The ACT still has the power to achieve genuine and lasting change on climate action but the required "burning drive" has given way to a malaise, the former leader of the ACT Greens says.
Shane Rattenbury has used his first major speech after leaving politics in May to say community demand mixed with political will is all that was really needed to drive successful climate action.
"I just don't see the burning drive to make things happen. I hear the same reflection from insiders who feel exasperated by the malaise they are witnessing," Mr Rattenbury said.
"It will be up to members of the Assembly and the community to make sure that the government is not allowed to drift, and the ACT continues to be a leader on climate action."
Mr Rattenbury gave the Hugh Saddler memorial lecture organised by the Australia Institute on Monday night, revealing he did not know how the ACT would meet its first 40 per cent emissions reduction target when it was first legislated.
"But the value of setting the target was the creation of the expectation that we should, and then following it up with sustained support for the ideas being brought forward to deliver it," he said.
The ACT met the target by 2020.
Mr Rattenbury said the ACT could not rest on its laurels and the government's new climate action felt rather anaemic because its new initiatives were mostly rated as low impact and there was no new funding to support it.
Mr Rattenbury said he had always hoped Australia would reach a point where Europe used to operate, where everyone understood the scientific imperative for action to address climate change, all sides of politics were committed to emissions reduction and the debate was about how to achieve it.
Achieving that political consensus now appeared to be a pipe dream, he said.
"This political dynamic presents a genuine challenge to the progressive side of politics, particularly when it comes to climate action. It is pretty well a matter of public record that Labor and the Greens struggle to get along across the country," he said.
Mr Rattenbury, who sat in the Legislative Assembly from 2008 to 2026 and in cabinet from 2012 until 2024, said he hoped others would be able to replicate the experience in the ACT.
"Can Labor actually stop and look beyond the tribalism? Can the Greens see that they will not get everything at once, but can make genuine progress?" he said.
"Can both sides recognise that in any good partnership, you don't always get everything you want, but you can get a lot?"
Mr Rattenbury said that is what Labor and the Greens had recognised in the ACT and what others around Australia needed to realise.
"Otherwise we might see Liberal and One Nation partnerships who are focused on taking this country backwards," he said.
The former minister also defended the ACT's record on zero-emissions energy against critics who say the territory is not really 100 per cent renewable because it's connected to the national grid and has to sometimes rely on that grid for power.
"The bottom line is that the ACT has commissioned enough renewables to cover all our electricity demand every year on a net basis," he said.
"Those critics fail to recognise that the ACT signed power purchase agreements that enabled the projects to get built. It was those agreements that enabled to projects to get to financial close, start construction and then generate electricity and displace fossil generation."
