ESTIMATES: Earlier today, I had a whole 11 mins to interrogate the Environment Dept on Adani, managing conflicts of interest, New Acland coal mine and the Browse Basin gas pipeline, and the findings were revelatory; a thread:
The Auditor General noted that the Enviro Dept didn't have a policy to deal with conflicts of interests, so the Dept created one. BUT the Dept isn’t looking back in time to see if previous enviro approvals were affected by conflicts, which seems... like a massive oversight imho
Despite Auditor General concerns, the Enviro Dept did NOT develop special additional measures to address conflicts where staff return from secondments - or even ‘placements’ with the Minerals Council writing their policy on watering down enviro laws 😳
The Enviro Dept investigated New Acland coal for mining outside approved mining footprints, but somehow concluded it “was not inconsistent” with the company’s approvals. Never mind the climate impacts, which aren’t considered by our federal enviro laws 😳
On Adani, the Enviro Dept sought external legal advice about arguing in Court that the water impacts of the pipeline for water for Adani’s proposed coal mine should not be considered. Yes, an actual lawyer advised them that a water pipeline *for coal* has nil to do with coal..
And on the Browse Basin gas pipeline, no details about how the legally relevant environmental history of the proponent will be considered, despite Gorgon’s history of conditions breaches. Nothing to see here folks... and that was my 11 minutes, yay democracy
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