Look, the two party system has made change difficult, but we're seeing a breakdown now of the two party system.
I think as a scientist, Tim Flannery says he's seeing climate change kicked around Parliament for decades and Australians are already paying for the years of denial, distraction and delay from our politicians.
You know, I've seen a decades worth of warming. Just in a couple of years, temperatures have been like about one point six degrees above So you know, if we are to deal with that adequately, we need to cut harder and faster than we ever thought about doing before.
While the last election sent the major parties a clear message that Australia should act on climate change, he says this election is all about how, and he's optimistic that this could actually be the last climate election. From Schwartz Media, I'm Rubby Jones. This is seven am today, Chief Counselor of the Climate Council, Tim Flannery, and the choice Australians are facing between expanding renewables or repeating the mistakes of
the past. It's Monday, April fourteen, So Tim, three years ago we had Australia's so called climate election, and at the moment that that election was called, Australia was really an outlier on the global stage when it came to taking real action on the climate crisis. We were not addressing the enormous problem that was confronting us. So how much progress has been made since Labor took power?
Look, a lot of progress has been made. We were virtually global parias under the Morrison government. Back then. There was hardly any evs on the road. Today ten percent of castles or evs roughly where now at about forty percent of the energy that's produced in Eastern Australia is coming from clean sources you know, wind, solar and hydro and that's a record high. It's fantastic. So we've made a lot of progress, but we've got a long way to go.
Okay. So with that in mind, then what are Labor offering by way of climate policy should they win this election.
Labor is offering a continuation of their twenty thirty target, which is eighty two percent of electricity from clean sources by twenty thirty, so you know, by twenty twenty eight we should be at least at seventy percent according to that policy.
The problem at the moment is the upfront cost of a battery is too high for too many people. We're going to fix that.
They've also got a just announced a new policy on batteries in communities.
Where the battery families can store the free energy generated on a sunny day when no one time, and use it when they need it and every house.
Which will again help us accelerate that transition from gigantic and polluting fossil fuel plants through to win in solar and batteries. So you know, they are the positive things that I'm seeing coming out of the Labor Party.
And the Albanezy government is still approving new coal mines and oil and gas projects. So how can that possibly square with a commitment to tackle the climate crisis.
Well, it doesn't, is the answer. I'm no fan of some of the compromises that have been made with the fossil fuel industry over the years by various political parties, but the fact is that the politics is the art of compromise. That's what it's about. Otherwise it's warfare. So we have to live in a real world with that. Let's move as fast as we can. Let's take heed of the visionaries among us who think we can move faster and do that, but compromise is always going to
be part of the political process. What we need to do globally is to just phase out all of the fossil fuels. I guess the Australian government argument is that, you know, if we stop producing then people just buy it from somewhere else and we lose all influence. That may be true, but what Australia really needs to do is engage globally with all of the producers in a way that lets us cut that production of fossil fuels.
And that means looking at our own legislation and regulation to make sure that we are not approving new fields and new resources that will simply add to the problem.
Okay, well, let's talk about the coalitions policies going into this election. The major one being nuclear, so building seven nuclear reactors across Australia.
Our policy is to make sure that we can underpin our economy with a stable energy market for the next one hundred years.
So the et tell me what you think of the plan.
Well, I've got some problems with it. One is the water use that the nuclear power entails, so it's about a quarter more than a standard coualified power plant. And we've already seen the problems that we have on the western slopes where some of these reactors are going to be placed with drought and if we can't keep them cool, they melt down. So you know, you've got to have the water resources number one. Number two. You know, the
du opposition has talked about scaling down the public service. Well, the fact is, if you're going to have nuclear power, you need a massive public service to look into the regulation of that and the safety of that industry. You know, after all, in the US the EPA, over eighty percent of their employees are dealing with the nuclear industry, one hundred thousand people. So we've got big problems there in
terms of cost and contradiction in policy. I mean, thirdly, and most importantly, if we wait till twenty forty for nuclear power with this uncertain technology, we'll be adding about two billion tons of CO two to the atmosphere and that is totally unacceptable.
So what do you think the real motivation is behind the nuclear plan?
Look, I think that this is a delaying tactic. Ultimately, people just want to make another year's profit from their old coal plants or their gas plants, and regardless of the concert sequences, and that idea we'd have a nuclear plant B twenty forty is almost the best case scenario. I mean, we don't have a nuclear workforce anymore. We used to in the seventies and eighties, but they're all retired or dead now, so we've got to recruit new people.
We're dealing with an unproven technology. There's not a single small scale reactor operating on a power grid anywhere that I'm aware of in the world. Let's pie in the sky rubbish. To stake Australia's energy future, which is really the future of the economy on some untested idea like
that is appalling. In the same breath, I can say Labour is not doing enough, But I really do think that if we continue to accelerate with the wind and solar deployment and battery deployment that we've been doing for the last three years, this will be the last climate election.
