TRANSCRIPT – ABC Afternoon Briefing with Patricia Karvelas

Angie Bell MP

Shadow Minister for the Environment

Shadow Minister for Youth

Federal Member for Moncrieff

TRANSCRIPT

ABC Afternoon Briefing with Patricia Karvelas

27 October 2025

Subjects: The Labor government’s unbalanced EPBC reforms; Graeme Samuel’s comments; Being a strong opposition that keeps the Government to account.

E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………………

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

Let’s return to the government’s environment law reform set to be introduced into the parliament later this week. Now, the coalition today asked the government to split its legislation in half, prioritising the project approvals and dealing with environmental protections later. I spoke to the Shadow Environment Minister, Angie Bell, who only had a very short period of time because bells keep going off, before Shadow Cabinet a short time ago. Angie Bell, welcome to the program.

ANGIE BELL:

Great to be with you, PK.

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

If you don’t do a deal with Labor to get these environment laws through, they’re going to have to deal with the Greens. Now, presumably you agree that that’s less business-friendly. Aren’t you obligated to do this?

ANGIE BELL:

Well, what we’re obligated to do is look at everything that is on the table. We’ve only just received another lot of extracts for the second part of Murray Watt’s reforms. And so currently we’re going through those extra details. The first tranche of extracts that we received have a lot of moving parts, PK. There’s a lot of uncertainty, particularly around the meaning of net gain, of unacceptable impacts. But also, there’s not much in there, really, about protecting the environment in detail. And so, we have to work out how it all fits together with the EPBC Act, and we want to get a balanced outcome. And that means we want protections for the environment. But we want assurances for business.

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

Yeah, ok.

But you equally have asked for it to be split, and you can’t do both if you’re splitting it. The BCA, the Business Council of Australia doesn’t want it to be split. Are you going to dump that demand?

ANGIE BELL:

Well, Labor’s already dumped that demand, so they’ve already said no to that, PK. Very quickly.

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

So you must have known that would be the case. So why did you ask?

ANGIE BELL:

Well, very quickly, they said no- we want to be constructive in this process. I’ve met with the Minister’s office, I’ve met with the department now five times and we’ll continue that consultation as we go through this process. We want to make sure that the Bill is the best that it can be because these reforms are too important to get too wrong.

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

Graham Samuel came on this program on Friday and he was pretty scathing of his assessment of how you’ve all managed this. Why haven’t you followed up, your office hasn’t followed up, a briefing with him?

ANGIE BELL:

Well, we’re working through all of this. There’s a lot of work and a lot of balls in the air with this particular legislation.

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

He hasn’t been snubbed?

ANGIE BELL:

No, of course he hasn’t been snubbed. No, that’s absolutely not the case at all.

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

Have you called him since he’s made these comments?

ANGIE BELL:

To be honest, PK, I haven’t had time. I’ve been running this marathon since last week, since this draft legislation hit. I was up in the middle of the Pilbara when this hit and I had to get flights back to, you know, Perth and Sydney. I’m not giving excuses, but what I’m saying is there is a lot to go over. We’re still going through our processes with stakeholders and with our party room. And so, I think it definitely hasn’t been a snub. But what I will say is that the whole premise of the Samuel review was not about having an EPA. It was about having a commissioner. And so, there are lots of different moving parts from the Samuel review that have been included, haven’t been included, have been changed.

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

You would agree that under the last parliament, this tag of being the No-alition and being sort of blockers was problematic. Do you agree that you need to shift that image?

ANGIE BELL:

Well, look, I think in the last parliament, we agreed to about 80 per cent of the legislation. I was just in the House now talking to social services legislation that we agree to. So, you know, we have to have the fight where we don’t agree. And perhaps that seems to the Australian public that we’re disagreeing on everything, but we’re disagreeing on that, let’s say, 20 per cent that it was in the last term, of legislation that we don’t agree with. We’re in Canberra to be a strong Coalition. My electorate has sent me here to be a Liberal National Party member that is strongly keeping the government to account, and that’s what I’m doing.

PATRICIA KARVELAS:

There’s been lots of divisions. We’ve been running around. We’ve been able to speak to you. Angie Bell, thank you.

ANGIE BELL:

Thanks for having me, PK.

ENDS.