The Coalition is right. Last week’s carbon-emissions target will be costly for the economy. That is because it is far too low, not because it is too high.
The Government is not spending anywhere near enough to transition to renewables. There is money in this for Australia. And the quicker the transition the less vulnerable our economy will be.
The trouble with the target – and all the targets before and after it – is that without money and action they are next to worthless.
The Government is spending more money – about $12 billion a year – subsidising fossil fuels than it is spending on reducing emissions – about $9 billion.
This is silly. It is made worse by the approval, since coming to office, of 10 coal projects, 200 gas wells, and the extension of the North-West Shelf gas project (pictured) to 2070.
All of Labor’s talk about climate action is more than countered by its gifts to fossil industries. And then, of course, we have the gifts from the fossil industry to Labor and other political parties.
They are quite trivial amounts given the huge returns they bring: $172,000 from the gas lobby, $149,000 from Santos, $128,000 from Chevron and $80,000 from Woodside, among others. Added to this are the secret donations – anything under $16,000 to each of the state, territory, federal divisions of each party.
That has now been cut to $5000 before disclosure kicks in. Nonetheless, even after this year’s change, Australia’s donation laws are still pitifully opaque.
The major political parties are being bought very cheaply by the fossil industry to pursue policies which are bad for our economy, bad for our health, and deeply unpopular.
What is the point of aiming for a 62 to 70 per cent reduction by 2035? The independent Climate Council says the world needs to be at net zero by then if we are to avoid more of the sorts of fire, flood, and heatwave events that the Productivity Commission says are causing a big drag on the economy.
The cost of reducing emissions will be much less than not reducing emissions. Rather than arguing that Australia will make little difference if the world does not act, we should be urging the world to act and set an example as to how it can be done, and done profitably.
Labor would have had little to lose by setting a more ambitious target and setting aside more money to meet it.
To line up with voter opinion, Labor should wean itself off the fossil industry by pledging not to take donations from it and by refusing approval of any more coal mines or gas projects.
There would not be much electoral downside. Last election, the Coalition scored much higher fossil donations than Labor, including at least $500,000 from Gina Reinhart’s Hancock Prospecting, and still lost massively.
A YouGov poll last month (https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/new-poll-shows-aussies-back-strong-climate-action-as-unnatural-disasters-dent-productivity/) shows that a large majority of voters will be disappointed with the weak target, to say the least.
YouGov is an independent international pollster. Its poll, commissioned by the Climate Council, showed that 60 per cent of people want the Government to do more on climate change. Nearly 80 percent expressed concern about emissions causing catastrophic weather events.
The Government should also note that younger voters are more in favour of climate action. That’s where the electoral future lies.
Australia’s performance on electric vehicles is pitiful. Last Budget committed a paltry $40 million for charging stations. Small wonder Australians suffer from range anxiety and only 12 percent of sales are EVs. Norway’s figure is 90 percent. Uzbekistan’s is more than 50 percent.
Australians are paying for this failure at the bowser and paying for it in increased pollution and health impacts.
We have to get more panels, batteries, and car chargers into the one-third of dwellings that are rented. Maybe landlords should be required to provide tenants with a certain amount of electricity as a compulsory part of the lease.
The transition to net zero (or preferably real zero without any Mickey Mouse carbon trade-offs) need not be costly.
Australia imports nearly $40 billion worth of fuel a year. We should be reducing that to zero as soon as possible. Money aside, there is a national security weakness with importing all our fuel.
Meanwhile, the value of our total coal exports has fallen from $114 billion in 2021-22 to $91 billion in 2023-24. It will keep falling as steel-making technology changes and electricity generation with coal shrinks.
Climate aside, Australia has to future-proof itself. The cost of fossil-generated power is only going up and the cost of solar, wind, and batteries is going down.
Australia has a huge advantage over other nations with solar – abundant cheap land.
