Environment officials wary of Angus Taylor grasslands meeting, emails show
Department of the environment officials were acutely sensitive about meeting Angus Taylor over critically endangered grasslands while his family’s company was being investigated for alleged illegal land clearing in New South Wales, according to internal emails.
The information is revealed in correspondence that had previously been partially redacted from documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws in June this year.
It comes after Labor again pursued the energy and emissions reduction minister in question time on Tuesday and called on him to resign over the saga.
The correspondence shows a senior department official, Geoff Richardson, emailing colleagues on 15 March 2017, five days before he and other colleagues were to meet with Taylor and Josh Frydenberg’s office about the government’s designation of the critically endangered natural temperate grassland of the south-eastern highlands.
“I have a meeting with Monica Collins [the head of compliance] on Friday to understand the background to this becoming an issue, which I believe is compliance action/s initiated by NSW around land clearing conducted at one or more properties south of Cooma,” he writes.
“I need to understand this to know what Matt and I need to steer very clear of in any discussion with Mr Taylor.”
The department also revealed in responses to questions from a Senate committee that the meeting took place in Taylor’s office at Parliament House and that no notes were taken by officials present.
At the time of the meeting with Taylor, state and federal investigations were under way into whether the company Jam Land Pty Ltd illegally cleared land containing the grasses in the Monaro region of New South Wales.
Angus Taylor’s brother, Richard, is one of the directors of Jam Land and the minister himself holds an interest in the firm via his family investment company, Gufee.
In his email, Richardson writes to colleagues that he is seeking background ahead of the meeting as to why the grasslands listing had become an issue. He makes it clear that he believes the reason is the compliance action related to clearing.
Monica Collins, the department’s head of compliance, the unit respon
sible for investigating potential breaches of Australian environment law, was asked by Frydenberg’s office to attend the meeting with Taylor but another staff member from the unit went in her place.
The newly published information has come via questions on notice put by the Greens senator Janet Rice as part of the Senate inquiry into fauna extinctions.
The department agreed to supply the previously redacted material to the committee because “it relates to information that is now publicly known”.
Another email, sent on 22 April 2017 by the senior environment official Stephen Oxley about a month after the Taylor meeting, also reveals that there was only one incident of clearing of Monaro grasslands for agriculture being pursued – and that was the compliance case involving Jam Land.
“Since the ecological community was listed in 2000, the Department understands that this has happened only once for agriculture activities, and that is in relation to the current compliance investigation,” he wrote.
In the same email, he goes on to say: “Both NSW and Commonwealth are pursuing the current compliance case in question because the alleged destruction of high quality native grasslands has triggered both state and national law.”
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Taylor has repeatedly stated he sought the briefing because of the impact of the listing on farmers in his electorate of Hume. But Oxley’s email states that the regulatory impact on farmers had been low and no one else was being pursued for clearing the grasslands.
The newly supplied sections are from the same email in which the department gave Frydenberg’s office advice on whether the grassland protections could be watered down and whether such a change would have to be made public.
In responses to written questions from the Senate committee, the department reiterates that the compliance matter was not discussed at the 20 March 2017 meeting with Taylor “or in subsequent conversations with the former Minister for the Environment and Energy, the Hon Josh Frydenberg MP’s staff”.
A hearing last month of the Senate’s inquiry into fauna extinctions was told Taylor did not declare his business or personal interest in Jam Land at the time of the meeting with department officials in March 2017 and that one of the senior officials present did not take notes.
Asic records show Taylor’s interest in Jam Land was recorded in May 2017, after the departmental meeting. However the department told the committee it was aware of the family connection when the meeting took place.