Extract from The Guardian
It was easy to miss in the prime minister’s bluster about green
‘sabotage’ of the Carmichael mine, but the project’s delay was down to
administrative error
Perhaps due to the repeated deployment of blunt-force political
hyperbole, the government appears to have developed an almost complete
immunity to facts.
Listening to the prime minister’s angry rhetoric about green “sabotage” of the $16bn Carmichael coalmine, for example, you may have missed the fact that it was not delayed by “vigilante” green groups succeeding in an attempt to use legal process to defend worthless skinks and a snake, but rather by the fact that the environment minister Greg Hunt and/or his department made a mistake.
The federal government actually consented to the legal case being set aside so it could get the paperwork for its approval right – something it says it will be able to do in a couple of weeks.
Hunt was quite open about this in a radio interview on the day after the decision on 5 August.
“What has happened is that the court has at my request, set aside the decision to be reconsidered,” the environment minister happily conceded. “That would usually take six to eight weeks, the reason being the department gave advice that there was a possibility that the court might conclude that additional material never before considered could be required…. So the department said look as a matter of prudence so as we don’t find in six or eight or 10 or 12 months, a court decision which says there was a procedural issue, let’s remake it now.”
But as the government’s political woes deepened and it struggled with its “narrative” – that it stands for “jobs and growth” and Labor doesn’t – this administrative error somehow morphed into a plot by inner-city greens to rob hard-working Australians of employment.
In response, the government did not just try to change the technical requirements that tripped the environment minister up, but to undermine the commonwealth’s main environmental law – the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – in a way that will stop almost all environment groups from testing federal environmental approvals in court.
The details seem to have been done on the fly. As Guardian Australia revealed, federal cabinet met on Monday night with no formal cabinet submissions before it. The EPBC issue was discussed “under the line” and announced the next day. But for most of Wednesday the government was still trying to figure out how it could change the act in a way that would stymie (bad) greenies from challenging developments but continue to allow (good) farmers to do so, and was saying contradictory things about which part of the act it wanted to change.
The amendments eventually introduced on Thursday morning may still allow an individual farmer to challenge a development that has a direct impact on his or her farm, but only on the grounds of that direct impact, and only after lengthy and expensive legal debate about whether the farmer does have standing before the court. (Peak farm groups are not happy and are seeking legal advice.)
But for the most part environmental groups will not have standing because their concerns will be to make sure the government has done the right thing by the matters of national environmental significance that the Howard government designed the act to protect, and no individual is hurt by the eradication of a species, or the spoiling of a world heritage area or the damage to a commonwealth marine area. If a government makes a mistake that allows the destruction of those things it doesn’t hurt one person, it hurts us all, which was the whole reason environment groups were given standing to challenge federal decision-making in the first place.
None of that deterred the prime minister.
“We are taking the steps necessary to protect 10,000 jobs, to protect a $20 billion investment and to enable 100 million people in India to get coal and power for the best part of 50 years … because we support jobs and growth,” Abbott told the parliament – skillfully deflecting actual facts with almost every breath. “We support the workers of this country … when it comes to dudding workers, (Bill Shorten) has form. He wants to dud the workers of Adani ... we will never conspire with the Greens to close down the Carmichael mine, to stop it ever happening.”
Actual facts like – Adani’s own economist has said the project will create 1,464 jobs, that the Indian energy minister has said his country wants to try to stop imports of thermal coal within three years, that the court case has not prevented the mine from proceeding and that Labor supports Carmichael going ahead but does not support the unnecessary destruction of federal environment law. Or the fact that the EPBC act has successfully held up projects in only 0.4 per cent of cases.
To support its suspicions about the enviro-Labor de-industrial complex, the government disinterred a “secret” 2012 planning document by a network of green groups, leaked at the time, which did indeed show they wanted to delay new coalmines, especially those in the Galilee basin.
The reason was not a hatred of Australian workers or industry, but because if the coal from Carmichael – the biggest coalmine in Australia and possibly the world – were mined and burned it would use up 7 per cent of the greenhouse gas “budget” beyond which the world will not contain global warming to 2 degrees.
The prime minister might well disagree with that argument. The green group’s alleged co-conspirators, the Labor party, certainly disagreed with it when the document was first leaked.
Then treasurer Wayne Swan declared the campaign “reprehensible” and “puerile” and said the coal industry was “a very important wealth generator and a driver of jobs”.
“Unfortunately there are some in the environmental movement who do not understand that you can reduce carbon pollution and still have a viable coal industry, and indeed we need a viable coal industry unless you want to tank the global economy,” he said.
Abbott might well think so too. He has recently announced a long-term greenhouse gas reduction target that isn’t exactly ambitious, but is better than many expected. And his own modelling, finally released on Friday, shows that reaching that target will indeed reduce production and exports of coal, while shaving only a tiny fraction from economic growth.
But he started that debate by incorrectly overstating what his own modelling showed the costs of a tougher target would be, in order to try to continue to claim that he had found a way cheaper way to act on climate change than Labor, who would – you guessed it – destroy jobs and growth. (Labor hasn’t actually announced any targets yet, but Abbott’s modelling showed tougher targets would shave only a tiny bit extra from continued strong economic growth.)
