Australian politicians facing climate change firestorm

SURROUNDED by the rugged national parks on the Sapphire Coast of New South Wales, the small seaside town of Tathra has not forgotten the inferno that burnt down 65 homes last March.

Many residents believe the out-ofcontrol bushfire was the result of climate change and, ahead of a general election tomorrow, concerned voters like these are dragging Australian politics Left-wards as they demand action.

“You could see the fire coming and ... these explosions of flame. It was very noisy. It was a bit like a steam train coming at you,” said resident Nick Graham-hicks, who runs a company in the large-scale wind and solar sector.

“Climate change to me is very real. I very strongly believe that there will be more catastrophes,” he added. “Our existing government, the Liberal-national party, are not taking it very seriously and I don’t think they see it as a threat. Labor seems to be much more proactive and their policies are much, much stronger.”

While individual bushfires cannot be directly attributed to rising temperatures, the Bureau of Meteorology declared in its 2018 statement that climate change is “influencing the frequency and severity” of such events. Such warnings take on added weight after 2018 was declared Australia’s thirdwarmest on record, including the hottest summer ever documented.

Tomorrow, voters have the chance to steer Australia to the environmental Left under Bill Shorten, the Labor opposition leader, or to give the centreright coalition of Liberal and National parties three more years in power.

The slowing economy has been the main focus of the campaign but surveys suggest climate change is a key concern. The Lowy Institute think tank, said global warming was a “critical threat” to the nation’s interests according to almost two thirds of Australians, ahead of international terrorism and North Korea’s nuclear programme.

In January 2018, the city of Penrith on Sydney’s western fringes baked in temperatures of 117F (47C), the region’s highest recorded since 1939. The Labor candidate in the local seat of Lindsay is Diane Beamer, who was born in Liverpool and migrated to Australia with her parents in the early Sixties. She wants her adopted homeland to follow the UK environmental example. “We live in a land of sunshine,” she said. “Why can’t we actually capture it on every school? Why don’t we have battery technology that means we have little power stations in every household?”

But many voters in this blue collar city remain sceptical. “Renewables? If the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine where are we going to get power from? If India, China and America are not doing anything there is not much we can do,” said Arthur Cowan, 67. The latest polls show little separating the two major parties. Labor has been ahead since 2016 but that lead has slimmed recently to 51 per cent compared with the coalition’s 49 per cent.

Is Scott Morrison, the Liberal Party leader who triumphantly brought a lump of coal into parliament in 2017, the man to guide the world’s driest inhabited continent to a greener future? As the country heats up, the chances of those who play down the climate change threat appear to be cooling.