The Labor Party, which won the election, will have to bow to the demands of independent representatives in climate policy.
Australia’s parliamentary elections on Saturday will bring a major change to the country’s politics. The Conservative coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party, which ruled the country for nearly a decade, suffered an election defeat. Prime minister Scott Morrison has already acknowledged his defeat.
The Labor Party comes to power Anthony Albanesen under. Not all votes have been counted yet. At the moment, it seems that the Labor Party is not getting the necessary 76 seats in the country’s 150-seat parliament, but needs help from the Greens and the Independent Representatives, who seem to be getting a total of around 15 seats.
Albanese himself has said he wants to change Australia so that a different confrontation is eliminated. He wants to involve a wider audience and different citizens in decision-making. The level of public services is to be improved.
Revolutionizing climate policy
However, the most significant change is coming in climate policy. Conservative-led Australia was seen as a problem in international climate talks because the country was unwilling to compromise on its vast coal and gas industry. Australia has been one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and its own energy production is largely based on fossil fuels.
The Morrison government’s climate goal was to reduce the country’s emissions by 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. This has been considered a very modest goal in the world that would not help curb global climate change.
The Labor Party has been in pain with its own climate policy. The party lost seats to conservatives in coal mining areas in the last election. Some Labor representatives have openly supported new fossil energy projects.
The party now aims to reduce emissions by 43 percent by 2030. The party is also investing in the electrification of transport.
Women demand more
The election brought a new phenomenon to Australian politics: women demanding a tougher climate policy.
The election was run by a group of educated, working and women from affluent areas who said they were thoroughly tired of the Conservatives’ reluctance to take action on climate change.
The women were united by a powerful experience of outrage after watching news images of huge fires destroying Australia’s forests, droughts eradicating fields and the floods that followed. They had left their jobs in business, the media, and medicine, for example, and threw themselves into politics to change their country’s climate policy.
People in this group have traditionally voted conservatives in the election. This time, they did not qualify for the slightly stricter goals of the Labor Party either, but demanded real action.
The climate requirement for independent representatives is to at least halve Australia’s emissions by 2030. The Labor Party will probably be satisfied with this if the independent representatives are in the language position.
Independent women representatives also call for a more equal distribution of income and an end to violence and harassment against women. In Australia, rampant sexual harassment has even attracted a great deal of attention.
The Australian Green Party is getting at least two MPs through Parliament. The climate requirement for the Greens is even stricter: zero emissions by 2050, the halting of new coal and gas projects and the decommissioning of coal by the end of this decade.