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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.
It became known as our climate election. More than half of voters in 2022 said it was a top concern. But a year on from the federal election, how much has really changed? A 43 per cent target has been legislated, and the government promises we’ll reach net zero – but coal and gas projects appear to still be getting approved.
Today, Director of the Australia Institute’s Climate & Energy program Polly Hemming, on what a year of Labor government has delivered for the climate.

It’s Tuesday, May 23

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RUBY:

Polly, about a year ago Australia went to the polls and we had what many people at the time described as a climate election, People that voted for action on climate change. I thought to begin with, why it was that climate was such a critical issue for voters last year, just how far behind the rest of the world had fallen by the time we got up to election night 2022?

POLLY:

Yeah, it was all pretty bleak, wasn't it? And it feels surreal now how bad things were. I just sort of left with this overwhelming sense of grimness. Things were looking pretty desperate. Apparently, Australia's answer to COVID was more gas.

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“Get more gas, more often and more reliable. By resetting our East Coast gas market, unlocking additional gas to drive recovery, paving the way ultimately for a world leading Australian gas hub to support high wage jobs”

POLLY:

The government was telling us that we were meeting and beating out climate targets, but essentially we were meeting and baiting them by cheating and that was the little ambition we had.

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“Australia is achieving even more than the United States when it comes to this 20% fall in emissions…”

POLLY:

Our energy transition was among the worst in the OECD. We were the world's third largest fossil fuel exporter. Subsidizing fossil fuel expansion. We had former gas executives developing our climate policies.

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“Gas has chosen itself because as yet, there's been nothing that has been presented which meets the goals that we have, which is reliability…”

POLLY:

Then of course in the background we had catastrophic bushfires and floods and so all of that kind of created this perfect storm, excuse the pun, where people were feeling really anxious, really angry and also increasingly desperate.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“What we did was we went “What is good policy?” What makes a difference?”

POLLY:

Labour came to the election with a better climate target and some policies that sounded quite good. I won't go so far as to say that they were running on a climate platform at the election, but it was obviously less bad than the alternative.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“Today I announce Labor’s plan to create jobs, cut power bills, boost renewables and reduce emissions”

POLLY:

And we had two things happen. We had a landslide loss for the Coalition, so it wasn't necessarily a landslide win for Labour, which is a comment on many things to come, I think. And people voted for basically what was a climate super-majority and we had more Greens being voted in. We had of course the incredibly successful teal candidates being voted in. And I think the rhetoric was that Australia is back. We're back on the world stage when it comes to climate.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“We need to act on climate change…”

POLLY:

… it was very much, you know, we are- we're going to get to work, we're going to decarbonise Australia, we're going to be a renewable energy superpower, and we're going to make the most of the economic opportunities that climate action can bring. We're not going to look at it as a liability.

RUBY:

And so how does that compare to the way that Labor is talking about the climate today? Has there been a shift election night?

POLLY:

Yeah, essentially. We've gone from Bowen saying gas is not a transition fuel…

Archival tape – Chris Bowen:

“One thing about gas is I don't regard it as a transition fuel. I don't regard it as a low emissions fuel, but I do regard it as flexible”

POLLY:

…to now the Prime Minister, Minister Bowen and our Resources Minister Madeleine King, all suddenly saying gas actually is a transition fuel.

Archival tape – Chris Bowen:

“Gas has a role to play, for peaking and syncing for many years to come. It would be irresponsible to put some sort of blanket ban…”

Archival tape – Madeleine King:

“The thing about the gas industry is they're the best placed to reduce emissions. So they have had an objective of reaching net zero by 2050 for much longer than the Commonwealth Government has.”

