A collective of ‘climate’ independents have called on the clean energy sector to back their more ambitious visions for Australian climate action, arguing that major parties had failed and allowed federal energy policy to become too heavily politicised.
Independent candidates Zali Steggall, Allegra Spender and David Pocock pitched their policy proposals for how Australia could seize the positive economic opportunities that can be created while achieving decarbonisation goals – at the Smart Energy Expo in Sydney on Wednesday.
Warringah MP Zali Steggall said that the growing momentum behind independent candidates has been driven by a broad community sentiment that Australia’s major political parties had shown themselves to be incapable of addressing the climate challenge.
“I’ve had three years of sitting in Canberra, listening to the spin and the rubbish that gets exchanged in Parliament,” Steggall said.
“It’s time that we have a plan, and I know many of the independent candidates have echoed this sentiment. We actually need to change the climate in Canberra.”
“We need to change this. Continuing along the same path is just a recipe for disaster.”
“We are losing opportunities because we are not seen as a favourable jurisdiction. Let’s make the 47th parliament that disrupts the change to Australian politics,” Steggall added.
Independent candidate for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, is backing a 50 per cent emissions reduction target for 2030 and shifting Australia’s electricity grid to at least 80 per cent renewables over the same timeframe.
Speaking at the expo, Spender said that neither the Liberal-National Coalition nor the Labor Party had been able to adequately tackle the climate policy challenge, and Australia was missing out on new positive economic opportunities as a result.
“The Coalition at the state level is showing that this is actually not a Coalition issue – this is an issue in relation to the federal party,” Spender said.
“They’ve stuck with Tony Abbott’s 2030 targets. Those are the targets that if the rest of the world adopted, we’d be down for three degrees of warming.”
“The Labor Party have been doing much better, but they still don’t have the ambition that the community recognises, that the business community identifies.”
“That’s why we need to shake this up and that’s why I’m standing as an independent, because there’s not enough focus at the federal level about the opportunity that we’re facing.”
“If we are truly going to capture the opportunity of a clean energy future, we need ambition,” Spender added.
Former Wallabies captain and independent ACT senate candidate, David Pocock, launched his plan for an electrification pilot project, that would convert a Canberra suburb to have its entire energy use electrified – to cut costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
“Why do we need to want to demonstrate how electrification can actually save households money? This is an opportunity,” Pocock said.
“We have to ensure that we are running trials, ensuring that we get the right policy in place to make that happen. Rooftop solar is an incredible Australian success story. We have an opportunity to do that for other technologies and to really ensure that households benefit.”
“We’ve been caught in ten years of politicisation of [climate change], from outright denial to now we’re in a ‘delay’ phase, but there are significant emissions reductions that can be achieved with this,” Pocock added.
Pocock said that his proposal for an electrification pilot had been developed in collaboration with Rewiring Australia’s Saul Griffith.
Griffith told the expo that Australia was well placed to emerge as a world leader in achieving decarbonisation through the electrification of energy use.
“Australia can lead the world on this decarbonisation-electrification. Because we’ve had the rooftop solar miracle, because of the shape of our markets, Australia could do the world’s first completely zero emission suburb,” Griffith said.
Labor’s climate and energy spokesperson Chris Bowen and Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt will address the Smart Energy Expo on Thursday. Federal energy minister Angus Taylor has declined to address the event.
