It began as a routine campaign stop by prime minister Anthony Albanese in Sydney last week to announce a billion-dollar mental health package. But it was vision of an agitated climate protester being hustled off the scene by security guards that dominated the evening news cycle.
News media focused on the security breach, but the real questions are why the youthful intruder felt the need to barge into the event, what she said and why she was so agitated.
It’s always tempting to dismiss actions like this as having little relevance to mainstream life. This wasn’t 21-year-old Alexa Stuart’s first protest with the climate action group Rising Tide, and it will likely not be her last. But the passion in her voice in last week’s incident signalled growing concern among young people about a political class chronically unresponsive to climate change.
The resurrection as US president of climate denier-in-chief Donald Trump was a stamp of approval for politicians already subject to relentless fossil fuel industry propaganda to allow the issue of climate change to slip completely from the radar.
Unprecedented rivers of rain last month left an area of Queensland twice the size of Victoria under water, yet the 2025 campaign continued as if nothing had happened. Neither party wants to discuss our continued reliance on fossil fuels. Labor talks only of targets and energy, while in the Coalition’s manifesto climate change scored just one sentence about supporting community action.
As more and more weather calamities continue to afflict every continent, young people see a world behaving as if that doesn’t matter, and their anxiety goes through the roof. As Stuart told the PM, “You’re condemning young people like me to a life of climate disasters. Of course we have poor mental health issues! When will you listen?” When, indeed.
Major parties’ failure to address climate change head-on is just as real in Tasmania. Premiers and ministers who describe us as climate action leaders are deceiving themselves and the rest of us. They base their claim not on any deliberate action but on an accident of history – our long-standing hydro-electric system – and recent low levels of forest harvesting.
In 2008 under Paul Lennon’s Labor government, Tasmania’s first climate change Act established a “Tasmanian Climate Action Council” to give independent advice on targets and strategies. Months after winning office in 2014 Will Hodgman’s Liberals rushed a bill through parliament to abolish the TCAC on the basis of saving money. (It cost a lot less than the salary of just one top adviser.)
We still have a Climate Change Office under ministerial control, but there’s no longer a statutory body of outside advisers able to keep ministers abreast of the accelerating impact of a changing climate on lives and the environment. This aversion to independent expertise is now playing out in the government’s refusal to accept planning scrutiny of the proposed Macquarie Point stadium.
Climate policy has been in the too-hard basket for years, reflected in the fact that it is no longer a named portfolio responsibility. Few would know that we had three different ministers in 2024 with responsibility for climate change. Climate knowledge is expanding and the rate of change is rising, yet the subject gets little or no ministerial attention even when there is a climate-related emergency.
This indifference is reflected in public consultations ahead of the latest amendment to the Act in 2022. Lengthy submissions by advisory group Climate Tasmania made detailed, well-considered proposals about improving the Act. (I am a member but had no part in preparing these submissions.)
Climate Tasmania’s proposals gave special attention to Tasmania’s unique energy profile. Because most of our electricity is hydro-generated, most fossil fuel emissions are from transport. These will remain unchanged unless Tasmania reduces the number of vehicles powered by petrol or diesel.
Weaning ourselves off petrol, diesel and gas has an economic and social cost which was addressed in our submission, proposing that the government build into the Act various measures to smooth the necessary transition process.
None of our proposals got any traction and we received no advice as to why. But we can hazard a guess. Turning us away from our present dangerous path would require a government bold enough to lead major social change.
A new review cycle of the Tasmanian Climate Change Act is now getting under way. This is an opportunity for the government to show it cares about the concerns of young people like Alexa Stuart. So can it grasp the depth of this concern, and does it have enough character to act on it?