Archival tape – Chris Bowen:

“I’m very keen to ensure we have as much gas as is necessary and possible. Of course, that means we need to have difficult conversations…”

POLLY:

And something has happened, I think, since the election, where we seem to be back where we were 12 months ago, you know, even Sky News is saying the Prime Minister is sounding like the coalition on climate, we're hearing fossil fuel talking points coming out again. The latest budget even had a future gas strategy in it. So I think sometime around the safeguard mechanism debate, the key climate policy of the government, things kind of started unraveling. It feels like the mask has kind of slipped. Labour was forced to respond to the Greens' call for no new gas and coal and it suddenly had to justify its endorsement and its support and material support to subsidies for gas and coal projects. And that's kind of when they went to the cupboard and pulled out all the old fossil fuel talking points. Suddenly, you know, Minister Bowen is saying that it would be irresponsible to stop approving new gas and coal, implying that we can't just switch them off overnight, which is to be clean. No one has ever been suggesting that new gas and coal takes about ten years to develop, and it's all for export. So it feels like we had this big debate about the safeguard mechanism, and then the Greens made a call for no new gas and coal expansion in Australia or to stop approving new gas and coal projects. And that's when Labour sort of completely dropped its facade and it went to the cabin and pulled out all the old fossil fuel lines. And now the government is pretty much free to do what it wants on fossil fuels.

RUBY:

So you're saying that the safeguard mechanism was a pivotal moment for the Labor government, as you say it was the most significant bit of emissions policy we were likely to see in this parliament and ultimately it passed with the support of the Greens. So how do you think that the form of legislation that passed has set the stage for the way that this government will deal with climate going forward, what does it mean for the rest of this term and the rest of the time the Albanese government is in power?

POLLY:

Yeah.The safeguard mechanism debate was the first time Labour really had to actually be confronted with talking about fossil fuels and saying one way or the other where it endorsed or supported new gas and coal projects. And I think actually even from before the election, there were red flags about how the Albanese government was going to approach climate. But I think ultimately, you know, people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. And ultimately people were maybe not thinking terribly strategically or objectively about it… No one in Australia has ever said Australia's climate policies are awesome except for the gas industry. And I think people just wanted to believe that Labour was actually doing something and I think that is still the case. But what we are in now has been described as the critical decade for climate action, and it is halfway through 2023, that's just over six years to 2030. So we're almost halfway through the critical decade. The science says… the International Energy Agency, the United Nations, the IPCC, countless scientists say if we have any chance to avoid catastrophic climate change, of staying anywhere within the realm of 1.5 to 2 degrees of global warming, we cannot keep digging up and burning fossil fuels.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Polly, so we’re at a point now where this Labor government has already passed their emissions policy – they altered the safeguard mechanism. So does that mean really, we won’t see much more from this term of parliament, when it comes to seriously reducing our emissions? Has the opportunity passed?

POLLY:

I mean, there's always opportunities. I'll never say, No, it's too late. But I think the safeguard mechanism debate was an opportunity to actually have an official parliamentary debate about new gas and coal. So, yes, the issue is kind of settled for this term of parliament. We've locked in complacency. If Labour wasn't going to do anything about fossil fuels before the safeguard, when there was that political leverage, they're certainly not going to do anything about it now. And what's really weird, I think, is that the safeguard mechanism was a Coalition policy, and the changes that Labour's proposing and that have been implemented actually aren't vastly different to the original safeguard. Labour, whether it's using it, whether it's climate policy, stage three tax cuts, the new biodiversity market is using Coalition policy, but it's being treated quite differently in public. I guarantee if the Coalition was still in power and I was no fan of their policies, but if they'd said, ‘Oh no, we're not going to stop approving new gas and coal, we're going to change this scheme slightly so you can increase emissions infinitely as long as you offset them’ then the media releases would have looked quite different. And I, I don't know why the bar is set so low for the current government on climate. If it's denial or relationships or desire to have a seat at the table or a combination of all of them. But there seems to be an overwhelming lack of skepticism. So Tanya Plibersek was applauded when she refused Clive Palmer's mine near the Great Barrier Reef. You know, that's a bit of a no-brainer PR-wise with a coal mine next to one of Australia's icons owned by Australia's most hated man. You know, of course you're not going to approve it. But then even these two other mines that didn't get approval, these were zombie mines that pretty much canceled themselves and the Minister was still applauded. I think there was a bit of noise about the coal mine that was just approved, the metallurgical coal mine. But to be clear, there have been red flags all along. Under this government, we have the middle arm gas processing plant in Darwin received, you know, over $1,000,000,000in federal funding in the last budget. The government is still giving fossil fuels the same subsidies that they were before. We still have 114 new gas and coal projects in development. Labour's own projections, the day that they gave their annual climate statement last year, said that fugitive emissions, those are the emissions from extracting gas, will increase through to 2030. There have been signs all along that that Labour possibly wasn't being genuine with its rhetoric around climate ambition. If you're still funding and endorsing fossil fuels. Then it really doesn't matter how much sugar you add to a cake made with rotten eggs, I suppose.

