Why Won’t the Government Stop New Coal and Gas? [S3-12]

Show Notes

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Music: “Insurrection”
Written by Pierre Chrétien
Performed by the Soul Jazz Orchestra
Courtesy of Do Right Music Inc.

Transcript

11 November 2026

link to podcast

Glenn
Welcome to another episode of Why Can’t They Just, a podcast about politics, policy and getting stuff done. I’m Glenn Davidson.

Janaline
I’m Janaline Oh. I’m a former diplomat and a climate, environment and anti-racism activist.

Luke
I’m Luke Robertson, a conservation biology and environmental policy student.

Janaline
Before we start, I‘d like to acknowledge that we are all recording this on the unceded lands of First Nations people in Australia. Recognising that sovereignty was never ceded, we pay our respects to their Elders, past and present, and we extend those respects to any First Nations listeners that we have today.

Glenn
Today we are talking about coal and gas. Now, implementing a coherent energy policy in Australia is one of the most fraught and difficult challenges in modern governance.

At its core, Australia is caught in a high-stakes balancing act, trying to simultaneously deliver reliable power as ageing coal plants retire, keep electricity affordable for households, and meet ambitious decarbonisation targets as part of global efforts to decarbonise the world.

But the challenge isn’t just technical. It’s structural, ethical and political. First, there is a deep constitutional divide: it’s the federal government that sets international climate commitments, while state governments control land use, mining approvals and local energy assets. This split creates a patchwork of competing state priorities and constant friction between economic, environmental and political imperatives.

Second, political polarisation has led to severe policy whiplash. Repeated changes in federal strategy have created investment paralysis, leaving major investors hesitant to commit to long-term capital.

And thirdly, physical and social hurdles loom large. Transitioning to a decentralised renewable grid requires thousands of kilometres of new transmission lines, triggering intense local opposition over land rights and regional impacts.

And then there’s Australia’s economic reality, which complicates everything. As a major global exporter of LNG and coal, domestic interventions risk jeopardizing major trading relationships - including with suppliers of oil and petroleum products - and regional livelihoods. And it leaves the government open to allegations of rank hypocrisy when juxtaposing environmental claims with continuing exports of fossil fuels.

So Janaline, is the Albanese Labor government being hypocritical by continuing to approve new coal and gas projects while spruiking the decarbonisation message? Is the government simply engaging in virtue signalling, as some would call it, including to our trading partners, while at the same time feeding its fossil fuel funded economic habit?

Janaline
Very, very pertinent questions.

I think underlying all of that, we really need to unpack the role of Australian exports in global energy markets, and particularly address the question of whether Australia phasing out or stopping new approvals of coal and gas projects would actually reduce global emissions. And I’ve not had anybody present to me a coherent argument that it would.

If we step back a bit, I actually think the government is doing pretty well on domestic climate action. As you say, climate politics in Australia has been disappointingly toxic. Australia had the opportunity during the Rudd government to pass a world-first price on carbon as a bipartisan measure. The Liberal opposition, then led by Malcolm Turnbull in 2009, made an agreement with the Rudd government to support a market-based price on carbon as the most economically efficient way of bringing down carbon emissions. Because of that, Malcolm Turnbull was rolled as Liberal opposition leader and replaced by Tony Abbott.

Since then, as you say, we’ve had policy whiplash. So the Rudd government failed to pass a carbon price. The Gillard Labor government that succeeded it introduced one with the support of the crossbench in the Senate. Tony Abbott, when he came in, in 2013, immediately repealed it. The following nine years of Coalition governments persistently failed to take climate action.

The last iteration under Scott Morrison signed up to the Paris Agreement, agreed to aim for net zero by 2050, and then proceeded to essentially say ‘business as usual until the 2040s and then in the 2040s some magical technological wand will be waved and we will meet net zero by 2050’.

When the Albanese Labor government came in, they immediately said, ‘yeah, this isn’t really viable’. They then proceeded to take very significant measures focused firstly on the electricity sector. They then went about reforming industrial emissions, and we’ve talked about the safeguard mechanism and the way in which they introduced what is effectively a carbon price for the large industrial emitters. They took a number of measures, particularly around fuel efficiency standards for light passenger vehicles to start to decarbonise transport.

