Recording: Fairness, science and fury

Descriptive transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's event. I'm just going to wait for 30 seconds or so to give people time to come into the virtual room.

Alright, we've hit the magic mark of 100, so I'll begin and hopefully more people can join us as we go along. So, hello, everybody.

Firstly, before we begin today, I want to acknowledge that wherever we are in Australia, we are on traditional lands of First Nations peoples. This was land that was never ceded, and I want to pay respect to Elders past and present, wherever you are joining us today. In terms of where I am, I'm at UTS, so I'm on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and I want to pay a special tribute to the Gadigal people as the original custodians of knowledge for the land upon which this university is built. They deserve special respect for that.

My name is Verity Firth, I'm the Executive Director of Social Justice here at UTS, and I also head up our Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion. It's my pleasure today to be joined by some very distinguished guests: Zali Steggall, Ketan Joshi, and Professor Robynne Quiggin, and I'll have the chance to introduce them properly shortly. I'm just going to go through a few bits of housekeeping first.

So, the first thing is that this event is being live captioned. To view the captions, you click on the link that is in the chat, and you can find the chat at the bottom of your screen in the Zoom control panel. Once you've done that, the captions will open in a separate window.

If you have any questions during today's event, we do allow Q&A for our panellists, which is always fun. What you can do is, we don't use the chat for that, so don't go into the chat. Go into the special Q&A box, which is also sitting there in the Zoom control panel. You can then upvote questions that other people have asked, and that's good, because what I tend to do is ask the most popular questions, as you can imagine. We do ask people that they give relevant questions to the topic, but hopefully your question will be one of the ones that others enjoy and upvote.

So the title for today's event comes from a quote by none other than Ketan Joshi, and he writes: "Every problem is insurmountable before it is surmounted. Every change is slow before it is fast. Every apocalypse is inevitable until it is cancelled. This one can be cancelled, and by the snowballing power of fairness, science and fury." Cancelled by the snowballing power of fairness, science and fury. We just love that, hence the title.

And I am hoping it does seem like the tide is finally turning, after decades of denial, distraction and inaction on climate change.

Internationally, commitments to net zero emissions are gaining traction. Countries including the UK, New Zealand and France have enacted laws to achieve a net zero target by 2050, and many other countries, including South Korea, Japan, the EU and the United States are in the process of doing the same. China too has promised to go net zero by 2060.

Tomorrow, to coincide with International Earth Day, US President Joe Biden is hosting a two-day climate summit for 40 world leaders, designed to underscore the urgency and the economic benefits of stronger climate action. In his invitation, Biden urged leaders to use the summit as an opportunity to outline how their countries will contribute to stronger climate action. Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be in attendance, but with Australia currently offering no more concrete commitment than that we will preferably get to net zero by 2050, we are rightly seen as lagging behind.

At the same time, Australia's contribution to the world's production of fossil fuels is growing. We're the third largest exporter and our economic recovery from COVID-19 has been largely built around gas and other fossil fuels, a strategy that was widely criticised by the UN last year. And Australians are really at the front line of climate change impact. In the last two years, we have suffered through environmental catastrophes, including the bushfires of 2019–20, last month's devastating flooding and this month's cyclone in WA.

Local and international pressure is building. People from all backgrounds and all corners of society are calling for action to be taken.

I'm proud to say—and you can't get away without us doing a little bit of a plug for UTS here—but UTS was one of the first five Australian universities to sign up to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. And in September 2019, we signed the Climate Emergency Declaration, committing to climate-orientated action with our resources, research and education.

The Institute for Sustainable Futures here at UTS has been conducting research and projects for Australian and international clients since 1997. We've also just launched this year a new Bachelor of Sustainability and Environment in the FASS School of International Studies and Education. The idea behind this degree is it will produce graduates equipped with the knowledge to understand the interconnections between environmental, economic, social and cultural sustainability and ultimately tackle the complexity of achieving a sustainable future.

