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Climate Wars (Revisisted): Party Time Ep 3

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Federal Election 2025

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Climate change was a big deal last election, and it’s a big deal this time too. With nuclear now on the table, what is the next battle in Australia’s ongoing climate wars? How do you even say nuclear? And is it even possible for Australia to be run entirely on renewables?

https://sbs-podcast.streamguys1.com/party-time/20250418070337-english-99dc6c5b-90fc-4e1c-88e4-47ca6d34812c.mp3?awCollectionId=party-time&awGenre=Society+and+Culture&awEpisodeId=00000196-424f-dd76-abff-564fc19a0000&dur_cat=4

There’s only a few things guaranteed in life – death, taxes, and if you’re an Australian citizen, voting in a Federal Election. With the 2025 election just around the corner, Party Time will be by your side until the polling booths open, making your compulsory democratic contributions a little bit more fun.

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Rania Yallop

Elfy Scott

Parliament of Australia 

Elections

Climate change

I really forgot that cow farts were such a big part of this discussion.

Hi, I'm Rania Yallop, and I'm Alfie Scott, and welcome to Party Time, the podcast from SBS News, where we'll keep you up to speed on everything you need to know for this federal election.

Rania, this week we saw the 2nd leaders' debate that aired on the ABC. So what were the biggest moments?

OK, so there are a few big moments, but I'm gonna keep it relevant to this pod and focus on the climate and energy stuff. First off, the Prime Minister didn't give an answer as to when bills would come down under labour. Famously, at the last election, he promised power bills would drop by 2.

$175 this term that hasn't happened. They've gone up quite a bit more. When will the bills come down?

Under our plan, we know that renewables are the cheapest form of power, and that is why we are doing that, rolling it out, including through gas. Peter Ray's gas, gas is now $13. It was $30.13 dollars is cheaper than $30. When, when do we see the bills come down? Well.

What we need to do is to roll out renewables.

Peter Dutton was questioned about his nuclear scheme, energy, etc. But the most interesting bit was about climate change. Both leaders were asked whether they accept Australia is seeing the impact of climate change. Peter Dutton said, I'll let scientists

and others pass that judgement, but really not willing to say this is climate change happening right now. Well, as the Prime Minister refused to do the other day to make comment in this regard as well, I don't know, David, because I'm not a scientist and I can't tell you whether

The, the temperature has risen in Tharamminda as a result of climate change, uh, or that the water levels are up, uh in Thargaminda's latest flood, uh, as a result of climate change. I and I think the honest answer for most people is that,

the science is very clear. It doesn't mean that every single weather event is because of climate change. It does mean that the science told us that the events would be more extreme and they'd be more

frequent. Thank you so much for putting that together so that nobody else has to watch the debate in full.

Such a public service. You're welcome. OK, Rya, this week for the intro, I was thinking there are a lot of terms that people are going to be hearing in the run up to the election that may not totally make sense. So I thought that as a reminder, we should have a bit of a dictionary moment.

Yeah. OK. Should we get like some learning music going? Yes, absolutely, we should.

Let's start with marginal seats. That's a seat that's considered by the Australian Electoral Commission to be very much in play because the elected candidate received less than 56% of the vote at the previous election. When a seat's marginal, it's at a really high risk of being lost to another candidate. One

that I always forget is a bellwether seat, and that means an electorate that consistently elects a local member from the political party that ends up forming government.

And pollsters look to them to predict the outcome of elections. Uh, fun fact, a bellwether is called that because it refers to the leading sheep in a flock, so it wore a belt.

Yeah, OK, that was, uh, not as fun as you think it was. Oh shit.

Another one that can be hard to remember is the crossbench. Basically it's referring to the MPs and senators who aren't members of the government or opposition like the Greens, minor parties, independents. They all sit on the crossbench and they like physically sit on the crossbench. It's the bit that's in between the two sides in the parliament.

And speaking of which, a hung parliament, which is another term a lot of people are saying and not nearly as horny as it might sound, and that happens when no political party or the coalition, which is the combination of liberals and Nationals, get the majority of seats in the House of Representative.

When that happens, the crossbench will side with one choice for government and form what's known as a minority

government. And very lastly, the democracy sausage. So even though sausage sizzles have been like a big part of the voting process for a really long time, according to the Museum of Australian Democracy, that actual term was coined around 2010 by a group of friends who listed and mapped all polling places in Brisbane holding sausage sizzles. God's work, truly. All right, that's dictionary time.

