Good work by Labor here, the Greens are furious. Let's see if...

Good work by Labor here, the Greens are furious. Let's see if the Libs decide to back a Labor proposal for once and don't side with the loony Greens.

via The Saturday Paper

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Royce Kurmelovs tells us that hidden in legislation is a plan to give Resources Minister Madeleine King power to approve gas projects – taking the oversight away from Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.

If passed, the amendments will mean the environment minister is automatically assumed to agree with any regulatory changes made by the resources minister concerning directions to NOPSEMA on how it makes decisions during approval processes.

As these regulations have not yet been written – pending the outcome of a current review – this would give Resources Minister Madeleine King broad ministerial discretion to rewrite the way projects are approved.

The proposal appears to follow fierce reaction from the gas industry calling for changes to approval processes after a series of high-profile legal challenges.

On October 6, 2023, Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher sent a letter to Minister King, co-signed by the heads of South Korean and Japanese petroleum companies, demanding the government “take urgent action to deliver regulations which provide clarity and certainty for industry”.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, of the South Australian Greens, said the government had been caught in a “sneaky” effort to clear the way for the approval of new gas mega projects.

“On one hand we have an environment minister saying she will fix Australia’s broken environment laws, on the other hand we have a resources minister quietly giving herself the power to bypass those laws via loopholes to approve new mega gas projects,” Hanson-Young said.