It is entirely reasonable for each Party and each candidate at the coming election to make their climate policies sound as desirable as possible. The question is, what claims have substance and what is empty spin?

With each candidate offering a sales pitch, everyday Australians can be forgiven for being confused about whether or not Labor’s climate policies offer a better alternative to those of the Coalition, and what Greens and independents are really offering. It is most important to get this clear.

In this article, we will try to dispassionately offer some clarity on climate policies being offered. ARRCC is nonpartisan, and attempts to offer an unbiased evaluation of what is being offered by various parties and candidates in relation to what is required to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming.

Photo: Lismore street in March 2022. Credit: Harry Creamer.

For the reader who prefers to take a somewhat detailed look themselves at the current climate policies of the various candidates, see here.

We appreciate the advocacy by some comparatively more pro-climate action Liberal and Labor MPs within their parties, however their record shows that they ultimately vote along party lines. Thus, our descriptions below relate to their parties as a whole.

There are other areas of policy that matter to people, such as health, aged care, housing affordability, and on these we defer to the assessment of others. Our focus is on climate change.

However, it’s difficult to imagine anything as important as preventing damage to our life-sustaining climate. Australia is a continent that is particularly vulnerable to climate impacts, and we have tragically seen that in our recent history. Our people have suffered through the unprecedented fire season of 2019-2020, the hottest summer (just passed) ever experienced in WA and the most severe floods since records began in the February of 2022.

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report offers the most comprehensive and compelling case ever for robust action to be taken in this decade, starting now.

What criteria guide people of faith?

As people of faith, we want to see the return of the climate to balance. This requires humanity to get well ahead of ‘net zero by 2050’ and use whatever means available to cut pollution now.

The world needs Australia to cut emissions by at least 50% by 2030, preferably much more and sooner. Even at 1.1°C warming, we see more frequent extreme weather events, fires, coral bleaching and sea level rise and there’s a time lag between greenhouse gas pollution today and its warming effect years later. Thus, the earth is already at dangerous levels of warming.

Australia should act compassionately and with justice, given our disproportionate contribution to creating the climate crisis through our fossil fuel exports and high consumption lifestyles. Our nation should re-start substantial contributions to the UN Green Climate Fund, to assist vulnerable, low-income countries to cope with the impacts of climate change. This should be additional to the Aid budget.

Our over-dependence on the polluting fossil fuels of the past must be replaced as quickly as possible by an increased use of the clean, renewable energy of a more sustainable future. An added benefit is that renewable energy and low-carbon industries create many more jobs than fossil fuel industries. According to the Climate of the Nation 2018 Report, aside from the 48% of Australians who don’t know, most Australians think that the coal industry accounts for almost 9% of the workforce when in fact it makes up just 0.35%. Certain vested interests have colluded with allied media to leave this false impression.

That said, ARRCC advocates for communities currently dependent on coal and gas industries to be supported with public funding to shift their local economies in an orderly way to more low carbon and renewable energy industries. This is preferable to leaving them to an uncertain fate as the world moves away from coal and gas.

By upgrading our public and private investment in renewables, Australians can enjoy not only cheaper electricity, but also:

• Long-term, fewer extreme weather-fuelled disasters and sea level rise
• Greater support for Aboriginal rights to protect Country and cultural heritage
• Greater long-term certainty for communities currently dependent on coal and gas as the world shifts away from fossil fuels
• Better stewardship of our environment for the benefit of future generations
• Fewer threats to water security
• Fewer threats to agriculture and food security
• Australia taking more of a fair share of its international responsibility to protect the climate
• Better health outcomes, eg, lower incidence of respiratory diseases and deaths from heat stress, improved food security.

There should be no more deforestation and the associated loss of habitats and biodiversity. Mature forests, mangroves and other natural ecosystems are the planet's most effective way of sequestering carbon. They should be protected and restored.

To make all this possible, we need laws to limit the influence of coal and gas companies on our politics. That way, government decision-making can return to serving the common good. Australian democracy needs strengthening through legislated caps on political donations, accountability and transparency about donations, shutting the revolving door between politicians and lobbyists, honesty in election campaigns, and an effective anti-corruption commission.