As I've mentioned, people from all backgrounds and sectors are adding their voice and expertise to the call for action. So what arguments or actions are the most likely to lead to change?

To begin today's discussion, it's my real pleasure to introduce Zali Steggall. As I'm sure you're all aware, Zali is the independent federal member for the seat of Warringah in Sydney's north, which she has held since May 2019, when she won it from former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

In November last year, Zali, much to the applause of all of us in the gallery, tabled the Climate Change Bill, proposing to enact net zero emissions by 2050 in Australia into law to ensure the long-term safety, security and prosperity of Australia.

It's garnered support from Australian businesses, industry groups and community organisations. Zali has been a vocal champion and key driver of legislative action in Australia to address the issues and opportunities around climate change.

Welcome, Zali. It's an honour to have you join us today and I'd like you to take the floor.

Thank you so much, Verity, and thank you, everyone, for having me.

If I could start also by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which I stand, and may we work together for a sustainable, prosperous future for all generations in the future. I certainly think we all have a lot to learn from our First Nations people.

This is exciting. Webinars like this are so important in building the consensus and the understanding of what needs to be done, but also what can be done, because if there's one thing that I've felt around climate, it's often that sense of anxiety over, we have a steam train that has left the station and we don't have governments that are really doing anything to put the brakes on and turn it into a safer direction. So people are really looking for guidance, looking for where is the optimism and the things we can do.

I am a positive person, a glass half full kind of person, and I believe no matter how great the challenge, you just have to set the goal and then you can break it down into manageable bits. I believed that in my sporting career, my legal career and certainly the start of my political career.

So in terms of the climate change bills, it was very much my goal in getting into parliament to try and break the divisive politics around this issue, and my predecessor certainly contributed to that very adversarial and divisive approach to it.

This is not—I have built on the efforts of other countries, primarily the United Kingdom, who passed the Climate Change Act back in 2008, and it has assisted them to reduce their emissions by some 29% to date. But what it's also done is it's taken the politics out of their approach and it's allowed them to trust in the science and to take expert advice.

So when I introduced the climate change bills in November last year, it was obviously as a private member's bill, trying to very much represent the views that I had heard from many, from scientific backgrounds, the business community. The bill was then put to inquiry to the Environment and Energy Committee, and it has now had over 6,500 submissions. And pretty much every sector of Australian society—business—probably apart from thermal coal mining, has come out in support of it because it sets that pathway.

So what the bill's trying to do really clearly is set a framework for our decarbonising action. We need to balance our emissions budgets, and it's something that for over a decade now, our governments simply haven't been doing.

So what the bills do is they provide a comprehensive framework. It locks into law our ultimate goal of net zero by 2050. Now I know the science is also quite telling that we need to get there sooner than that, but we need to at least put an outer barrier so that we can drive investment and confidence so that technology comes on board.

What the bill does is it sets a prerogative on government to set five-year emission reduction budgets. So what that does is every five years, there is a clear commitment that is science-based and is expert-advised to the governments. What it means is it takes it outside of the three-year political cycle of elections. It gives that longer term certainty, and there are always two budgets at any one time in play. The sectors will always have visibility of the next 10 years to come.

It has been shown to be really effective in the UK. I think the Centre for Policy Development described it as a 'north star', a way to guide climate efforts, because it would really identify each sector. And we know each sector has different potential. Agriculture can transition much differently to what our energy sector can, and I know Ketan will give us some more expertise on all that. But we need to make sure we have a plan and that each sector is integrated into that plan and that there is accountability.

The UK Climate Change Committee, which was established under their Climate Change Bill, made a submission to the inquiry on the bills. And they have said that having a clear Climate Change Committee provides clear signals to investors, helps build political consensus and navigate political challenges, and encourages an evidence-based approach to climate policy. I think that is music to the ears of many Australians.