So Rania, we're really in the thick of the election campaign now, and we wanted to start taking a closer look at some of the key issues that will actually drive decisions at the ballot

box. Yeah, so climate and the environment have been really controversial and really quite powerful issues in Australian politics for a really long time. The climate wars of the Kevin, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott era are kind of over, but it's still

absolutely. And if you needed any reminding, some famous moments from those times include Scott Morrison bringing a lump of coal into Parliament. This is coal.

and the Greens voting against a carbon tax labour put forward because they didn't think it was.

now climate discussions have calmed down a bit during this term of parliament.

Yeah, but this election promises on climate and the environment are dramatically different and probably worth inspecting.

Yeah, so we needed someone who's much more professional and smart than the both of us to help us break down what voters are looking at this time around. So joining us is Sarah Tymevska. She's one of the SBS Federal political reporters.

Thanks for joining us, Sarah. Thanks for having me. We're a bit into this campaign now, and it seems like the two major parties are like pretty closely aligned on a lot of their policies, but not energy. Are we like coming into climate wars 2.0? I think that what

we saw maybe a decade ago was climate wars, you know, playing out as to whether or not climate change was real. We are now in a situation where both major

Parties are committed to net zero by 2050, but you're right in saying that this is really a policy divergence because the path to net zero is quite different. So while labour is proposing to continue along the trajectory of renewables firmed by gas, the Coalition is proposing to have gas in the system, but also to transition to

Nuclear power which it says will be more reliable and drive down prices over the long term. The Energy minister and the shadow energy minister had a debate at the National Press Club about their competing visions for net zero, and Ted O'Brien seemed to leave open the possibility that the coalition could leave the Paris Agreement. Just

looking back on the current government term, has labour delivered on its energy promises?

Well, there's a few parts of that. So I mean on the promise to lower energy bills by $275 they have not delivered. Energy prices have gone up. On other parts of it, for example, there was a promise to deliver nature positive laws which would set up a new environmental protection authority. labour is heading into the 2025 election with essentially the same policy it took to the 22 election.

And that is partly because the Prime Minister has vetoed a deal that Tanya Plibersek, the Environment Minister, had lined up with the Greens to get that legislation through parliament. He's always maintained though that labour doesn't have the numbers in.

The Senate, the deal was not on the table, which is a point of contention between labour and the Greens, but that they will consult with industry and consult with environmental groups to work towards a solution. What

Yeah, so look, I mean, in terms of the 43% by 2030, we're currently at 42%, but that extra 1% is actually quite a lot of work. There is, you know, I think ageing coal-fired power stations are being extended in some states because of the need for, you know, base load power, and look, I think when

labour released its gas strategy to 2050, there was an admission there as well that, you know, Australia's reliance on gas will increase over the next decade because as we transition off coal,

Industrial demand for gas is actually going to increase and Australia's gas supply looks like it could go into shortfall from 2027, which means we might be in a sort of strange position where we're importing gas from Qatar and the US while exporting a really high percentage of our domestic gas supply from the east.

Korea. The big policy I feel that's come from the coalition in the last few years is this nuclear idea. Where did that kind of come from and what are they hoping to achieve?

Look, nuclear is something that the National Party had been calling for for quite some time because the rollout of renewables has been particularly tricky in a lot of.

and rural electorates where you know a lot of graziers and people who are living on the land don't want to see wind turbines erected on their properties or you know this huge rollout of transmission lines. I think that because Scott Morrison locked the coalition into net zero by 2050, there's now this debate about

OK, so how do we actually get there, and there are members of the National Party, you know, Matt Canavan, for example, um there is like a ideological opposition in some sense to renewables, and nuclear was seen as a bit of a middle ground because the the the rationale is or the thinking behind the policy is we can put the nuclear reactors on sites near the, you know, where the coal-fired power stations are.

And tap into the grid with existing infrastructure and whatnot. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but I thought it was interesting a few months ago, Matt Canavan did a podcast and he basically said, look, we know that nuclear's not the most, not the cheapest form of electricity, but it solves a political problem for us.

And it should be considered. So look, plenty of debate about whether or not we should lift the moratorium and let the market decide, but labour is staunchly against that because their argument is that if you lift the moratorium on nuclear, it means that

It, you know, it'll send mixed signals to the market, um, and they clearly want to continue along a renewable path.

