Australia’s new climate politics will reshape its entire economy with Adam Bandt & David Pocock

malady that a flick stars opposite. Over the next few years, even while fires, droughts and floods devastated the country, Morrison was accused of ignoring the threat of climate change, but the electorate could not ignore those impacts. Fast forward to elections in May twenty twenty two and there was a seismic shift in Australian politics. Morrison's Liberal Party took a drubbing at the polls and he was replaced by Labors

Anthony Albanesi. Even more surprising was the success of the Australian Greens and a group of independent candidates known as the Teals, who promised strong climate action, and now the Labor government has done what was not long ago unimaginable. It has passed a law that binds the country to

a forty three percent emissions reduction by twenty thirty. Anthony Albanesi's Climate Change Bill is expected to pass through Parliament after Teale Independence and the Grains reportedly secured concessions to

support Liba's forty three percent emissions reduction target. Although the bill is a historic first, many have criticized it for not aligning with what the country must do to help the world reach its climate goals, and Australia's ongoing love affair with fossil fuels raises questions about how it will meet the forty three percent target. The country is one of the top two X voters of coal and has the third high CEO two emissions per capita of any

G twenty country, higher even than the US. This week on Zero we are joined by two politicians who were key to the passing of the emissions reduction target and are committed to strengthening the goal. Later we'll hear from international rugby captain turned senator David Pocock, but my first guest is Adam Bant, the leader of the Australian Greens. He sits in the House of Representatives and his party

holds the balance of power in the country's Senate. We discuss Australia's new political landscape, the fight for better climate legislation, and the opportunities for a decarbonized Australia. Adam, Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Now. After the May twenty two elections, Australia has what Summer calling the climate supermajority, with Greens getting their biggest haul and a group of independents known as the Teals pouted in on a climate mandate.

What's changed in the Australian political discourse that means these candidates succeeded. There's always been an appetite in Australia to take action on climate because people see it playing out. It has just been lacking the federal leadership to do it,

especially over the last decade. But we've just come off the back of three years of droughts and bush fires that gained international attention and also then floods, and there was a real understanding that the federal government was not only unwilling to act, but was actually actively expanding coal and gas, and in fact, in response to the COVID pandemic, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison led what he called a gas led recovery to take public money to invest in

opening up new gas fields, as if that would how be a solution to the economic and social wars facing us after the pandemic. Were this growing sense that the climate crisis was hitting us at home, but also seeing international movement, even from conservative governments from the United Kingdom for example, but also governments in the United States post Trump starting to act. It was a real sense that enough was enough and it was time for Australia to

act on climate. And what we saw at the election was not only a change of government but a really interesting result where the then government, Scott Morrison's government and the now government Anthony Albernizi's Labor both saw their votes

go backwards. They both promoted more coal and gas and both saw their votes go backwards, and the parties and the people who votes went up, which was the Greens getting our biggest ever representation in Parliament and our highest ever vote and a number of independents on strong climate platforms all tackled the question of climate and coal and gas and said it's time to get out of coal and gas and stop opening up coal and gas. And that's what the people rewarded as a result of the election.

There's now a bill that enshrains and emissions reductions target in law and that's a forty three percent reduction over two thousand five levels by twenty thirty. Is that what the science says we need to keep global warming below

one point five degrees celsius. It's definitely not, and the science says that Australia is for it to do its fair share to limit global warming to one and a half degrees, would have to be cutting pollution by seventy four percent by twenty thirty, which is of course close

to the United kingdom sixty eight percent target. The independent analysis done in Australia of Australia's fair share also says that even if one were to give up on one and a half degrees and still aim for the well below two degree target of the Paris Agreement, Australia's domestic contribution would need to be fifty percent, So to be Paris Agreement compliant, Australia would need to be doing between fifty and seventy four percent, and it's not the forty

three percent that the government wouldn't budge from that was in the bill. Is based on no qualified power stations closing earlier than anticipated, and they made that a big election promise. But what we were able to do is the Greens would secure some changes to the bill that would allow it to be ratcheted up quickly without obstacle. We ensured that the target couldn't be reduced if there

was a change of government. And for the first time also, we're going to see it harder for government agencies to fund new coal and gas project because climate goals and temperature limits are now going to be included in the governing legislation for a lot of Australia's agencies, like the Export Finance Agency that in the past has been used to promote fossil fuels and to fund fossil fuel expansion.

