Net zero has been ground zero for energy ambition. What a chance we have now

The Age

14-05-2025

This opportunity is redolent of the one that was seized by the Curtin and then Chifley governments during and immediately after World War II. John Curtin relied on two independents to govern through his first term from 1941 to 1943. The 1943 election delivered an overwhelming majority and a parliament like the one emerging now after May 3.
The second Curtin government and the Chifley government that followed Curtin's death at the end of World War II established an economic reform programme that set up Australia for a quarter of a century of full employment with rising living standards for a growing population.
The Chifley government was defeated in 1949 after the leading opposition figure, Robert Menzies, abandoned his United Australia Party, which had become captured by vested business interests. After the United Australia Party's catastrophic defeat in 1943, he established a Liberal Party that could appeal to broader interests and values of the democratic Australian polity.
After the election, the Coalition holds only about 15 per cent of seats in the eight capital cities where most Australians live. A 21st-century Menzies would recognise the central role of Coalition approaches to climate and energy policy in the collapse of its electoral support in metropolitan Australia.
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The renewed Albanese government has an opportunity to deliver the policies that can underpin Australia's use of its exceptionally rich renewable energy and sustainably harvested biomass resources to supply zero-carbon goods that other countries cannot supply economically for themselves.
On election night, Albanese restated his commitment to using Australia's clean energy advantages to build a Future Made in Australia. Treasurer Jim Chalmers noted the opportunity that a strong electoral position provided to implement this vision, and told Australians it would not be wasted.
Australian exports of goods embodying renewable energy could reduce global emissions by up to 10 per cent. They would generate export income for Australians vastly larger than are now provided by the gas and coal industries, which will decline as other countries reduce carbon emissions.
The new industries are large enough to drive restoration of growth in Australian productivity and living standards after the dozen years of stagnation that began in 2013.
The most important industries to drive Australia – the superpower industries – use hydrogen made with renewable energy. Recent announcements that many prominent hydrogen projects have been closed or shelved has generated talk that hydrogen is dead, or too underdeveloped for independent life. Like Mark Twain's death, those rumours are exaggerated.
Apply sound economic principles to policy and the first hydrogen-based investments in new export industries are ready to go now. Hydrogen-based iron-making is ready for investment in the Upper Spencer Gulf of South Australia. Whyalla will have a sustainable future in iron-making based on green hydrogen, or it will have no sustainable future at all.
The May 3 election has not changed in any way the physics, economics or ethics of climate change. What it has changed is the capacity of government in Australia to establish and maintain policies that will allow us to reduce domestic emissions in line with our international obligations.
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It has strengthened the capacity of government to introduce and sustain policies that support Australia in contributing disproportionately to global decarbonisation by supplying goods embodying renewable energy that the high-income economies of North-East Asia and Europe cannot supply at reasonable cost from their own resources.
It has opened an opportunity for Australia to leave behind a dozen years of stagnation of living standards and to enter a new era of full employment with rising incomes for an increasing population.