What about the Greens and the independents? What are they bringing to this election in terms of climate and energy? Well, well,

they have unsurprisingly been really staunchly against expansion of coal and gas projects, and there has been quite strident criticism of of labour, but also of the coalition's energy and climate policy.

So the Greens said that there was a deal to be done, particularly on nature positive reforms, um, and the independents are also saying that there shouldn't be any new coal or gas projects. I think the reality of the system and and of the short term is that there will be more gas in particular.

Sarah, you're on the road right now, um, for the listeners, the background at Moss is a beach in Darwin.

And I, I guess I'm wondering like on the ground, what are you hearing from voters in terms of climate concerns? Like is it anywhere near what it was for the previous couple of

elections? Look, it's a good question because I did speak to a tourism.

Operator in Cairns when we went to Green Island, which is on the Great Barrier Reef, and he was saying that it is still a critical issue and that tourism, you know, investment actually does funnel into protecting the reef, but,

When we speak to voters, and I've got to caveat this by saying it's a very controlled environment on the bus, you don't actually get a lot of time to meet real people and the leaders' events are very sort of controlled and coordinated, there's a lot of security, but the times that we have gone out onto the street and sort of chatted to locals, I've got to say, I think the main issues that I'm hearing is cost of living.

Health, energy, housing, I think climate change in and of itself is not as big of an issue as it was at the 22 election. I think it's sort of been superseded by cost of living

pressures. There's some like loud people though, right? Like I feel like a lot of the protest action, the people who've made it into those controlled environments are, you know, protesting climate.

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. There's been these rising tide protesters who've crashed a few press conferences both from Anthony Albanese's side and Peter Dutton's campaign. They've kind of come in and said no more coal and gas. There was an announcement where, you know, the Prime Minister was pledging a billion dollars.

For mental health investment and a young 21-year-old rising tide activist sort of stormed into the press conference and said, you are condemning my generation to a lifetime of climate anxiety, you know, you say you care about young people's mental health, but this is what we're worried about, so.

I think there is absolutely among young voters, and I think it is a concern, but I would say that sort of in very broad brush stroke terms and speaking very generally, I just don't think it's that kind of top of mind issue that it was potentially a bit more at the last election.

Sarah, thank you so much for chatting with us. We really appreciate your time.

Yeah, so even though there's like a lot going on in this space, it seems like some of the conversations around it have gone a bit quiet.

Yeah, although there are still some pretty big policy swings like the coalition's nuclear plan.

Yeah, true. I guess what we really need to figure out is what does Australia need at this point? Like, are any of these plans really feasible and what's the best way forward for our environment and us in the country at large? Yes,

Absolutely. So another person who is much, much smarter than us to discuss these things is Tony Wood. He is the energy and climate change programme director at the Grattan Institute.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Tony. You're very welcome. As we head into this election, how do you feel when you look at the energy and climate policies that both major parties have on the table?

I think they're they're fine on some specific detail.

What I think we're sadly lacking and haven't had for quite a long time is a effectively a long-term vision or a plan for what, what are we doing here? What are we gonna try and achieve, and how are we gonna do it? What are the things that we don't know yet, which we're gonna have to solve on the way. What are the consequences going to be? And don't pretend this is all going to be cheap and easy, because it never was, and it's not turning out to be cheap and easy. There are some big challenges here. We are fundamentally turning out most of our entire economy on its head.

In a very short space of time, can be done, absolutely, but there's some challenges, and I think so far, um, neither side of politics has been prepared to really paint a clear picture for the Australian voter, um, the Australian community, what this is, why we're doing it, and what the consequences will be, because I think the journey we have to undertake is,

Um, something which we have no choice. Uh, climate change is there, it's here, we've seen it almost every year in Australia. We have no choice except to do it. The big choice we have is whether we do it well or whether we do it badly. And my concern at the moment, we are at risk of doing it not as well as we might.

Last election we had a bit of a clear idea of where they sat in terms of emission reductions. Are there targets heading into this campaign? Look, I think

and sadly what's happened here is that by comparison with 2022.

And climate figured quite strongly in the election and obviously was a clear part of how we got a number of really well credentialed independence into parliament. This time around, climate isn't up there as high on on voter concerns. Much more of the concern has been about cost of living. Now, the two are fundamentally related.

