Ungiven Speech by Prime Minister Albanese in regards to the El Nino event underway

Today I’d like to talk to you all about the weather. About the El Nino which has been announced for the upcoming months and what that might mean for Australians. This includes children, who are particularly in my thoughts, and who are hopefully also listening.

First I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners, from those who first stood on this land and under this sky, to those still standing today. First Nations people sought to explain their observations of the interactions between land, sky, moon, sun, rivers, lakes and seas in stories where each entity is personified. Other cultures called such personifications Gods, and again, used stories to explain what they observed. Such stories often warned of dire consequences for humanity from interfering with the gods. Now it is science we look to for our explanations — although our scientists agree that our weather is created by how entities such as earth, sky, oceans, moon and sun interact.

An El Nino is a natural climate event. It happens when the atmosphere and the Pacific ocean interact in a specific way. Kids, the Pacific is the ocean which extends from the beaches on our Eastern Coastline for thousands of kilometres, all the way to America

The vast size of the Pacific Ocean means an El Nino event is felt around the globe. However, it is the places closest to the Pacific, like Australia, that feel an El Nino most.

The Indian Ocean, the ocean around Western Australia, has a corresponding event called the Positive Indian Dipole. That too, is underway.

The El Nino and Positive Indian Dipole means that we have extra heat energy coming into our weather. All weather events will be more intense. That’s all we know: the scientists can’t make their information any more precise.

So it’s like the alert some teachers give when a child is entering Year Nine. Teachers will tell you it could be a tough year, but they can’t tell you exactly how it will be tough. They want parents and children to get themselves ready. To have systems in place to identify problems early; to be ready to problem-solve with the school; to reach out for extra help; for everyone in a family to have each other’s backs.

I know — because I’ve seen it — that the Australian community has each other’s backs. Children, I want you to remember this. You will be kept safe, and you will be taught how to help others be safe. We are putting in more monitoring systems, more early warning systems. We are ensuring our services are in place to respond — and to respond in a way that capitalises on and respects the community’s knowledge of itself. We have extra help budgeted and ready for when you need it.

But this isn’t the whole picture. This Labor government knows the weather is different than it was before. We accept the science about why this is so. We understand that we’ve added in a barrier between the sky far above, and the land and water below — we’ve interfered, despite all those warnings in our old stories.

That barrier works like a one- way mirror — it lets the person on the outside see in, but the person on the inside can only see their own reflection. In the same way, the by-products of burning fossil fuels have made a barrier which lets in heat from space, but doesn’t let it out again from around the Earth.

What does this mean? It means that the extra heat energy of the El Nino is arriving at a time when our planet already has far more heat energy than it ever has before. This summer’s weather events will exceed the usual El Nino level of intensity. Many children listening have already experienced these intense weather systems. They write to us asking what we are doing about pressing pause on global warming to protect not just people, but the natural world.

I know there are adults who are cynical about letters like these. People say to me that children these days don’t connect to the natural world the way earlier generations did. They spend less time outside, and less time exploring nature or watching animals. Instead, people say, kids are always on screens. They don’t really care about the environment.

But is that a fair conclusion to draw? We all know there are fewer animals to watch outside: we’re in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. Extremes in weather also keep children indoors. The childhood older generations enjoyed, with days spent exploring a richly diverse natural world isn’t available to today’s kids. But children do care: in those letters they tell us that they aspire to that kind of childhood for their own children and grandchildren.

Yes, children love the complexity of invented animals like Pokemon. They would have loved the complex ecosystems we explored as children.

But we are bringing those places and animals back, kids, we are bringing them back.

And I know there is cynicism too, about how much our government is really doing to transition out of fossil fuels. People know that fossil fuel companies give political parties donations to buy political good will when they are in government.

I could stand here and tell you correctly that our parliament is doing more than the last parliaments did, and we are going in the right direction. If I say only this, we will still get some donations.

Not the huge amounts received by the Liberal party who are a bit like lawn mower parents, eagerly mowing down any obstacles standing in the way of their beloved fossil fuel companies.

