I think we could probably say we've never seen a cyclone quite like this. It's been a very strangely behaved cyclone.
Mike's second is the Saturday Paper's National correspondent. He spent the week tracking Cyclone Alfred as a bore down on Queensland.
You know, normally, when tropical cyclones leave the tropics, I mean the reason they call tropical cyclones, obviously they start to weaken. But Alfred did the opposite, you know, instead of petering out off the Sunshine Coast, it abruptly intensified and then it completely changed course. It basically did a U turn. It was heading off to the sort of east southeast. Suddenly it turned and went to the west,
started heading towards Brisbane. Along the way, it's done at least one loop, the loop where it's sort of gone in a full circle.
The storm hits as we're gearing up for the election. It brings back memories of the floods and bushfires that tore through the country last time we voted. From Schwartz Media, I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM today. Mike's second on the politics of natural disasters and why every election is a climate change election. It's Saturday, March eighth. Mike, you've pointed to just how unusual this cyclone is. Can you tell me about the conditions that led to what
we've seen? Why did Alfred behave so strangely?
The basic reason why this reintensification happened has to do with the ocean temperature. Science tells us that for a cyclone to form, it requires surface temperatures of above about twenty six point five degrees celsius. And as it happened, the water is around Australia at the moment and all through last year were the hottest they've ever been, including in the Coral Sea, and the water temperature of southern
Queensland coast was a balmi twenty seven degrees. The meteorologists and the experts, people like Matt Kean from the Climate Change Authority and David Coroli from the Climate Council say what we all know, essentially, it's climate change. What Corolli tells me is that we're seeing fewer cyclones overall, but the ones that do form tend to be more intense and more erratic and wetter because you know, a warmer atmosphere holds more water, so when it rains, it buckets,
and all of it aligns with Alfred's behavior. You know, it meandered down the Queensland coast for well over a week, then it powered back up, then it took a path we haven't seen in about fifty years for that region, and then you know, it moved to a snails place, essentially stalled, you know, while the big waves continued to batter the coast and the rain continued to buck it down.
Brisbane's been bracing for it all week and a lot of the same places that were so damaged by flooding in twenty twenty two right before the last election. So how did that last event shape how people voted?
Well, last election was very much a climate election. We had a green slide so called in Brisbane. The Greens picked up three seas. It's a large part of that I think was because the Greens had a wonderful ground campaign where they basically went door to door in response to the flooding and offered to help people. So that earned them a lot of goodwill. We'd also had the Black Summer bush fires not so long before the last election.
We remember Scott Morrison's famous suicide note, I don't hold a hose mate, you know, which saw people move away from the coalition.
The Prime Minister has caved tonight, rushing back from Hawaii amid criticism for taking a holiday while Sydney Burns Scott Morrison express I know it was.
Jones to understand this, and they'll be pleased I'm coming back on shore.
But they know that.
You know, I don't hold a hosemte, and I don't should control room.
That's the great people who do that.
The other thing I should mention, of course, is we had a bunch of so called teals climate independence elected in what had formerly been safe Liberal Party seats and central to their platform, of course, was that we should have a stronger response to climate change. Now things have changed a bit, the cost of livings in biting climate
change had receded as a top priority for voters. But I think this storm could very much refocus the minds of voters, particularly the four million odd voters in the path of this cyclone, could very well refocus their minds on the issues.
And if that is the case, why people are looking for action on climate change. Still, what would the government be able to point to when it comes to which record on climate change action.