Now that is going to be a bit harder. So we as the Greens, pushed for some changes, secured some changes to a weak bill to the point where we were prepared to pass it. But doesn't do what the science requires. No, and I suspect not even the government says that it's a science based target, but the bill does not give any new funding or really, beyond the points you made, any concrete policy to be able to get to even the forty three percent target. So is

the current law anything more than symbolic. Well, you're right that there's Apart from some of the things that I mentioned, it doesn't really have a lot of teeth. And the government was upfront about that. They said they wanted targets enshrined in law to give certainty to the country that

there would be emissions reductions. But the government is still yet to detail how it's going to mate even this week target, and that work will be done overcoming months as the government lays out its mechanism for requiring existing polluters to start cutting their pollution and also critically how we'll deal with the question of proposed new coal and

gas projects. That mechanism is going to need the support of the Senate, where the Government does not have the majority and where the Greens are sitting in balance of power.

So over the coming months we'll be pushing very hard to say, having passed this legislation, now we need to give it some teeth and government needs to put some meat on the bones of its policy, and the country will be looking very very closely at that, not only because there is a very big question about how the government is going to meet even its weak targets, but also because there are some big new coal and gas projects that are in the pipeline that the government is backing,

and the expert analysis locally is that there's no way that the government can approve those projects and still expect to meet even its weaky three percent target. Some of these projects are so big that if even just one of them goes ahead, it would blow that forty three percent target out of the water. So all eyes are now turning to what the government is actually going to do to cut pollution. So that's the science, and we

need a lot more emissions reduction. But how much support is there from the public, from business and from major polluters to go beyond the forty three percent target. There's a lot of support from the public and indeed from business as well. Interestingly, in the lead up to the election, business was saying that a target even closer to fifty

percent would be acceptable in Australia. So in many respects, the government was undercarting what sum even in the business community are saying there's a lot of support from the public, as I've said, for more ambitious action because we now have the situation where less than a third of the country voted for the party that is in government, the Labor Party, and there's a reference for the parties whose votes went up were the ones who said do more

than this forty three percent target. The push, as I mentioned, through the business front, where there's going to be a real issue is how much work is government going to ask existing business to do to cut pollution and how much harder is that going to be for existing business to cut pollution if the government builds in space to open up new projects, so to take one of them, for example, the b to Loop basin in the Northern Territory, that project alone, if it goes ahead, would lift Australia's

domestic commissions by up to thirteen percent and it's not included in the forty three percent modeling. That would in turn impose a lot more obligations on existing business to make a way for these big climate busting projects. And that's why I think you'll see you overcoming months a greater community push, including with business side by side, to say we can't keep addressing this problem at the same time as making the problem worse. You can't put the

fire are out while you're pouring petrol on it. And I think one of the things that needs to be understood is just how central coal and gas are to the Australian political economy. And Australia is the world's third largest exporter of fossil fuel pollution and on track to be, if not already the largest exporter of gas, primarily in the form of LNG, and so all of this raises real questions as to how Australia is going to contribute to the climate challenge. And these big coal and gas

corporations have a lot of sway over the government. We'll be pushing really, really hard as the government writes these new laws and regulations to actually now start cutting pollution, to say, look, we'll have the debate about how quickly to get out of coal and gas, but we've got to draw a line under existing projects and say no more new projects. And that's going to be one of the big battles overcoming months. Now. How politically feasible is

it anyway? Given Let's consider Norway, which is an aisle exporting country that has both. It's major political party is completely in agreement that oil continues to be the source of revenue, that they will continue to support oil extraction. And yet it's done domestically pretty green things. You know, it's blessed with hydropower, it's been electrifying, it's transport very quickly, but it still hasn't been able to get rid of the addiction to oil. Why do you think Australia can

do it? Because our big trading partners have all set themselves net zero targets. So the countries that are responsible for seventy five percent of our coal exports, our thermal coal exports, have all set themselves net zero by twenty fifty or twenty sixty targets. Now, if you work backwards from that, that means they're going to have to decarbonize their electricity sectors sometime around the twenty thirties if they're going to meet a twenty fifty net zero target across

