Community right to feel Albanese having it both ways on climate
In the days when Bill Shorten led the ALP, a mural entitled “Two Face” appeared in Preston during a byelection for what was then the seat of Batman. Artist Scott Marsh portrayed the opposition leader both as a coffee-sipping, scarf-clad opponent of the Adani Carmichael coal mine and as an advocate for Queensland jobs in high-vis and a hard hat.
The “Two Face” mural depicted a Labor Party caught between environmental and economic demands.
Shorten won that battle, withstanding the challenge of the Greens, only to lose the war a year later and make way for Anthony Albanese, whose second federal election victory has resulted in the Greens being all but swept from the House of Representatives and the Coalition thrown into turmoil. Yet though Shorten and the mural are gone, and Labor is entrenched on the government benches, the duality Marsh depicted persists.
When then-environment minister Tanya Plibersek postponed a decision on extending the life of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas plant in March, there was clearly one eye on those voters concerned about the environment and our response to the challenge of global heating.
With victory secured, the prime minister replaced Plibersek with Murray Watt, whose first major announcement has been an extension of the plant’s life until 2070.
Albanese can argue he has a solid mandate for this decision. The release in May last year of Labor’s Future Gas Strategy made it clear that this country would continue to export gas, support gas users at home, and encourage the finding and opening of new gas fields, while working to offset the emissions created as a result. As the prime minister (somewhat testily) reiterated at a Canberra press conference on Monday: “It’s net zero, not zero … You can’t have renewables unless you have firming capacity – simple as that.”
In truth, nothing is quite so simple. At the time of the strategy’s release, inner-city Labor MPs such as Josh Burns, Jerome Laxale and Ged Kearney – the winner of that Batman byelection in 2018 – all expressed reservations. “We cannot draw out our reliance on fossil fuels any longer than is necessary,” Kearney said at the time. Will they speak out now?
By pushing out the North West Shelf licence far beyond 2050, when net zero is supposed to be achieved, the government has signalled to Woodside that its plans for the massive Browse gas field off the coast of Broome in Western Australia may also gain favour.
Such a move would be inconsistent with the policies the world’s top energy forecaster, the International Energy Agency, has set out for limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. In its 2021 report, Net Zero by 2050, the IEA states that “there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway ... the focus for oil and gas producers switches entirely to output – and emissions reductions – from the operation of existing assets”.
Opening Browse would also threaten Scott Reef, locking future governments into the same sort of exercises in denial that have characterised the discussion around the Great Barrier Reef.
The Future Gas Strategy says little about how reducing reliance on gas – a particular problem for Western Australia, where Labor has enjoyed such electoral success recently – is to be achieved. As the Grattan Institute’s energy director Tony Wood put it: “The government’s strategy … has a whole lot of dots and it’s up to everybody else to join them up.”
As for Woodside, even its own shareholders aren’t convinced it is serious about tackling climate change, rejecting its decarbonisation plans as inadequate in a historic but non-binding vote last year.
Speaking to ABC Radio Perth ahead of his announcement, Watt said that “whatever decision I make, there’ll be lots of people unhappy”. Yet, it is remarkable how often giant multinationals aren’t the ones wearing the frowns. Instead, those are to be found among two populations who have often been promised better outcomes by Canberra.
When our environment and climate reporter, Bianca Hall, visited the plant site this month, she found that in nearby Roebourne, home to many of the region’s Indigenous traditional owners, there were few signs of any economic benefit from Woodside’s enterprise.
“At the 2021 census, 28.5 per cent of residents in Roebourne were in the labour force, compared with 63.9 per cent of West Australians,” she reported.
Most traditional owners and custodians believe the North West Shelf project is also destroying their heritage, the extraordinary petroglyphs of Murujuga. The controversial last-minute release of a report from scientists at Curtin University will do little to allay their fears, given the experience of other Pilbara Indigenous communities at Juukan Gorge.
The other unhappy population is one that Australian politicians are fond of referring to as “family”: our Pacific neighbours. Climate ministers from Tuvalu and Vanuatu reacted to the extension with dismay, calling it a threat to their survival and “a slap in the face”.
The government has a fiendishly difficult task balancing competing interests here, not least our society’s, and our world’s, continued short-term need for gas, and the requirement that Australia plays its role in the global imperative to cut carbon emissions.
This week, our chief political commentator, James Massola, said: “Albanese must stop telling people how ambitious he is and instead take Australians into his confidence and tell them what he plans to do – and why.”
Nowhere is this more true than in Labor’s policies to reshape this country’s energy future. The clear sense of betrayal from some and relief from others suggests many are not sure where he stands.
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