The chair of the Climate Change Authority, Matt Kean, has declared Australia must take “strong and decisive action” to address the climate crisis despite Donald Trump’s return to the White House, arguing the world needs cheap renewable energy and the country can provide it.
Kean, a former News South Wales Liberal treasurer and energy minister, told Guardian Australia there were “enormous opportunities and benefits” in taking action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, no matter who was US president.
“We don’t know exactly what Trump will do, but climate change waits for no one and will spare no one and no country. That’s why we will continue to need to act - to take strong and decisive action to address this great challenge of our times,” he said.
“The world still needs cheap renewable energy, and the products that come with that, and Australia is in a very strong position to meet the world’s needs, and in doing so create huge jobs and prosperity for our country that we’ve never seen before.”
Kean said past evidence, including in Trump’s first term as president, showed states, territories and the private sector would continue to act. “I have no doubt that will continue to be the case,” he said.
His comments contrasted with those from the Nationals MP Keith Pitt and Senate colleague Matt Canavan, who argued the federal Coalition should dump its commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 after Trump’s re-election.
“We need to consider our policies around net zero and their impact on the cost of living for every Australian and adopt policy that the Australian people can actually afford,” Pitt told Guardian Australia on Thursday.
He said Trump’s decisive victory provided clear guidance on the best way forward on climate change and other issues.
“Clearly president-elect Trump took bold positions on a number of policies and was successful,” he said. “We will be in a contest with an Albanese government, which, in my view, went too far, too fast and at too high a cost to the people on their climate policies and, if we want there to be a contest at the next election, we will need to have a policy position that is sufficiently different.”
He said any decision on a policy rethink would be “up to the shadow cabinet”.
But a spokesperson for the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, told Guardian Australia on Thursday that the policy on net zero stands. “There’s no change in our position,” the spokesperson said.
Earlier on Thursday, the Coalition’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Simon Birmingham, emphasised the importance of sticking to the net zero objective.
“I want to see Australia stay committed to net zero by 2050,” he told ABC Radio National. “I don’t anticipate any change in those commitments.”
Anthony Albanese also recommitted to the government’s existing policies despite Trump’s stated intention to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement.
“Even if you were a climate sceptic and didn’t believe any of the science and didn’t notice that there were more floods and more bushfires and more cyclones – it would still be good policy because it will produce the cheapest form of energy, not the most expensive, which we know as nuclear,” the prime minister said on Thursday.
But he declined to commit to a 2035 emissions reduction target before the next federal election, saying the government was focused on 2030. The Climate Change Authority is preparing advice to the government on a 2035 emissions reduction target, but it will not be ready until next year.
Initial advice from the authority found a 65-75% cut below 2005 levels would be “ambitious, but could be achievable”.
The government is not keen to reactivate the climate debate in Australia because the effects of climate change continue to generate anxiety in the community and Albanese is pushing a message of optimism about the future.
Along with pressing the importance of pursuing net zero, Birmingham also talked up the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy, saying it was taking “hard and difficult policy positions and decisions to be able to achieve that” and “moving into a space in the policy debate nobody has been game to go into before”.
“But doing so because we see it as necessary if you are to be credible in achieving net zero whilst protecting Australia’s industrial base in the future.”
Birmingham’s comments came after Canavan took to the social media site X early on Thursday to condemn the net zero goal.
“The re-election of Trump means that we can all say what we think again,” he wrote. In a subsequent post he said Australians should “stop whining” about possible tariffs like “some kind of hopeless basket case” and “take charge of our own destiny for a change”.
“We should get out of the Paris climate agreement, dump net zero (which is dead anyway because of Trump) and unleash a New Age of Australian Energy Abundance,” he posted.
Canavan insisted Australia had all the natural resources to become “the richest country in the world” without any other help and could also become a “manufacturing powerhouse”.
“We just need to dig up our coal, drill for our gas and use our uranium and we will have the cheapest energy prices in the world.”
The Climate Council chief executive, Amanda McKenzie, emphasised the need for Australia to stay the course on the clean energy transition.
“During his first presidency, Trump tried to withdraw the US from climate diplomacy, but state and local governments powered ahead,” McKenzie said in a statement. “Countries and US states know the Trump playbook – and they’re determined to keep driving climate action forward.”
