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Within the party, however, a group of activists had been formed to push for climate action. The Network of Activists for the Work Environment (LEAN) was launched in 2013 with the support of Bob Hawke, who had made the environmentalist the center of the government he led.
During its early years in the wild, the group met with party branches across the country, gathering support for an ambitious climate policy.
After the defeat of 2019, he changed his tactics. Working alongside union allies, the group focused on community outreach to coal seats, where they argued that coal would soon be phased out by Australian export customers, whatever our government did and that there was money and jobs in renewable energy and associated manufacturing.
For the past 18 months or so, it has begun to look like it was gaining traction, says LEAN national co-convener Felicity Wade. At least in Hunter, where the group helped found the Hunter Jobs Alliance to promote job opportunities in new industries, it seemed that even if the miners weren’t fully on board, they would at least have “released baseball bats.”
Some senior MPs agreed, although Fitzgibbon and elements of the trade union movement were not convinced.
In August last year, the Herald and The Age published a comprehensive survey commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation, which suggests that support for climate action extends far beyond inland cities. across regions and even in the coal country.
A survey of 15,000 Australians conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Australian Conservation Foundation found that 67% of voters believed the government should do more to tackle climate change, including a majority in 151 seats. nationals.
However, the mood inside the shadow cabinet remained intensely nervous.
A crucial moment of calm came from an unexpected source.
A team led by then-climate and shadow energy spokesman Chris Bowen was busy perfecting the party’s climate policy set, consulting the Australian Business Council as it did so.
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That was crucial. Prior to the last election, the BCA, made up of CEOs from more than 100 of Australia’s largest companies, had backed the Coalition’s goal of reducing emissions by between 26 and 28 per cent as appropriate. criticizing the Labor plan by 45 per cent as “demolition of the economy”. ”.
The position served as rocket fuel for the Coalition’s attack on Labor’s climate policy.
But late last year, Bowen’s team felt that under the new leadership of the BCA, and reflecting a global shift in business attitudes, the group could soften its line.
They were excited when the BCA published a political position in early October.
The BCA now believed that reducing emissions by 46 to 50 percent from 2005 levels in the decade would be both pragmatic and ambitious. It would boost investment and help Australia avoid a “costly and damaging” effort to catch up with the world.
“The goal of our work is to move forward, not to engage in endless debate on issues that the nation and the world have gone through,” said BCA President Tim Reed.
“You can’t overstate the importance of this moment,” Felicity Wade said this week.
With the BCA supporting climate action, it would be much more difficult for the Coalition to prosecute a case against labor policy.
Over the next few months, other business groups, such as the AI Group and even the Minerals Council of Australia, tacitly approved the emission increase targets or refused to engage in a political fight over it.
Bowen proved effective in disabling the Coalition’s claim that Labor policies equate to a “stealth carbon tax” and emphasized the chances of job creation whenever the issue arose.
Penny Wong arrived in Fiji shortly after her visit to Tokyo. Credit: Getty
At 9pm last Saturday, it was clear that Labor had threaded the needle. Not only did the blue-collar liberal seats fall to the Greens in Sydney and Melbourne, but the Greens also rose to Brisbane.
And most revealingly, a campaign of terror finely targeted by nationals in the coal seats did not convince voters that the Labor climate plan would kill local economies.
This has led many observers to believe, or at least expect, that voters have effectively ended Australia’s climate wars, and that the debate can now shift to what extent and how quickly Australia can reduce its emissions, in instead of whether it should.
“We have shown that climate action is not toxic in coal-rich regions, while green greens have shown that not having a climate policy is toxic in metropolitan areas,” a Labor source said.
The victories of the Greens in Brisbane and the victories of the Greens in other capitals proved that there is strong support for ambitious climate action. Credit: Getty Images
Cristina Talacko, president of the Coalition for Conservation, a group advocating for increased climate action within the Coalition, said the election shows that no party can expect to win the government in Australia without a credible climate policy.
“What these elections have really shown us is that the nation is more united in this than we thought, that the regions and the cities want action and certainty.
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“It’s time to regroup, so that the party understands that they should have done something much better than what they proposed, especially when it comes to reducing emissions and developing a national climate strategy,” he said. .
Some of the climate movement has gone further.
Wesley Morgan, a Climate Council researcher and climate diplomacy specialist at the Griffith Asia Institute, said the work now clearly has an internal mandate to increase its climate ambition and that its neighbors and allies are asking for it.
“If they have the mandate and they have it, that’s what they should do,” he said.
Labor sources have ruled out that sentiment.
“We have won a fragile truce; we don’t want to destroy that, “Wade said.
“The workforce should be limited to 43 percent and delivered and delivered well. It won’t be easy, that’s a lot of emissions to get out of this economy.
“Those who want more should focus on implementation.”
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Despite the domestic realities that work faces, the pressure will be applied internationally.
In November, Australia will attend COP27 climate talks in Egypt, where there will be more calls for Australia to be in line with equal nations and set a 50% target, as well as to increase funding commitments with countries in development.
The next meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum is expected to take place in July, when Australia can expect to face tough questions, a Labor source said.
Pacific leaders have made it “very clear” that they want to see Australia advocating for more ambitious global climate action and that its biggest security threat is climate change rather than foreign aggression. dir Morgan.
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It is clear, then, how quickly the Labor government has tried to re-engage the world with the climate.
Hours after returning from the Quad Leadership Summit in Japan with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong embarked on a flight to Fiji.
“As the Prime Minister of Climate Australia [under Kevin Rudd]I know the imperative we all share is to take serious action to reduce emissions and transform our economies, ”Wong said.
“Nothing is more central to the security and economies of the Pacific.
“I understand that climate change is not an abstract threat, but an existential one.”
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