The ABC is reporting that Murray Watt is very close to making a deal with the Coalition to pass it’s environmental protection legislation. Jake Evans, a very good up and coming reporter, says that Watt and the Coalition’s Angie Bell are having their third meeting to nut out an agreement.

We spoke about this on Tuesday. There is another pathway in the Senate – through the Greens – so if the government is negotiating with the Coalition to pass environmental protection laws, it means THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT TO GO FURTHER THAN IT HAS TO ON THESE LAWS.

The mining industry want the Coalition to negotiate on these laws, which will set out go and no go zones for development and fossil fuel projects, because the alternative is the government negotiates with the Greens and that would mean some actual protections would be put in place.

And we can’t have that.

So basically, Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce will be on the same side as the Labor government on environmental protections. What does that say about the legislation?

(And a reminder that Tanya Plibersek had a deal with the Greens in the last parliament, where the Coalition refused to negotiate on the laws, which was scraped after the PM intervened, because Labor didn’t want a deal done that way. Because it is committed to doing the very least it can do.)