Coalition’s nuclear split leaves Labor with zero excuses on climate and renewables

At the recent federal election, Australians sent a clear and emphatic message: they want urgent action on energy transition and climate change.

The electorate rejected the LNP’s nuclear con job, energy transition delay tactics and climate denialism. Labor was returned with a decisive mandate to accelerate Australia’s renewable energy rollout and economy-wide decarbonisation.

The nuclear fallout now includes an historic rupture between the Coalition partners, with the Liberal and National Parties committing the most spectacular act of political self-annihilation in living memory.

Energy and climate policy were key, with the partners unable to reach agreement on a credible way forward and the Nationals reaffirming their commitment to nuclear – the very policy binned by voters. Since neither party can form government without the other, they have, as of now, consigned themselves to electoral oblivion. 

Importantly, the Coalition split also provides the opportunity for a broader political realignment. The Nationals, by doubling down on nuclear and fossil fuels, are irretrievably out of step and irrelevant.

After their recent drubbing, the Liberals are in the electoral wilderness. Meanwhile, climate-focused Community Independents and other climate and energy progressives gained traction, especially among voters disillusioned with the LNP’s record of abject failure on climate and energy.

The Liberals now have the opportunity to free themselves of their National Party shackles and pivot to alignment with what Australians need, rather than what fossil fuel vested interests demand they advocate.

Meanwhile, the expanded Teals bench will bring sensible advocacy and informed debate, holding the Albanese government to account and ensuring the absence of effective opposition does not lead to complacency and inertia.

This is a turning point in Australia’s energy and climate politics. During its near-decade in power to 2022, the Coalition systematically derailed the clean energy transition.

Totally captured by fossil fuel interests, it dismantled effective climate policies, undermined renewables investment, and fostered disinformation about emissions and the reliability of firmed clean energy.

It failed to act on our time-critical opportunity to reposition from a top three global petro-state to zero-emissions energy trade and investment leader in a rapidly decarbonising globe, putting our future economic and energy security at grave risk. 

The consequences of this profoundly damaging legacy are still being felt. Since returning to office, the Labor government has been playing catch-up as it seeks to massively scale our energy transformation to achieve its 82% renewables target by 2030, and implements its Future Made in Australia program.

It has been building public-private collaborations via the National Reconstruction Fund, alongside the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Australian Renewable Energy Authority, Northern Australia Infrastructure Find and Export Finance Australia, as well as fostering greater state government alignment in transition.

The Coalition’s divorce removes a major obstacle to progress. The pathway is clear for Labor to advance its clean energy agenda and build further momentum around urgent, scalable solutions.

This includes a rapid rollout of transmission, electrifying everything, accelerating deployment of firmed renewables, both distributed – as in its $2.3bn Cheaper Home Batteries program – and utility, via mechanisms such as its enhanced Capacity Investment Scheme, creating regional jobs in clean industries, and clean affordable energy to underpin downstream industries and consumers.

Critically, Labor can now also go full steam ahead on decarbonising our key exports, such as iron ore in which we lead globally, pivoting to onshore value-adding of green iron, a $100 billion annual economic uplift opportunity. 

Business and investors now have a level of policy certainty unimaginable a few short years ago, meaning private finance, domestic and international, can now confidently crowd-in behind state support for green transition.

Australia should now be strengthening collaboration on international climate, trade and carbon policy with our key trading partners. Our economic and political influence as a middle power within the Asia-Pacific lies in our status as the trading partner of choice for much of the region’s industrial base, only strengthened by our abundance of critical minerals, strategic metals and other resources key to transition.

As the Albanese Labor government gears up to bid to host COP31 in late 2026, it must grasp its responsibility to demonstrate leadership in actions, not just words, on slashing domestic emissions – including by increasing the ambition of its emissions reduction target to 75% by 2035 – and use the comparative advantages it can leverage in a decarbonised global economy. 

We are brilliantly placed to champion momentum towards global action on methane and a carbon price in regional trade throughout the Asia-Pacific via an Asian carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), building Asian collaboration and alignment with Europe and its carbon tariff.

This would reflect the social cost of the carbon emissions embedded in industrial commodities. It would provide the price signal to mobilise global capital at speed and scale into decarbonising industry, catalysing efforts to cut carbon, and effectively valuing those commodities embodying renewable energy in their production.

Labor’s extraordinary electoral victory is now coupled with the incomparable political gift of the implosion of the opposition, and a climate and energy-forward crossbench.

This hands the Albanese government a once-in-a-hundred year opportunity to secure an historical legacy as the government that positioned Australia for the next century and more as a clean, green superpower in the emerging net-zero world economy, leveraging our abundant renewables potential and world-leading resources to build prosperity and a safe climate for all.