The Coalition is spinning a line that climate action is economically bad. How are they getting away with it?

The Loy Yang coal-fired power plant in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. ‘Despite the immense opportunity that renewables offer us, about a third of Australians now want to get rid of net zero because they think it will make life cheaper,’ Zoe Daniel writes. Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The Guardian

During the last parliament I negotiated an amendment to the Climate Change Act to lock in Australia’s carbon emissions target as a floor – not a ceiling.

I did it to promote government ambition to exceed the target and, having covered the first Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement, to provide a legislative buffer against backsliding by a future Australian government.