Katina Curtis: All-in-together attitude on environment laws hasn’t survived the details

The Kumbaya, “we’re just so happy to be in the room” attitudes about the overhaul of environmental laws were never going to survive the release of actual details.

And so it has come to pass.

Minister Murray Watt was adamant about the mixed-up seating chart for his first stakeholder consultation session after taking on the environment portfolio.

He didn’t want business and industry groups in one corner and environmental campaigners in the other.

When parts of the legislation were released to the same stakeholders last week, the rush of people legging it back to their corners was deafening.

Watt was left standing in the middle, claiming that if everyone had problems with his Bill, that must mean it struck the right balance.

And then Sussan Ley painted the Opposition into a corner all on its own.

The Opposition Leader might be single-handedly keeping Australia Post in business.

Without even having the entirety of the legislation — expected to see the full light of day on Thursday — she dashed off a letter demanding the Government split it in two.

It was, as the man most invoked in this whole debate, Graeme Samuel said, bewildering.

Labor tried that in the last term of Parliament: Tanya Plibersek chopped the grand plans up into smaller pieces because the whole was deemed too unwieldy to produce in a timely manner and pass.

The result was a deal that only did half the job — environmental protections without benefits for business — and left little to negotiate or trade off for Senate support.

Plibersek did land a deal with the Greens, even convincing them to drop demands for a climate trigger that would force projects through the whole assessment shebang.

But Anthony Albanese nixed it over fears about the reaction from WA, where the State Government’s comprehensively botched implementation of Aboriginal cultural heritage laws a year earlier had well and truly salted the earth.

Now the Coalition is running the complete opposite argument to the one it tried on a year ago.

Business and mining groups are telling them splitting the Bill is a bad idea.

It risks getting part of the reforms through with Coalition backing, then the Government turning to the Greens and their demands to end forestry and ban new fossil fuel projects for the other half.

But since when has the Coalition listened to what big business thought?

It isn’t doing it now on net zero, it didn’t do it last term on divestment powers to bust up supermarkets and airlines, and it hasn’t done for a decade on energy policy, despite the best efforts of the likes of Josh Frydenberg.

There might not be any more strains of Kumbaya echoing in the corridors of Parliament House, but Watt continues to be upbeat about landing a deal.

The balance of that deal depends on who’s willing to re-emerge from their corner.