MIKE:

I think we could probably say we've never seen a cyclone quite like this. It's been a very strangely behaved cyclone.

DANIEL:

Mike Seccombe is The Saturday Paper’s national correspondent. He spent the week tracking Cyclone Alfred as it bore down on Queensland.

MIKE:

You know, normally when tropical cyclones leave the tropics, I mean the reason they’re called 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. It 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.

DANIEL:

The storm hits as we’re gearing up for the election and brings back memories of the floods and bushfires that tore through the country last time we voted.

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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

Today, Mike Seccombe on the politics of natural disasters and why every election is a climate change election.

It’s Saturday, March 8.

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DANIEL:

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?

MIKE:

The basic reason why this re-intensification happened has to do with the ocean temperature. Science tells us that for a cyclone to form, It requires surface temperatures of above about 26.5°C. And as it happened, the waters 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 off the southern Queensland coast was a balmy 27 degrees. The meteorologists and the experts, people like Matt Kean from the Climate Change Authority and David Karoly from the Climate Council, say what we all know essentially, it's climate change. What Karoly 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 some, you know, a warmer atmosphere holds more water so when it rains, it buckets, and all of it aligns with Alfred's behaviour. 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 50 years for that region. And then, you know, it moved at a snail's pace. It essentially stalled, you know, while the big waves continued to batter the coast and the rain continued to bucket down.

DANIEL:

Brisbane has been bracing for it all week in a lot of the same places that were so damaged by flooding in 2022, right before the last election. So how did that last event shape how people voted?

MIKE:

Well, last election was very much a climate election. We had a green slide, so called, in Brisbane. The Greens picked up three seats. A large part of that was, I think, 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 bushfires 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.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“The Prime Minister has caved, tonight rushing back from Hawaii amid criticism for taking a holiday while Sydney burns. Scott Morrison expressed his…”

Audio Excerpt - Scott Morrison:

“I know Australians will understand this, and they'll be pleased I’m coming back I'm sure. But they know that, you know, I don't hold a hose, mate, and I don't sit in a control room. That's the brave people who do that...”

MIKE:

The other thing I should mention, of course, is we had a bunch of so-called teals, climate independents, 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 living has been 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, you know, 4 million odd voters in the path of this cyclone, could very well refocus their minds on the issues.

DANIEL:

And if that is the case, Mike, people are looking for action on climate change still, what would the government be able to point to when it comes to its record on climate change action?

MIKE:

Well, quite a bit actually. I mean, not as much as a lot of a lot of people who are concerned about climate change, including myself I might add, might hope for. But the Albanese 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 26-28% under the Morrison government. Labor jumped it up to 43% emissions reduction by 2030. And then it implemented 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 less fuel, and various incentives that encourage investment in wind, 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 43% ambition for cuts in emissions.

Meanwhile the Coalition, led by Peter Dutton, has previously indicated that it might not even stick with that 43% 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 prospect of achieving. Dutton has since tried to tamp this down, and he said that he will not be following Donald Trump's footsteps and withdrawing Australia from Paris altogether.

Audio Excerpt - Interviewer:

“Would you consider withdrawing from Paris?”

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“Well, I think we've been pretty firm in our commitment to net zero by 2050, and that's a commitment that we take seriously and that we'll honour. 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.”

MIKE:

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 could 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.

DANIEL:

Coming up after the break, the political balancing act in a time of crisis.

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DANIEL:

Mike, let's talk some more about the Paris Agreement and Australia's commitment to it. Are we on track to meet our obligations?

MIKE:

So yes, the target was 43%, compared with 2005 levels, by 2030. 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 emissions are projected to be down to 42.6% on the current trajectory by 2030. 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 Keane of the Climate Change Authority attributed the delay in part to the disruptive climate policies of Donald Trump and the United States and said that that meant that 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 2035. 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 75% 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.

DANIEL:

So as you mentioned, Mike, Peter Dutton has ruled out withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but let's talk about the Coalition's climate policies and what they would mean for our emissions targets.

MIKE:

You're right, Dutton has said he's committed in principle to setting a new 2035 target, he's given no hint as to what that might be. But the policies that the Coalition has laid out raise serious doubts about whether they'd even meet the 2030 target, the 43% reduction goal. For one thing, the Coalition voted against essentially all of Labor's climate policies. You know, the safeguards mechanism, fuel standards, etc., etc.

But more significantly, the Coalition's signature energy policy is building a whole bunch of nuclear power. The Coalition says that it wants to have 38% of Australia's electricity coming from nuclear power sources by 2050. The problem with that, of course, is that nuclear takes a long time to build on, you know, even the most optimistic projections. They wouldn't get even the first of their proposed nuclear power stations built until the middle-late 2030s. 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 2 billion tons of extra carbon pollution to the atmosphere. Matt Kean has also pointed out that even the Coalition's own commissioned modelling that they relied on when proposing this nuclear plan from Frontier Economics also recognised 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 Kean should be sacked and that this was a politicised exercise. In fact, the shadow Climate Change and Energy Minister Ted O'Brien, and this nuclear plan is essentially his baby, he wrote to Kean accusing the authority of departing from its mandate and he accused them of producing, quote, a political critique.

Audio Excerpt - Matt Kean:

“I'm not sure why Mr. O'Brien is trying to politicise the Independent Climate Authority. Our role is to provide evidence based and science based advice on climate policy.”

MIKE:

Kean invited the Coalition to provide any solid alternative estimates. So far, as far as I know, the Coalition has not done so.

DANIEL:

It's interesting, though, Mike, isn't it. We see leaders band together in moments of crisis, as we've seen this week. We've seen the LNP Premier David Crisafulli standing with the PM talking about the cyclone, but what we don't seem to be seeing is leaders banding 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?

MIKE:

Well, it was a very pertinent observation you made that we've seen Albanese standing there with Crisafulli. Albanese 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 advantage 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 during the Black Summer bushfires. 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 elderly neighbours etc., but he politicised it and took a swipe at Anthony Albanese suggesting that if Albanese called an election this week, it would display a tin ear for the the reality of the situation.

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“Some people will have lost everything, that's 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 tin ear to do that. So it’s not due until the 17th of May, so he's got plenty of time…”

MIKE:

But 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 Hemmes. And the Fin piece 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 Kean, he actually used those words, deliberately obstructionist.

As Kean 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 realise 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 deal with a world that is, quoting him again, inexorably heating up. So I would make two observations here. The first is that this is particularly pertinent in the electorates of Peter Dutton and Ted O'Brien, because they're right under where 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 the 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.

DANIEL:

Mike, thank you so much for your time.

MIKE:

Thanks a lot, Daniel.

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DANIEL:

7am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper.

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