Interview with Tom Connell - Sky News Afternoon Agenda

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Welcome back. The government are trying to get through a few bills during the year. In particular, a long-awaited overhaul of environmental laws. 

Let's bring in the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman. Where are we sitting on this? It looks as though businesses have some objections. They're kind of supportive of it. Is Labor going to compromise on this? Or is this now take it or leave it, because it's been a long time coming?

PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: It has been a long time coming. The Graeme Samuel review was delivered to Sussan Ley when she was the Environment Minister. 

This has been out there, as needed reforms, since October 2020. It is now October 2025. We want to get this done. We knew five years ago that our laws were not fit for purpose. They were not delivering on what the Australian people needed for our environment or for Australian jobs. 

So we want to see this package in the form we introduce, get through the Parliament. We introduced it this week. It has been a long time coming. A lot of consultation. It is time to get this done. 

CONNELL: Well, the consultation has had people ask what an 'unacceptable impact' it would be on the environment. Is that fair enough to ask for detail on that? Because that seems very subjective.

GORMAN: Of course people will ask for detail. All of the information and all the legislation will be put forward into the Parliament when it is introduced. That is the appropriate consultative mechanism. 

Of course, people will raise ideas, as we are seeing from some organisations, about what should be in this bill. But the Minister has consulted very widely. He has been to my state of Western Australia four times. Done extensive consultation. That is what people expected. 

You are going to see the outcomes of that work. There is two options for the Opposition and the Greens; they can go back into their 'No-alition.' Choose to oppose - and we have seen a little bit of that, where they wanted to oppose some measures before they have even seen them. 

Or we can act for the Australian people and give them something that is better for the environment and better for business. 

CONNELL: A lot of detail there, I guess the various stakeholders and Coalition-Greens, they have all the info now so they can go away - and I did say before, although I spoke generally about the Labor Government having these NDAs when they deal with it, and I'm told no NDAs on this, the non-disclosure agreements they had to sign. 

Although I understand they are being used on other pieces of legislation. Critical minerals - so one of the big points of this, if we end up processing them, there'll be lots of radioactive waste. Where would that be stored?

GORMAN: We, of course, have done some work in the Parliament in the last term about the storage of radioactive waste. These conversations happen in terms of both what we need to have as our legislative underpinning for the long-term storage of that waste, but also - 

CONNELL: Is that a potential issue, though? Would you need it - wherever that happens, would you need the approval of local community groups, or would it just be making decisions on where it's best and safest?

GORMAN: There is already a framework for that, and of course, we have that framework for existing radioactive materials that we have from medical devices that have radiation in them. So we will continue doing that in the normal way. But what we are talking about - 

CONNELL: But this would mean a lot more than that, wouldn't it, in terms of scale? 

GORMAN: I am not sure of exactly what particular mineral you are talking about Tom, and obviously, as we go through the approvals for any new piece of mining or processing, it'll go through the normal approvals process. 

I can assure everyone of that. But what we want to have is these minerals that will be refined somewhere - we want to see those jobs here. We want to see that value add here. So that tax is also paid here, and economic value is added here, and we add to the diversity of the market, because that means that there is more security supply. 

We saw not that long ago here in Australia, where we were at the end of a lot of supply chains in the world, and we could not get the essential things we needed. We want to make sure that we are providing solutions to that when it comes to critical minerals.

CONNELL: And the jobs and wealth that it could generate for a community - would it make sense for storage to happen there too? You get one, you get the other?

GORMAN: We will deal with that in the normal way under the existing mechanisms that we have.

CONNELL: But this could be a test for that. If the scale is a lot bigger, right? Will the existing framework be adequate, or would a new one be necessary? 

GORMAN: If there is a particular project that you are concerned about I am happy to get more information. But if we are just going to sit and have an assertion that there is going to be lots of - 

CONNELL: Well, I guess my question is this; the framework you spoke about, do you think it would need to be updated, perhaps, or changes made if the scale is bigger than that envisaged? Because now suddenly we're going 'right, let's really get this going.'

GORMAN: That would be part of the normal approvals process, but we as a government are saying we want to see more critical minerals processed here.

CONNELL: Okay. Final question on the CFMEU. So revelations to do with the administration of the union, led by Mark Irving. John Perkovich was promoted in July. There'd been all these warnings about corruption allegations against him, lots of information applied, seemingly ignored. Now he's been sacked because of those allegations. That's a bit embarrassing, isn't it?

GORMAN: We chose to put the CFMEU into administration. What I understand from Question Time that I have just come from is some 60 staff members and officials of the CFMEU have been removed as a result of that administration. That is a good thing - 

CONNELL: This person was promoted, and there were warnings, and they were ignored. Should that be looked at? That process of what's happening there, in Victoria in particular?

GORMAN: I am not going to give public advice to the administrator on your program. The administrator has the powers to clean out that union. That is the strongest possible action that we could take. That is the right thing to do. 

And I think the Australian people know that we have been very firm in our view of cleaning up this union and also saying there is no place for criminal activity in the construction sector. 

CONNELL: Ran out of time. Patrick Gorman, thank you. 

GORMAN: Thank you. 

ENDS