But we’d get enough money to hold our own against the Coalition in a campaign — and keep on, in that right direction of transitioning out of fossil fuels.

Of course, even though that is all true, we have a problem. Our direction is fine, but we are being outpaced by the climate here. It’s getting hotter much faster than models predicted.

I shouldn’t have to call a press conference to discuss a natural climate event.

So what do we do about our problem of a political system that stops us acting with the required speed?

I have had many conversations about this — one conversation was with a colleague who is now very ill. We spoke about politics, life — and TV shows.

We discussed a TV show from the early 1990’s that still has a cult following — I’m not naming it, because it wasn’t made for kids and I’d rather they kept watching Bluey. It started out as a pretty ordinary Aussie soap opera in the early 1990’s. On its second season it was obvious it would be cancelled by Channel Nine — they cut its running time in half and moved it from prime time to the late slot.

Somehow knowing it would be cancelled set the show’s producers free. With nothing to lose they threw everything at the rest of the season. Their new storylines incorporated crazy stuff like laser-wielding vampires, people-eating plants and an Egyptian Sun Goddess. Groundbreaking in 1991.

Forgetting for a moment just how close to death my friend was I told her that I envied those TV producers who’d had nothing left to lose — ‘think what we could do in this term of government if we didn’t stand to lose our campaign funding’ I said.

She told me I’d missed the real message in the story.

She said “they didn’t make the ground-breaking television they wanted to until they had lost half their show time and a lot of their audience. They didn’t know or trust their audience — or maybe they didn’t have enough faith in their creative vision. But imagine if they had. Those exciting storylines would have been aired in prime time — ratings would have exploded — they’d have kept their funding, and probably brought in more money from overseas.”

I could imagine this. I didn’t entirely agree. After all, the money was coming from Channel Nine. That meant that the Channel Nine execs were their initial audience. To get to the wider Australian audience the show’s producers had to keep the execs happy first.

Of course, I was aware of the parallels with politics. For our political party to reach you, the voters, we first have to make the party donors happy. We have to agree to give them what they want, and that includes not talking about the deal we’ve made. And children, if you are still listening, I’m sure you’ve been told to beware of adults that ask you to tell lies for them and help them keep secrets. It’s good advice.

I thought about what my friend had said. I thought about the fact that my government has the prime time slot now. Our show still has more time to run. And Australians want to see us act on climate. The scientists tell us it isn’t game over, it’s game on: we can avoid the worst of the climate crisis if we halve global emissions before 2030, which requires slamming the brakes on the fossil fuel industry. The economists tell us that becoming leaders in renewables will result in a prosperous future.

And so, with all that in mind, my colleagues and I have talked and imagined together. And what I’m announcing may get our show cancelled. But then again, perhaps it won’t, perhaps our ratings will explode and we’ll achieve cult status. But however it turns out, this is the direction we have chosen.

To take action to stabilise our climate requires Australians to be on the same page, and that page needs to tell the truth. We are going to introduce Truth in Political Advertising Laws. This is something that 87 per cent of Australians have asked for. In the same vein, Australia’s media ownership is the most concentrated in the world. We have a bill to address this which will come before the Parliament this year.

The undue influence of big donors (often fossil fuel companies) on Australian politics has concerned many Australians. The government agrees with voters that money in politics is getting out of control. We are introducing measures including real time disclosure laws, caps on donations and caps on spending in elections. If we can make this even stronger, we will.

Those measures will make it easier for any government after us to remain on the path we are announcing now:

We will not give any further approvals for coal, oil or gas mines. We will no longer subsidise fossil fuel industries.

Fellow Australians I say to you: the Labor party is our party. It is Australia’s party. It is not their party.

Our government will direct further funding to renewables, and I encourage fossil fuel companies to apply for this, and build upon it from their own deep pockets, and make the transition with the rest of us.

Fellow Australians — Australians of all ages — these times call for us to be inventive, collaborative and audacious. We will be looking for your ideas, rewarding collaborative endeavours and celebrating your bold steps into the future.

Thank you.