The New South Wales government urged the prime minister’s department to remove Santos’ Narrabri gas project from a list of developments it wanted to rush through the approval process, warning it would “undermine public trust”, documents released under freedom of information show.
Last year, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced the government would fast-track approvals for 15 projects to help drive economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.
One of those was the controversial Narrabri gas project, which at that stage had not been approved by the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC), but which Morrison wanted for the so-called “gas-led recovery”.