What they haven’t done is stop new approvals of coal and gas projects. And there are a few reasons they haven’t done that.

Firstly, as I said, because they are not convinced that Australia stopping new approvals of coal and gas projects is actually going to reduce global emissions. And the reason for that is because we operate in a global market.

Australia is a very significant exporter of both coal and gas, particularly LNG, but it is a relatively small supplier of global demand for those two commodities. We produce about 4% of global coal demand and we supply about 1% of global gas demand. Australia cutting off its exports is not going to have a significant impact on global prices for those commodities and there is a very strong likelihood that the importers of our coal and gas will source coal and gas from elsewhere. And this has been borne out when China restricted Australian coal imports, it significantly increased its imports from other countries, notably Russia.

Now, having said all of that, it would not be reasonable to say, ‘well, Australia cutting off new coal and gas is not going to make any difference to international demand, so we should just keep doing it and hope that other countries change their behaviour’. Australia is not doing that.

The Australian government has actually invested a colossal amount in building clean energy alternatives that will, and are explicitly intended to, replace our fossil fuel exports in the future and not even in the very far future. I think the government’s ambition is that over the medium term, so over the next 10, 20 years, our exports of fossil fuels will decline and our exports of clean energy alternatives, green hydrogen, green iron and green steel in particular, will increase; that our focus on critical minerals will help to replace some of the fossil fuel exports.

Chris Bowen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, explicitly says and has repeatedly said he does not want Australia to be the Kodak of the fossil fuel trade. Famously, Kodak, a maker of cameras and film, failed to respond to the advances of digital photography and ended up disappearing. Chris Bowen has explicitly said Australia needs to keep being an energy exporter. It needs to stop being a fossil fuel exporter and become a clean energy exporter. And that is a deliberate government policy and they have put literally billions of dollars behind that.

Luke
Is there not a difference between how much, like, yes, of the global fossil fuels which are consumed, we only make up 4% and 1%. But in the context of how much we export, amongst other exporters of fossil fuels, we make up 25% of coal exports, and 20% of gas exports. So amongst the global consumption, yes, I don’t think we make up a lot, but of those which are exported, we hold a very large share of the market.

So, given that we make up such a large share of the market, when a project is stopped, how does that not reduce demand? I don’t recall the exact example, but South Korea recently committed to the phasing out of coal imports, or they said it was in part linked to the fact that we’re not going to be able to receive as many coal exports in from Australia.

So as an exporter and the fact that we are a large exporter, I don’t understand how we don’t make a difference.

Janaline
If Australia stops exporting fossil fuels without dealing with the demand side, then our import markets are likely to source from elsewhere. With the South Korean example, I’ve not heard that they explicitly linked it to a mine in New South Wales, but South Korea does have a net zero commitment and they have taken climate action pretty seriously. And they have said that they want to phase out coal by 2040 and that has been strongly supported by the Australian government.

And the key is the Australian government acting in the international space to encourage importers to reduce their demand and to buy more clean energy. Stopping our exports actually runs the risk of reducing our negotiating power with those countries to get them to decarbonise.

Why is that? Because they want to have reliable energy supplies. If Australia can say, we will continue to supply you with the energy that you need, but we would also really like to engage with you on buying green hydrogen or green iron, we would really like to engage with your companies to do co-investments in clean energy products, then that is a much more constructive way of getting them to change their behaviour. And it is also a way in which we can give them the assurance that they need to be able to buy Australian clean energy products.

So sovereign risk is a real thing: because if you have been supplying a country for a long time and then you say ‘actually we’re going to stop this’, they are quite likely to say ‘well we’re going to start buying it from somewhere else’.

Now Australia is a big coal exporter. As you said, 25%. But one of the reasons that we have such a big market share is because we’re a very efficient exporter. If Australia exits the market, it doesn’t mean that 25% of coal exports vanishes and that demand vanishes. It means that other exporters who have not previously been able to compete with Australia are then able to fill the void. And that is exactly what we’ve seen happen when various glitches have happened in fossil fuel trade around the world.

