ABC Weekend Breakfast interview with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

HOST: We are joined now by the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek. Minister, thanks for coming.

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Good to be with you.

HOST: Now, we now know that the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been killed in that Israeli strike. The situation is escalating. Your colleague Penny Wong spoke to the UN and called for unity. That doesn't seem likely as things stand.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, it's a very concerning situation and of course, Australia has been urging de-escalation and immediate ceasefire. Penny Wong is at the UN with a lot of world leaders at the moment and I'm sure this is top of their list for discussion. What we have been saying since October last year is that any Australians that are in Lebanon should come home immediately. If Australians here have relatives in Lebanon who are Australian citizens, they should urge them to come home. It's a very dangerous situation. It's changing on the ground very quickly. And of course, we would always try and get Australians home, but it becomes very difficult if the airport there closes, as it may, unexpectedly, it may close for long periods of time. It will be very difficult to get everybody home. So, please, our message is, please come home now if you possibly can.

HOST: Minister, we want to turn now to domestic politics, and earlier this week you approved three coal mine expansions. We saw that the Shadow Minister for Resources, Senator Susan McDonald, had said, I'm going to quote here, "the extension of the three coal mines confirms Labor's renewables only approach to energy has failed". Is this an admission that Labor renewable policy is ineffective?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, of course not. And in fact, when the Coalition were in government, they were approving twice as many coal projects as renewable energy projects. Since Labor has been in government, we have flipped that on its head completely. I have approved ten times more renewable energy projects than coal projects. Ten times more. We've approved enough renewable energy projects to power seven million Australian homes. More than 60 projects, enough to power more than seven million Australian homes. This is what the transition looks like. This is the energy transition in operation. The previous government had 22 energy policies. They didn't land one, and now they're running around the country with a nuclear energy fantasy that is uncosted, that will deliver no power for 20 years. And the other thing I'd say is we had a decade of delay and inaction because the Greens lined up with the Liberals and Nationals to knock off the previous Labor Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme. Because of that vote we saw an extra 80 million tonnes of carbon dioxide pollution enter our atmosphere. Nobody imagines that a transition can happen overnight, but we have achieved 40 per cent renewable energy in our energy grid and, as I say, ten times as many renewable energy projects as coal.

HOST: In saying that though the extension of coal mines, one will keep operating now until almost 2050, doesn't that undermine the government's commitments to reaching net zero by 2050?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, not at all.

HOST: How does it not?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Because all of these projects fit within our safeguard mechanism. The safeguard mechanism was voted for by the Greens and the Teals. The safeguard mechanism is a legislated pathway to net zero. All large projects must be assessed against the safeguard mechanism. They all have to fit within that net zero trajectory and our 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030. They all fit within the trajectory to net zero. And that safeguard mechanism is the equivalent of removing 200 million tonnes of carbon pollution from our atmosphere. That's the same as taking two thirds of cars off Australian roads. This is a massive transformation that is underway in our economy. This is as big as the industrial revolution. And people who imagine that you can flick a switch and it happens overnight are fooling themselves. This is the transition in action. Ten times more renewable energy projects than coal projects. But it can't happen overnight.

HOST: We take that, you know, there is the issue of the transition period, of course, and it will take some time. I think a lot of people didn't realise it's going to take this time and that the [indistinct], I beg your pardon, the Labor Government, is planning for this long of a transition period. The question I want to put to you is, how do you explain this to our Pacific neighbours who have requested time and again for Australia to stop their fossil fuel production?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we have a plan that brings carbon emissions in Australia down by 43 per cent by 2030, gets us to net zero by 2050. It's hard to do that in an economy like Australia's. As well as building all of the 60 renewable energy projects that we're building right now, big solar, big wind, big battery farms, we need to build the transmission lines, we need to actually change our economy. The idea that we can do that overnight is, is people fooling themselves. It is a hard transition to make, but we are making it. That's what the safeguard mechanism is all about. And I'd remind people that the Greens, at the time we legislated the safeguard mechanism, said this means pollution in Australia will now go down, not up. That is the key here.

HOST: You're also doing some work with a campaign to end food waste in Australia. The government's also got its own aims to end food waste and to significantly reduce it, given the economic and environmental impacts of that. Are we on track there?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah. Again, this is an ambitious target to halve food waste in Australia by 2030. We're working with farmers and industry. We're working throughout the supply chain with industries like dairy and bakery. And this is a specific campaign. The Great Unwaste is a specific campaign to help households reduce their food waste. We're wasting about one in every five shopping bags of food we bring home. The average household thinks they waste about two kilos a week. They in fact waste about four kilos a week. And if we reduce that, we can save households about two and a half year on their budget as well. Do you know it takes an area a landmass the size of Victoria every year to grow the food we throw away? The food that ends up in the bin. Obviously a huge environmental impact as well. So, if we can reduce the environmental impact, if we can reduce the impost on family budgets, we're doing everybody a favour.

HOST: Okay, Minister, how do you reduce food waste? What do you do? How do you recycle that mouldy mayonnaise that's about to go off?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Okay, the mayonnaise that's about to go off. I do throw that away because that would poison my family. But things like old vegetables, I make soup out of, frittata, and fruit, baking fruit like a nice streusel or something, those strawberries that are a bit soft. They're delicious. Love a bit of banana bread. I think it's important to peel the banana before you put it in the freezer. I've discovered that one to my great misfortune. But the best thing about this campaign is like, I'm a busy working mum, you know, it's actually hard to be the one, the only one in the family that cares that there's something that's near it's used by date in the fridge. What I hope it will do is actually activate some of those teenagers and kids in their twenties that are still living at home and care about the environment to do their share in actually keeping an eye on what's in the fridge too.

HOST: Can you come talk to my 15-year-old who just throws things away?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I don't know. I don't have much success with my own kids. But maybe having an outsider is the thing we need. Maybe the advertising campaign will help.

HOST: Well, Minister, the next time you come on, we're expecting a strudel or a banana bread?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Fantastic. Will do.

HOST: Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek. Thank you so much.