Vikki Campion: It is difficult to see how an extra jet in the sky is better for the environment
Parents are told to lead by example so, while industrialising developers can also be climate warriors, we should not listen to what they say but watch what they do, writes Vikki Campion.
Opinion
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Parenting is hard. Who among us does not wish for a secret weapon in our struggle of school drop-offs, music lessons, P&C bake stalls, coaching little athletics while we juggle work and pay our power bills?
Mike Cannon-Brookes, that’s who.
In his defence of his $75 million private jet purchase, the Aussie rich-list billionaire and sustainability savant said he wanted to be a “present dad”.
The jet is now a paternal symbol, the secret to juggling family life and his ambition to save the world, soaring above Australian mums and dads, Captain Planet-style, cutting off their carbon emissions as he pumps out his own.
He isn’t just another billionaire in the age of over-exposure lecturing you on climate change as he jets his new F1 race team across the globe.
He has put his money where his mouth is, taking over our biggest polluter, AGL, and closing its Upper Hunter coal plant down, while power prices move from the lowest in eight years in 2022, to among the highest in the OECD.
Meanwhile, we critics clutch our soggy paper straws and soaring power bills, and whine about carbon emissions, like the 10 metric tonnes of CO2 likely pumped into the atmosphere this week on his Sydney to Melbourne return trip that lined up with his F1 team competing in the Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix.
That 58-minute flight route ranks as the fifth busiest domestic route on earth. Doing it in economy emits 0.45 tonnes of CO2, but what is the true cost of burning jet fuel when you are showing kids how sweet it is to solve climate change one high-octane lap at a time?
When Mike was buying up AGL’s controlling shares in February 2022, he went on a little PR offensive, telling us: “We have the lowest energy prices we have in eight years.”
“The reason is that we’ve passed 30% renewables in the grid, and renewables are a far, far cheaper way of generating energy. The faster we can get renewables into our grid, the faster we can go from 30 per cent to 70 per cent to 80 per cent to 90 per cent, the faster we will bring prices down. That is well backed, in fact.”
Exactly three years on from that interview this February, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen signed off on a press release praising “daily records for renewable generation ... set with over 75 per cent of electricity in the National Energy Market coming from renewables on 6 November 2024” and “record amounts of solar, wind and other renewables came online across 2024”.
And have our bills fallen yet?
No, they soared like an Atlassian Williams F1 race car airlifted over the Pacific.
Small business was warned this week power prices will stay high this year and next, “impacted by factors such as high demand, coal generator and network outages, and low solar and wind output”.
Households were warned by Canstar to “take shorter showers” to bring down their power bill as authorities look to hike what companies can charge.
Mr Cannon-Brookes is still set on his dream for solar for the masses, as he defended his new flying machine, writing: “I have an extremely rigorous carbon regime for all my flying – including using direct air capture and sustainable fuels for the carbon and contrails, to far exceed my flight footprint.”
“These options aren’t practical for commercial flights – but are viable privately. This means my flights actually have a net negative carbon footprint.”
Like the “busy working mum” Meghan Markle in Netflix territory, it is difficult to see how an extra jet in the sky is actually better for the environment.
So far in 2025, Mr Cannon-Brooke’s jet has gone on 15 trips for 79 hours of flight time, emitting an estimated 401 metric tonnes of CO2 – worth about 20 small to medium households emissions for a year.
That’s a fair whack of CO2 for a guy who in 2019 was giving employees time off so they could harangue polluters at climate protests.
And this doesn’t include his F1 team and their equipment zipping around the globe from Montreal to Saudi Arabia, Miami, Italy, Spain, Japan, China and the rest of the world for the rest of the year.
As a parent, whether “present dad” or “busy working mum”, we are told to lead by example.
Sure, industrialising developers can also be climate warriors. Even if their superhero vehicle of choice is a private jet.
Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do.
SAVING CANCER SUFFERERS SHOULD BE ABOUT LIVES, NOT LOBBYING
You break a person down into parts after the doctor says cancer. Suddenly, you are aware of each organ.
Did it get to the stomach, the lymph nodes, the brain, the bowel?
Relief when it’s not in the lymph system. Despair when it is.
There’s cancers that people say are “good” because they can be treated now. Then there’s melanoma.
At country shows, you find Jay Allen, the Melanoma Man, a truckie diagnosed with stage three melanoma and given a 50 per cent chance to live.
He’s in towns like Guyra, where the cockies never go to the doctor, who would take the time off work if they hadn’t given up a while back of finding one with room on the books.
They go under the hat and inside the boots and, when skin cancers are found early, it saves the taxpayer more than $100,000 per patient.
Yet the Jay’s Australian Skin Cancer Foundation doesn’t get a dollar of government funding.
This is where our political system is so broken. It’s the cancer with the best lobbyist that gets coin. The minister will pose in your van for a photo op but forget about a meeting.
We’ll funnel money into grants to “decolonise dentistry” yet the cancer survivor-turned-CEO relies on charity, on Lions Clubs and Rotary to fill his tank to get melanoma experts into the towns without doctors.
Lots of cancer groups want funding, but how many are willing to drive 60,000km in less than two years to the poor towns in the bush without doctors and do it for free?
How many can be detected with a simple strip-off in a van? You break your person down to stages after the doctor says cancer. You break them down into survival rates.
At stage three or four, melanoma is what people call “a nasty cancer”. They mean a death sentence.
Funding a service like this won’t just save money; it allows you to pick up the pieces before you start to break your person into parts.
LIFTER
NSW Premier Chris Minns for his epiphany on 50 diesel buses.
LEANER
Climate 200 conveynor Simon Holmes a Court for tellling a person asking why energy bills weren’t going down with the rollout of renewables: “Don’t be a dick”.
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