‘More frequent, intense’: PM puts climate front and centre for election

Climate change has been elevated to a major election issue by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declaring that leaders must take decisive action to address global warming because it is making natural disasters such as Cyclone Alfred worse and more expensive to recover from.

Albanese briefed media on Friday morning from the National Situation Room in Canberra, where he insisted that governments must act on the scientific advice, calling for urgent action to cut greenhouse emissions and minimise the growing costs of extreme weather.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese briefs media about Cyclone Alfred from the National Situation Room in Canberra.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“You can’t say this event [Tropical Cyclone Alfred] is just because of climate change. What you can say is that climate change is having an impact on our weather patterns,” Albanese said.

“The science tells us that there would be more extreme weather events, they would be more frequent and they would be more intense.”

The CSIRO has stated that warmer oceans caused by climate change may result in fewer cyclones, but those that hit are “stronger, bringing intense rainfall and dangerous storm surges”.

The cyclone is predicted to cross the coast on Saturday, but high winds have already left more than 80,000 NSW and Queensland residents without power. The clean-up bill from a potential flood in Queensland could be billions of dollars.

The Albanese government has set a legally binding target to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 and to reach net zero emissions by 2050 but delayed setting a target for 2035 until after the election as US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable approach pushes back key advice.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has committed to dumping the government’s 2030 target, claiming it is unachievable and driving up electricity prices, but has vowed to hit the 2050 target with a nuclear power strategy.

Albanese on Friday issued a challenge to the Coalition on the cost of the energy transition to swap polluting fossil fuels for clean energy, arguing that there was a significant cost attached to a lack of action to curb emissions and reduce the impacts of global warming.

“People speak about the costs of that action to deal with the transition that’s under way,” Albanese said. “There’s an economic cost as well as a human cost of weather events, and that is something that ... my government is very conscious of, which is why we’re so determined not just to deal with the immediate threats, but to always have our eye on that horizon.”

The Albanese government is also under pressure over the cost of electricity and has faced questions over the patchy delivery of its plan to raise the share of renewable energy in the electricity grid to 82 per cent by 2030, in a bid to wind down fossil-fuel pollution.

It made an election promise in the 2022 campaign to cut electricity bills by $275. But this went awry almost immediately when a global energy crunch raised fuel costs and boosted average household bills to about $1600.

The Coalition argues that its nuclear plan will be cheaper and points to the government’s lack of progress on emissions reduction.

“We will continue to advocate for solutions that deliver affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy for all Australians,” said opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien.

“The Albanese government has shown itself to be all talk and no action as emissions have risen under their watch.”

Australia’s annual emissions levels have remained virtually unchanged since now and June 2022, when Scott Morrison left office and the Labor government was elected.

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