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Labor and the Greens have struck a grand bargain on fuel efficiency standards, offshore gas and the petroleum resource rent tax to pass all three bills in the Senate.
The government and Greens gagged debate in the lower house on fuel efficiency standards and then combined in the Senate to add all three bills to an hours motion requiring they be voted on Thursday.
The procedural moves outraged the Coalition, which opposes the fuel efficiency standards, and the independent MPs and senator David Pocock, who had wanted the PRRT bill strengthened to raise more revenue.
The offshore petroleum and greenhouse gas storage legislation amendment is a workers safety bill containing a schedule that would allow the resources minister to override the environment minister when it comes to setting approvals rules including First Nations consultation for offshore gas.
Under the Labor-Greens deal, the government will remove this schedule from the bill to pass the non-controversial elements but it is not abandoning its intention to legislate this reform.
In return, the Greens will help pass the petroleum resource rent tax and the fuel efficiency standards.
The Greens revealed the deal includes a commitment not to bring back the changes to the offshore gas approvals process until the third tranche of the government’s environmental law reform.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, told reporters in Canberra the minor party had effectively “killed the gas fast track”.
Bandt said he can’t see a “pathway through parliament” this term because the second tranche of environmental laws have not been introduced and tranche three on environmental approvals has been delayed “indefinitely”.
In the hours motion, senators Tammy Tyrrell and Lidia Thorpe voted with Labor and the Greens, indicating they are likely to supply the necessary votes, while cutting out Pocock and Jacqui Lambie.
Pocock told the Senate the government was “selling us out” by legislating an omnibus bill that makes “important changes off the back of the PwC scandal and puts them with a dud deal when it comes to the export of our gas”.
“They should be ashamed of themselves … We’re not collecting anything from our offshore gas.
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“Hundreds of billions of dollars of LNG gets exported and today not a cent of PRRT [has been paid].”
Earlier, Bandt rejected charges of a “dirty deal”, saying the real “dirty deal” was “the one done between Labor and the gas corporations to open up new climate-destroying gas projects against the wishes of First Nations voices”.
The shadow transport minister, Bridget McKenzie, criticised the deal, telling the Senate “we could be in Moscow – or any other communist country”.
McKenzie said the guillotine motions had ensured “nobody” – whether they support fuel efficiency standards or not – could have their say “on the biggest change to the transport sector since we got rid of the horse and cart”.
“This is what weak leaders do when they are afraid, afraid of dissent.”
In March Labor unveiled changes to its fuel efficiency standards, which are aimed at disincentivising the use of high-polluting cars and hastening the importation of cleaner vehicles, amid pressure from the auto industry.
The deal effectively cuts out the Coalition, which had made demands to speed up approvals of offshore gas projects in return for helping Labor pass PRRT tax changes, which had struggled to win crossbench support due to the fact they don’t raise extra revenue or tackle deductions.