the economy. So, in other words, they've already given Australia deadline about getting out of coal. Similarly, with gas, the growing demand from trading partners in Asia in particular is for hydrogen and is that's going to be one of the key ways that those economies are going to be able to meet their own climate goals, in their own net zero emissions goals. So the outlook for these exports

at the moment is bleak. But Australia itself, actually, when it comes to gas, for example, does not get a lot. It's primarily it's big multinationals that are extracting and often paying no tax and in many instances not even paying royalties on the gas itself. So for in Australia, twenty seven big gas corporations in one year brought in seventy seven billion dollars Australian of revenue in one year and

paid zero dollars tax on it. So unlike Norway, where they have at least a tax system that enables them to gain some wealth from the fossil fuels that they're ding to help drive a domestic transformation, Australia is not

even getting that. There's enormous, enormous state capture of the political parties in Australia by these big gas and coal corporations, but it actually doesn't deliver back to the economy what a lot of people might think it does, and so there's enormous opportunities economically for Australia to get off it. And also that's the way it's going because that's where our training partners are going. But look at what has happened to commodity braces because of the war that Russia

is fighting in Ukraine. Isn't that going to be the exact argument for more digging off coal and more allergy projects and perhaps even more remaining of metals. Well, I don't think building an economy off the back of a dictator invading another country and hoping that somehow that will continue is a good model, either for foreign affairs or for or your domestic economic security. Like, we have to diversify.

Australia economy absolutely has to diversify. And I think if there's one lesson that can be taken from this is that it is not a good idea to be reliant on fossil fuel imports from another country Like that is the object lesson that comes out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And this is where for Australia in particular, we have an enormous opportunity to be energy independent and to be selling the rest of the world our sun

and our wind. The prospects of direct undersea cables Singapore or Indonesia, for example, where you generate the electricity from on the mainland Australia are actively being discussed and funded. At the moment, there is growing investment in grain hydrogen. I mean, we are pretty blessed here in this country with sun and wind and an advanced manufacturing capacity and intellectual capacity. We can sell things to other countries than coal and gas, and we know the sun and the

wind will always be framed. Multiple labor politicians use the phrase as long as people want to buy our coal, will sell it to them. During the election. That is starkly different from your view. How can those two views meet up? Do you anticipate lengthy, fierce battles on climate ahead,

what is your red line? Well, there's something that our former prime minister used to say, which is that Australia has got to sell its coal to other countries and can't stop selling it because otherwise they'll buy it from

somewhere else and it won't be as good. And the new prime minister, from the different side of politics has started saying exactly the same things, started saying all Australia needs to sell coal, and in fact some of his ministers have said Australia will be still selling coal out past the twenty fifties. This idea that if we don't sell it to them, then someone else will. I call that the drug dealers defense. It's like, if you don't buy it from me, then you're going to get work

quality stuff from someone around the corner. So I'm actually somehow performing a public service. Like coal wherever it is burnt, whether it's burnt here, whether it's burnt overseas, harms Australia and it harms the rest of the world. There is no such thing as clean coal, and I think people have seen through it, and some of the biggest public campaigns and on the ground mobilizations here have been against

big new coal mines in Australia. The Adane coal mine that was here was the feature of the previous selection, the one before this. There is widespread support to say stop opening up these coal mines. And I think people just don't buy this idea anymore that Australia has got to sell it to them because otherwise they'll get it

from somewhere else. I think Australia has such a large share of the global thermal coal market that any shift from Australia will have repercussions and ripples right around the world. And if Australia stopped doing it, then I reckon it wouldn't be that others would step in. It would send a really clear signal to the rest of the world

that Cole's days were over. I think the second thing that we probably need to put on the table front and center is what is an economic diversification and support and transition plan for coal and gas workers and communities. What does that look like? And that hasn't really been thought through that well from governments in the past, and that has created the space for scare campaigns. I think part of what we've got to do in this parliament is to say we need a plan to support coal

and gas workers through the transition. Specifically, though, what is your redline while you're in power and these discussions are going on. Look, the Australian grains have a policy of getting out of thermal coal by twenty thirty, both for domestic and export use and metallurgical coal by twenty forty. But what we're putting on the table at the moment

in this term of parliament is a compromise position. Let's just stop opening up new coal and gas projects and we can then have a discussion about how we get out of it, whether we haven't managed exit by twenty thirty, whether the government's got some other idea. But what we're putting on the table in all the negotiations will be having with the government is stop opening up new projects. That should be something that everyone can agree on. Now.

