Latest news with #KenHenry
AU Financial Review
22-07-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Why Ken Henry's plan could finally fix our broken environmental system
Ken Henry has injected a refreshing economic element into the now long-overdue reform of Australia's environment laws. He has embraced, with a compelling economic imperative, the recommendations contained in the review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which was handed to then-environment minister Sussan Ley in October 2020.
ABC News
20-07-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Ken Henry wants Australia's media to do a better job
Ken Henry, a former treasury secretary, wants the media to do a better job. He says the media has to hold Australia's political system accountable for its failure to deliver a better future for younger Australians. "Report after report tells the same story," he said last week. "The environment is not being protected. Biodiversity is not being conserved. Nature is in systemic decline. "We have whole industries with business models built on the destruction of the natural world. "We have turned nature against us. Our destruction of the natural environment now poses an existential threat to everything we value. "I am angry at our failures. But we should all be angry at our collective failure to design economic structures, including environmental regulations, that underpin confidence in a better future for our children and grandchildren," he said. Dr Henry made those comments at the National Press Club on Wednesday. But in the Q&A portion of his speech, he singled out the media. He said none of today's politicians will be alive in 100 years, but younger Australians will have to live in a world that today's politicians leave for them. He said that unless the media holds the political system accountable for its obligation to deliver a better future for our children, that obligation won't be observed. "We used to talk about the critical role played by the 'Fourth Estate'," he said. "It's time that we rebuilt it." What did he mean by that? The 'Fourth Estate' refers to the news media. In Australian society, the first three estates of our democratic state are the parliament (legislature), the government (executive), and the courts (judiciary). As the so-called fourth estate, the media, is supposed to monitor the behaviour of those three estates to keep them accountable. Dr Henry's plea last week for Australia's media to remember its crucial democratic role was important to hear. But it won't be an easy task. Why is trust in the mainstream media declining? Why are people increasingly turning to the 'Fifth Estate' for their news and analysis? The Fifth Estate refers to the growing network of alternative and independent news sources, including bloggers, podcasters, and influencers. It's where a large number of journalists who used to work for legacy media outlets are now working. A significant amount of the journalistic output from the Fifth Estate is dedicated to documenting the chronic and systemic failures of our Fourth Estate legacy media to tell the truth about today's world. The phenomenon reflects something bigger and fundamentally broken about the world we're living in. A fortnight ago, the oldest living former Malaysian prime minister, Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad, who recently turned 100, shared his feelings about where he thinks we're all heading: "Something has gone wrong with the world, with human civilisation," he wrote. "For centuries we have been ridding ourselves of barbarism in human society, of injustices, of the oppression of men by men [...] "But can we say we are still civilised now? Over the last three decades especially, we have destroyed most of the ethical values that we had built up. "Now we are seeing an orgy of killing. We are seeing genocide being perpetrated before our own eyes. Worse still, the genocide is actually being promoted and defended [...] "Will we stop? No. We cannot. Because the very people who preached the rights of humanity are the ones to destroy our hard-fought civilisation. "I hide my face. I am ashamed. Civilisation is no more the norm." In his speech last week, Dr Henry lamented that we have whole industries with business models built on the destruction of the natural world. But many of the people running the world's major media companies are deeply financially invested in those destructive industries. Their media outlets (and think-tanks) have spent decades attacking the scientific community and other media to undermine global efforts on climate change. For how many decades have they been attacking the CSIRO? But for the sake of argument, let's assume that Dr Henry gets his wish and the idealised ethos of the Fourth Estate can be resurrected by enough media companies to form a critical mass. Where can a revitalised Fourth Estate seek its "agreed facts" about the world we're living in, to hold our political system to account for the next few decades? Thankfully, in 2025, Australia's independent courts are still an accepted source of facts and truth. We're very lucky to have a legal system that has avoided the corruption of legal systems in other countries. And in recent weeks, the Federal Court has published a few judgements