of course, kept the door open to him voting.

If there's ever a leadership issue, he can come back in here.

I detect a bit of a souring, actually, on

how Barnaby's performing here.

And I detected it actually more from the right.

So you think the right, let me just ask the question, You think the right is thinking, mate, what are you doing?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there's a bit of that going on.

And you had, you know, even Mr.

Hastie saying you should stay in the party rather than race off.

I just think some of this drama from Drama De Joyce gets tiresome for everybody, including his own, especially his own side.

And Little Proud really made no bones about it just this morning, said,

well, even if we do drop net zero as a party, we still have to have have a credible alternative plan for what we do.

We are not a protest party.

We're not about banging on, getting cheap headlines.

You know, the rest of the sentence I can spell out for you, like some, like Barnaby, it was a direct crack at Barnaby Joyce.

Oh, yeah, it was.

And that proposition that, you know, Barnaby should be looked after better to keep him in the tent, that he's offered a front bench position.

He kind of slammed that as well, didn't he?

He went, nah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what I mean.

I detect a souring going on here.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Some of the shtick isn't working anymore.

No, but that may psychologically

push Barnaby over the cliff, though, don't you think?

And is that in the interests of centre-right, the mainstream right?

Because I do think whatever you say about Barnaby Joyce, he does have some appeal in some parts of the electorate.

And if he was theoretically to go down the One Nation road,

which he refuses to rule out,

it's obviously part of his thinking.

Exactly.

Then I think it could be problematic for peeling off some votes.

All I think it does is cannibalise, by the way, the right-wing vote.

I don't think it increases it at all.

It just cannibalises it, you know, and then there's elaborate questions about preference flows and how it works.

But you know what I'm saying?

I don't think it's easy for them.

Yeah, but it's not easy for them.

But the Liberal Party, especially, and also the National Party, has historically

fought back against One Nation at every stage.

It's never joined them.

Previous leaders of the National Party never did.

John Howard from the very beginning pushed back against Pauline Hanson because they knew

you can't give in to that side.

That's someone trying to go after your own part of the electorate.

And they always fought back against it in whatever way they could.

Barnaby

would be basically waving the white flag to that and joining that movement.

Yeah, so there's one more thing I think is worth mentioning that Barnaby Joyce has got like this bill, the net zero bill, that gets debated every Monday.

Yeah, that's the sort of the drip torture that Tony Passon has.

That cunning Labor strategists have, well, it was a gift Barnaby gave them, and so they're using it.

Yeah, and he thanks them.

Thanks, it's so good that they've got this time.

But today, already, I think it was Tony Passon, wasn't it, who spoke on the bill?

And the government's whole vibe, what they're trying to spin, just to put it out there, is, you know, now it takes on a new character if they speak on this because Barnaby Joyce is, you know, should be kind of chopped liver to them.

Now, I don't know if that quite passes the,

I don't think anyone cares about who speaks when.

Do you think the public's noticing?

I'm not.

No, but it keeps him in the headline, which suits Labor.

I mean, Labor is, if I was the Prime Minister, I'd be going on more holidays with, you know, like, I don't, why would you not?

You'd be living your best life.

Now, Anthony Albanese, it's now broken an embargo they put on this, has met with the Chinese Premier on the sidelines of the first of the summits.

Now, that's significant.

We don't have a read yet as we record about whether, for instance, the critical minerals deal was raised, whether the skirmish in the South China Sea was raised.

But these are the more thorny issues and questions that will emerge and be asked about, right?

Like how hard line he goes on that, given he's just

become BFFs sort of with Donald Trump, which

we've talked about, like was quite a success for him as a strategy.

That'll be interesting to see because this is the hard bit, I think, for the government.

You can't just do the China-US thing and it's all like we're all skipping and it's all easy.

There's a tension point and it often flares up and how to manage it in a way that's calculated, doesn't hurt our trade relationships, but still equally demonstrates to the public that you take your sovereignty and your national security seriously is vexed, right?

And they will have their grievances as well.

They'll be complaining.

They love a grievance.

They'll be complaining that we're doing deals with Trump on critical minerals.

That's a way of sort of

undermining China's ability to sell those things.

So, yeah, it'll go both ways.

I think this is the Prime Minister sort of has been aware of that all along.

He did that trip recently, don't forget.

And yet,

here the Chinese are a few months later

grumbling and grizzling about the closeness of the relationship with Albanese and Donald Trump.

Yeah, more to come on that.

And of course, the big one, the really big one this week is going to be Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

That is absolutely the blockbuster.

But kind of the broader themes that we're seeing, even Australia's deal on things like critical minerals, which is the C word is there, like it is about China and all leading to this one big moment.

Yeah, I think Donald Trump's rhetoric has been really fascinating.

He's toned it right down.

Hasn't he?

I mean, Paul Keating's been jumping up and down saying, see, I told you also.

He's not a warmonger.

He does want deal making rather than conflict.

It's more the people he has around him tend to be the hawks who are

he still has hawks in his ear, but he also has the base that elected him, never forget it, I say it all the time, elected him on ending forever wars, less conflict, more kind of looking in your own backyard.

And that must be still an overriding thing for him, which is why it's confusing, really, that he would, you know rename something the Department of War at the same time as saying he's not into wars.

And also, can we just, I know we've been given the right wind up here.

Can we just talk about the greatest renovation in history?

Let's go.

Let's go.

You know, I think Maureen Dowd wrote a great piece.

This is like it's it's an act and it's a metaphor on steroids.

It is, it is.

The ripping down of the East Wing.

It's a pretty incredible sort of thing to put on, right?

Isn't it just I think so.

Imagine, I don't know, bulldozing half the lodge lodge or something, or taking out half of Kirabilly to build a ballroom.

Like, it's that level stuff.

Look, good for him.

He loves a bit of bling, and he's not afraid to be able to do it.

I'm sure he'll be very muted.

That's it for politics now today.

Jacob, it's so good being face-to-face.

It was.

It was great fun having you here.

And tomorrow I'll be joined by David Spears for more on what's happening in Parliament this week.

And then on Wednesday, the wonderful Anthony Green will join me for a special episode on the rise of one nation and how it's mirroring history.

This man knows everything, so it's perfect.

And if you have a question, send it to the partyroom at abc.net.au.

Mel and I will answer it on Thursday.

See you, Jacob.

See you later.