But having a sensible debate about the desirable speed of Australia’s shift to a lower carbon economy or about the relative costs or about the impact of world action on the medium-term prospects for our exports of coal – any of that would require the debate to enter the realm of fact.
Listening to the prime minister’s angry rhetoric about green “sabotage” of the $16bn Carmichael coalmine, for example, you may have missed the fact that it was not delayed by “vigilante” green groups succeeding in an attempt to use legal process to defend worthless skinks and a snake, but rather by the fact that the environment minister Greg Hunt and/or his department made a mistake.
The federal government actually consented to the legal case being set aside so it could get the paperwork for its approval right – something it says it will be able to do in a couple of weeks.
Hunt was quite open about this in a radio interview on the day after the decision on 5 August.
“What has happened is that the court has at my request, set aside the decision to be reconsidered,” the environment minister happily conceded. “That would usually take six to eight weeks, the reason being the department gave advice that there was a possibility that the court might conclude that additional material never before considered could be required…. So the department said look as a matter of prudence so as we don’t find in six or eight or 10 or 12 months, a court decision which says there was a procedural issue, let’s remake it now.”
But as the government’s political woes deepened and it struggled with its “narrative” – that it stands for “jobs and growth” and Labor doesn’t – this administrative error somehow morphed into a plot by inner-city greens to rob hard-working Australians of employment.
In response, the government did not just try to change the technical requirements that tripped the environment minister up, but to undermine the commonwealth’s main environmental law – the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – in a way that will stop almost all environment groups from testing federal environmental approvals in court.
The details seem to have been done on the fly. As Guardian Australia revealed, federal cabinet met on Monday night with no formal cabinet submissions before it. The EPBC issue was discussed “under the line” and announced the next day. But for most of Wednesday the government was still trying to figure out how it could change the act in a way that would stymie (bad) greenies from challenging developments but continue to allow (good) farmers to do so, and was saying contradictory things about which part of the act it wanted to change.
The amendments eventually introduced on Thursday morning may still allow an individual farmer to challenge a development that has a direct impact on his or her farm, but only on the grounds of that direct impact, and only after lengthy and expensive legal debate about whether the farmer does have standing before the court. (Peak farm groups are not happy and are seeking legal advice.)
But for the most part environmental groups will not have standing because their concerns will be to make sure the government has done the right thing by the matters of national environmental significance that the Howard government designed the act to protect, and no individual is hurt by the eradication of a species, or the spoiling of a world heritage area or the damage to a commonwealth marine area. If a government makes a mistake that allows the destruction of those things it doesn’t hurt one person, it hurts us all, which was the whole reason environment groups were given standing to challenge federal decision-making in the first place.
None of that deterred the prime minister.
“We are taking the steps necessary to protect 10,000 jobs, to protect a $20 billion investment and to enable 100 million people in India to get coal and power for the best part of 50 years … because we support jobs and growth,” Abbott told the parliament – skillfully deflecting actual facts with almost every breath. “We support the workers of this country … when it comes to dudding workers, (Bill Shorten) has form. He wants to dud the workers of Adani ... we will never conspire with the Greens to close down the Carmichael mine, to stop it ever happening.”
Actual facts like – Adani’s own economist has said the project will create 1,464 jobs, that the Indian energy minister has said his country wants to try to stop imports of thermal coal within three years, that the court case has not prevented the mine from proceeding and that Labor supports Carmichael going ahead but does not support the unnecessary destruction of federal environment law. Or the fact that the EPBC act has successfully held up projects in only 0.4 per cent of cases.
To support its suspicions about the enviro-Labor de-industrial complex, the government disinterred a “secret” 2012 planning document by a network of green groups, leaked at the time, which did indeed show they wanted to delay new coalmines, especially those in the Galilee basin.
The reason was not a hatred of Australian workers or industry, but because if the coal from Carmichael – the biggest coalmine in Australia and possibly the world – were mined and burned it would use up 7 per cent of the greenhouse gas “budget” beyond which the world will not contain global warming to 2 degrees.
The prime minister might well disagree with that argument. The green group’s alleged co-conspirators, the Labor party, certainly disagreed with it when the document was first leaked.
Then treasurer Wayne Swan declared the campaign “reprehensible” and “puerile” and said the coal industry was “a very important wealth generator and a driver of jobs”.
“Unfortunately there are some in the environmental movement who do not understand that you can reduce carbon pollution and still have a viable coal industry, and indeed we need a viable coal industry unless you want to tank the global economy,” he said.
Abbott might well think so too. He has recently announced a long-term greenhouse gas reduction target that isn’t exactly ambitious, but is better than many expected. And his own modelling, finally released on Friday, shows that reaching that target will indeed reduce production and exports of coal, while shaving only a tiny fraction from economic growth.
But he started that debate by incorrectly overstating what his own modelling showed the costs of a tougher target would be, in order to try to continue to claim that he had found a way cheaper way to act on climate change than Labor, who would – you guessed it – destroy jobs and growth. (Labor hasn’t actually announced any targets yet, but Abbott’s modelling showed tougher targets would shave only a tiny bit extra from continued strong economic growth.)
But having a sensible debate about the desirable speed of Australia’s shift to a lower carbon economy or about the relative costs or about the impact of world action on the medium-term prospects for our exports of coal – any of that would require the debate to enter the realm of fact.
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