Former ADF Chief calls for federal reporting on climate risk

The Oni delivered its report in December of 2022. We participated in putting together of that report in the Security Leaders Climate Group, so we were Privy to some of the early thinking that might be in it. But the report has been kept secret by the government and I I recognize that it’s a classified report, but we think that the government should allow either a statement in the house or some report in the public space for the findings. And you know, it’s really interesting cause I’ve got here the annual threat assessment from the Director of National intelligence in the United States which spends a a little bit of time, 5 pages on climate change and consequences and threats to the United States security. Why, Why can’t we, Why can’t MPs in this House, Why can’t people running select committees here have access to the information? All right. So by comparison, there was a short reference to climate in the defense strategy and I think that addressed defenses, bases having to adapt and have energy resilience. Is that a start? Well, it’s a kind of stop, but it’s very limited. In our report issued today on Is it too hot to handle? We point to the issues of the northern bases in which the government’s planning to invest significantly. We point to the impact of heat conditions, particularly heat in which is not livable and not operable and that will have some impact on those defence bases. But, you know, it sort of raises the question in your mind, well, what about a city like Darwin? What does that mean in terms of climate change consequences for the people who live in Darwin? Are we going to put them underground like we do in Cooper PD or they’re not going to live there? Or what another reason why we think we’re not taking it seriously? I think we’ve discussed before and again, we’re addressing it today. If the government had advice on something like climate migration from Pacific Islands, let’s just imagine that it did some work on a scenario where 200,000 people had to be relocated to Australia. What is the general benefit for the population here, knowing about that? I think the most important part of it, Greg, is you can certainly prepare people for what’s going to happen. You know, I think unfortunately in Australia we often have a bit of a record of waiting for it to happen and then figuring out what we’re going to do. I would much prefer that we get on the front foot and we start to think about these consequences and say to ourselves, what can we actually do Now? Our region is very open to Australia, Australia taking leadership on some of these kinds of roles. That’s one of them. OK, so what’s outstanding or what, you know, further demands, would you and your group put on the government in the near term in the next six months or so? Look, we think that the government is trying to walk away from the idea that climate change consequences are an existential threat, potentially. If we’re talking 2 1/2°C of warming up to 3 1/2°C of warming. We’ve embarked on a national adaptation plan which began last month. We’re all invited to put in comments on what it might look like. It’s objective, we’re told, is to educate public servants about climate change at local, state and territory and federal government levels. The major thing that’s missing from all of that is the involvement of the communities. And it’s not the first time I’ve said this, but if we persist in doing risk assessments and doing assessments on adaptation without taking the community into account, we’re going to be missing a big part of the jigsaw puzzle. And then we operate as though mitigation or fossil fuels and all those things are separated from the idea of a national adaptation plan. I mean, if you look at the record of project approvals for fossil fuel industry, there hasn’t been much change from the previous government. So who is best placed in the federal bureaucracy to pull all this thinking together? Obviously it’s not in each and every case defence nor the climate or energy agencies who well, like I think there are several, several parts to how we see it. First of all, in our view, there ought to be an ongoing threat assessment from climate change sell inside the office of national intelligence. It ought to be looking at the the weak signals leading up to potential change. I think from a whole of government perspective, we need a climate change tsar. We need someone to bring it together and I would argue answerable to the Prime Minister and the government, but not necessarily ministers. I mean, I I think what we’re seeing at the moment is a siloed response to a lot of this stuff and it’s not being brought together in a comprehensive way that is whole of government or whole of community.