Climate-Conscious Voters Have Toppled Australia’s Right-Wing Prime Minister

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

A Green-Labor coalition won a stunning victory in Australia’s election, overthrowing a decade of conservative rule. This victory was largely driven by concerns about the climate emergency. Voters Saturday elected Anthony Albanese of the center-left Labor Party as their new prime minister, defeating the right-wing, pro-coal Scott Morrison, who had served as Australia’s prime minister since 2018. The Labor Party also won more seats in Parliament. Saturday’s address was given by Anthony Albanese to supporters.

PRIME MINISTER–ELECT ANTHONY ALBANESE: And I want to thank my fellow Australians for this extraordinary honor. The Australian people voted for change tonight. I am humbled by the victory and am honored to be the 31st prime minster of Australia.

AMY GOODMAN: Australian Prime Minister Albanese was sworn in today and immediately flew to Japan to meet with President Biden and other leaders of the Quad — that’s Australia, Japan, India and the United States. The Australian election has been described as a “greenslide,” with voters largely backing candidates pushing for stronger climate action and against Morrison’s pro-coal policies. Australia has the least ambitious plans to address the climate crisis than any other nation in the Global North, with many climate advocates calling Australia’s policies inadequate. Australia’s economy has overwhelmingly relied on coal and gas, despite urgent calls to phase out fossil fuels and for the world’s richest nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half to prevent the most catastrophic effects of the climate crisis. The country is currently facing the effects of climate catastrophe. There are massive wildfires, floods, droughts, and other consequences that can only be avoided if immediate action is not taken.

Oceania’s response to the election was overwhelming, with many voicing support for climate action. Fiji’s prime minister congratulated Albanese in a tweet, saying, quote, “Of your many promises to support the Pacific, none is more welcome than your plan to put the climate first — our people’s shared future depends on it.”

For more, we’re joined by Tim Flannery, a leading Australian climate scientist and activist and one of Australia’s leading writers on the climate crisis. Before Australian voters went to polls, he wrote an article. piece For The New Statesman headlined “Will the Australian elections finally spark action on climate change?”

Well, Tim Flannery, it’s being called a “greenslide.” Can you explain what happened?

TIM FLANNERY: Sure, Amy. It was great to be with you again on this important day.

So, what we’ve seen in Australia is a really fundamental shift in, really, the way politics operate in the country. We saw half a dozen safe conservative seats in Australia won by Green, independent candidates. Most of these were younger women, professional women who care deeply about climate, social equity, and anti-corruption measures in Australian parliamentary systems. This was a significant shift. Can you imagine the impact on the U.S. of half a dozen of most secure Republican Senate seats being given to people like this? Well, that’s what’s happened in Australia. We’ve also had a real renewed vote for the Greens. Their vote is up much higher than it’s been in recent years. They look like they’ll have four seats in the lower house. They may even hold the balance of power in the new Parliament, although that’s as yet unclear. Labor won. And Labor, although it’s had rather, I would say, muted policies in terms of addressing climate change, they are far better than the conservative party that has lost power now.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the teals.

TIM FLANNERY: Well, the teals are the most fascinating phenomenon that I’ve seen in my time in Australian politics. I was involved in the creation of the first teal. Her name is Zali Stewart. She won the seat of the conservative — or, archconservative ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Australia at the previous election, and she has now won with an increased majority. It’s very clear that that seat is not going to go back into conservative hands anytime soon. She is now joined in this role by five other young women, all professionals, corporates, and people in the philanthropic sectors. And they all beat conservative members in Parliament, the equivalent to your Republicans. And this has been — it’s such a fundamental shift. It’s sort of hard to understand how you go from that far-right position to what appears to be a left position.

AMY GOODMAN: And then explain the term “teal.” Blue-green?

TIM FLANNERY: Oh, well, yeah. Sure, yeah. Blue is the preferred color of conservatives in Australia. You can also mix blue with a little bit of green to get teal.