We weren't able to get their agreement to that during the climate legislation and negotiations and that was disappointing, but that was round one, right. The next round will come when the government introduces the regulations to explain how it's going to cut pollution, and we'll be looking very closely to see whether that allows new coal and gas projects, because, as I say, that is something that will need the support of the Senate where the Greens are in the

balance of power. We're also going to push for our environment laws to include what's called a climate trigger, which is to say, when you give environmental assessment approval to new projects at the moment, you don't even have to take into account whether it's going to make climate change worse. We want that to change. And the last thing we will push for that we are saying very very strongly to this new government is stopped giving subsidies to coal

and gas. There's about eleven billion dollars Australian of subsidies per year at the federal level that go effectively to the coal and gas industries. So we're saving stop funding them, put a climate trigger in our laws, stop opening up new coal and gas mines. They're the positions that we are putting on the table and that we are going to fight tooth and nail for in this term of parliament.

Now in the elections, the Conservative Liberal Party, which might confuse some people listening to the podcast, but the Conservative Liberal Party like some of its safest seats to climate positive candidates. It's being anti climate action now a dead position in Australia. I think it's absolutely if not dead, it's on life support. And I think people shouldn't underestimate the significance of this. We saw Conservative seats switch to candidates that have a better climate policy than the new

Labor government. But you saw Conservative seats prepared to vote for a candidate that says we need a transition plan out of coal and gas and I want you to stop opening up coal and gas mines. And forty three percent is far too weak. And we saw conservative seats go to the grains as well, so it's not just progressive labor seats that went to the grains, it was conservative liberal seats that switched to the grains. For the first time. You get rewarded in Australia politically now for

having a better policy on climate. I don't think the penny's quite dropped with the new government yet, that there is now space for them to go further and faster. That was a fascinating conversation. Thanks Adam, Thanks very much. After the break, we'll hear from Senator David Pocock, one of the new crop of independent politicians Adam is talking about, and whose journey from rugby to politics has made him

a deciding vote in Australia's Upper House. Welcome back. Joining me now is David Pocock, one of Australia's most celebrated rugby players, who captained the Wallabies and played for the team between two thousand and eight and twenty nineteen. In twenty twenty one, David moved into politics and beat a Conservative incumbent to become the first independent candidate to ever win the Senate seat for the Australian Capital Territory, which

includes Canberra. Alongside the Greens. His vote was crucial for passing Australia's forty three percent emissions reduction target. David, Welcome to zero. Thanks good to be with you. You've had a fascinating career. You captain Australia's international rugby union team, You've campaigned on social issues like marriage quality, and now you're an independent senator in Australia's upper House with the deciding vote when it comes to climate legislation. Where did

your climate journey begin? So? I grew up in Zimbabwe and moved to Australia as a teenager and in high school really enjoyed geography, so I started learning about climate change. It seemed like something we should be paying a bit more attention to back then, and I guess that urgency has just grown. And over the years, whilst I was playing rugby professionally, was involved in some community development work back in Zimbabwe and talking to rural subsistence communities and

just hearing their concerns. About the changing climate and their inability to really adapt. They simply don't have the funds that wealthy countries have to actually adapt, and they've contributed almost nothing to the problem. That really heightened my interest in it, and I guess really spurred my advocacy and wanting to use whatever platform I had while I was playing rugby to get more people talking about it, particularly here in a We're a huge fossil fuel exporter and

probably no surprise, we've been a climate lagguard. We've we've actually frustrated international talks. It's just it's not good enough for Australia to be doing that. We have to actually be part of the conversation, part of the solution to this global challenge. As part of your urgency and climate you got arrested in twenty fourteen changing yourself to a coal digger. What was that like? You know, what made

