2022-04-29
The McGowan and Morrison governments are hard to distinguish on climate policy – with both essentially ignoring the climate crisis
By Hon Brad Pettitt, MLC, Member for South Metropolitan
Imagine you opened the paper this week to read the Morrison government had not funded any new large-scale renewable energy projects in this year’s budget. Instead, it had just approved more hugely polluting fossil fuel projects.
Imagine you read that the Morrison Government has refused to legislate a 2050 net-zero target and hadn’t even bothered with a 2030 emissions reduction target.
Given the Morrison Government’s poor record on climate change action you might not be that surprised. Afterall, Australia did rank dead last of all nations on climate performance.
But these things aren’t just true of the Morrison Government, they are also equally true of the McGowan Labor Government’s position on climate in WA.
With Woodside’s Scarborough gas project – Australia’s largest fossil fuel project in almost a decade – getting the green light, WA’s emissions will rise even more quickly than they are now.
Scarborough’s approval alone guarantees that WA will be unable to reduce its emissions in line with the IPCC’s advice. Scarborough will generate 1.6 billion tonnes of emissions, equivalent to 15 coal-fired power stations or around 5 per cent of WA’s current total emissions every single year.
Scarborough was met with strong condemnation from the environment sector and the Greens while receiving enthusiastic approval from both Morrison and the McGowan Governments.
In fact, McGowan and Morrison are hard to distinguish on climate policy.
Both have refused to legislate climate targets for 2050 and instead spout vague climate “plans” that are more accurately described as colour brochures with no credible pathway to net zero.
Neither McGowan nor Morrison have ambitious climate targets for 2030. In fact, WA doesn’t have a 2030 target whatsoever.
Both McGowan and Morrison are allocating millions in taxpayer money to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) despite its failure to be effective at scale anywhere in the world.
Both McGowan and Morrison are relying on future technologies that aren’t yet commercially viable instead of investing in tangible, cheap renewable technologies such as wind and solar that we know can reduce our emissions right now.
Both McGowan and Morrison have underwhelming – to put it politely – electric vehicle policies with no incentives to encourage Australians to transition to cleaner modes of transport.
And as we have seen with Scarborough, both McGowan and Morrison support the expansion of the fossil fuels despite every climate scientist and even the International Energy Agency (IEA) saying: no more coal and gas.
Given all of this, it’s not a surprise that WA is the only state with rising emissions. In comparison to Morrison and McGowan, other states have set ambitious legislated targets for 2030 and 2050, invested heavily in renewable energy, battery storage, EV uptake and energy efficiency, and are otherwise heeding the warnings of climate scientists.
Perhaps the only difference between the Morrison and McGowan Governments is that the ALP occasionally pretend they care about climate action in media releases or campaign brochures.
That is why the May 2022 election matters both for WA and the nation. In balance of power, the Greens will take climate action by stopping new coal and gas mines and force a new ALP Government to listen and act on the science on climate change.
It’s simple. Without the Greens, an Albanese Government will do as little as possible on climate – just as the McGowan Government has done for the past five years in WA.
Header photo: Brad and daughter at CCWA's Climate Action Now rally in Perth on 9th April. Credit: Emily Wilson Photography (@emilygetscreative)