So I do strongly believe we need to lock net zero into law, because we've seen the divisive politics in Australia. I don't think it's good enough to have our current 'preferably by 2050' kind of approach, because it doesn't create the accountability and make sure that every sector is locked in to reaching the goals that need to be done.

We saw in the UK, by having net zero into law, it's been a constant requirement on their government throughout crises, whether it be Brexit or whether it be COVID-19 crisis. And so under law, they've had to put out their carbon budgets, which means there can't be that distraction. And we've seen in the last two years with bushfires, with COVID, that this is too important an issue to have a government put off such an important thing as a five-year budget because of current focus. So I think it is very important.

We saw today the UK announced that it will aim for a 78% reduction on 1990 levels by 2035, and that's on top of their 68% by 2030. It's driven a lot of their COVID recovery spending, so they've backed that up with a 12 billion pounds Green Industrial Revolution plan.

In contrast, in Australia, we still are saying 'preferably by 2050 and as soon as possible'. Now, that language has shifted. When I was in parliament first in 2019, the prime minister would talk of, if I put net zero to him by 2050, he gave me a rhetoric of 'that will wreck the economy and wreck the jobs', which of course is factually incorrect. But obviously, the language has shifted, but they're still not willing to be pinned down to it.

And this is really a problem because it's not giving the certainty that business and industry need to attract international investment, but to commit the funds that we need.

It's really been interesting, in fact, during the inquiry, that areas like local governments, like building council, like architects—when you build a house, you plan for 30 years, you need to know a long-term plan of what you're building for. And they are calling for that clear pathway, just as industries, when they are investing in their infrastructure, they want to know what is the infrastructure that will meet the market that they need to deliver to over the next 30 years.

And at the moment, that uncertainty does not make Australia a very attractive market, which is a real problem because we, on one hand, have great capacity, we have great potential, but we also have great risk because we are one of the most exposed continents to the impacts of climate change. At the north, we have whole areas of the population that simply won't be insurable, may not be habitable.

The inquiry revealed that some $212 billion worth of public infrastructure on the east coast of Australia is at risk of coastal erosion and climate change impact. So the cost is very, very clear. I think any Australian that—we saw with the bushfires what that impact is going to be, and it really is huge.

So it's really important that we have that long-term certainty by locking it into law. We have the ability to accelerate with the science, with advice, by bringing it forward as we set each five-year budget, but of course, we need to lock in the outer limit.

A major part of the bills is also the risk assessment and adaptation planning, because sadly, we have a lot of warming already locked into the system.

I'm really concerned about how exposed the Australian population is to the transition, to the disruption that is coming. I'm concerned of the impacts when it comes to our environmental impacts, our social impacts, people's livelihoods and homes, their safety when it comes to areas that are going to be prone to floods, bushfires, coastal erosion, extended drought, heatwaves, storms—the force of which will make certain areas just repeatedly hit by disaster and economically unsound—to the employment transition that needs to happen.

We have sectors that are at risk of disruption. There's no point in denying that reality. We will not set the path of international markets. Markets will move on. And we are an export nation, so that export market is going to be disrupted and we need a plan.

I don't think we're doing any service to the communities that are going to be impacted by downplaying the risk, by putting off when that disruption is due to happen, simply for political votes and I think expedient short-term policy making, rather than long-term policy making.

So that's what the Climate Change Bill is trying to achieve—that long-term planning beyond the political three-year cycle to ensure we actually have a plan.

Now, at the moment, the government is still focused on gas, and gas is really not where the future lies. We know from AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator, that we simply don't need more gas at the moment.

So we need to be focusing on the technologies that can deliver the results very quickly, and we have so much resource, which I know others will talk about. Gas is still a leading cause of emissions, so it is not the answer.

In terms of the technology, we know we already have a lot of the answers to the problem, and the Climate Change Bill embraces the technology roadmaps that the government relies on, because of course we need to keep assessing technology readiness. It's not just limited to that, but that's a key part to it. Technology is one of the limbs of solving this problem.

But, of course, we absolutely need to do more than what we're doing at the moment. At the moment, we are only committed to reducing 26% to 28% by 2030, and my understanding is we're only on track for about 22%.

During the inquiry, we have asked the Department of Energy whether they have calculated a pathway to net zero, and their answer was that no, they have not been instructed by the government to plan that pathway.

The Climate Change Authority also acknowledged that they have not been asked by the government to plan a pathway to net zero.

And the Department of Environment and Agriculture admitted that they have not been asked to cost the impact of the alternative.

So, in the face of the Bureau of Meteorology telling us that we're on track to three degrees of warming globally, over four degrees in Australia, we have our department in charge of our emergency and safety not even looking at the overall cost of consequence of the likely outcome, unless we change course.

So, they are rather worrying and dire facts, but it's very much why I and so many are really putting forward the alternative.

Now, the Prime Minister's recent comments that we won't solve this in the wine bars and cafes and dinner parties of the inner city, I think is incredibly divisive, short-sighted, and ironically, factually wrong, because the UN has said two-thirds of global emissions are consumer-driven.

So, we all have choice, we all have the power to make a difference—I think primarily how we vote, but also by our choices as customers.

I believe we absolutely can solve this. We have the US summit coming. We have ambitious announcements coming from our trading partners.

Australia is more and more isolated. The pressure is on in Canberra on the Prime Minister and internationally from our trading partners.

So, I am confident we can get there, but we will only get there if we all apply maximum pressure. Thank you.

Thanks for that, Zali. There's a lot of food for thought in that, so we'll get to you later when we come to the panel.

But I now will introduce our other panellists, and it's a real joy to introduce Ketan Joshi and Professor Robynne Quiggin.

Ketan Joshi has a decade of experience in the renewable energy industry, ranging from data analytics to communications. He's worked in corporations, government, and freelanced for non-government organisations, and is an influential commentator on climate, clean tech, and science communication. He's also written for a range of media outlets, including The Guardian, The Monthly, and Cosmos magazine. His book, Windfall: Unlocking a Fossil-Free Future, was published in September 2020, and you can find a link in the chat now to that book, if you're interested in it. So, welcome, Ketan.

Professor Robynne Quiggin is the Associate Dean of Indigenous Leadership and Engagement here at UTS. She's a member of the Wiradjuri Nation of central western New South Wales and has lived and worked in Sydney, practising as a solicitor and consultant for 15 years, focusing on legal, compliance and policy areas of relevance to Indigenous Australians. Prior to her appointment here at UTS, Robynne was Deputy Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission. She has a longstanding commitment to a rights-based framework as a way for individuals and communities to pursue their social, economic, cultural, linguistic and artistic priorities. She's participated in a number of international human rights and biodiversity forums and has published on the role of rights in relation to economic, cultural, artistic and scientific work of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Welcome, Robynne.

So, my first question—as I was listening to Zali, I scribbled down a number of things she was saying, and there was a wonderful quote about legislating, taking politics out of the approach, which I thought is interesting in and of itself. But essentially, what Zali is saying is that we need to enshrine in law and lock in net zero in law in order to achieve the climate change goals.

Robynne, I'm coming to you first. With your background as a solicitor, do you feel that legal frameworks will do the job of embedding climate action and sustainability into the future of Australia, or are there other ways of achieving this, or is it a bit of both?

Thanks, Verity. I think you've kind of partly answered my question. It's a bit of both. You're absolutely right. I think the legal framework, and certainly the one that Zali has proposed, looks absolutely wonderful to me. I think legal frameworks are operationally important. They do, we hope, stand the test of elections.

As an Aboriginal person, we know that we can have wonderful legislation introduced. In the early 1990s, we had the Mabo decision, and then we had a fantastic, simple Native Title Act that was developed by Aboriginal people and politicians. Come 1998, change of government, we had significant amendments and an enormous watering down. So there is always the risk that what is passed in parliament can be undone in parliament.

However, that does not take away from the importance of legislation, not only as an operational and the foundation—the laws that we have—we elect our politicians, we ask them to pass laws. That is a really foundational, important part of our civil society, and we hope that they will stand the test of time. So I think it's really important—and really important to pass these laws.

Our laws also reflect our values, and I think that there are so many people who, while it may not be their biggest priority yet, do feel that climate change is important, do feel that we need to have our representatives pass laws that give us these kinds of protections for country—and I'm talking about land and waters there—for people, for our economies, and the way of life that we are very, very blessed to enjoy, largely courtesy of the generations and generations of care of this place that was given by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over many, many years.

So I think law is a really important building block—legislation is a really important building block. I think some of the litigation we've seen is also instructive and important for the assertion of rights. It is influential, if only for the fact that when litigation is successful and companies or governments face consequences, it does get people's attention. I think that is really important. So litigation is another building block of the legal system.

Interestingly, ASIC has issued guidance to directors as well for their role in companies, that they must be really careful to ensure that disclosure is clear, that there's compliance with climate change impact on the business of the company that they are directors of, so that that is disclosed and that there's also legal compliance. I think it's really instructive that someone like ASIC is issuing that kind of guidance and telling directors how they have to behave and that there are penalties for it. So I think those kinds of legal obligations are also important.

Also, internationally, we have our entire human rights system, and while classically—the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—don't necessarily speak to climate change directly or, for example, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The impact of climate change, of course, as Zali has laid out for us and many of us know, just bang, straight down on our security, our right to housing, our right to be able to eat, our right to safety, our right to employment. If places are wiped out, food bowls are wiped out. The very, very dramatic and frightening things that we have seen on the south coast of New South Wales, where I'm located, that we just saw. You know, the CSIRO tells us that cyclones are moving south. We just saw that in Western Australia. If we see the devastation of our infrastructure, of our homes, of the places that we grow food, the very fundamentals, our human rights are absolutely impacted on, and we have the case now of the Torres Strait Islanders who have gone to the international human rights system, taking their case to the Human Rights Committee, saying that a whole bundle of their human rights are being impacted by the rising sea levels and the loss of their home, the loss of safe water and the loss of their food sources.

So all of those things are part of it, but sending the message of legislation is incredibly important. It states our values and it gives a brilliant framework, I think, in this bill for compliance and standard setting.

The other part that's really important is the finance sector. Now, I am conscious, Verity, you might want me to pause and draw breath and I will talk about that next and give someone else a chance for a moment, but I do think that the finance sector is—I went to university to study human rights and do criminal law at the time. It was shortly after the Royal Commission was handed down. It was quite a long time ago. That's why I went. I didn't want to hear about insurance. I didn't really want to learn about mortgages. I didn't really want to learn about property law.

And I have swung around to understand that the finance sector, they know volatility. They're always looking at that change risk, assessing that, and no-one was more surprised than me to sit in a conference that IAG was hosting, our biggest insurer, beginning the process for the development of the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative and the roadmap that we now have, which is a brilliant document and really worth looking at.

No-one was more surprised to learn than I was that insurance is not a viable industry if we don't pull up climate change, and they have been one of the biggest advocates.

So I have become someone who's really engaged from looking at the financial services sector from a consumer perspective for Aboriginal people, to looking at it as a real game changer for climate change for all of us.

The Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative is a really, really important roadmap for providing guidance for the finance sector from banks to credit unions, to credit providers, to investors, to our superannuation funds, in how to direct those funds sustainably and how to ensure that where our money is going and the huge, huge funds that we all have.

We are all consumers and we all have a—you might think, "I'm not invested in anything." If you have a superannuation account, you are an investor and your money is going somewhere.

And these kinds of initiatives are really pushing the investment of these large amounts of money into sustainable initiatives and saying to the people running these financial institutions, "Don't invest in things that will result in the kind of stranded assets—looking at gas and coal—that will result in harm, that do contribute and potentially bring individual liability one day to people who make those decisions because they have caused harm."

So there's a big push in the finance sector, a wonderful, wonderful movement out there amongst—because, for example, the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative roadmap—in other countries, and I was listening to Zali as well, really informed as well by the experience in the UK and the EU.

In those countries, it was done by government. Here, it was done by industry. Here, it was an amazing, probably first time—although I might be wrong about that—but a quite unique collaboration of banks, insurers, super funds to come together to go, "How can we do this? How can we do this well? And how do we bring our industry to this cause?"

So I think the law is a really important building block and it joins together, I think, very closely with the finance sector. And as I say, no-one was more surprised than me. A good news story.

The activist finance sector.

It's interesting, though, isn't it? It shows about the opportunities that are also created by taking climate change seriously, which brings me to my question for you, Ketan, which is: despite decades of disappointment and all of these things that make us feel like argh and the extremely challenging recent years, your book is ultimately really hopeful and you talk about the opportunities for a sustainable future for Australia. So tell us a bit about that.

Yeah, and thanks, Verity, and thank you, Zali and Robynne. It's so, so wonderful to hear from both of you. It's also—not many things fill me with optimism and joy, and hearing from both of you, what you're describing is just so wonderful.

The book was really tough to write because I wrote it at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, and that was over the duration of the Black Summer bushfires in Australia.

I was not in Australia when that happened and I just kind of watched the political response from afar.

There was this long-running idea that all you needed to precipitate strong climate action was the manifestation of a disaster, a really serious disaster that breaks everyone out of their complacency.

And, unfortunately, power doesn't really work like that. Power in the things that are causing the climate change problem is quite concentrated.

So even though it would break a lot of people out of complacency, it doesn't break the right people out of complacency.

Unfortunately, after the Black Summer bushfires, not a lot changed, and in fact, arguably things got a little bit worse because COVID-19 happened and the gas-fired recovery happened.

So what a lot of people have been feeling is a sense of not just hopelessness but powerlessness.

They feel disconnected from being able to pull the levers that change this whole thing.

And I thought, okay, well, I need to—my experience doesn't agree with that.

My experience in my reading and my writing all suggests that people have a bit more power than they think they do, and so I wanted to flesh that out in the second half of the book.

The first half of the book is kind of a historical look at what happened and then the second half is what can we do, what actions can be taken, and that spans a bunch of different things.

There's the obvious things that people really sort of know about.

This is your carbon footprint stuff. So it's day-to-day decisions like walking to the shops instead of driving to the shops, making decisions to reduce your use of plastic.

Plastic bags kind of get derided as a bit of greenwashing, but plastic is quite an astonishing contributor directly to the climate problem.

So if you're not using plastic bags, you should feel good about that. I think that's a good thing.

But for a long time, that has taken centre stage when it comes to the things that individuals—that people can do.

I think what I wanted to do was try and shift it towards a more collective and group sort of idea, the way that the actions of individuals when they're brought together can actually become greater than the sum of their parts.

And so that leads into things like activism. So the 2019 climate marches in Australia are a great example of where far, far more people turned out to those than was anticipated.

I did some calculations in the book on—Australia was actually quite overrepresented in terms of those climate marches, so people care about this stuff.

Then there's also things you can do like deciding where to put your money.

It's not just the people who burn fossil fuels. There's actually this sort of web or network of contributors that ease the process of burning fossil fuels—companies that dig up fossil fuels, companies that lend money to other companies that dig up fossil fuels, and public relations firms, investors, superannuation, things like that.

So what you can do is actually take your money away from those people and make a real point of telling them, "I actually don't want to be associated with the destruction of my future or the future of my children," and it's a very, very powerful thing to do.

The divestment movement has had a lot of impact.

So those things—the personal carbon footprint stuff and the activism stuff—work really well, but there's this thir