The Albanese government is facing calls to release a declassified version of a secret report into the security threats caused by the climate crisis, in the same way it released the defence strategic review.
The Greens are seeking to use a Senate procedure to push for transparency, saying the security report will help parliamentarians to “weigh up predicted wars, water shortages and supply chain collapses against every new coal and gas approval”.
The party has given notice that it will move a motion in the Senate on Monday to produce documents within one month.
The notice demands that the government release a declassified version of an Office of National Intelligence report that was originally handed to the government in late 2022.
The acting leader of the Greens, Mehreen Faruqi, said Labor was “sitting on a report full of explosive truths” and the public deserved to know the projected impacts.
“If the White House can release the US’s National Intelligence Assessment and assessments by the Pentagon, the prime minister should be able to release a declassified version of the Office of National Intelligence’s climate risk assessment for Australia,” she said.
The US report, released in 2021, warned: “Intensifying physical effects will exacerbate geopolitical flashpoints, particularly after 2030, and key countries and regions will face increasing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance.”
The US intelligence community further warned that the US and its partners “face costly challenges that will become more difficult to manage without concerted effort to reduce emissions and cap warming”.
The Greens senator David Shoebridge, who submitted the notice of motion, said Australia was “increasingly isolated in wanting to suppress security assessments of the big climate risks the world is facing”.
Shoebridge argued that the government’s refusal, to date, to release the climate risk assessment was “yet another way of protecting the fossil fuel industry at the expense of Australia’s national security and the Australian public”.
He said the public had a right to know about “the devastating national security risks associated with the climate crisis”.
“A declassified version of the defence strategic review was made public and the same type of climate risk assessments are released around the world, the same should be done here.”
The defence strategic review, conducted by the former Australian defence force chief Angus Houston and the former Labor defence minister Stephen Smith, was handed to the government in February.
Two months later the government released a public version of the report, which warned that the ADF was structured for “a bygone era” and must be able to project military power further from Australia’s shores.
The report labelled the competition between China and the US as “the defining feature of our region and our time” but it also included a brief chapter on climate change.
Smith and Houston warned that the climate crisis was increasing the demand on the ADF for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief tasks.
“The acceleration of major climate events risks overwhelming the government’s capacity to respond effectively and detracting from defence’s primary objective of defencing Australia,” the report said.
In answer to a question on notice from Shoebridge about whether the review had taken into account the ONI assessment, the Department of Defence said Houston and Smith “had access to a range of material to perform their analysis at both a classified and unclassified level”.
Sources with knowledge of the matter have previously told Guardian Australia the ONI’s climate risk assessment included classified information, so any decision on “whether or how” it is released publicly would be “a matter for government”.
The Albanese government came to office promising to “end the climate wars” and has explicitly acknowledged global heating as a national security threat.
Last year, when it notified the UN of Australia’s new 2030 emissions reduction target, the government highlighted its commitment to order “an urgent climate risk assessment of the implications of climate change for national security, which will be an enduring feature of Australia’s climate action”.
An unofficial assessment, prepared by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration thinktank, said this week that Australia must prepare for “devastating” climate-fuelled disruption in the Asia Pacific, including failed states, forced migration and regional conflicts over water shortages.
