Interview with Sarah Dingle, ABC News Radio

SARAH DINGLE, HOST: Well, if one thing is certain about climate change, it’s uncertainty. Rising temperatures and extreme weather events will become more likely, but the question is how exactly is that going to impact our daily lives. The Federal Government has today released its first Climate Risk Assessment report on how life in Australia will be affected by climate change.

The Federal Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Jenny McAllister, joins me now. Minister, welcome. This first Climate Risk Assessment looks at how rising temperatures could affect major sectors like national security. What’s the fear there?

JENNY MCALLISTER, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE & ENERGY: Well, Sarah, you’re right – it’s time for us to start looking carefully at the impacts of climate change on a whole range of sectors in Australian life. So I think Australians know that climate change is real, they can see it with more intense natural disasters and they can feel it on very hot days.

The report that we’ve produced looks at a range of risks that impact a range of different sectors. You asked about defence. The issue being raised here is that the number of natural disasters that are increasingly requiring external support for communities to be able to cope have an impact on our defence forces, and we need to start thinking about how we’re going to address that in the context of our overall national security objectives and our overall objectives for safety for all Australians.

DINGLE: So, when the ADF get deployed to help and when they don’t, is that what you mean?

MCALLISTER: The risk that’s identified here is that it inevitably places a new call on resources, and it’s being identified as one of the things, one of the many things, that we need to think about as we plan for a more uncertain future.

DINGLE: Well, this report also predicts that hospitals and health professionals will be confronted by new communicable diseases. How is that worked out? What are you worried about in this case?

MCALLISTER: Well, as the climate changes, we expect that the country will become warmer. We’ll have a warmer climate overall and a greater number of very hot days. One possible consequence of that is the introduction of some communicable diseases that are previously only present in tropical areas. And so this report points to the possibility that we might need to prepare for those in our health system.

But it also makes the broader point that our health systems generally need to prepare for a warmer climate. That might mean being prepared for greater numbers of hospital admissions during heat waves. It might be something a little simpler as making sure that our primary health care systems are engaging with vulnerable patients and clients in local communities, and making sure that at an individual level they’ve got a good plan for what they’re going to do on very hot days.

We can see some of those things already happening in communities around the country. The difference here is this: for the last decade the Coalition did almost nothing on climate change, action to reduce our emissions, and they paid very little attention to the impacts of climate change also. They couldn’t even bring themselves to acknowledge the science.

We are taking a different approach, and we are working with the many local organisations, local community organisations, state governments that over the last decade had already started thinking about some of these problems so we can produce a national level response.

DINGLE: So on that, this report, this Climate Risk Assessment report, is the first step towards developing a National Adaptation Plan. That includes town planning. What do you think is going to be necessary in terms of adaptation for town planning?

MCALLISTER: Well, we already know that we need to do some careful thinking about the location of new settlements to make sure that they are appropriately placed and are designed in a way that doesn't unnecessarily expose them to climate risk. And the planning ministers under Minister Catherine King have come together across the country to start thinking about those challenges.

But there are smaller things that we know we can do in urban planning as well. We’ve got many councils around the country who are deliberately introducing greenery and green space to cool suburbs and to make sure that we’ve got all of the infrastructure, the green infrastructure in place that can make suburbs a lot more comfortable to live in.

DINGLE: In terms of some of the bigger calls, though, we’ve had some devastating floods this summer and in recent years, particularly in Lismore and Grafton. Will the National Adaptation Plan outline where people simply should not build homes going forward?

MCALLISTER: The National Adaptation Plan will be a framework that describes all of the steps that different actors in our system need to take to prepare for a changed climate. That doesn’t take away the responsibility of State Governments to engage in urban planning or Local Governments to deliver services. But it will provide a national picture of the highest priorities for adaptation, and that’s this initial piece of work that the Commonwealth is undertaking.

We know, though, that we’re going to have to do a lot more work to prepare communities for natural disasters. It’s no good waiting until after the disaster has struck; we need to be thinking about what we can do upfront. That’s why our government, the Albanese Government, established the Disaster Ready Fund, and we’ve already allocated millions of dollars to things like building evacuation centres, improving flood resilience of communities by raising levies and all of these kinds of works, including securing communications so communities are ready at times of disaster.

DINGLE: Minister, the Great Barrier Reef is in the middle of another mass bleaching event. It’s the fifth mass bleaching event for the corals in the last eight years. The coral has basically no time to recover. Now, there’s research out today showing almost half of cane growers are sceptical of the science behind the laws protecting the Great Barrier Reef. We know runoff, nutrients and pesticides from agriculture in Queensland also affects the reef greatly. Should we essentially kiss goodbye to the reef? We know that climate change is coming. You’ve said the Australian people accept it as a fact. Five mass bleachings in eight years, is this the end?

MCALLISTER: We are custodians of one of the world’s great wonders, and we are so privileged to have the Great Barrier Reef in our territory. We have to do everything we can to protect the reef, and that’s the approach that the government is taking. You know, first and foremost, that means taking steps to reduce our emissions at home and to work towards stronger global action. And you can see that in the work that we’ve done to establish clear targets here and to legislate targets for some of our largest emitters. But at the same time we do need to invest in the reef so that it’s as healthy as it can be and so it’s got the best chance of repairing itself from events like this. This is all incredibly necessary work. Australians love the reef. We’re proud of it, and we’re determined to protect it as a government.

DINGLE: Well, I want to ask you about one other thing: Opposition Leader Peter Dutton gave a speech being reported by the Australian Financial Review last night. He’s outlined three principles guiding the Coalition’s approach to nuclear energy, the second of which is listening to communities and seeking a social licence for nuclear power. Do you think there’s community appetite for nuclear power?

MCALLISTER: Well, broadly I’d say this: after 22 failed energy policies under the last Liberal government, Peter Dutton is now choosing distraction over substance in developing an energy policy from Opposition. I mean, there are three big problems with nuclear: it is the most expensive energy technology; it won’t be ready for decades; and it risks reliability to the grid.

DINGLE: But he has proposed –

MCALLISTER: Peter Dutton and his colleagues need to explain why they are advocating for the most expensive option for consumers rather than the cheapest.

DINGLE: He has said that nuclear will function as a kind of assist for renewables. And he also said in terms of renewables there’ll be an expansion of rooftop solar as an alternative to large-scale renewable energy projects. And in that, he’s got the agreement of Kerry Schott who says that solar panels on every rooftop will alleviate the need for thousands of kilometres of transmission infrastructure, which is, after all, very expensive. Wouldn’t that be a better way of going about this?

MCALLISTER: Well, let’s be clear about their starting point: I mean, the Leader of the National Party has called for a complete pause on the rollout of large-scale renewable projects. This is not a credible pathway to secure a resilient energy system for the future. Our advice from the Australian Energy Market Operator is that renewables firmed with storage such as batteries or hydro power and supplemented by gas is the lowest cost way to secure our energy system through the transition. That’s advice provided to us by the market operator. And if Mr Dutton wants to disagree with that, he really needs to explain to the Australian public why he’s advocating for a solution that will be more expensive and less reliable.

DINGLE: Minister, thanks for joining us.

MCALLISTER: My pleasure.

DINGLE: That was Federal Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Jenny McAllister.