Greg Hunt
Fossil Fuels | Liberal Party | Revolving Doors
Current Position
- Honorary Melbourne Enterprise Professor by the University of Melbourne – 2023 – Present
- Chair of the Monash University Turner Institute Advisory Council, 2022 – Present
Previous Positions
- Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage from 2004 to 2007.
- Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2007.
- Minister for the Environment from 2013 to 2016.
- Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science from 2016 to 2017.
- Minister for Health and Aged Care from 2020 to 2022.
- Minister for Health from 2017 to 2020.
- Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service and Cabinet from 2019 to 2020.
- Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science from 2016 to 2017.
Mining Connections
- Greg Hunt was Environment Minister in the Abbott/ Turnbull government from 18 September 2013 until 19 July 2016. When Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister, he appointed Sid Marris straight from the Minerals Council as one of his key advisers: Senior Adviser Energy, Climate Change, Resources and Northern Australia.
- Replacing Marris as head of environment and climate policy at the Minerals Council was Patrick Gibbons who had previously been an adviser to Hunt.
- In 2015 Greg Hunt gave federal re-approval for Adani’s Carmichae coal mine.
- At the time Hunt’s office claimed that the mine would not “be a substantial cause of climate change effects” and would have “no impact on matters of national environmental significance”
- Hunt also approved the revised expansion plans for the Abbot Point coal terminal in 2015.
- The project’s proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, the plans for handling the dredged material so close to the reef and wetlands and the implied support for expanded thermal coal exports were concerns for environmentalists.
- In August 2015 Hunt introduced amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. These amendments were designed to make it much more difficult for environment and community groups to use the legal process to ensure the environment is protected and the law is upheld.
- At the time polling revealed that only 22 per cent of Australians support the Federal government’s proposed environment law amendments to strip community groups of the right to challenge mining approvals in the courts, and 77 per cent believe Australians should be able to use environment laws to protect the environment.
Acknowledgements
This entry in the #RevolvingDoors series has been produced from the Dirty Power Report authored by Michael West and Simone Marsh in collaboration with Greenpeace.
See the report below: