Greens Member for Ballina Tamara Smith has slammed Labor’s recent climate bill success as a ‘waste of time’ and says her party will introduce their own next year.
State parliamentarians were up into the early hours of the morning more than once in the final sitting week for 2023 as they debated the merits, or otherwise, of Labor’s emissions goals and strategies.
Labor issued a media release once their amended bill passed, saying it had made ambitious emissions reduction targets law and set up a ‘strong and independent’ Net Zero Commission.
But after voting for the bill with amendments thrashed out in parliament, Ms Smith said the new Climate Change (Net Zero Future) goal of net zero climate emissions by 2050 wasn’t ‘a game changer’.
Greens push for independent commissioner free from fossil fuels ties
There were some ‘important improvements’ made to the bill with thanks to her party, Ms Smith said, including in terms of the commissioner’s independence and ability to give advice about new coal and gas projects.
‘They love appointing commissioners,’ Ms Smith said of Labor NSW, ‘we managed to get a push that that person can’t be someone who has any ties to the fossil fuel industry’.
‘But at the end of the day, climate science is telling us and what the lead organisations around the world, including the UN, are saying is that when countries and governments are saying net zero by 2050, that it just means nothing without interim binding steep targets’.
‘Yeah, we’ve kind of enabled Labor to faff around,’ the Ballina member said, ‘so next year, we will be introducing our own legislation’.
‘It may not get up but we’re not going just sit back because let’s face it, in 2050 a lot of those people, they won’t even be in politics and it’s well and truly too late,’ she said.
From 18% to 50% reductions in seven years
Aside from the net-zero-by-2050 goal, the new law also includes staged targets of an overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 50% compared to 2005 by 2030 and 70% by 2035.
The new law includes setting up an independent Net Zero Commission to ‘monitor, review, report on and advise on progress towards these targets,’ the government says.
Ms Smith said the new law offered no hope of slowing down a two-degree global warming trajectory.
‘Two degrees of warming is very unpleasant on the planet and risk to life,’ the Greens member said, ‘so it’s disappointing, it’s incredibly disappointing’.
‘We tried to get that steep interim target, make it binding, and they wouldn’t have a bar of it,’ Ms Smith said, referring to the political debate in parliament between The Greens and Labor.
‘What are we going to do, get to 2048 and go, oops, we’re not on target?’ she said, ‘that is absurd and everyone in the climate space thinks it’s absurd as well’.
The state’s trajectory will have to improve significantly quickly given the government’s acknowledgement of NSW having only achieved an 18% reduction on 2005 levels of greenhouse gas emissions to date.
The reduction was achieved, the government said, by going ‘beyond aspirational targets and enshrining them in law’.
Lismore Labor MP says coal has to go
Labor said the new law provided for the targets to be ‘ratcheted up over time, in line with community expectations’.
‘It commits the Premier and Minister for Climate Change to meeting the net zero target, demonstrating the government’s commitment to serious action on climate change,’ Labor’s media release said.
‘It will also provide business and industry with energy and investment certainty, and create new jobs while bolstering Australian manufacturing in the energy sector.’
Minister for Climate Change, Energy and the Environment Penny Sharpe was quoted saying the new law was proof Labor could build consensus on ‘what is right for NSW’ and deliver key election promises, ‘despite holding minority government’.
Labor Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin said there had been the ‘usual argy bargy’ during parliamentary debate but the billl ‘got through’.
‘Everybody wants to get there sooner,’ Ms Saffin said, ‘so within the legislation, there’s commitments to try and get there sooner, which is fantastic’.
‘It’s legislated for the first time in NSW that we have to transition to renewables,’ Ms Saffin said, ‘and yes, while there’s still some coal happening, it will go, it has to go because otherwise, we don’t get to net zero’.
‘Gas and coal will be around for a while,’ the Labor member said.
‘But the quicker they go the better because there’s been so little done on transition over the years,’ she said.
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