HOW DO THE VARIOUS PARTIES & CANDIDATES MEASURE UP?

Let’s start with a bird’s-eye view of where ten years of ‘climate wars’ and Coalition governments have landed us.

Australia is currently regarded as an international climate laggard. In the analysis of Carbon Tracker, our nation’s climate policies are ranked as ‘highly insufficient’. The United Nations ranked 193 countries on their progress towards goals relating to ‘climate action’ and the adoption of ‘affordable and clean energy’, putting Australia exactly last. The Global Climate and Health Alliance assessed Australia’s policies as being aligned with global heating of 4°C (illustrated below).

The question is, would Labor be better? Has the Coalition improved its policies, now that it is heading in to the 2022 election? After all, their ads spruik renewable energy and a proud record of reducing emissions. And would the Greens and Independents be better than either of the major parties?

Note that ‘independents’ below refers only to ‘Voices Of’ or Climate 200-backed candidates.

Ambition on reducing emissions 

Climate finance via UN Green Climate Fund 

For perspective, Oxfam and other civil society organisations recently recommended that, over time, Australia should scale up climate finance to our fair share of $12 billion annually by 2030. 

Ambition on clean, renewable energy 

Transition away from fossil fuels to renewables 

Integrity in politics 

A key reason for the delay in national climate action has been the unfair influence of fossil fuel interests on Australian politics, something which has been increasing over the last few decades. The Australian Democracy Network has done the research on the mechanisms used. They call it ‘State Capture’.

‘State Capture’ is achieved through large, inadequately disclosed donations, through employing large numbers of experienced lobbyists, close collegial relationships between industry representatives and politicians, public influence campaigns and the famous revolving door between boardrooms and parliamentary offices.

Large donations are regularly made to the Coalition in particular, but also to Labor, from gas and coal interests. From recently released Australian Electoral Commission data, fossil fuel companies gave the Coalition $731,534 and Labor $598,220, with just over half of this from the gas industry. Another $1 million flowed to the Coalition from the Cormack Foundation which generates much of its money from shares in fossil fuel companies.

ARRCC is part of the Australian Democracy Network which is advocating for legislation to free our democracy from these vested interests (and others) so that government decisions can be made for the common good. 

SIFTING TRUTH FROM SPIN

Another source of confusion is government advertising, seen on billboards across the country. Australia has weak laws to prevent misleading political conduct and advertising, another area around which the Australian Democracy Network is advocating for legislation. Note that the ads below are paid for by taxpayer dollars.

We have not been able to find equivalent public advertising billboards for federal Labor’s policies. At any rate, Labor has not been in power for ten years so cannot point to its track record in the same way.

Everyday Australians are presented with ads like these below.

Government ad on investing in clean energy

A fair-minded look at the Coalition’s policies suggests that the Government is trying to look better than they actually are. They have stepped back from belittling renewables in the last couple of years but are still not especially committed to investing in them.

It is true that both major parties now believe that we can increase the share of renewables by a further 50% by 2030. The difference between is that the Coalition will largely depend on the market and the policies of the states and territories, whereas the ALP would be more proactive.

The Coalition has instead committed to investing in a ‘gas-led recovery’. For example, despite ever-lower renewable energy prices, advances in efficiency, investor preference and popular demand, the federal government plans to invest $600 million in a gas-fired power station in the Hunter Valley.

When Origin decided to close the coal-fired Eraring power station earlier than planned, the federal Minister for Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, described the decision as ‘bitterly disappointing’.

The Government’s Technology Investment Roadmap also supports public support for ‘electricity storage, low emissions steel and aluminium production, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and soil carbon sequestration’. Some of this is commendable, but CCS is problematic. Despite billions in investment over decades both here and overseas, it tends to be very expensive and underperform in terms of sequestering the large amounts of CO2 required to combat global warming.

It is hoped that CCS could mitigate emissions from gas extraction and use. The alternative meme below is closer to the truth that the Coalition supports a ‘gas-led recovery’.