Because what we do know and we're seeing in some parts of the country, unfortunately for those people, the consequences of changing climate, their lives, their houses, their affordability, their insurance, all that stuff is just going off the chart. So these two are very closely related, but unfortunately that's where we are now, so um we do have bipartisan support still to net zero by 2050. That's good.

Um, Australia has an international commitment to reduce emissions by 2030. It's not something that the opposition currently agrees with, but that target has been locked into the Paris Agreement.

We don't have either side of politics has yet put forward what their target would be for 2035. In principle, the Australian government should have already provided to the Paris Agreement our target for 2035.

Simply because I think unfortunately, concerns about the political blowback, both sides of politics decided they wouldn't set the 2035 target until after the election. So it is important that we have interim targets, but also interim policies that are going to meet those targets and right now we don't, we gave up on climate, you know, on carbon pricing.

Um, we do have a couple of mechanisms that are working today. The renewable energy target finishes in 2030, and we haven't got anything really to replace it much. So what we do not have, we, we did have at least at the last election.

Both sides of politics we're talking about how they would meet their targets. We don't see that anything like as much today. Um, the opposition talks about some combination of nuclear maybe, but remember, it isn't just about electricity, it's also about heavy industry, it's also about transport, it's also about agriculture. And if we're going to get to net zero.

of those sectors. What do we need to know about the state of the climate at large right now? So you've alluded to some of the impacts in Australia, but what do we need to know about how the world is heading at the moment?

Look, I think the reality is that it's a bit of a mixed bag. We are seeing.

For many countries, strong commitment to addressing the challenges of climate change. Obviously, uh there's a real problem at the moment in relation to how the United States is going to approach this problem. Um, this is not intended to be a political statement, but clearly there's been a change of position from the Biden government to the Trump government. Um, how that's gonna play out, nobody knows. It's a very difficult question indeed. What we are seeing, uh, is almost,

A reinforced commitment from other parts of the world that we need to do this and we need to do it together. It's a bit like what happened with the Ukraine war. It forced people to think about depending on Russia for their gas, and as a consequence of that they started to much more positively look at the alternatives. So my optimism at the moment, and today's Wednesday and my Wednesdays are my days for optimism, um, I think that's what we're seeing, we're seeing here now is.

really a huge issue around global security of energy and global cooperation.

One of the biggest policies the coalition has announced heading into this election is the idea of adding nuclear power into the system. What are the realistic pros and cons of that? Well,

the nuclear, I mean, Australia has had in the past attempts to think about building a nuclear power station from both sides of politics.

Um, why hasn't it happened? Fundamentally, the economics are terrible. Um, we found, we found back in the 1960s, 1970s that uh we could build very big coal-fired power stations really cheaply, and that's what we did. Now we didn't consider at the time.

The environmental consequences of burning coal in the coal-fired power station, but we ended up with very reliable, very low cost electricity, and nuclear was never going to do that. I'm not against nuclear, but nuclear really is not going to do anything to affect our cost of living, our energy resilience, or even our emissions for a long time yet. Um, small scale modular reactors do not exist. There are more unicorns in the world. There are commercial in our life.

Make sure my granddaughter's not listening to this call because she's like the unicorns. Australia, in my view, has a plan, we should continue with that plan, which is fundamentally about renewable energy backed up with um uh with storage and also backed up with gas. That's where we should be going for now. Um, we can see where we're heading, we're not doing it as well as we might, but we're making good progress. Our emissions have come down by more than 20% since 2005, and they're heading down further. We may not get to the 43% current target, but we're heading in the right direction.

Climate Wars (Revisited): Party Time Ep 3

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Climate change was a big deal last election, and it’s a big deal this time too. With nuclear now on the table, what is the next battle in Australia’s ongoing climate wars? How do you even say nuclear? And is it even possible for Australia to be run entirely on renewables?

Climate Wars (Revisited): Party Time Ep 3

SBS News

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Recommended for you

Climate Wars (Revisited): Party Time Ep 3

Party Time

Get the SBS Audio app

Other ways to listen

Climate change was a big deal last election, and it’s a big deal this time too. With nuclear now on the table, what is the next battle in Australia’s ongoing climate wars? How do you even say nuclear? And is it even possible for Australia to be run entirely on renewables?

Climate Wars (Revisited): Party Time Ep 3

SBS News

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