Albanese knows the power dynamic between Labor and mining interests has shifted

In the end, as it turns out, elections do have consequences.

And when they’re as dramatic as the political earthquake of May 3, they change the country, as this week’s blockbuster environmental law overhaul demonstrates.

Nearly 15 months ago, the prime minister was the guest of honour at the annual Minerals Council of Australia dinner.

Held in the Great Hall of Parliament, the event is a fixture on the Canberra calendar.

It acts as a resolute restatement of the industry’s centrality to the national economy. An often-needed reminder to the political class about where their fiscal bread is buttered.

Last year’s event — filled to the brim with the heads of Australia’s biggest and most important mining companies — took place at a time when miners were still smarting over Labor’s first term industrial relations reforms.

The entertainment was an opportunity to berate and condemn a Labor prime minister to his face.

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A moment to remember

As Anthony Albanese sat at the head table (this correspondent was at the table next to his), the council’s chief executive Tania Constable accused his government of picking a fight with the industry over industrial relations and environmental issues.

Undermine the industry “at your peril”, she said.

“We don’t want conflict. But under these new workplace laws, conflict has been brought upon us.” 

The broadside was well received by the MCA membership in the room, with attendees congratulating Constable on her tough words.

Good work. That’ll fix him.

If dressing down riled him, the prime minister showed no outward signs.

And when he delivered his speech, which had been pre-circulated to reporters, he didn’t adjust a word to respond to Constable’s pointed attack. A rhetorical version of turning the other cheek.

Memories of that dinner, just under 15 months ago, were awakened this week as the government closed in on a blockbuster environmental reform deal with the Greens.

Make no mistake, several people in his inner circles told this column over recent days, Albanese has never forgotten that moment.

It’s significance is intrinsic to a shift in the power dynamic between Labor and the mining industry. This week’s environmental law reform is its embodiment.

To be clear, the government did not do a deal with the Greens — rather than the Coalition, as the mining industry wanted — out of political revenge for a snub.

Albanese pushed the Greens to accept amendments that business wanted on approval law.

‘Pretty good’ for industry 

Association of Mining and Exploration Companies chief Warren Pearce, who represents small and medium sized miners including critical minerals developers, applauded the reforms, telling 7.30 on Thursday that “it’s pretty good” for his industry.

But the fact the government landed the deal with Sarah Hanson Young — and does not fear the electoral consequences of doing so — points to an erosion in the resource industry’s ability to set the political terms.

This is no small thing.

During the Rudd and Gillard governments, the MCA’s chief executive Mitch Hook was a feared kingmaker.

His $50 million advertising campaign against their government’s doomed mining tax succeeded in part because the industry’s might was too much for a weakened and insecure Labor.

Likewise, when Constable chided the Albanese government, it was perceived to be weak, on its knees, headed for minority government or even defeat against an ascendant Peter Dutton.

The prime minister had his own reasons to bite his tongue and bide his time. Antagonising miners would have been a bad strategy for a prime minister whose victory over Scott Morrison two-and-a-half years earlier hinged on three seats in Western Australia.

A few months after the MCA speech, as parliament wound up for 2024, Labor’s first attempt to pass its environmental overhaul — again with the Greens — was scuppered by miners and WA premier Roger Cook.

Labor’s win in May — its 94-seat majority and a bereft opposition — have reset those terms.

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Farmers treated like miners

“The prime minister and the government don’t feel they have to satisfy people who have gone to war with us,” one minister told this column on Friday.

The dust is still settling on the Labor-Greens overhaul of John Howard’s quarter-century old national environmental regime, which became law on Friday.

But it’s clear that Albanese landed the nature law overhaul on his terms. And on his timeline.

The environment was the priority. Mining and pastoral interests came second.

Labor’s deal with the Greens means farmers in Queensland woke to the news on Thursday that agricultural land will for the first time be covered by federal environmental law.

They will be treated the same as miners, renewables builders and housing developers. They will need an Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) assessment and approval.

The new laws also eliminate the exemption for land clearing within 50 metres of rivers and creeks in the Great Barrier Reef catchment to halt sediment runoff that is blamed for damaging the reef.

“What it really comes down to — and it’s very similar for the changes that we’ve made to forestry as well — is that those two industries have not had to follow the same rules as every other industry,” Environment Minister Murray Watt said on Friday.

“And now they will. Which I think is only fair.”

No small feat 

If this is a bitter pill for farmers in Queensland they might ask themselves what the LNP has been up to lately.

This week it was mostly dealing with self-absorbed speculation about the future of Barnaby Joyce.

And for months prior to that, a row over its commitment to net zero: A concept that has now been dumped without any real evidence that doing so would change people’s cost of living any time soon.

As the government’s EPBC negotiations intensified on Monday, Watt told a farmers’ lobby group what was at stake.

“You need to know that if we go with the Greens, land issues will be on the table,” Watt said.

The Coalition now claims the government never wanted to do a deal with them. That is simply untrue.

There were sound reasons for Labor to go with the other “party of government”, including avoiding a stoush with industry. Watt kept the door open to the end.

But ultimately, it was the Greens who wanted the deal more. Hanson-Young above all else, who had the big job of bringing her party with her.

“I don’t think it could have been done without her,” Watt told this column on Friday.

In the end elections matter.

Which is something younger Australians — particularly those brought up on a relentless doom-feed of climate change worry — might take some solace in.

Overhauling the EPBC Act has been no small feat.

It follows years, if not decades, of campaigning by a relatively small group of environmentalists. Their efforts are evidence that showing up and persistence can succeed.

There are those who say the reforms fall short. Implementation is a massive body of work given every state needs to now come on board. Approvals may not speed up for good economically important projects.

But should it fulfil its promise, the bill’s impact on Australia’s stressed and degrading environment — the habitats we pass through, recreate in, or just know they exist — may be more tangible for the lives of those younger Australians than anything happening in the climate policy space.

The up-front costs of change are high and the pay-off, if there is one, is many decades in the future.

The EPBC reform bills, by contrast, deliver in the here and now.

Ken Henry, the former Treasury secretary and chair of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, said the parliament “has done its job and restored national leadership on environmental protection and repair”.

“Writing into law an acknowledgement that environmental protection and biodiversity conservation necessarily underpin everything else, and that they must therefore have primacy, is a profound achievement.”

Jacob Greber is political editor of ABC’s 7.30 program.