So I think it is not realistic to focus on production because, at the end of the day, what creates climate change is the burning of fossil fuels. It is not the production of fossil fuels and the shipping of fossil fuels. And if countries keep burning fossil fuels, it doesn’t matter where those fossil fuels come from, you are still going to have a climate problem.

So yes, you can say, ‘oh, well, at least Australia is not morally culpable’. But if it doesn’t actually stop emissions, and in fact, if one of the consequences of it is that it makes it harder to encourage people to invest in clean energy, then I think that is highly problematic.

Luke
Yeah, I mean, that’s all very compelling. And obviously you’re right, it’s where it’s burned. So in 2022, New South Wales banned greenfield coal expansions, like completely new coal mines. Do you think that was sensible?

Janaline
I mean, there are lots of reasons to ban greenfield coal expansion. One is just a recognition that the market is going to die because most of our importers have net zero targets. There are very good, you know, nature-based reasons for not having greenfield coal projects. But if that is your only climate strategy, then it is a flawed strategy.

Like, I’m not saying we should be promoting new coal projects. What I’m saying is: stopping those things is not necessarily going to reduce global emissions and that we need to have a much more sophisticated strategy for reducing emissions.

Luke
Just circle back to the example I cited earlier. That was the Bylong coal project, which was a Korean-owned venture, which was a greenfield coal project. So it wouldn’t happen anyway now. And there was evidence that it did contribute to KEPCO’s decision to ban exports. KEPCO is a state-owned energy provider for South Korea.

Glenn
Now, Australia’s internal energy strategy is undergoing a massive transformation. We’re living through a unique paradox. Australia produces vast amounts of gas, yet the Australian energy market operator continuously warns of prospective winter shortfalls in the southern states. In response, the federal government has introduced significant policy shifts, including mandatory domestic gas reservation schemes, gas price caps and market interventions designed to safeguard local manufacturing.

At the same time, the role of natural gas is being rewritten, from a permanent fuel source to a temporary peaking fuel to support the rapid rollout of renewables.

Janaline, from a policy and market perspective, does carving out these mandatory domestic quotas risk the long-term capital investment needed for future gas fields, or is this policy shift the only pragmatic way to guarantee local industrial security while natural gas acts as a firming fuel during Australia’s renewable transition?

Janaline
We should always have had a gas reservation on the east coast. Western Australia’s had one for a long time; they’ve had the lowest gas prices in the country as a result. An even better approach would have been one that has recently been reproposed by the Superpower Institute, which they call the Fair Share Levy, which is effectively: the government implements a 40% two-way cash flow tax on gas production.

What does two-way mean? It means that during the production phase, when net revenue for the gas company is negative, the government helps to stump up 40% of the cost, so it’s a negative tax. But when the revenue starts going positive, the government gets 40% of the revenue. And notice that this is about revenue, this is not about profit. So it means that the gas companies can’t do profit shifting, but it also means that it has a zero impact on the investment decision because the government has taken part in the production phase.

It’s actually quite similar to the Norwegian approach, which is to have a government equity stake, but it avoids the legal and management involvement that you would have if you had an equity stake.

Now, there has been a recent proposal, which has had a lot of hearing in Australia, for a 25% gas export tax. In other words, a 25% tax just on the exports. which means that if the gas is used on shore, the export tax doesn’t apply. It sounds very attractive, but it would have a pretty significant effect on our export relationships. I am not completely convinced it would be allowable under the free trade agreements that we have with Korea and Japan. And it also again adds to sovereign risk because there was a very clear understanding at the beginning of the export contractual arrangements that there would not be a significant change in the taxation arrangements.

For all of those reasons, I think a 25% gas export tax is not the best solution. I think a much better solution is the Superpower Institute’s cash flow tax.

Another reasonable solution is one that was proposed by the former Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry, which was to have a very, very large windfall tax in the event of, for example, a global crisis or a war that sent the gas prices rising to a very high level. He proposed 100%. I’m actually all for that because this again should not affect investment because nobody was expecting a war.