Per kind courtesy of CommsDeclare, an organisation of marketing professionals concerned about climate change.

Government ad on ‘clean hydrogen’ 

The Roadmap also gives strong support for developing ‘clean hydrogen’, however Minister Taylor has himself said publicly that ‘modelling showed green hydrogen was unlikely to be an economically viable fuel source for energy generation for at least a decade.’ (Source: The Age, 1-2-2022) 

Hydrogen as a fuel itself has zero carbon emissions but hydrogen exports to Japan in January were created using brown coal. The fact is that hydrogen created using fossil fuels (‘blue hydrogen’) is currently very much cheaper than ‘green hydrogen’.

While hydrogen is widely touted as a fuel of the future with zero carbon emissions, it requires intensive energy input.  Professor of environmental engineering at Stanford University, Mark Jacobson, co-authored a study which found that when the full production process is taken into account, the ‘greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen is more than 20 percent greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat and some 60 percent greater than burning diesel oil for heat.’

Professor Jacobson said, ‘Blue hydrogen is basically a smokescreen for more air pollution, mining [and] fossil fuel use with hardly any carbon dioxide benefits.’

Government ad on emissions reduction

Polly Hemming is a climate advisor at the independent think tank, The Australia Institute. Ms Hemming says that there’s really only one sector where emissions have plummeted: land use, technically called Land Use, Land Use Changes and Forestry, or LULUCF.

Australia measures its emissions against the baseline year of 2005. Back in 2005, changes to Queensland’s land clearing laws meant rampant land clearing stopped, which resulted in a massive drop in emissions. The other reason there was a drop in land use sector emissions was the drought in the 2000s.

This was confirmed on ABC’s RN Breakfast by Coalition Senator Matt Canavan who said, ‘The only reason we've met emissions reduction targets is not because (of) people in the cities, we've reforested, well we've stopped farmers clearing their own land. That's the reason we've lowered our emissions.’

Ms Hemming says, ‘if you take away land sector emissions, the US has reduced emissions by 11 per cent; the EU has reduced theirs by 20 per cent; and the UK has reduced theirs by 33 per cent. Once you take out the land use sector, Australia’s emissions have gone up by 7 per cent.’

Conclusion

We have attempted to provide an easy-to-read outline of the policies of the various parties and candidates and critique some of the political advertising which could easily confuse the public.

Our long-term goal is strong bipartisan climate action policies at the federal level. We therefore plan to encourage our federal MPs to give greater priority to shifting Australia rapidly away from its dependence on fossil fuels, regardless of who wins power at the coming election. 

POLICIES IN MORE DETAIL 

Ambition on reducing emissions 

Coalition – the big breakthrough for the Coalition in 2021 was agreeing to net zero by 2050

• The target they took to Glasgow was the Abbott-era 26-28% emission reduction below 2005 levels by 2030. They signed the Glasgow Climate Pact which committed Australia to increasing this ambition annually, but within hours announced there would be no change in 2022.

ALP - has set a near-term 2030 target of 43% emissions reduction target on 2005 levels.

Greens – aims for net zero or net negative Australian greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 or sooner.

Independents – varies but Zali Steggall, Helen Haines and Rebekha Sharkie seek 60% emissions reduction on 2005 levels by 2030.   

Climate finance via UN Green Climate Fund 

For perspective, Oxfam and other civil society organisations recently recommended that, over time, Australia should scale up climate finance to our fair share of $12 billion annually by 2030.

Coalition – no longer contributes to the UN Green Climate Fund; gave $1bn in climate finance through bi-lateral Aid 2015 - 2020 and at Glasgow promised $500 million more, mainly to Pacific neighbours.

ALP - say that they ‘will honour our national obligations under the Paris Agreement.’ We have not been able to find a proposed amount being offered.

Greens - say that ‘Equity must be at the core of all climate change negotiations … Australia has a responsibility to assist other nations, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, to create safer climate economies and adapt to the climate crisis.’ Similarly, we have not been able to find a proposed amount being offered.

Independents – unknown.