For example, the SunCable project is now negotiating with Indonesia to lay an electric cable from a vast solar array in the Northern Territory to Singapore 4500km away.
Solar arrays in parts of Australia can improve agricultural productivity in sheep country. Overnight condensation on the panels causes water run-off and greater grass growth.
Australia must not let the grass grow under our feet by remaining at the mercy of increasingly insecure fuel supplies from overseas and of shrinking markets for our coal exports.
Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest and his Fortescue Metals Group have the right idea – supporting net zero and a carbon price for international shipping. Fortescue has a green-ammonia powered ship, the Green Pioneer. It happens to be in New York at the time of the UN summit being attended by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Forrest – who has a clear understanding of business opportunities and economics – has called US President Donald Trump’s energy policy “gobsmackingly illogical” and kowtowing to oil and gas donors. Australia’s is nowhere near as bad, but if last week’s target is any guide, it could be a lot better.
Crispin Hull
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 23 September 2025.
This article states: “The Government is not spending anywhere near enough to transition to renewables.” This is a very city-based perspective. In rural Australia, social licence to place large turbines close to residences is rapidly disappearing. There are many health problems, sleep disruption, ear pressure etc. from noise, vibration, flicker etc. Two Senate committees in 2011 and 2015 with many hundreds of submissions confirmed the same thing. If Crispin’s house was a rural one, and large wind turbines were placed a kilometre or so from his house, he would soon have a rethink.
In regard to gas, the Climate Change Authority emissions reduction advice to government included a reference to the AEMO ISP Step-Change scenario for its modelling of electricity emissions reductions. The Step-Change forecast annual fuel mix to 2049-50 for gas includes: mid merit gas reducing in an orderly linear fashion from 7,818 GWh in 2023-24 to 4,858 GWh in 2034-35 to 317 GWh in 2049-50; flexible gas increasing from 2,181 GWh in 2023-24 to 2,463 GWh in 2023-35 to peak at 15,143 GWh in 2043-44 and reducing in linear fashion to 6,031 GWh in 2049-50. So AEMO forecasts we will need more gas to 2043-44 to back up variable renewables and still need some supply in 2049-50. In regard to storage replacing gas, Utility storage increases from 1,980 GWh in 2023-24 to 30,644 GWh in 2034-35 to peak at 34,667 GWh in 2038-39 then orderly reduce to 23,767 GWh in 2049-50. CER storage (roof top batteries) increases from 335 GWh in 2023-24 to 13,797 GWh in 2034-35 to 49,207 GWh in 2049-50.
Professor Rod Sims, and many other learned economists, believe that the lowest cost and effective way to reduce fossil fuel production, consumption and burning is to apply a cost price to the tonnes of CO2e emissions from its burning, and allocating the revenue to assisting low income consumers who pay the final price in their energy consumption.
Climate change will happen regardless of the targets. My solar panels do not work during the night. Buying a battery is not the answer. To make it and dispose of it is a problem. We can still build nuclear power plants if we eliminate the Americans’ expensive submarines.
The problem as I see it is that governments are very poor at prevention. Try putting in a pedestrian crossing on a major road and listen to everyone complain. Wait until a few small children are flattened by a truck and you will get no objection. Governments will only act when we have a disaster. The problem is climate change will just be a series of mini-disasters. No one big event sufficient to get government action. We will be like yabbies in a pot of water gradually being boiled alive.
Tax concessions are one of the most contributing factors to serious flaws in our tax system. The flaw is permanency. Tax concessions should be allowed to promote transitions into the future and not supporting dinosaur behaviours. Tax concessions should have a limited legislative or regulatory life such as five years before review or finalisation. This should be understood by participants from the beginning. They are support for a social, economic, financial, environmental, industrial or business transition.
A good example would be the Rudd-Henry response to the GFC. Bad examples include Managed Investment Schemes, Property acquisition, Franking Credits, MV ute exemptions, mining, old energy et al. The list is almost endless.