Luke
Yeah, I agree. I mean, of all those ideas, the one I like the most is Ken Henry’s because neither the government nor investors can foresee a war coming, but we still reap the benefits from it if it does happen.

Personally, I’m just uncomfortable with raising revenue from fossil fuels when we should be trying to get off of them. Not that the ginormous amount of money that disappears doesn’t disappoint me.

But yeah, I’m just quite conflicted about, you know, touching it at all, given that we saw that play out when gambling reforms - states make a lot of money off pokie machines, make a lot of money off cigarettes. I don’t like that. So in my view, the fight should be taken to the part of the resource sector which is not going anywhere and that’s mining. There’s still a lot of money there that’s not being turned into tax revenue that really should be.

So that’s my view. Somewhat controversial, I guess.

Janaline
No, I think that’s a really good point. And I agree with you. I like the windfall tax too. I guess the down side of the windfall tax is that this is what the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax was supposed to deal with and of course inevitably there are just a million little loopholes that fossil fuel companies who can afford extremely good lawyers are very good at exploiting.

One of my issues with the 25% export levy is that the proponents of it are proposing that this is the way to fund the NDIS, this is the way to fund Medicare, this is the way to raise welfare payments. I agree with you Luke. I think there is a significant flaw in that proposal, which is that if you do actually apply a levy like that and use it to fund those basic government services, you do actually put the government in the situation of relying on that revenue and therefore giving it a really big incentive to promote the expansion of export gas, which I don’t think is actually the objective envisaged by the people who are proposing the levy.

Luke
Do these people honestly think that the government will look at these exports and look at all the money and be like, ‘nope, too bad’. I can’t see that happening. I think that’s a total fantasy.

Janaline
I totally agree with you.

Glenn
Yes, now that’s sort of very well and good and makes perfect economic sense and there’s some good proposals in there.

But if you go back to first principles, a country that has the abundant supplies of natural gas that we have should not be having shortages in its domestic market, and those shortages pushing up prices to inordinately high levels which are helping to fuel inflation and the so-called cost of living crisis. Punters in the pub are going to say, why is that happening? And because you have certain obligations to foreign shareholders doesn’t cut it as an argument that is persuasive.

And while the Albanese Labor government is doing all of these things to try and put a coherent, sensible strategy in place and to ensure local supply, they will not be the government forever. And the prospect of a coalition of some sorts, including with One Nation and parties that are much more pro-foreign companies and energy companies, does not augur well.

So my question, I suppose, is really, how do we future-proof this so that we end up with an adequate domestic supply at a fair price for Australian consumers that still meets our obligations to foreign import partners and survives the political ups and downs in this totally insane policy area.

Janaline
Those are all really good questions, Glenn, and thank you for taking us back to your original point.

I think we future-proof it in a couple of ways: one is by putting in place and legislating this gas reservation because I think once we have a gas reservation it’s going to be very difficult for any future government to reverse it.

Another really good way of future-proofing is to wean our own domestic suppliers off the need for gas. So you talk about gas being used in smaller quantities as a firming option, and I think it probably will continue to be needed in probably quite small quantities as a firming option into the future.

However, the bigger issue is the use of gas in manufacturing and Australian manufacturers are very, very big users of gas. I think significant policy measures to create incentives for those manufacturers to electrify their processes where they can, or to find alternative low carbon options that don’t involve methane are very important. And the government has started to do this. They have various measures to encourage manufacturers, businesses and residences to electrify.

The best future-proofing for Australian manufacturing is to need less gas. And the biggest user of domestic gas in Australia is the LNG industry to compress and chill the LNG so that it liquefies and they can ship it. Forcing those companies to electrify those processes will, in itself, free up about a third of domestic gas use for the rest of the market.

Even better, promoting decarbonisation of those supply chains that use the LNG, in other words, decarbonisation of supply chains in our LNG import markets, will also help. So we need joined-up policy.