RUBY:

So where does all of this leave us then when it comes to the emissions targets? Do you have any reason to believe that Australia will reach net zero by 2050?

POLLY:

So net zero is essentially a meaningless term. It's just an accounting calculation, you know, emissions out compensated for by emissions in and out can be gamed incredibly easily. So are we going to achieve it? Yes, but that's easy. Are we going to reduce our emissions? That's another question entirely. There really are no regulations or incentives in Australia that are going to result in the scale of absolute reductions in emissions the science says that we so desperately need. What we've got at the heart of Australia's climate policies is creative accounting by government and industry and the government supplying millions and millions of carbon offsets so that fossil fuel companies can use to say that they're net zero. So yeah, we'll get there on paper, but the atmosphere will tell us whether we're going to legitimately do anything meaningful.

RUBY:

Mhm and something, something that you hear Polly from people who want more from this government on climate that what they’re doing is already an improvement on the climate policy we have up until this point. And there’s room for further adjustments further improvements down the track. What do you make about that kind of thinking about climate particularly given the point in history that we’re in at the moment?

POLLY:

So I guess domestically it's an improvement. But to be clear, it's a pretty low bar. And I'm not being negative. It's just there are some things happening, but we don't have time for incrementalism. We're done with that. You know, a few more solar panels are trivial compared with the damage that we're doing with our fossil fuel exports. So I guess if you knew with certainty that climate change was going to be respectful of geographic boundaries and international accounting protocols, then what's happening in Australia? Sure, it's an improvement, but only just. Even domestically, there's not a lot to indicate that we will get to that 43% reduction by 2030, given that we are still exporting literally billions of tonnes of CO2 with our gas and coal and spending a lot of time making sure that there are buyers of those that gas and coal for decades to come. It's kind of moot whether our domestic policies are slightly better. Unfortunately, climate change doesn't respect arbitrary geopolitical boundaries or clever accounting. So we are in Australia still going to be seeing worsening fires and floods and extreme temperatures because of those emissions we've exported. You know, it won't matter if we have more solar power or we’re exporting more renewable hydrogen because Australia, like the rest of the world, like our Pacific neighbours is going to be in chaos in the future.

RUBY:

Polly, thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

POLLY:

Thanks Ruby

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RUBY:

Also in the news…

A Sydney police officer who used a ‘leg sweep’ manoeuvre to tackle a 16 year old Indigenous boy to the ground, has been found guilty of assault. The verdict comes as New South Wales police face growing criticism over the use of force following the tasering of a 95 year old great grandmother Clare Nowland. Nowland suffers from dementia and was a resident in an aged care facility at the time of the incident.

AND

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has been revealed as an alleged victim of blackmail at the hands of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. According to a report published in The Wall Street Journal, the blackmail took place after Epstein discovered Gates had conducted an affair with a Russian bridge player. A spokesperson for Gates says the billionaire philanthropist had no financial dealings with Epstein, and that it was a mistake to quote ‘ever have met him’.

I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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