As Plibersek moves out, Mr ‘Fix It' takes on plagued environment job
Senator Murray Watt has kicked off his stint as environment minister with backing from the warring mining and environment sectors to break the deadlock that dogged predecessor Tanya Plibersek and deliver the government's long-promised environment reforms.
The government promised in 2022 to create a national environment watchdog and committed to pursuing broad reforms to nature protection laws, but failed to deliver either.
Plibersek began in the portfolio with a promise to end native species extinctions. She ended it on the outer with the environment lobby, which has been disappointed at the lack of new nature protections, and after a deal with the Greens to pass the Environment Protection Act in the Senate was scuppered by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following vigorous lobbying against the bill from the mining industry and the Premier of Western Australia Roger Cook.
Albanese also weighed in on Plibersek's portfolio for a second time, in December, when he assured Tasmania's salmon farming industry its future was secure. This assurance appeared to preempt an ongoing review of commercial operations in Macquarie Harbour, on the state's west coast, due to its impact on the endangered Maugean skate.
Plibersek has been moved to the social services ministry, an appointment she welcomes with a social media statement saying she was 'delighted to be the minister for social services in the new Labor government', as it was an area she had long been interested in. She takes on responsibility for the department that oversees welfare spending – the single largest expenditure in the federal budget – as well as issues close to her heart, such as domestic violence prevention and gender equality.
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Watt, who earned a reputation as a fixer in the emergency services, agriculture and then industrial affairs portfolios in the first term of the Albanese government, said he was thrilled to be appointed Minister for the Environment.
'Our natural environment and water supply is the foundation of life on Earth and only a Labor government can advance its long-term conservation,' he said.
The former workplace and industrial relations minister is a key powerbroker from Queensland, riding high in the party for delivering a swathe of seats in the state.
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