What is really, really important is encouraging our regional partners to invest in green hydrogen, green steel, green iron, and also really importantly to agree to buy it to decarbonise their own supply chains, because the more that they do that and the faster they do that, the less they need Australian LNG, and the more gas will be available in the interim for the domestic market. And then at the same time, we have these measures domestically to encourage our own manufacturers to decarbonise; to reduce their reliance on gas.

Glenn
So that’s a really good long term strategy. The political reality is that we’ve got probably a little over 18 months before we’re due for another federal election and the landscape will change. The Albanese Labor government that is there now with a 94-seat majority may not be there after May 2028, and certainly not with a 94-seat majority and they could possibly not even be the government.

Will we be far enough down this path for these things to have been normalised and embedded in the system, or will it be a situation where, as we’ve seen previously, a change of government comes in and simply undoes everything?

Janaline
I think the domestic gas reservation policy can be bedded in. The Future Made in Australia, the green hydrogen and green iron and green steel project, is a longer term project. If the government can secure some really solid off-take agreements - in other words, purchase agreements - for the products of that within the next 18 months, and some of them are quite close, then I think it will be impossible to undo those agreements. And if there are enough of those agreements, that creates the momentum to keep the industry going. Because a government would then have to essentially destroy the commercial reality on the ground.

Things like encouraging domestic manufacturing to electrify is already happening. For those companies that have already made those investments or have already gone a significant way to planning those investments, a change of government is not going to change their commercial calculations.

So I think the government has done quite a lot to embed some of this stuff. We can’t future-proof against every change of government and particularly since the Coalition has been very, very clear that one of their goals, if they come into government, is to cancel anything that smells of a subsidy for climate action, they will, if they get elected, have a pretty clear mandate.

So I think the challenge for Australian business and the challenge for the Australian government is to ensure that enough commercial reality is created on the ground before that happens.

And I would add, Australian business is very firmly behind the decarbonisation project. They see it as in their economic interest, in their commercial interest, in the future to decarbonise their supply chains because they can see where the world is going and they want to have a secure investment environment.

Glenn
Now, Australia doesn’t operate in a vacuum. We compete directly for capital, long-term buyers and equipment against heavyweights like the United States and Qatar. While Australia has tightened environmental constraints and domestic reservation rules, the US Gulf Coast has seen massive LNG expansion and Qatar continues its aggressive multi-stage expansion of the North Field.

At the same time, European markets are re-evaluating long-term gas import strategy, while key Asian trade partners like Japan and South Korea rely heavily on Australian supply.

Australia also faces stiffer competition for global capital and long-term buyers. At the same time, policy interventions and shifting environmental frameworks have raised sovereign risk concerns among long-standing trading partners like Japan and South Korea.

So Janaline, from a global strategy perspective, is Australia in danger of pricing and regulating itself out of the international market? Or does our proximity to Asia and long-term trade trust and focus on decarbonised LNG provide a lasting competitive advantage?

Janaline
I think the government’s approach to approvals of expansions of existing projects very much reflects that concern that we don’t want to be raising the costs and pricing ourselves out of the market and raising our sovereign risk.

Just a word on sovereign risk: one of the things that I have heard from a proponent of no new coal and gas is that sovereign risk is overrated. And I just want to say, in my experience as someone who has tried to sell Australia as an investment destination in an Asian market - in Hong Kong - sovereign risk is a real thing.

And an example that I often give people is when the Andrews Labor government came into power in Victoria and cancelled the East-West Freeway link, tt was an election commitment; they clearly had a mandate to do it. I’m not questioning that decision. But every single investor that we spoke to for the next 12 months raised it as an issue. And there are boutique hotels and jewellery shops and abattoirs and farming ventures that have not gone ahead in Australia because of that decision.

Now, I’m not here to say that it was a bad decision or they shouldn’t have done it. As I said, they had an electoral mandate; but I’m just saying it did have a very significant impact on the calculations of people who were thinking of investing in Australia.

So you can imagine the kind of impact you would have if you had a federal government essentially saying they wanted to close down a complete export sector. And probably the three of us here would quite like to see that export sector close down. And the Minister for Climate Change and Energy has said he would like to see that export sector phase out eventually.

