Anthony Albanese has said tours of natural disaster areas have become an unfortunate fixture of his prime ministership, as the government weathers controversy over a key part of its plans for carbon cuts.
Mr Albanese and WA Premier Mark McGowan toured flood-stricken Fitzroy Crossing on Monday, a town of about 1300 people in the Kimberley region about 400 kilometres east of Broome.
Mr Albanese met locals, whom he said had maintained pride in the community they had built despite the devastation after a tropical cyclone brought flood waters that peaked at 15.8 metres and left the town cut off.
Six months ago Mr Albanese’s first tour of a natural disaster area as PM, in Windsor outside of Sydney, coincided with debate about the description of floods as “once-in-a-century” events when many locals had just undergone their fourth flood in two years.
The PM used the term on Monday while acknowledging that disasters had become unsettlingly regular.
Once in a century?
“The people on the ground here and in emergency services as well, who’ve lived in this community for a very long period of time say that this is unprecedented,” he said.
“When you go and look first hand – at the damage that was done, for example, to the bridges and the roads, you see the power of this, this water and the difference that it’s made.”
Mr Albanese has made five tours of major disaster areas in just over six months since his election.
“It is something that we have done now in too many places, tragically in New South Wales, in Victoria, in Tasmania, in South Australia, here in the Kimberley in Western Australia,” he said.
Although there is a consensus view that climate change is the cause of the more frequent disasters, there were opposing views on the potential remedy on Monday.
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Not so natural
An independent review into the system used by Australian companies to offset greenhouse gas emissions did not uphold complaints by whistleblowers alleging widespread rorting of the $4.5 billion Emissions Reductions Fund.
“While the panel was provided with some evidence supporting that position, it was also provided with evidence to the contrary,” former chief scientist Ian Chubb concluded.
The review made 16 recommendations for restoring public confidence in the carbon markets, including ending projects aiming to avert deforestation in the future.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen welcomed the recommendations for improving a system that is crucial to the government’s 43 per cent emissions reduction target by the end of the decade.
That comes just as Mr Bowen prepares to release details for how the government will force a group of Australia’s 200 largest industrial polluters to cut their emissions.
But Andrew Macintosh, an ANU law professor who published research which alleged up to 75 per cent of the credits issued under the scheme were bogus, decried the findings.
He said that without a plan to ensure that large polluters were not offsetting their emissions with “low integrity” credits the operation of Labor’s climate policy would be jeopardised.
Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute concurred and said it had missed a key question, namely: “How many dodgy carbon credits are still circulating in the Australian economy and how can we recognise them?”
Dr Chubb, a neuroscientist and former ANU vice-chancellor, offered a pithy response when asked if he had anything to say to critics who accused the review of not going far enough.
“They’re wrong,” he said.
Mr Bowen said the review had not sought to please everyone, but defended it as based on rigorous science.
A system with public confidence would be essential to cut emissions against the backdrop of natural disasters that no longer seemed so natural, Mr Bowen said.
“Floods that were once regarded as once in 100 years or more are happening once every 10 years or less,” he said.
“That is not a coincidence.”
