A basketballer-turned-Labor candidate has dwarfed the prime minister as he visited one of Australia's great environmental wonders, but one key political player remained conspicuously absent.
Anthony Albanese hopped on a boat to the Great Barrier Reef with Labor's Leichhardt pick Matt Smith, a two-metre tall former Cairns Taipans player.
As he made a multimillion dollar reef announcement, Mr Albanese was also joined by the health minister, the special envoy for the Great Barrier Reef and even a local tourism CEO.
But his environment minister Tanya Plibersek was missing in action.
The prime minister and Ms Plibersek have long been speculated to be rivals but asked about her absence on Thursday, the environment minister said she had recently visited Cairns three times and helped launch Mr Smith's campaign.
The environment has played second fiddle to the cost of living in the lead-up to the May 3 election, but remains an important issue.
Climate activists have gatecrashed Mr Albanese's press conferences twice on the campaign trail, while Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has also been heckled.
Labor is promising $10 million to promote and protect the reef, including $6 million to subsidise school trips to the UNESCO World Heritage site.
"If we don't take climate change seriously, we'll go back into the naughty corner at those international conferences," Mr Albanese said.
The former coalition government came under fire when then-environment minister Sussan Ley lobbied to keep the reef off UNESCO's "in-danger" list, after sea temperatures and other ecological issues caused it significant damage.
In July, the Labor government dodged another potential "in-danger" listing after the World Heritage Committee noted a change in Australia's approach to climate change and marine management.
Scientists are calling for more action.
"We owe kids more than a field trip, we owe them a future where the reef still exists," Australian Marine Conservation Society manager and marine ecologist Lissa Schindler said.
Coral reefs are home to about 25 per cent of the world's fish and the Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest.
But a heatwave off the Queensland coast in 2024 led to the reef's seventh mass bleaching event since 1998, and the fifth since 2016.
Labor has invested $540 million in water quality projects, $180 million to save the Reef Headquarters and other money on efforts to employ Indigenous rangers and reduce the impact of bycatch from fishing.
It has also legislated targets to reduce carbon emissions and help support the goal of keeping global average temperature rises to 1.5C.
But Australia has been urged to set more ambitious aims as a 1.5C increase could still cause coral reefs to decline by 70 to 90 per cent, a 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found.