It will make it a lot harder to build up the clean energy export profile that it is looking to build up because a lot of the people that we will need to buy those clean energy products are the ones that are currently relying on our fossil fuel exports. And I think it is really, really important to assure those buyers that we will continue to meet their needs with whatever product they need, but we would really like them to look closely and seriously at switching their reliance in Australia from this product to another product. And that other product is the decarbonised heavy industry supply components.

So I guess I would say the way in which we phase out fossil fuel exports is by focusing on building up the clean energy exports and not talking too much about the fossil fuel exports, and if necessary continuing with the approvals.

Now some of these proposals should be denied on environmental grounds. But if you’re talking about the extension of a life of an existing project or a small expansion that’s not going to have a significant impact on nature, then if the government approves that project, it can actually help to reassure our markets that we are serious about their energy security and it is therefore safe to take the risk of agreeing to a purchase agreement for green hydrogen or green iron.

Glenn
Yes, it’s interesting that you bring the environment back into the foreground on that. When you look at all the metrics for climate change, whether it’s the rapid increase in ocean temperatures, the melting of the ice caps, the massive wildfires in various parts of the world, the climate is changing quickly. And while we’re taking these steps to decarbonise, there is a question as to whether we’re doing it fast enough and whether there’ll be anything left by the time we actually get to where we want to be. Burning more fossil fuels is only contributing to the problem.

Janaline
Yeah, but the key is burning fossil fuels and the way that we stop people from burning fossil fuels is to give them a viable alternative. So yes, absolutely it’s urgent and that’s why I would like to see a massive investment push in clean energy. I would like to see a global commitment to decarbonising heavy industry supply chains as a really big step towards stopping the burning of fossil fuels. But shutting down production I don’t think is the path that gets there.

Glenn
Now as always time has beaten us and we’re coming to the end of our session today. So let’s have some final statements and we’ll start with you, Luke.

Luke
It is important to understand that when these fossil fuels are burned, the real impact of them. So recent developments in attribution science have allowed scientists at the University of New South Wales to determine the actual climate impacts of a single project.

So if we look at the recent Hunter Valley operations extension, according to this tool, the carbon impacts tracer, it would cause an additional 14.7 million coral colonies lost. Which, to be clear, a coral colony is just a polyp, so that could be really tiny or really big.

So that’s a very significant loss. Same with glacial loss: it says it would produce 20 kilometers square of glacial loss outside of Greenland and Antarctica; and using the EU’s methodology, an additional 108 lives lost by 2100.

These are certainly big concerns and finding out a way to address this wicked problem is so serious, but it’s so important that we really bring back our understanding to what the impacts are; that we shouldn’t just perceive everything as a drop in the ocean. Because the impacts of climate change are far reaching, you know, pop up in ways that you can’t even perceive. There are so many species that are retreating further into higher altitude habitat, which has ginormous ecological consequences. And of course, that then flows on into economic impacts in, you know, the services that those creatures might provide, like bats hunting moths.

And it is important that our climate policy does what it’s supposed to do, that is the reduction of emissions, right? And it is important that all of our policy levers pull in the same direction. So hopefully at the federal budget we will see changes to the diesel fuel tax credit rebate because that is certainly quite the contradiction in Australian climate policy that is allowing the continual use of fossil fuels where it doesn’t need to be.

And my final thing is we should really definitely try to figure out consensus because it has been quite disappointing in the way in which a lack of consensus has stifled progress. It is something that does keep me up at night. So I’ll leave it there.

Glenn
Thank you, Luke. And from you, Janaline?

Janaline
Yeah, I love the little plug at the end for the diesel fuel tax reform. To be perfectly honest, though, it won’t lead to a net reduction in emissions because all of those companies are already covered by the safeguard mechanism. However, it is a contradiction and removing it will accelerate onsite abatement, which is what we want.

I think it’s important to talk about those impacts. One of my issues, though, with this carbon impact tracker - and I totally understand its motivation; it is trying to address this drop in the ocean argument. Obviously all of the drops add up and they are important.

