Editorial
An oink of pure greed

Murray Watt didn’t need to consider climate change. The law didn’t ask him to, because for three years Labor has been stalling on laws that would. In a triumph of his own party’s inaction, his first decision as environment minister has been to extend the life of Australia’s largest gas project by almost half a century.

It is a horrible little pig-nosed decision, an oink of pure greed. Watt’s approval will allow Woodside Energy’s North West Shelf project to release an extra 4.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The figure is roughly 10 times Australia’s current total yearly emissions.

In a brief statement, Watt made no mention of the catastrophic climate change to which he was wantonly adding. He said his responsibilities were to economic and social considerations and to national heritage.

“My responsibility is to consider the acceptability of the project’s impact on protected matters,” he said. “In this case, the impact of air emissions on the Murujuga rock art that forms part of the Dampier Archipelago was considered as part of the assessment process. I have ensured that adequate protection for the rock art is central to my proposed decision.”

And then: “While this process is ongoing, I will not be making further comment.”

This is a book burning in slow motion. Watt’s decision was made only hours after the United Nations indicated the site would not be listed for World Heritage protection if the government did not stop further industrial development. It is indifferent to the library of petroglyphs at Murujuga, to the destruction of their stone pages.

The approval has been fought by Mardathoonera people, by Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people. It is opposed by climate scientists. The Western Australian premier dismisses their concern as a “political frolic”. He says Labor’s job is to “strip away the background noise”.

For decades, Woodside has treated Western Australia as a fiefdom. They dictate policy. Police work for them as a private army, rounding up protesters. The state’s politics is a failure, or cronyism and avarice.

That politics sets the national debate. It has succeeded for more than a decade in denying reforms to the federal environment protection act. Even as those reforms are again being considered, they will be without a climate trigger. Labor is still in thrall to the small number of people digging big holes and selling off the country’s wealth.

Watt decided to make Western Australia the first place he visited in his new portfolio. He described the environment there as “a particular flashpoint”. He made a virtue of not meeting with the Conservation Council of Western Australia or with Woodside. He didn’t need to. Woodside had already won the argument and there was nothing they could ask for that wouldn’t be given.

This is what the Albanese government is doing with its near historic mandate: extending a gas project that will pillage Indigenous lands and add substantially to the irreversible heating of the planet. It is almost cartoonish in its depravity.

Australia will pretend the emissions from the North West Shelf are not our responsibility, because the gas will be burnt elsewhere, as if the globe were not a globe, as if we are not all linked by rising seas and what was once called humanity.

Watt is often described in political circles as a fixer. Of what, it is no longer clear.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 31, 2025 as "An oink of pure greed".

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