Well quite a bit actually, I mean not as much as a lot of people who are concerned about climate change, including myself I Dad might hope for. But the Albanezi government highlights a number of measures that it says are helping. For a start, when it came in, it immediately upped Australia's commitment under the Paris Climate Accord our emissions reduction target, which had been twenty six to twenty eight percent under
the Morrison government. Labor jumped it up to forty three percent emissions reduction by twenty thirty, and then it implemented a a variety of policies that were intended to help get us there. You know. A key one was the Safeguard mechanism, which requires Australia's biggest corporate emitters to progressively
curb their greenhouse gas output over time. They've introduced fuel efficiency standards for cars, making them cleaner and use link less fuel, and various incentives that encourage investment in when solar, hydrogen, etc. So these policies collectively are what the government credits and a lot of the experts, I might say, also credit for putting Australia on track to meet this legislated forty
three percent ambition for cuts in emissions. Meanwhile, the coalition, led by Peter Dutton, has previously indicated that it might not even stick with that forty three percent target if it's elected. Last year, Dutton said, and I'm quoting him here, there was no sense in signing up to targets you don't have any prospective achieving. Dutton has since tried to tamp this down, and he said that he's he will not be following Donald Trump's footsteps and withdrawing Usustralia from
Paris altogether. Would you consider withdrawing from Paris.
I think we've been pretty firm in our commitment to net zero by twenty fifty and that's a commitment that we take seriously in the will honor. I think it'll be interesting to see where the United States goes and what influence that has in Europe and elsewhere around the world.
But you know, the devil's in the detail. And Matt Kean, the head of the Climate Change Authority, says what we might see if we can get a coalition government is what he calls a dirty remain, meaning that they might stay in name, but do things that undercut our ability to hit our targets.
Coming up after the break the political Balancing Act in a time of crisis.
Hi Ruby Jones. Here, seven Am tells stories that need to be told. Our journalism is founded on trust and independence, and now we're increasing our coverage. Every Saturday until the election, we'll bring you an extra episode to break down the biggest political moments of the week. If you enjoy seven Am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at seven am podcast dot com dot are you forward slash support. Thanks for listening and supporting our work.
Well, let's talk some more about the Paris Agreement in Australia's commitment to it. Are we on track to meet our obligations?
So yes, the target was forty three percent compared with two thousand and five levels by twenty thirty, so that's what we submitted under the Paris Agreement. According to the most recent figures from the Climate Change Department, which came out at the end of last year, our missions are projected to be down to forty two point six percent on the current trajectory by twenty thirty so we're very close. However, Paris requires each party to ratchet up its ambitions over time.
All parties were supposed to submit their new targets by February. Australia missed the deadline. Matt Kean if the Climate Change Authority attributed the delay in part to the disruptive climate policies of Donald Trump in the United States and said that that meant they would have to recalibrate what Australia would do. But I would suggest a more cynical observer would look at this and say, well, the government probably prefers to delay announcing a higher target until after the election.
So there's still this question hanging of how far Australia would go under a future Labor government. There's little doubt that Labor would, if it was re elected, set a more ambitious target for twenty thirty five. The question is just how much it would advance its ambition, whether it would match what the experts say is actually needed, which is something around a seventy five percent cut to be consistent with the goal of keeping global heating at less
than two degrees. So if a future government attempts to step back, it would be in violation of the treaty.
So, as you mentioned, Mike Peter Dutton has ruled out withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. But let's talk about the coalition's climate policy and what they would mean for our missions targets.
You're right, Dutton has said he's committed in principle of setting a new twenty thirty five target. He's given no hint as to what that might be. But the policies the coalition has laid out race series doubts about whether they'd even meet the twenty thirty target, the forty three percent reduction goal. For one thing, the coalition voted against essentially all of Labour's climate policies, you know, the safeguard's mechanism,
fuel standards, et cetera, et cetera. But more significantly, the coalition's signature nature policy is building a whole bunch of nuclear power. The coalition says that it wants to have thirty eight percent of Australia's electricity coming from nuclear power sources by twenty fifty. The problem with that, of course, is that nuclear takes a long time to build. On even the most optimistic projections. They wouldn't get even the first of their proposed nuclear power stations built until the
mid or late twenty thirties and in the interim. Their plan is to keep the old coal fired power generators running and burn a lot more gas, all of which, of course releases more carbon into the atmosphere. So the Climate Change Authority ran the numbers on the coalition's policy and they found that this reliance on fossil fuels during the time it takes to build nuclear would add something like two billion tons of extra carbon pollution to the atmosphere.
