What was going on?

Some in the Federal Liberal Party finally conceded there is a such a thing as climate change, however this was not at all evident from their rhetoric and policies and they were still opposing any real action. Was this because they didn’t want to stop giving money to their mates and donors in the fossil fuel industry?

The National Party still didn’t seem to “believe in climate change”, nor care about their constituents.

Despite resisting it all the way to the meter box, just before the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November 2021, the Coalition made a big thing of adopting a Zero Emissions target for 2050, which Australia already had committed to. But they still didn’t have a real plan to get there and still kept on funding large-scale highly damaging fossil fuel projects. 

The Federal Coalition Government provided an eye-watering $9 BILLION of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry in 2020-21 financial year, which is well over the budget for the Australian Defence Force, according to the Australia Institute. State Governments too propped up this climate-wrecking industry to the tune of $1.2 billion in the same year. A total of more than $10 BILLION! This is our money, remember, and our climate.

In December 2021, the Labor Party adopted a national policy target of 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 and a promised to boost renewables to an 82% share of grid. Labor was putting climate to the fore in its election campaign. 

Inspired by the success of climate-advocating Independents such as Helen Haines and Zali Stegall, there were a lot of Independents running for the May 2022 Federal election on platforms with an emphasis on significantly stronger action on climate change, and government integrity.

Meanwhile, on the one hand some State Governments were doing some heaving lifting for climate change with strong and wide-ranging policies and programs to increase renewables and transition the electricity grid. Unfortunately, with the other hand, most were, and are, still approving large scale coal and gas developments (“in the public interest”), subsidising the destruction of our native climate-saving forests and allowing excessive land clearing.