that should help the Fourth Estate to keep its bearings. One of those judgements was Pabai vs Commonwealth of Australia, published on Tuesday. As my ABC colleagues Kirstie Wellauer and Stephanie Boltje wrote, it was the first time an Australian court had ruled on whether the Commonwealth has a legal duty of care to protect its citizens from the impacts of climate change, and whether cultural loss from climate change should be compensated. Federal Court judge Michael Wigney found the Commonwealth does not owe a duty of care to Torres Strait Islander peoples to protect them from the impacts of climate change or fund adaptation measures. He also ruled that Australia's greenhouse gas emissions targets were matters of "core government policy" that should be decided by the parliament, not the courts. He said he had "considerable sympathy" for the Torres Strait Islander peoples' case, but Australian law, as it stood, provided no real or effective avenue through which they were able to pursue their claims on the matter. "That will remain the case unless and until the law in Australia changes, either by the incremental development or expansion of the common law by appellate courts, or by the enactment of legislation," he wrote. "Until then, the only recourse that those in the position of the applicants and other Torres Strait Islanders have is recourse via the ballot box." But Justice Wigney found some other things. He found that when Australia's government set its emissions reduction targets between 2015 and 2021 — when the federal Coalition was in power — it "failed to engage with or give any real or genuine consideration to what was the best available science" when setting those targets. "The best available science was and is clear," Justice Wigney wrote. "To prevent the worst and most dangerous impacts of climate change, it was and is imperative for every country to take steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions so as to ensure that the increase in the global average temperature is held to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. "Those critical objectives were enshrined in the Paris Agreement, to which Australia is a party. "The evidence in this case indicated that the emissions reduction targets set by the Commonwealth in 2015, 2020 and 2021 were plainly not consistent with those objectives or its international obligations under the Paris Agreement," he found. At the Press Club last week, I asked Dr Henry about that finding. If the media wanted to hold Australia's political system accountable for its obligation to deliver a better future for younger Australians, what hope does it have if Australian governments don't even care about the science? "What has been missing here is a respect for the science, is a respect for the evidence, is a respect for the truth," Henry replied. A second important judgement, published earlier this month, was Wertheim vs Haddad. In that case, Federal Court judge Angus Stewart ruled that a series of lectures delivered by an Islamic preacher, Wissam Haddad, at a Sydney prayer centre in November 2023, must be removed from social media because they contained "fundamentally racist and antisemitic" material. He found the lectures contravened the Racial Discrimination Act. "They make perverse generalisations against Jewish people as a group," he wrote. "Jewish people in Australia in November 2023 and thereafter would experience them to be harassing and intimidating. "That is all the more so because they were made at the time of heightened vulnerability and fragility experienced by Jews in Australia, but they would also have been harassing and intimidating had they been made prior to 7 October, 2023. "That is because of their profound offensiveness and the long history of persecution of Jews associated with the use of such rhetoric. Those effects on Jews in Australia would be profound and serious," he wrote. In his summary of the reasons for judgement, Justice Stewart also had this to say: "The Court has found that the impugned passages in the interview and the sermon say critical and disparaging things about the actions of Israel and in particular the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza and about Zionists, but that the ordinary, reasonable listener would not understand those things to be about Jewish people in general. "That person would understand that not all Jews are Zionists and that disparagement of Zionism constitutes disparagement of a philosophy or ideology and not a race or ethnic group. "Also, political criticism of Israel, however inflammatory or adversarial, is not by its nature criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity. "The conclusion that it is not antisemitic to criticise Israel is the corollary of the conclusion that to blame Jews for the actions of Israel is antisemitic; the one flows from the other." It was an important passage. It should help Australia's media to think more clearly about one of the most profound conflicts of the 21st century, and to hold Australia's political system to account for its participation in, response to, handling of, and debate about the conflict. Both rulings from the Federal Court have given the mainstream media a solid foundation to work with, for a revitalised Fourth Estate.