you want to take that step? Like so many people, I'd been involved in a bunch of campaigns, marches, protests, writing letters, petitions, and then there was this this coal mine that was one in one of Australia's best agricultural areas, and two within that area in the middle of a critically endangered ecosystem made absolutely no sense to me in terms of the environmental impact, the impact on farmers, and obviously the climate impact of opening up a brand new

coal mine. Got to know one of the farmers who now lives next door to this big coal mine, and having grown up on a farming family, I could sympathize and see just how helpless and unrepresented you feel. But then just decided that I needed to actually make that stand alongside him and hundreds of other people who were arrested on that mine site. And the mine went ahead, but a very similar project a few years later didn't

go ahead. So whilst unsuccessful, I think it added to the conversation around opening up new coal mines given all we know about climate change. Yeah, and then why did you finally decide to make this jump from being a

political activist to a politician? After Rugby, I was involved in an agriculture and conservation project in zimbab We spend most of last year there and halfway through the year was approached by a community group here in Canberra where I live, saying we think that there is a pathway for an independent to represent the ACT with the Australian Capital Territory in the Federal Parliament. If we can get the right candidate. We've been having all these kitchen table conversations.

Your name keeps coming up. Would you consider it? And initially didn't think it was for me, But the more, you know, the more I thought about it, and what I thought this is, this is an amazing opportunity to potentially represent our community. I love on all these issues that are important to me, are important to the people that i'd be representing. But we're not seeing the kind of ambition that we need. We're not seeing politicians actually deal with these big challenges we face in a way

that turns them into opportunities for all of us. So I thought, well, if I don't do this, I'll probably regret it. I don't want to sit around after the election on a few years time thinking what could have happened, And so I put my hand up, and having never been part of a political party or being formally involved

in politics, it was. It was a wild ride, really enjoyable and energizing just seeing the amount of community support and building a campaign that was really crowdsourcing, a policy platform that resonated with people and we've seen across the country a record number of independents voted into the Low House and then also the Senate. Now let's just sit with that for a moment, because it is hard. Many countries have two major political parties. That's the case here

in the UK where I live. You have the Conservative Party and you have the Labor Party. That's the case in the US, which is essentially a two party system with the Democrats and the Republicans. And that was the case in Australia for a long time. Of course, there were other parties, but those two parties, the Liberal and National Coalition and Labor were really the two major forces.

What happened in the last few years, you think that's changed Australia's landscape so drastically, allowing independence to make it in the parliament. I think that a number of factors. One, just the underlying dissatisfaction with politics as usual, and then on top of that, having it in the last parliament, a few independents who are actually talking about the issues that people are concerned about, talking about more ambitious climate action,

talking about integrity in politics. And then a number of candidates decided to actually run and there was a group set up to actually help fundraise for these independent candidates. The group David is talking about is Climate two hundred, a crowdfunded organization that raised millions of dollars to support the campaigns of twenty three candidates running as independents or

for minor parties in this year's election. We see money in politics, the sad realities that you need money to actually be able to win, to run a good campaign, and for the first time that wasn't a problem for many of these independent candidates. They were well resourced, they were talking about things that that mattered, and on the back of that, we saw tens of thousands of Australians

who hadn't previously got involved in politics volunteering campaigning. You know, here in Canaerra, a city of four hundred and twenty thousand people, I had over two thousand, two hundred volunteers. It was really energizing and I think you left everyone feeling a little bit more hopeful about the future. Now, the bill enshrines emissions reductions in law, which is forty three percent from two thousand five levels by twenty thirty. What do you see as the priority legislation to pass

to ensure Australia meets this target. Well, it's it's historic in Australia just to actually legislate the target. Having forty three percent by twenty thirty and metzera by twenty fifty in law is a step four. But this is nothing to sit around patting ourselves on the back about, and even the business community here in Australia has been pushing fifty by twenty thirty. So clearly we have to ensure

that this forty three is just a starting point. It's largely symbolic, and now we've got to get on with the business of transforming our entire economy, working on the generation side of things and then beginning to work on the demand side, working with households to actually ensure that they can reap the significant benefits of electrifying their households. You know, that's the challenge. This has never been done before, but that's the opportunity. So for me, it's about ensuring

