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🗞️Prime Minister Albanese Accuses Dutton of Fearmongering Over Climate Action

🗞️Prime Minister Albanese Accuses Dutton of Fearmongering Over Climate Action

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Here is the audio clip from the Press Conference at Parliament House , Canberra

The leader of the opposition disclosed that the Coalition will not establish a target for reducing emissions by 2030 unless it wins the upcoming election. Due to this, Australia's prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has accused Dutton of being "afraid of the future" and threatening to "chase away" investment in renewable energy.

The background :

The legally binding Paris Agreement seeks to keep the rise in the average global temperature below 2°C over pre-industrial levels and to 1.5°C by the end of the current century. In order for this to happen, greenhouse gas emissions need to peak before 2025 and then drop by 43% by 2030. In the multilateral climate change process, the Paris Agreement is a turning point that unites nations to fight and adapt to climate change.

The Coalition :

The leader of the opposition announced on Saturday that he would run an opposition campaign, claiming Labor's legally mandated goal of reducing emissions by forty-three percent by 2030 was unachievable.

We've got a strong commitment to net zero by 2050 – but we've got to be realistic about where families are at the moment. The amount of hurt and pain that people are feeling in their own budgets, the number of business failures and an economy that has really tightened dramatically.

When the Prime Minister made the commitment of 43 per cent, the economy wasn't in a state that it is now. People were paying much less – less than, sub-2 percent—for their mortgages. People are now paying six, seven, eight per cent for their mortgages. It's a very different environment.

The Prime Minister, when he talks about signing up to international agreements—I know he likes to rub shoulders with all the international leaders and be popular within that group – but his first responsibility is to take care of Australians, and I think he's taken his eye off that ball. People are really stretched with cost of living pressures at the moment, and my argument is that we should be taking care of Australians first and bringing power prices down. Instead, their ‘renewables-only’ policy has really driven prices up, and everybody knows that in their bills. Now the energy regulator is saying, 'well, there's a prospect of will have blackouts and brownouts', which would be a disaster for families but for businesses as well. That's the approach that we've taken.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

Well, we've said we're very much on track. I note Peter Dutton's absurd comments that were made in his press conference. What we've done is adopt as a parliament and as a nation, clear climate policies that put in place a legislated net zero by 2050, that put in place a legislative 43 per cent reduction by 2030 and have a process of accountability and transparency through the Climate Change Authority. That authority released information in December, which is available for you to have a look at, that projected that we’re on track at that point to 42 per cent, given the policies that were implemented.

Now, since then, we've had production tax credits for critical minerals, for green hydrogen. We, of course, will continue to look towards policies that make a difference, that makes sense for our economy, but also make sense for our environment. For Peter Dutton to walk away from any 2030 commitment, to be clear, is walking away from the Paris Agreement. He himself has said that in the past. Angus Taylor made it very clear, ‘Well let me give Labor a bit of news, the Paris Agreement requires a 2030 target’.

Then he said further on, ‘You can't be in the Paris agreement without a 2030 target’. In Hansard, in parliament, 24 February 2021. The first quote was 19 October 2019. And it is quite extraordinary that there are people here who asked me day after day from the day I was elected leader of the Labor party in 2019, what our 2030 target would be. What we did was we went away, we did the hard work, we did the analysis, and that's why we have now legislated that target.

Solutions for Climate Australia

Climate advocacy project Solutions for Climate Australia stated it was deeply disturbed by the announcement today by Federal Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton that the Federal Coalition will not commit to pathways and targets to reduce climate pollution this decade.

“This is a gutless and weak approach by Mr. Dutton - it's not doing anything to deal with increasing climate disasters. If put into place, the Federal Liberal-Nationals no-plan on climate would produce billions more tonnes of climate pollution and place many more Australians in the path of climate disasters.

Why does it matter?

It matters because committing to reducing emissions and taking part in the Paris Agreement require setting a 2030 target. It becomes challenging to monitor development and hold governments responsible for their climate action initiatives in the absence of a defined goal.

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🗞️Prime Minister Albanese Accuses Dutton of Fearmongering Over Climate Action

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