The Guardian
18-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Ken Henry is right to be a bit worked up – he has a solid reform plan ready to go for an emboldened Labor
Ken Henry, the former Treasury boss, slipped up during his address to the National Press Club this week. Speaking in his capacity as chair of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, Henry was asked about his landmark review of the nation's tax system, handed to the Rudd government back in 2010. Its official title was Australia's Future Tax System Review. Famously, Labor sat on the report and most of its 140 recommendations for bringing the taxation system into the 21st century, with a 40% mining super profits tax the only major element taken up by the government. It sparked a huge lobbying backlash and was quickly consumed by Labor's bitter civil war. But, with tax reform back on the agenda ahead of next month's productivity roundtable, the more than 1,070-page report has returned to the headlines. 'Every recommendation of the Henry review remains valid,' the reform campaigner said, giving a thumbs up to the crowded club, before catching himself. 'Actually, that's the first time I've ever called it the Henry review. You must have got me excited.' Henry clarified some of the ideas could benefit from 'sharpening up' but said the suite of measures he recommended then was broadly ready to go for any government prepared to match his excitement for making the system better. Henry was right to be a bit worked up. He has a lot of the answers to the biggest challenges facing the emboldened Labor government this term. Since he handed his tax report to then treasurer, Wayne Swan, Henry faced criticism in the banking royal commission. He was forced to quit as chairman of National Australia Bank after the commission's report said he and the then chief executive had not learned the lessons from past failures at the bank, including $100m in fees charged to customers without any service being provided. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Years later, Henry is fed up with the delay on overhauling Australia's broken environmental laws. Known for his advocacy for threatened species – especially the northern hairy-nosed wombat – he used his speech to endorse Graeme Samuel's review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. At stake is the foundation of all life on earth, Henry warned, pointing to threats to food systems, clean air and water, and vulnerable animal and plant species. 'We have turned nature against us,' Henry said. 'Our destruction of the natural environment now poses an existential threat to everything we value.' He said Labor should consider the inclusion of a climate trigger in its looming redesign of the nature positive package, requiring approvals for major projects to at least consider any effect on global warming. He suggested Labor should make the case for a new carbon tax, exasperated that the policy had ever been ditched by Tony Abbott's Coalition and describing it as 'the world's best carbon policy'. Less helpful to the government was Henry's blunt words about the toxic algal bloom now wreaking havoc with the waters off South Australia, an ecological disaster being fuelled by ocean warming. For Henry, the massive destruction of marine life washing up on Adelaide's beaches does not represent an early signal of things to come. He said it was a 'late warning' on the threat to oceans from the actions of humans on land. Federal Labor is under increasing pressure to act, amid concerns beaches will have to be closed over summer and permanent damage wrought to sea life. Some kind of federal intervention is looking likely in the next few days, potentially from the top levels of the government. Henry cast changes to the EPBC Act as critical to boosting productivity. The creation of a federal environmental protection agency was delayed before the election over fears of a backlash in resource-rich Western Australia, with Albanese moving to scuttle a deal with the Greens and push the issue into the new term. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion The calibre of the audience for the speech was a strong indication of how important the reforms will be. Among those served Lancashire hotpot was the former Reserve Bank deputy governor, Guy Debelle, now a board member of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. A few seats away was David Parker, the chair of the Clean Energy Regulator, and a senior member of environment minister Murray Watt's staff. A table of parliamentarians nearby included the independent David Pocock, the Greens' Sarah Hanson-Young, and Labor MPs Alicia Payne and Karen Grogan, the chair of the Senate environment committee. Henry will have a seat at the table at Jim Chalmers' cabinet room summit in August, as well as at an unofficial preview to the talks set to be hosted by the Wentworth MP, Allegra Spender, next week. That meeting follows the independent's work on tax reform in the last parliament. Henry noted Australian workers have forfeited as much as $500,000 in lost earnings in the past quarter of a century because of policy paralysis and shoddy productivity. He put road user levies on electric vehicles and moves to scale back the cost of franking credits to shareholders as ideas to help fund a cut to the corporate tax rate. It's not yet clear just how far Labor is prepared to go on fixing the outdated environmental laws or changing the tax system. The answer could lie somewhere between the politically cautious Albanese and the more ambitious Chalmers. Treasurers and prime ministers can have different objectives, but an effective pairing is a prerequisite for lasting change. Albanese and Watt look eager to involve business in the redesign of the environmental plan, making sure to have broad buy-in for the changes and force the opposition to the fringes. That approach could guide future work as Albanese seeks to marginalise Sussan Ley and the Coalition to deliver at last the Labor government he has spent decades imagining. On Friday, speaking from the G20 finance ministers meeting in South Africa, Chalmers endorsed Henry's message and said he viewed proper environmental law reform as part of the solution to Australia's productivity challenge. It is good the government, MPs across the parliament, the bureaucracy and decision-makers in the community are prepared to listen to informed voices like Henry. Even if he is is reluctant to use his own name in the branding, he has a solid reform plan ready to go for Albanese, just in the period where his legacy will made or broken. Tom McIlroy is Guardian Australia's chief political correspondent
