Tanya Plibersek and Anthony Albanese (Image: AAP/Dean Lewins)
Tanya Plibersek and Anthony Albanese (Image: AAP/Dean Lewins)

A new biography has renewed speculation about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s surprise decision to give Tanya Plibersek the environment and water portfolios, considered to be some of Parliament’s most complex — not to mention reputationally risky for the minister heading them.

Was Albo making the most of Plibersek’s razor-sharp mind and problem-solving skills, or was it a political manoeuvre to charge his biggest leadership competition with tough, unpopular decisions during an era dominated by environmental outrage?

Journalist Margaret Simons’ new biography, Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms, delves into the campaign that led to Labor finally toppling the Coalition’s decade-long reign in 2022.

It also touched on Albanese’s supposed insecurity about left-faction darling Plibersek — a rumour that went into overdrive when she was among the few cabinet ministers who didn’t get to take their shadow portfolios into the 47th Parliament.

Simons writes that Plibersek was “fully expecting” to be made minister for education and minister for women — instead, Albanese appointed Jason Clare in the former, a promotion by anyone’s standards for the up-and-comer, while Katy Gallagher was given the women’s portfolio along with finance.

“Predictably, the media said she had been demoted. It was true,” Simons writes.

“In public, she pointed out how important the environment portfolio was to voters, and how excited she was to get to grips with it. But she was now junior to Chris Bowen, who had been given the climate change and energy portfolio.”

Plibersek’s big challenge

Simons probed Plibersek about whether Albanese had ever pulled her aside to explain the demotion. Her unusually clipped response was: “Well, you have to ask the leader that. I’m not going to talk about conversations we had.” Simons, in response, said she had. Plibersek shrugged.

It was clear she had no interest in quashing speculation as to Albanese’s reasoning for the surprise move, if indeed it was given at all, beyond acknowledging in the aftermath of the appointment that it “wasn’t what I expected”.

The environment and water portfolios she was thrust into weren’t going to be easy — and she knew it. Blue ribbon seats turning teal, Plibersek said at the time, “shows that we’ve got a lot of work to do in this area and I’m up for it, I’m up for that challenge”.

A welcome “challenge” was a euphemism, according to Labor sources who spoke to Simons, describing environment and water as “very difficult and complex portfolios” that are known in political circles to “both involve making hard decisions that will often please nobody”.

Suddenly under Plibersek’s remit were gatekeeping fossil fuel projects, fixing woeful environment laws, thwarting the extinction of our native species, tackling the Murray-Darling Basin water crisis, and doing something about our ailing Great Barrier Reef.

Parachuted into the tough environment gig, Simons writes that it was clear Plibersek “would find it hard to maintain her high popularity and her profile”.

Hard decisions bite

It didn’t take long for the first headache to appear: the dismal 2021 State of the Environment Report, something predecessor Sussan Ley held back from tabling during the dying weeks of her government, probably to avoid bad press.

Plibersek did her best to put the gutwrenching contents — including that Australia had lost more mammals than any other continent — on the shoulders of the previous Morrison ministry. Even so, the report set a difficult agenda for the months ahead.

She’s faced a slew of agonising decisions since, including Defence Housing Australia’s wish to build on critically endangered ACT grasslands, whether Burrup Indigenous rock art was more important than two giant Woodside gas export plants, and whether to allow 140 projects that could relegate koalas to history.

Bad press came to a head last month, however, when power-tripping Greens Leader Adam Bandt — whose party is lavishly enjoying a commanding number of seats in the Senate — named and shamed Plibersek personally for her quiet approval of a fossil fuel project.

It was late on a Friday — a tactic familiar to many political journalists anticipating the weekend rather than the devilish moves of the elected officials they cover — that Plibersek greenlit oil and gas titan Santos’ fracking request to open no fewer than 116 new coal seam gas wells in Queensland’s Surat Basin.

“Not only that,” Bandt tweeted incredulously, “Tanya Plibersek has given them the green light to operate until 2077 … No media release. No statement. No regard for the climate.”

Crossbenchers joined in the mudslinging. Climate 200-backed independent Monique Ryan posted a link to The Australian’s coverage, which led with a photo of Plibersek, scoffing that Santos had “received an excellent return on their investment” — namely the $83,000 they’d donated to Labor in 2021-22.

It added insult to injury for Plibersek when a gleeful Santos said the decision meant it had spent more than a billion dollars this year on drilling new wells to supply energy not to the domestic market, which is strangled by a looming shortage and surging bills, but to Korea and Malaysia. Australia wasn’t even going to see the benefit.

A long history

Despite Albanese and Plibersek assuring the public they’re on cordial terms, the cracks have long shown in their relationship. Eyebrows were raised when she was absent from Labor’s official campaign launch at Optus Stadium in Perth last year, although she attended a Labor fundraising event the next day.

Was she making a point or just exhausted? The media had a field day declaring that Plibersek had been sidelined by Albo. Not so, she said firmly. She told Simons she made more than 70 media appearances and 39 electorate visits during that time, according to her office’s own numbers.

Yet a scorned woman was a compelling narrative too good to resist. Plibersek’s pathway to the top job had seemed an inevitability after Bill Shorten’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the so-called “quiet Australians” in 2019. Like Julie Bishop across the floor, Plibersek had spent years as deputy leader, but like Bishop, that’s as far as she’d go.

In firming up a leadership bid, Plibersek attracted strong support from Shorten himself, as well as former prime minister Julia Gillard, but ultimately ruled herself out — we now know it was to support her daughter who was emerging from an abusive relationship.

Still, Plibersek told Simons, she’s “pretty confident” she would’ve won the leadership contest against Albanese — a fairly brazen broadside against him, unwittingly or not. Plibersek framed it as a retort to the naysayers that accused her of not having the numbers in the party room.

Albanese waved away her comments, saying Plibersek had been his friend for “a very long period of time” though adding firmly that it was he who was “elected unopposed after the 2019 election, and I won [the election] in 2022”.

Albanese’s motives a mystery

None of this says anything about Albanese’s motives, however, which may never become known to those outside his tightest circle. And Plibersek’s unpopular decisions about fossil fuel projects, environmental protection and so on may just reflect the difficult nature of the portfolios she’s been saddled with.

After all, times are tough for several portfolios plagued by controversy in the eight months of Albanese’s government. Bowen is copping it from nearly every angle (except the big polluters) for the safeguard mechanism. Treasurer Jim Chalmers is being accused of raiding our retirement and breaking an election promise. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has been slammed for accepting party favours from the gamblers she legislates (she disclosed them all).

One Labor MP tells Crikey any whispers about Albanese warding off a leadership challenge down the line are fairly Machiavellian. But they added it was clear that Plibersek did not want the environment portfolio she was given. Now she’s just got to make the best of it.