Support for a rapid transition to clean, renewable energy 

Coalition - continues to provide some support for renewables but puts much larger amounts of money into new technologies such as developing hydrogen as an energy source and Carbon Capture & Storage. They ‘will look to the private sector to lead investment’ in solar and wind. (Source: Technology Investment Roadmap)

- supports a ‘gas-led recovery’, thus committing hundreds of millions in public funds for gas projects, eg, exploration for gas in the Beetaloo Basin, a gas-fired power station in the Hunter Valley.

- has a $2.1 bn Future Fuels Fund to partner with industry to support the uptake of low and zero emissions vehicles. The Strategy identifies commercial fleets as a priority area.

- the Government’s Renewable Energy Target of 20% was reached in 2020, but there are no plans to revise the RET. The Government’s projected 69% electricity from renewables by 2030 will mainly be driven by State policies.

- channels public funds to the fossil fuel projects, even where business would not.

- provides generous subsidies to fossil fuel industries. We regard the Fuel Tax Credits Scheme to be a form of subsidy to mining industries. While it also benefits the agriculture sector,  based on ATO statistics, $3.5 bn will go to mining industries in the 2021-22 financial year.

ALP - recognises that there are many more jobs in renewables and low carbon industries and plans to use regulations and public money to build these up. (Source: ALP website)

- plans to boost the up-take of electric vehicles (EVs), invest $20 billion to rebuild and modernise the grid so it can manage more renewable energy, install 400 community batteries, and so on.

- would legislate 82% renewable energy by 2030.

- like the Coalition, is inclined to approve coal and gas projects and maintain subsidies for fossil fuel industries.

Greens - plans to get to 100% of electricity demand generated by renewables ASAP; then get to 700% through public investment, feed-in tariffs and regulations to support a range of renewable energy generation, storage, transmission networks, energy efficiency, and export technologies.

• wants no new coal-fired power stations, gas mines or oil wells, and no expansions to any existing infrastructure; plus assistance for fossil fuel-dependent communities to make the transition to more sustainable industries.
• Wants an effective price on carbon.
• Would remove subsidies for fossil fuel industries.

Independents – Independents have a track record during the Gillard years of helping deliver a price on carbon, making possible the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. (Source: https://www.climate200.com.au/) They have a similar commitment to increasing Australia’s use of clean energy now.

• oppose a ‘gas-led recovery’ and new fossil fuel infrastructure
• support a just transition for coal and gas dependent communities, eg, see Helen Haines’ Issue Paper – Climate Change.

Reducing deforestation

Coalition – sees forests as a resource for wood products; is seeking to weaken our already weak environmental protection laws.

ALP – supportive of forestry industry but opposes weakening of environmental protection laws.

Greens – wants stronger environmental protection laws to preserve forests and other habitats and restore them as natural carbon sinks.

Independents – broadly favour the protection of forests and biodiversity. (Source: Vote Climate Now.)

Limiting the political influence of coal and gas companies 

Coalition – accepts large donations from fossil fuel industries

- despite a 2019 election promise to institute an Integrity oversight body, has delayed debate about it in Parliament and put forward a proposal for a body with very limited powers.

ALP – accepts large donations from fossil fuel industries (less than Coalition Parties)

- the ALP has been supportive of increased accountability in government, eg, supported Hon. Helen Haines’ proposed legislation for a strong Integrity Commission.

Greens - promise to ‘restrict the corrupting influence of big political donations, … close the revolving door between big business and politics, establish a federal anti-corruption commission, protect the rights of community groups to speak out.’ 

Independents – One of the key motivations of independent candidates is the desire to see greater honesty, accountability and integrity in politics. (Source: https://www.climate200.com.au/)

by Thea Ormerod, ARRCC President

Up-date 27 April 2022

This website allows voters to see one assessment of the climate performance (dark green) and the climate commitment -or intentions - (bright green) for each individual electorate: voteearthnow.life 

Simply choose your electorate and it provides results for each candidate.

Provided by A/Prof Robert Eisenberg
Founder of Vote Earth Now

[email protected]

https://voteearthnow.com 
+61405539711