The Guardian
18-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Green groups fear business sector will dominate debate at Chalmers' roundtable at environment's expense
Environmentalists fear they are being shut out of the economic debate after peak nature groups were overlooked for invites to Jim Chalmers' reform roundtable. The current list of 24 invitees to next month's summit features only one representative from the environment movement: former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, in his capacity as chair of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation. In contrast, Australia's four peak business groups – the Business Council of Australia, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Australian Industry Group and Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia – will each be represented as Chalmers attempts to build a broad consensus on economic reforms to lift living standards. An invite has also been extended to Ben Wyatt, the former Western Australian treasurer who now sits on the boards of gas giant Woodside and miner Rio Tinto. Basha Stasak, a nature program manager at the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), said the views of green groups were critical to the debate given the link between environmental protection and economic prosperity. 'Over quite a long time now, we've seen nature as something that we can exploit and extract from, and [have] not considered the cumulative impacts of that, and not considered the importance of protecting nature to maintain a prosperous economy,' Stasak said. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'We will not have that perspective in this [roundtable] debate. We will not have a strong perspective about why protecting nature is so essential for our economic prosperity.' Henry this week drew a direct link between nature and the economy, casting a long-awaited fix to federal environment protection laws as the 'most important' reform the Albanese government could pursue to lift stagnant productivity growth. Stasak said there would be a 'lot of pressure' on Henry and independent MP Allegra Spender, another nature advocate invited, to use their presence at the forum to speak up for environmentalists. Guardian Australia understands Henry secured an invitation to the summit because of his expertise in tax reform, as well as his environmental advocacy. On Friday, Chalmers announced another 13 invitees to the three-day event in Canberra, including Henry, Spender and Wyatt. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion The Commonwealth Bank of Australia chief executive, Matt Comyn, the NSW treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, the Tech Council of Australia boss, Scott Farquhar, the ACCC chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, and the respective heads of the departments of prime minister and cabinet and Treasury, Steven Kennedy and Jenny Wilkinson, were also among the latest batch of invitees. More invitations will be issued as the summit's agenda is finalised, Chalmers said, while noting that 'we can't invite representatives from every industry or organisation'. In a statement to Guardian Australia, Watt did not directly address the green groups' omission from the roundtable but said the forum was a 'fantastic chance to achieve important reform' – including to the environmental approvals process. Watt said he spoke with the ACF, WWF-Australia and Greenpeace as recently as Friday afternoon as part of his planned rewrite of federal nature laws. 'I look forward to more productive discussions in the future as we prepare to pass this important legislation,' he said. The Greens assistant climate and energy spokesperson, Steph Hodgins-May, said the decision to invite a Woodside board member – Wyatt – showed the depths of 'Labor's toxic ties to the gas industry'. Wyatt was appointed to the Woodside board less than six months after quitting WA parliament in March 2021. In May, the gas giant was granted provisional approval to operate its North West shelf gas processing plant until 2070, subject to strict conditions. The federal government is still awaiting Woodside's response to the draft decision, which was originally due 10 days after the 28 May ruling. Guardian Australia sought an explanation from the offices of Chalmers and Watt for Wyatt's invitation but did not receive a response. The roundtable will be held on 19-21 August.
Sky News AU
17-07-2025
- Business
- Sky News AU
‘Spending addiction': Fears Labor government will reintroduce carbon tax
Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses the possibility of Labor reintroducing the carbon tax following former treasury secretary Ken Henry labelling it as the 'world's best' carbon policy. 'The Albanese government's so-called productivity summit is shaping up as a tax summit, and the one tax that seems to be gathering support – you guessed it – is the return of some sort of a carbon tax, Ms Credlin said. 'Now this is a government that's addicted to spending and addicted to union power; its union addiction means it can't address labour productivity, and its spending addiction means that it needs more and more revenue. 'It won't save the planet because any further cuts in emissions that we might secure here will be more than lost amidst the massive emissions increases coming from China and India as they strive to raise their people's standard of living.'
