Climate Politics in Australia

The major party duopoly is entrenching Australia as a climate action laggard. To change that would require the Greens and climate conscious independents in the Senate to convince Labor.

By Chris Johansen, Green Issue Co-editor

The Australian continent has long since been immortalized as a “land of droughts and flooding rains”, well before there was any realization that the global climate was changing due to human activity. But recent trends in global climate change have revealed that those droughts and flooding rains have been getting more intense and more frequent, to the point of affecting “the cost of living”, the major political issue of the day. However, the major political parties, Labor and the Coalition, did their best to downplay climate change as a factor in the 2025 Federal election.

Let’s start with the obvious analysis first, the politics of the Liberal-National Coalition. In recent years they have abandoned any previous lip service to the contention of human induced climate change, and reverted to Tony Abbott-style climate denial. The primary indications of this are as follows:

• In their campaigning they did not mention “climate change”, and when asked about it by an interviewer or debate moderator tried to dismiss it as an election factor.
• Indeed, in the Leaders’ Debate on 16th April the Opposition Leader claimed he was not sufficiently expert enough to know whether climate change is happening or not. He said this is up to the expert scientists; actually, they have been providing unambiguous data on the changing climate to politicians and the public for decades.
• Some Coalition supporters prefer to characterize the now apparent increasing intensity and frequency of storms, floods, fires, etc. as natural deviations from the long-term norm (records are meant to be broken!), rather than as increasing trends.
• Among Coalition supporters the term “alarmists” is increasingly used to describe those advocating meaningful climate action.
• The Coalition’s energy policy is discussed devoid of any relation to climate change. Energy costs are mentioned without any reference to climate effects, and certainly without any mention of the now-mounting costs of climate inaction.
• This energy policy was designed to extend the life of fossil fuels, which was the purpose of the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy. It would take 1-2 decades to construct nuclear power plants, which would be much more costly than renewable energy options and only end up supplying a fraction of Australia’s future energy needs. This would allow for continued operation of coal-fired power and expansion of gas fired power.
• The Coalition opposes further expansion of renewable energy, exaggerating it’s cost and, of all things, claiming it’s damage to the environment.
• The Coalition supports massive onshore and offshore gas exploration, for both domestic use and export (i.e. “drill baby drill!”), patently oblivious to the climate damage that this would do.
• They want to reduce the transport fuel excise tax and have no intention of tightening vehicle emissions standards. Transport is a major contributor to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
• They proposed no climate adaptation plans as that would require admission that climate change is happening.
• They oppose the hosting of the 2026 global climate conference, COP31, in Australia, even though in recent years such conferences have been infiltrated by the fossil fuel industry with the purpose of sabotaging effective climate action.
• With strong campaign donations support from the fossil fuel industry, and vocal backing by the conservative media and ‘think tanks” (who are also supported by the fossil fuel industry), and also revolving door arrangements between politics and the fossil fuel industry, it is clear that the Coalition is captive to the fossil fuel industry.
• The Coalition argues that, as other big greenhouse gas polluting countries, like USA, China, Russia, and developing economies like India and Indonesia, are claimed to have few plans for reducing fossil fuel burning, then why should Australia bother. A fair point if you don’t believe in climate change, but if you do the obvious way forward would be to set an example in greenhouse gas reduction in an attempt to convince bigger polluters to do likewise. 
• The Coalition further argues that as Australia only contributes about 1% of global emissions (i.e. Scope 1 emissions) any reductions we make would have an insignificant effect on global emissions. True, so do we give up or try to convince others around the world to reduce emissions? We could only do so by setting a credible emissions reduction standard.
• But, more fundamentally, the conservative philosophy of the Coalition opposes any type of radical societal change (“Let’s get Australia back on track”), like that to a new energy system, based on the claimed “radical” threat of a changing climate.

I could further elaborate on the evidence that the current Coalition has abandoned any consideration of climate change that they once may have had (e.g. in the Turnbull Government) but the above is enough to characterize Australia’s main opposition as embedded in climate denial. Will the recent thumping in the May 3rd election cause them to think again on the above? That should be possible as the South Australian Liberals have for long been overtly supportive of expanding renewable energy.