You really think that this could be the last climate election.
Look, I think Ruby this is the critical election in many ways. If Dunton wins this election, we'll see one climate election after the other after the other, and we'll see the lies continue to be propagated way out to
twenty forty and probably beyond. If we see a continuation of current policy or even an increase in ambition, this will be the last climate election because by twenty twenty eight will be seventy percent reliant on clean energy rather than fossil fuels on the main grid, electric cars will be more common, industry will have transitioned, at least in part across Australia, and I think at that point there's no turning back.
After the break the final frontier of climate denial.
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So Tim, can we just take a step back into the past for a moment. For a long time in Australia we were stuck in the so called climate wars, and you were in the midst of them. You were heading the Climate Commission. Can you tell me a bit about what it was like when your job became politicized.
Well, look, as Climate Commissioner, my job was to report to the government, but reach out into the Australian community and just talk to people about the issue of climate change. So I must have met I know twenty thousand Australians face to face over that time with other Climate commissioners, from the coal fields of Queensland through to the inner city town halls of Melbourne and Sydney, and it was
a great experience. I really really enjoyed doing it. I came away with my faith, really reaffirmed that Australians are generous people. They're willing to listen, their reasonable people. Are there people who believe in a fair go. But at the end of that process, you know, we were sacked by the Abbott government.
Tony Abbott has sacked a former Australian of the Year from his government posting, and the Coalition has made it clear that more public service jobs will go. I'm just not going to get into the whys and wherefors of individual decisions. We respect the integrity of senior members of the public service.
Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter to express his delight at the sackings. Great first day by PM Abbot firing top bureaucrats, merging departments, and killing carbon tax.
He said, I was very fortunate to be working with a young lady called Amanda Mackenzie who was working as our publicist, and when we heard we were going to be sacked, she said, well, why should you accept that? She said, this thing called crowdfunding. You know again, I didn't know about ground funding, so why don't we give it a go, see if we can crowdfund ourselves back into existence?
And we did and that led to the start of the Climate Council.
Was that right?
Indeed? That's right? So you know what I learned from that is never say die, you know, never accept things which are unreasonable or unjust find a way to fight back. And today I think we probably hire ten times as many people as were hired by the Commission, and we're doing a very effective job.
Yeah, we had a decade or so of public debate that really questioned the science of climate change. Can you talk to me about how climate denial has changed over the years and what it looks like now in twenty twenty five.
Sure, look, I think you know. Back when I was Climate Commissioner, Tony Abbott and others announced that the carbon tax was going to be horrific, that a leg of land was going to cost one hundred dollars.
Everyone's prices are going to go up and up and up, because that's the name nature of a carbon tax.
It will hear people have to look back and see those lies for what they are.
But do you accept some of the coalition's claims have been exaggerations. Roasts aren't going to cost one hundred dollars, are they?
But they are going to be significantly more expensive. And that's the point. Everything will be more expensive.
But it was very difficult because people were willing to lie so profligately and there seem to be no way to be heard really, so it was extremely frustrating. It was not unusual to meet people who would just flat out deny that climate change is happening, and you don't see much of that anymore. Even in regional Australia. People acknowledge that the climate is changing. They still some of them debate about why, and some say, oh, there's other
factors involved. It's not climate change, but even they are decreasing. The number of voices that you hear that from is decreasing. There's a few who'll say, oh, it's too expensive, and that's the lie that we hear at the moment, that it's going to be too expensive and therefore we better fall back on good old gas and coal or nuclear, so that they're the last set of lies that we're dealing with now. There's nowhere else for the climate skeptics to retreat to after that point. So my view is
we just keep pushing on proving them wrong. We've tested some of those ideas, we've found them to be lies, and we can see clearly the way forward now, which is just more wind and solar and batteries.
Tim, thank you so much for your time.
It's a pleasure. Thank you.
Also in the news today, first home buyers of newly built homes would be able to claim mortgage payments as a tax deduction under a coalition government. Peter Dutton announced the plan at a campaign launch in Western Sydney yesterday. The scheme would be means tested at incomes of one hundred and seventy five thousand for singles and two hundred and fifty thousand for couples. It would be limited to five years and the first six hundred and fifty thousand
dollars of mortgage. The Coalition estimates that a family on an average income would be about eleven thousand dollars a year better off. And Prime Minister Anthony Alberizi has unveiled a plan to allow people buying their first home to do so with a deposit of five percent. The federal government would also put ten billion towards building one hundred thousand homes exclusively for first home buyers. Housing Minister Clara O'Neills said the measure would stop property investors from competing
against young people trying to buy their first home. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.