Interview with Ali Moore, ABC Radio Melbourne Drive

ALI MOORE, HOST: Josh Wilson is the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Josh Wilson, welcome to drive.

JOSH WILSON, ASSISTANT MINISTER: Thanks, Ali. Good to be with you.

HOST: Can you take us through what you see as the most significant of these impacts as modelled in this assessment?

ASSISTANT MINISTER: Well, it's really important that we now have the first national climate risk assessment, the most comprehensive and detailed look at future climate risks. As you said in your introduction, it probably won't surprise people to know that climate impacts are going to continue to be part of our way of life. They're going to continue to make the world warmer. It's going to continue to deliver increased drought in some parts of Australia, drying conditions in some parts of Australia more frequent and more intense climate hazards, including storms and in some cases, bushfires, coastal inundation and so on. I mean, the general guidance that it provides us won't surprise people. I think some of the details probably will be confronting for communities, but it's what we need in order to guide the two important parts of our response. The first, of course, is to continue with ambitious climate emission reductions, climate action here in Australia to reduce our emissions to be part of that global cooperative effort. That's the first part. And the second part is adapting as well as we can to some of the impacts we're already living with and some of the impacts that we won't be able to avoid.

HOST: You do make the point that, while it might not surprise people, some of it is confronting. I mean, when you hear things like the number of deaths in this city in Melbourne would rise by 259 per cent under a three degree change and 60 per cent under a 1.5 degree change, that is pretty confronting. It's, you know, they're real numbers and potentially real people.

ASSISTANT MINISTER: Absolutely. And it's a reminder that when it comes to the health impacts of climate change, the greatest impact is from heat alone, not from bushfires or floods or cyclones, just from increased heat. It's already the case in Australia, we live in a relatively hot country in the summer, it's already the case that heat contributes to excess mortality, particularly in older Australians, that actually affects a relatively small number of people. The current number in Melbourne, for example, is 350 per year. So under a three degree temperature increase that could climb by two and a half to something like 1000 per annum. We want to avoid that. That's why it's so important that the direction of travel the Albanese government has put Australia on to seriously reduce our own emissions and make a constructive and regionally leading contribution to that global cooperative action continues because we don't want to see three degrees warming. That's why we legislated net zero by 2050 which is in keeping with what the IGCC calls for in order to keep global temperatures under two degrees and hopefully close to 1.5 degrees.

HOST: Well, you say close to 1.5 but I mean, there is already a recognition, isn't there, that the climate has warmed in this country by 1.5 we're sort of, we're already there?

ASSISTANT MINISTER: Well, that's right. I mean the 1.5 of course refers to the global average. That's how the Paris Climate Agreement works. But you're quite right. We've already experienced warming. Australians are already living with it, and we've also shown our capability to adapt to some of those changes. And it's really important that while the community will rightly find this kind of report confronting, they should hold on to the fact that since the Albanese government was elected, we've increased our climate emission reduction ambition by more than 60 per cent, we've increased renewable energy generation by more than 40 per cent, like in barely three years we've started to turn the dial, both in terms of our work to reduce emissions, but also in our adaptation work.

HOST: You're listening to Josh Wilson, who's the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and we are talking about the report the assessment that's being released today, the National Climate Risk Assessment. Give me a call. Tell me what you think of what you're hearing 1300 222 774. We talk about, well, you've been talking about adaption, talking about what can be done in terms of future emissions targets, which I'll ask you about in a tick. But I mean a really, really obvious question, and I know one that Chris Bowen has been asked today is, how do we have this? We have the action agenda on adaption, but we also have the decision to extend the North West Shelf natural gas project. How do the two fit together?

ASSISTANT MINISTER: Well, on the North West Shelf decision, you refer to the Burrup hub decision that was made by Minister Watt. Under our environmental protection framework, it wasn't a climate decision. It was about applying rigorous conditions to protect the first nations heritage, the absolutely incredible Murujuga rock art from localised, airborne—

HOST: But it's extended its potential operating life to 2070.

ASSISTANT MINISTER: It's a decision in relation to that processing hub. It's not a decision in relation to additional gas reserves. And our safeguard mechanism, which we reformed in the first 12 months of the government requires the 200 biggest emitters in Australia to ratchet up their emission reduction effort in keeping with our legislated net zero by 2050 target. As I said at the outset, this is a government that was elected in 2022 and from the very beginning committed to an emission reduction target by 2030 that was a more than a 60 per cent improvement on what the Morrison government had had carried on with before that, we will continue to work incredibly hard and work collaboratively.

HOST: That's not addressing the issue. I mean, every year that project runs, you know, and I'm not going to whether you want it or not, it's more that every year it runs, it is going to release more emissions into the environment. I'm just asking you how that fits with what you've been talking about today?

ASSISTANT MINISTER: Well, because we're on a pathway to net zero, we're not going to get to net zero tomorrow. The Australian energy system still draws on and uses hydrocarbons that involve emissions, but we've already increased renewable energy by more than 40 per cent just in the last three years, and we have got a very ambitious target to get to 82 per cent renewables by 2030. At the same time we have got clean energy and clean industry partnerships with a lot of countries in our region, like Singapore and Indonesia and Japan and Korea and so on, because we want to work with them on their decarbonisation pathway. But it's not going to be possible for any country, for Australia or any country, to stop using hydrocarbons tomorrow. What we have to do is keep making that steady, practical, ambitious progress towards net zero by 2050 because that's what the science tells us is required.

HOST: Josh Wilson, thanks for your time.

ASSISTANT MINISTER: Thanks, Ali.