But what about the Labor Party, which would now seem to have an open field in the field of climate action, considering that a large proportion of the population want it enhanced? Well, er … no. Labor’s prime objection in its first term was to get re-elected, the main strategy seeming to be nudging up as close to the Coalition as possible to secure the more conservative undecided and swing voters. This strategy seems to have worked beyond expectations and surely they don't have to worry about "nudging" for the next three years at least.

Labor’s existing stand on climate policy can be categorized as follows:

The good:

• Support of large scale solar and wind development and household solar.
• Support of development and deployment of large scale and household batteries for electricity storage.
• An 82% renewable energy target by 2035.
• Support of innovation and investment in green hydrogen and ammonia development.
• Support of global climate action through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The bad:

• A 43% emissions target reduction by 2035, which really needs to be much higher to reach a net zero target by 2050. A comprehensive step-wise plan is needed for phasing out of fossil fuels.
• Although the Coalition’s “Safeguard Mechanism” has been strengthened, to ensure something other than safeguarding ongoing pollution, it remains too weak to ensure the required rate of decline in greenhouse gas emissions. Allowance of the use of offsets remains its Achilles' heal as these are largely of dubious value themselves and discourage efforts for effective emissions reductions. It is generally recognized that carbon taxes are the only effective way of reducing emissions, as demonstrated in the 2010-13 Labor Government with the Greens.
• Even though yet to be done universally, failure to ensure accurate measurement of Australia’s methane emissions calculated using the global warming potential for 20 years (about 85) rather than that for 100 years (25).
• Failure to legislate a revised EPBC law which would incorporate climate consequences in environmental approvals.
• As part of EPBC, failure to legislate protection, and thus continued and increased carbon sequestration of old growth forests and existing natural vegetation generally (e.g. Savanah lands).
• Failure to make contingency plans for likely oncoming climate disasters, including upgrading of building standards.
• Failure to adequately tackle forms of greenhouse emissions other than from energy production, like from agriculture, manufacturing industry, transport, waste, etc.

And the ugly:

• Ongoing approval of coal and gas exploration and new mining, for domestic use or export.
• Use of the “drug dealers’ excuse” – if we don’t supply them someone else will – justifying the endless ongoing export of coal and LNG, effectively raising Australia’s total greenhouse gas contribution from about 1% domestically to about 5% globally.
• As for the Coalition, being captives of the fossil fuel industries.

So where does this leave Australia for its prospects of addressing climate change? Out in the cold (or more correctly “heat”) if policy remains as described above. A positive sign was the election of independents wanting climate action in the 2022 election (e.g. the Teals). This occurred in originally conservative seats, indicating an underlying groundswell of public support for climate action, irrespective of political philosophy. In the recent election, most of these Teals. and possibly a few more, will be returned to advocate for climate action in the Lower House, and hopefully compensate there for the Greens who have lost their lower House seats.

In the Senate, the Greens will hold the balance of power, along with several independent senators supportive of climate action (e.g. David Pocock, Lydia Thorpe), and will be able to negotiate with Labor for more effective climate action. When in a balance of power situation in the Lower House with Labor during 2010-13 they shepherded through a carbon price and agencies that have remained effective to this day in promoting conversion to renewable energy, such as the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Climate Change Authority.

The Greens current suite of climate policies are summarized in “Powering past Coal and Gas”, the main features of which are:

• Target net zero by 2035 with a credible stepwise plan to get there.
• Ending of subsidies and handouts to coal, oil and gas corporations.
• No new fossil fuel exploration or expansion.
• An orderly phase out of fossils fuels for home use and export.
• Expand publicly-owned renewable energy and upgrade transmission infrastructure.
• Provide subsidies, grants and low-interest loans to help households and small businesses move to renewable electricity.
• Promotion of electric vehicles to minimize transport emissions.
• Maximize carbon sequestration through policies like ending native forest logging.
• Climate adaptation planning – climate change induced damage is clearly underway so what do we do about it?

These would be the bargaining chips that the Greens would use to shepherd through Labor's legislative agenda. In this way there would be hope of Australia moving beyond its present status as a global climate action laggard.

Header photo credit: https://cff2.earth.com/uploads/2016/09/26141929/global-warming-climate-change-tree_1big_stock2.jpg

_{[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]}