So it takes the estimated amount of product in the project and it assumes that all of that is going to be burned. But it also assumes that if that mine did not go ahead, that much carbon dioxide would not enter the atmosphere because no other product would be burned. There is no evidence to suggest that that would be the case. And in fact, there’s quite strong evidence to suggest that it wouldn’t.

And this was actually articulated by Justice McElwaine in 2023 when the Federal Court rejected a challenge to a coal mine approval by Tanya Plibersek as the then federal environment minister, where he found that the minister did take into account the impacts of climate change; that the minister did take it very, very seriously and did see the burning of fossil fuels as being a direct contributor to climate change and accepted the terrible impacts of it.

But it also found that the minister had considered what would be the impact on global emissions of the project not going ahead. And because there was strong evidence that the markets into which that product was going to be sold would simply supply from elsewhere, it was not possible for her to conclude that not having the project go ahead would lead to a significant reduction in global emissions.

And this is the drug dealer’s defence: ‘I’m coming off drugs myself, but if I don’t keep supplying my markets, they’ll find some other drug dealer’. The Bush-Reagan war on drugs, which focused almost entirely on supply and not at all on demand in the US, was an abject failure. It did not stop the drug problem in the US. It had a lot of unintended geopolitical consequences in Latin America and probably helped to fuel the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan because they provided an alternative supply.

A lot of climate activists got very, very excited by a recent High Court decision which found that the New South Wales Planning Authority had not properly taken into account the climate impacts of a mine approval. And it was reasonable that the High Court should find that because it is in New South Wales legislation that they have to take those things into account.

But I think what the climate activists did not factor in is that it is also perfectly plausible that in taking into account those impacts, they will come to the same conclusion as the minister for environment in 2023, that stopping this particular mine would not necessarily lead to a global reduction in emissions.

So I absolutely agree with you, Luke. We absolutely have to focus on the terrible effects of climate change, but the issue is demand and the burning of the fossil fuel, and just stopping the production and supply in Australia is not necessarily going to do the job that you’re looking for it to do.

I think what you said is incredibly well said, Luke, and it is an important debate, but I guess my point is that, for the climate movement in Australia, this focus on production as the solution I think is misplaced. And I think it is unfortunate that they are devoting so much energy and effort into advocating for something that I just don’t think is really going to reduce emissions.

And what I would really, really like to see, as I said, is a huge focus on building up clean energy infrastructure in Australia; so including working in communities to get better social licence for things like transmission lines and for big renewable projects.

I would like to see a much bigger focus on supporting the rollout of renewable energy for heavy industry. So this comes back to a discussion that we had a while ago about promoting public renewables; of having a government owned public renewable energy body that can provide an assurance of reliable energy for those really big manufacturing projects to help them to decarbonise.

And I really, really would like to see a very significant effort put into encouraging countries all around the world to see the benefits of decarbonising their heavy industry supply chains: most of our partners have net zero targets.

In terms of what we can do on the production side, I think it is quite reasonable to do what New South Wales has recently done and put a condition on any fossil fuel approval that says you only sell to countries with net zero targets, because it delivers the message that we do want to phase out this part of our export profile.

So I think the key thing that we really, really need to be doing is building that pathway to enable us to transition away from fossil fuels in a way, as you say, Glenn, that does not compromise our economic fundamentals, that does not take away jobs, that creates opportunity and prosperity, and most importantly, deals with the incredible urgency of the climate emergency.

Glenn
That was another episode of Why Can’t They Just? The theme music that we use for this podcast is a piece called Insurrection by Pierre Chrétien, performed by the Soul Jazz Orchestra, courtesy of Do Right Music Inc.

Janaline
You can also hear us on Canberra community radio, 2XX FM 98.3, on Tuesdays between 6 and 7, or via 2XXfm.org.au. If you like our work, consider supporting us on Patreon, via our website whycanttheyjust.com.au.

Glenn
I’m Glenn Davidson.

Luke
I’m Luke Robertson.

Janaline
I’m Janaline Oh, and this is Why Can’t They Just?