AMY GOODMAN: And when you say “conservatives,” conservatives are Liberal in Australia?

TIM FLANNERY: That’s right. I’m sorry. I mean, it’s terribly confusing.

AMY GOODMAN: Liberals are conservative.

TIM FLANNERY: Exactly. The Liberal Party is our conservative party, so it’s our equivalent of the Republicans. Their color is blue. Although they are fiscally responsible and so forth the teals really care about climate, accountability within the Parliament and anticorruption and so on. They also care about equity and gender equity. They chose teal as their color choice.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain Australia’s dependence on coal and the world’s dependence, where Australia stands in terms of coal and gas exports.

TIM FLANNERY: Sure. Well, look, Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal by calorific value, because we have very high-calorie coal, and also of gas. So they’re important in terms of the Australian economy, but the economy itself is far broader than that. So, you know, we are looking — we all know that both coal and gas have a limited tenure. Globally, there will be major changes in the use of these fossil fuels over the next decade. The Labor Party, the teals, and the Greens all agree that our economy must move from its dependence on fossil fuels to new industries. This could be hydrogen. It could be electricity export directly. It could be minerals processing using clean electricity. We don’t know quite yet, but we see there is a real need for that transition.

The conservative government simply didn’t recognize this need. They believed that coal and gas would continue to be mined forever. People in the coal electrics and the gas electrics, where these things are mined, knew that this just wasn’t true, that, in fact, there was going to be a limit. We have lived through the most catastrophic climate in Australia since the last election, over the last three years, and it’s very clear now to people that change is absolutely essential.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim, you know that we met many years ago in New Mexico. It has been through these terrible fires. To help the world understand the effects of the climate crisis, it would be helpful if you could talk about what happened in Australia. I mean, climate is not at the top of voters’ concerns. Maybe it’s based on the kinds of questions that are asked in the United States. To understand the profound effects climate has had on your country.

TIM FLANNERY: Let’s face it, polling has shown that climate is the most pressing issue of the last election. And that’s come about in part because of the catastrophic impacts we have seen in Australia since the previous election just three years ago. Massive wildfires started shortly after the election. The largest area that was burned by fire in Australia was about 2% before those wildfires. 21% of Australia’s forests were destroyed by those fires. Many thousands of people lost homes and many thousands more were affected by the fires. Only 10% of those peoples have been able to rebuild their homes since the event. 90% of those peoples are still trying to live elsewhere or build houses, with some still camping out. This had a huge impact.

During those fires, our prime Minister at the time decided to take a holiday to Hawaii to avoid this terrible event in which our Navy had to rescue people from our beaches. I mean, if you hadn’t seen it, you would think it was fiction, but it was absolutely true. These fires trapped thousands of people who needed to be rescued by the armed forces.

In rapid succession, the nation was hit with some of its worst floods, leaving entire villages devastated by unprecedented flooding. That flooding has continued to escalate with at least three to four major flooding events. It seems like it is never ending.

And for people living in the cities, you might think they had escaped these influences, but we haven’t. Hundreds of people died when toxic smoke blanketed our major cities during the fires. People on the beach were covered in ash after falling debris from the sky. The mold has made Sydney, a beautiful, yellowish-sandstone city, black. People’s houses are covered in mildew and mold. People are throwing out whole wardrobes’ worth of clothing. The runoff from polluted sources into oceans makes beaches unusable. The Australian way of life has changed. The beautiful, sunny country I grew to love is now a distant memory. And it’s very, very strongly felt by people.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim Flannery: We want to thank for being here. Climate scientist, activist, writer, professor, University of Melbourne, author of many books including The Weather Makers: How Man Changes the Climate and What it Means for Earthly Life The Climate Cure: Solving Climate Emergency During the Era of COVID-19.

Next, this week marks George Floyd’s second anniversary as a police officer. We knew about George Floyd’s death. What about his personal life? We’ll speak with two Washington Post Reporters who co-authored this book His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Stay with Us