Matt Keen has also pointed out that even the coalition's own commissioned modeling that they relied on when proposing this nuclear plan from Frontier Economics also recognized that there would be billions of extra tons of emissions under the nuclear plan. The opposition's response was to take aim at the messenger. There were suggestions that Keene should be sacked and that this was a politicized exercise. In fact, the shadow Climate Change and Energy Minister Ted O'Brien, and this nuclear plan
is essentially his baby. He wrote to Keen, accusing the Authority of departing from its mandate, and he accused them of producing quote a political critique.
I'm not sure why mister O'Brien is trying to politicize the Independent Climate Authority.
Our role is to provide evidence based and science based advice on climate policy. Kein invited the coalition to provide any solid alternative estimates. So far, as far as I know, the coalition has not done so.
It's interesting, though, Michae. Isn't it that we see leaders band together in moments of crisis, as we've seen this week. We've seen the L and P Premier David Cristo fully standing with the PM talking about the cyclone. But what we don't seem to be seeing is leaders banning together and coming up with a bipartisan solution to what's causing these disasters in the first place. How do you think Albanese's handling of this storm in this moment could reshape the election campaign.
Well, it was a very pertinent observation you made that we've seen Albanese standing there with Chris and Fooley. Albanze is walking a line here. He needs to show leadership without looking like he's being opportunistic, I would suggest obviously he sees it playing to his managed to be visible in a crisis, and we know that failing to adequately respond to a disaster can be deadly for political leaders.
I refer again back to Scott Morrison heading off to Hawaii and during the Black Summer bush fires, And interestingly, I don't think Peter Dutton's handled this terribly well so far.
He went on Brisbane Radio on Wednesday morning, you know, talking about the seriousness of cyclone Alfred and the importance of checking on the old neighbors, etc. But he politicized it and took a swipe at Anthony Alberizi, suggesting that if Albinizi called an election this week, it would display a tiney for the reality of the situation.
Some people will have lost everything that in the reality of these weather events, and to go to an election at that stage, at that time, I think the Prime Minister would have a ten year to do that. Yeah, due until the seventheenth of May, so he's got plenty of time too.
Then it was revealed in a I think you'd say, an amusingly snarky piece in the Financial Review rear Window column that Dutton had left his electorate on Tuesday to do a party fundraiser in Sydney and had been entertained at the harbourside mansion of Justin Hymns, and the finnpiece had a killer final line which said of Dutton, I don't hold a tarp mate. But the bigger question here, I think is the policy one. Ultimately, you know, the risk is the coalition parties under Dutton are seen to
be deliberately obstructionist to climate action. And it's interesting when I was talking to Matt Keen, he actually used those words deliberately obstructionist, as Keene said when I spoke to him, and I'll quote him here because it was a particularly strong and pertinent quote. I thought. He said, whether we realize it or not, every election is now a climate change election because it touches everything the economy, the environment,
the prospects of future generations. And he was saying we should be pressing politicians all the time to explain how they'd deal with the world. That is quoting him again, inexorably heating up. So I would make two observations here. The first is that this particularly pertinent in the electorates of Peter Dutton and Ted O'Brien because they're right underwhere
the cyclone's tracking. And the other is that the smart money is still on a minority government in the next parliament, and the people who will hold a balance of power will be Greens. They will be the community independent Teals, all of whom have shown that they are much stronger on climate issues than the major parties are, So you know, this could well drive a stronger response in the future, I think and hope.
Mike, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks a lot.
Dan seven Am as a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. He's made by Atticus Basto, Shane Anderson, Chris dan Gate, Eric Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcvee, Travis Evans, Zoltenvechio and me Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Bordio. Every Saturday until the election, will be bringing you extra episodes to seven Am, breaking down the biggest political moments as they happen. Thanks for listening. See you mondaye