In 2014 the Hodgman government abolished the Tasmanian Climate Action Council, set up under the 2008 Climate Change (State Action) Act to help successive state governments understand what “state action” means.
Why did they do it? Their explanation at the time was that it was too expensive. But its cost in 2013-14, including bringing leading Sydney-based ecologist Lesley Hughes to Hobart to chair quarterly meetings, was just $152,000. That wouldn’t cover a single political minder.
Then-environment minister Matthew Groom, the sole government speaker in that critical House of Assembly debate, rushed through his short speech as if he didn’t want to discuss it. A handful of opponents did their best to delay the inevitable, but it was all over in 2½ hours.
The Legislative Council took just 38 minutes before voting to axe the TCAC, with Rob Valentine, then the member for Hobart, the only dissenter. The whole dirty deed took less than three hours of parliament’s time.
The axing of climate measures and institutions by the Abbott government six months earlier was the Hodgman government’s opening to ditch the TCAC. The government redefined action to mean writing plans, setting targets, supporting this or that local endeavour, while doing nothing about actual carbon emissions. Setting aside so-called offsets, they remain stubbornly high to this day.
To be fair, that was the pattern around the world in all but a handful of jurisdictions, mainly small ones where the citizenry has been able to hold government feet to the fire. Climate policymakers know all too well that the slow burn of climate change is a poor fit with short election cycles, and there’s been no shortage of those in Tasmania since the last four-year term ended in 2018.
The TCAC did not go down without a fight. Within months Leslie Hughes was back in Hobart, at her own expense, to support a new voluntary group, Climate Tasmania. It brought together recognised authorities in climate science, economics, energy markets, law, public health and public policy. Most were former TCAC members.
That was well over a decade ago. Early on, for reasons best known to those involved, the group asked me to join, which I did. Inevitable departures have brought in other newcomers including very active members in the state’s north. Thanks to Zoom we’ve managed to keep things ticking over.
Climate Tasmania has spread information, managed seminars, met with MPs and written submissions to government and parliament, seeking to put our views about government actions (or the lack of them) and to build interest in substantive measures for a safer future.
We’ve had our moments, including a memorable visit to Incat’s sensational electric ferry project hosted by the heroic Robert Clifford, but little progress has been made on the policy front. While solar power has grown significantly, actual Tasmanian emissions remain stubbornly high, and cold hard facts like record 2025 insurance payouts for Australian weather disasters speak for themselves.
Although every sane person knows in their bones that the climate is changing, mainly because we keep using coal, oil and gas for energy, some politicians choose the path of denier-in-chief President Donald Trump and seek to wind back the clock.
Whatever the short-term successes of these holdouts, their credibility is undermined at every turn by the renewable revolution. Australians with the means are starting a shift to electric vehicles, and the proportion of Australian homes carrying solar panels – many with battery storage – is fast closing on a world-leading 50 per cent.
Mitigating carbon emissions will always be necessary, but addressing change already happening is a rising challenge. At Climate Tasmania, drawing on community concern and informed by the best current science, we need to get parliament to lift its game.
Mutual support is fundamental to the whole question of how humanity responds to the climate crisis. We in Climate Tasmania try to remain positive because no-one needs a constant refrain of bad news. We have the benefit of being able to discuss between ourselves what’s happening around us and around the world. In so doing we support each other.
This week we are taking on a couple of new, younger members with many active years ahead of them as climate scientists. Their disciplined study of natural processes is needed more than ever as we are forced to adapt to a changing climate.
We still know the value of personal contact and how to have a good time, so our next meeting will be a get-together in the flesh. We remain positive. Every day is a new day, and who knows what tomorrow might bring?