that we have a target locked in. I'd like to see that ramp up over time, but then to actually be focusing on the integrity of it, So the integrity of the offsets that we're allowing companies to use for they're hard to abate emissions. The focus on communities that for generations have had jobs in fossil fuels. We need to be investing in those areas, ensuring that those communities

have secure, well paid jobs into the future. Australia is the third largest export or fossil fields call gas are major parts of the economy, and fossil fields continue to make the country a vast amount of money. How do you ensure that this continued prosperity can happen while you move away from the extraction and export of coal and gas. You know, Australia is the developed country that stands to lose the most from climate and action. We're seeing huge

warming already and we're seeing the effects of that. But given our renewable resources, we also potentially stand to gain the most from actually having the political courage to act and to act decisively and to become a renewable superpower. We've got huge deposits of things like lithium, which we need for batteries, and we've got huge renewable resources that we could potentially be exporting to our our neighbors. All of these take time to develop, so we've got to

get cracking. Do you support the calls to end all fossil fuel projects and do you believe there's any chance that the incumbent labor government will ever agree to such a proposal. Well, if you're gonna listen to scientists, we can't have any new call and gas projects, that's clear. IPCC was so clear about that. I support that. We simply cannot afford in the long term to be opening up new reserves of fossil fuels. The challenge for Australia is to be building these industries for the future at

the same time as we're phasing out fossil fuels. Politically, to be blunt, no, I can't see the government going for it in the current political climate. But I think societals, societal attitudes towards climate change, towards the social license that fossil fuel companies have is changing so fast. Hopefully it'll be possible very soon. So now, I don't know if anybody has made this comparison before, but your vote in the Senate is like your mansion's vote in the US Senate.

You'll be deciding whether to let a legislation go through or not. Many other times, your mansion, of course, had to play both sides and had to make compromises on the climate side, you could be playing the opposite role of pushing it even higher and higher in ambition. Is that a fair comparison. So in the Australian Senate at the moment, there's probably three people that the Government could

get a vote from terms of climate. So yeah, there's there's real opportunity there to actually be pushing the ambition and to be shaping policy to ensure that it is working for everyday Australians, that climate action is actually starting to address some of the cost of living issues that

we're seeing. The thing I said to people in Canberra during the election campaign was my commitment to people is on every piece of legislation, I'm going to hold it up and say how does it affect the people of the Australian Capital territory that I represent, How does this square with the kind of future that we want to create, and then use whatever power I have on the cross bench with that potential balance of power vote to ramp up the ambition and to suggest amendments that make it better,

that improve the legislation coming through the Center. At the last COP conference which was held here in the UK in Glasgow in twenty twenty one, Australia was awarded the Colossal Fossil Award for its ongoing support for fossil fields. As we approach a COP in November, which will be in Egypt this year, where do you think this climate believes Australia. I was at COP in Glasgow and as an Australian it was embarrassing to see the way we

were acting on the world stage. Even our Australian pavilion, we had a gas company front and center of our display. So I think this legislation is an announcement that we're back at the table. We're there to be constructive. I expect there'll be a big focus on support for developing countries given it in Africa, and that's what Australia needs to be doing here in the Pacific. We have to be stepping up our engagement and our support of our Pacific neighbors to deal with what is for them and

many of them in existential threat. And so I don't I don't think forty does that, but it's it's certainly signals to the world that we're no longer hopefully not going to the obstructionist and try and water down future agreements. David, thanks for joining me so yes, thanks for having me. Given Australia status as one of the largest exporters of fossil fields. What happens there affects the world as it

impacts have piled on. It's forced to change in the politics of the country, with independence becoming a force to reckon with. But it couldn't have happened without concerted effort of those organizing around a cause. Thanks so much for listening to Zero. If you like the show, please rate, review and subscribe, Tell a friend or tell an undecided voter. If you've got a suggestion for a guest or topic or something you just want us to look into, get

in touch at zeropod at Bloomberg dot net. Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine driscoll. Our theme music is composed by Wonderlely. Many people help make the show a success this week thanks to my Bloomberg News colleague in Australia, Ben Wescott, who cannot be stopped when he has a school I'm Akshatrati back next week.