“It was seen as a big deal. It is a big deal,” said London-based Scott,who heads the climate diplomacy and geopolitics program at the global climate think tank E3G.
Hunter MP Dan Repacholi,pictured here with Anthony Albanese,survived a Nationals campaign targeting Labor’s climate policy.Alex Ellinghausen
Speaking from London this week,Scott said that in the 1980s,Australia was a world leader in climate science and advocacy. Over the past 10 years,it has become a drag on climate action,not only reluctant to act in its own right but also looking to retard global action.
According to Scott,the entrails of the Australian election have been closely dissected around the world. She believes that Labor’s victory,combined with the rise of the independents and a surge in support for the Greens in Queensland,suggests that in power,Labor should consider reviewing its climate policy and making it more ambitious.
Labor figuresThe Sydney MorningHerald andThe Age spoke to dismissed that suggestion,saying such revisionism could blow up the fragile truce in the climate wars that voters have just imposed upon Australian politics.
So now Labor must walk a fine line:demonstrating to and partners around the world that it is back as a serious actor in climate diplomacy,and to Australian communities that it will not abandon them.
Environmental campaigner Felicity Wade and AMWU leader Steve Murphy collaborated to promote jobs and climate policy in the Hunter Valley.Louise Kennerley
It was not always a given that Labor would take a comprehensive climate policy to this most recent contest. Three election losses on the trot traumatised the party,and after the 2019 defeat,some senior MPs flatly opposed ambitious climate action.
Most notable among them was Joel Fitzgibbon,who suffered a 14.15 per cent primary vote swing against him in the mining seat of Hunter after the One Nation candidate ran a campaign backing coal in that election.
Inside the party,however,an activist group had formed to press for climate action. The Labor Environment Activist Network (LEAN) was launched in 2013 with the backing of Bob Hawke,who had made environmentalism central to the government he led.
During its early years in the wilderness,the group met with party branches around the country,drumming up support for ambitious climate policy.
After the 2019 loss,it shifted tactics. Working alongside union allies the group focused on community outreach in coal seats,where they made the case that coal would soon be phased out by Australia’s export customers whatever our government did and that there were money and jobs in renewable energy and associated manufacturing.
Over the past 18 months or so,it began to look like it was getting traction,says LEAN national co-convener Felicity Wade. At least in the Hunter,where the group helped found the Hunter Jobs Alliance to promote work opportunities in new industries,it appeared that even if miners were not quite on board,they might have at least “put the baseball bats away”.
Some senior MPs agreed,even if Fitzgibbon and elements of the union movement remained unconvinced.
In August last year,the Herald andThe Age suggesting that support for climate action extended well beyond the inner cities,across the regions and even into coal country.
MPs from all sides have reflected on the impact climate change had on the 2022 election and Labor's win.
The survey of 15,000 Australians conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Australian Conservation Foundation found 67 per cent of voters believed the government should be doing more to address climate change,including a majority in all 151 national seats.
Nevertheless,the mood inside the shadow cabinet remained intensely nervous.
A crucial moment of reassurance came from an unexpected source.
A team led by then-shadow climate and energy spokesman Chris Bowen was busy honing the party’s suite of climate policies,consulting the Business Council of Australia as it did so.
This was crucial. Before the last election,the BCA,made up of the chief executives of over 100 of Australia’s largest companies,had backed the Coalition’s goal of reducing emissions by 26 to 28 per cent as appropriate and blasted Labor’s.
The position served as rocket fuel to the Coalition’s attack on Labor’s climate policy.
But by late last year,it appeared to Bowen’s team that under the BCA’s new leadership – and reflecting a global shift in business-sector attitudes – the group might soften its line.
They were thrilled when the BCA.
The BCA now believed reducing emissions between 46 per cent and 50 per cent on 2005 levels within the decade would be both pragmatic and ambitious. It would drive investment and help Australia avoid a “costly and damaging” effort to catch up with the world.
“The purpose of our work is to move forward,not engage in an endless debate about issues the nation and the world has moved past,” BCA president Tim Reed said at the time.
“You can’t exaggerate how important that moment was,” Felicity Wade said this week.
With the BCA backing climate action,it would be far harder for the Coalition to prosecute a case against Labor’s policy.
Over the following months,other business groups,such as AI Group and even the Minerals Council of Australia,either tacitly endorsed increased emissions targets or declined to engage in political combat over it.
Bowen proved effective in defusing the Coalition’s claim that Labor’s policies amounted to a “sneaky carbon tax” and emphasised the job creation possibilities whenever that issue was raised.
Penny Wong arrived in Fiji soon after her visit to Tokyo.Getty
By 9pm last Saturday,it was clear that Labor had threaded the needle. Not only did blue-ribbon Liberal seats fall to the teals in Sydney and Melbourne,but the Greens also surged in Brisbane.
And most tellingly,a finely targeted scare campaign by the Nationals in coal seats failed to convince voters that Labor’s climate plan would kill local economies.
This has led many observers to believe,or at least to hope,that voters had effectively killed off Australia’s climate wars,and that the debate can now shift to how far and fast Australia can drive down its emissions,rather than whether it should.
“We’ve demonstrated that climate action is not toxic in coal regions,while the teals have demonstrated that not having a climate policy is toxic in inner-metropolitan areas,” one senior Labor source said.
Greens victories in Brisbane and teal victories in other capitals showed that there is strong support for ambitious climate action.Getty Images
Cristina Talacko,chair of Coalition for Conservation,a group that champions increased climate action within the Coalition,said the election demonstrates that no party can expect to win government in Australia without a credible climate policy.
“What this election really showed us is that the nation is more united on this than we thought,that the regions and the cities want action and certainty.
“It’s time to regroup,for the party to understand that they should have done something a lot better than what they proposed,especially when it came to emissions reduction and putting a national climate strategy together,” she said.
Some in the climate movement have gone further.
Wesley Morgan,a researcher with the Climate Council and specialist in climate diplomacy at the Griffith Asia Institute,said Labor now clearly has a domestic mandate to increase its climate ambition and that its neighbours and allies are urging them to.
“If they have the mandate,and they do,then that is what they should do,” he said.
Labor sources have dismissed this sentiment.
“We have won a fragile truce;we don’t want to wreck that,” Wade said.
“Labor should stick to 43 per cent and deliver it,and deliver it well. It is not going to be easy,that is a lot of emissions to take out of this economy.
“Those who want more should be focused on implementation.”
Despite the domestic realities Labor faces,pressure will be applied internationally.
In November,Australia will attend the COP27 climate talks in Egypt,where there will be further calls for Australia to fall into line with peer nations and set a 50 per cent target,as well as to increase funding commitments to developing nations.
The next meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum is expected to be held in July,when Australia can expect to face difficult questions,one Labor insider said.
Pacific leaders have made it “crystal clear” that they want to see Australia advocating on their behalf for more ambitious global climate action,and that they view their greatest security threat to be climate change rather than foreign aggression,Morgan said.
It is telling,then,how quickly the Labor government has sought to re-engage the world on climate.
Hours after returning from the Quad leaders’ summit in Japan with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,Foreign Minister Penny Wong boarded a flight for Fiji.
“As Australia’s first-ever climate minister[under Kevin Rudd],I know the imperative that we all share to take serious action to reduce emissions and transform our economies,” said Wong.
“Nothing is more central to the security and economies of the Pacific.
“I understand that climate change is not an abstract threat,but an existential one.”
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