Australia’s leading environment organisations have abruptly suspended advertising campaigns attacking the Coalition’s plan to introduce nuclear power and are instead funding ads accusing Anthony Albanese of signing “the death warrant” of an endangered species.
The shift from criticising the Coalition to Labor on the cusp of an election campaign was agreed by the bosses of green groups – including the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, the WWF Australia and the Climate Council – at what campaigners described as an emergency meeting on Saturday.
It reflects widespread anger within the environment movement about Albanese’s plan to rush through legislation this week with Coalition support to protect the salmon industry from a long-running legal challenge over its impact on the endangered Maugean skate.
One person at the meeting said the mood was “apoplectic” over what was seen as a rushed government plan to weaken national environment law. They said it followed the prime minister having intervened to shelve a commitment to create a national Environment Protection Agency in this term of parliament.
The campaign is notable in part because most environmental organisations would strongly prefer that Labor returns to government, whether in minority or majority, to a Peter Dutton-led Coalition taking power. Many of the anti-nuclear ads have also been strongly supportive of Labor’s renewable energy policies.
An Australian Conservation Foundation social media ad posted on Saturday said: “Australia’s next extinction is imminent and our PM is signing the death warrant. Not on our watch”. A Greenpeace Australia Pacific ad said: “Albanese goes all out for species extinction”.
The chief executive of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, David Ritter, said there was “visceral anger in the community” about a change to nature laws to prioritise an industry over scientific concerns about the skate, which had survived for more than 60m years. He said environmental advocacy groups agreed to a coordinated advertising approach “to ensure that the prime minister grasps the seriousness of the situation”, after direct lobbying failed.
“Like many other groups, Greenpeace has immediately refocused campaign effort to ensure the Australian public is aware of what the prime minister is proposing to do and the impact it would have – not just on the Maugean skate, but setting an incredibly bad precedent giving special treatment to a harmful and polluting industry,” he said. “In our own advertising, this issue has taken priority over gas and nuclear policy, for now.”
Ritter said campaigners believed it was not too late for Albanese to change course. “The bill should be dumped and a strong re-commitment should be made to deliver strong nature law reforms, and an independent watchdog to enforce them, within the first 12 months of government if reelected this year,” he said.
Other conservation group leaders told the government the suspension of their anti-nuclear advertising was “open-ended”. Some were reconsidering where they would dedicate resources during the campaign.
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The government plans to amend the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act to end a formal reconsideration by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, into whether an expansion of fish farming in the harbour in 2012 was properly approved. The industry, Tasmanian Labor MPs and state Liberal government have lobbied for the change.
The reconsideration was triggered by a legal request in 2023 from three environmentally focused organisations. An environment department opinion released under freedom of information laws suggested that it could lead to salmon farming having to stop in the harbour while an environmental impact statement was prepared.
Guardian Australia has learned the legislation would prevent reconsideration requests by third parties in some cases in which developments had been deemed “not a controlled action” – meaning they had not needed a full federal environmental assessment. It would apply when the development was ongoing or recurring, had been under way for at least five years before the request was made, and was subject to state or territory oversight.
A government spokesperson said on Sunday the proposed change was a “very specific amendment to address a flaw” in the EPBC Act.
“We won’t stand by and let workers lose their jobs because of a broken law. Under existing law, an industry could be shut down overnight when an environmental assessment commences. That is not acceptable to the government or to the community.
“We want to see laws which provide better environmental protections and faster decision-making. We remain committed to that. We will consult on specifics in a second term with the states, business and environment groups.”
The Maugean skate has been listed as endangered since 2004. Concern about its plight escalated last year when a government scientific committee said numbers in the wild were “extremely low”, and that fish farming in the harbour was the main cause of a substantial reduction in dissolved oxygen levels and should be scaled back or removed to save the species. It recommended the species be considered critically endangered.
A separate report by the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies last month said surveys suggested the skate population was likely to have recovered to 2014 levels after crashing last decade. It stressed the need for continued monitoring.
