TRANSCRIPT
The Australian government has been quite slow to connect the dots here between national security and climate, from your years, in that, in that space of security, how do you see those two fitting together and the role of the Australian Government necessitating action here?
Well, I think it's really interesting, because in 2021, we published our very first report called Missing in Action, in which we accused the Morison government of being off the stage and not visible when it came to countering the sorts of issues we saw with climate change. I have to say, we were very pleased when there was a change of government in in May last year, but we've been pretty disappointed with their performance so far. And to be brutally honest about it. I think they're missing an action too. And, you know, what I what I see is political leadership, not able to be principled and understand that it really is going to take significant change, if we're going to arrest current trends, as outlined in the global report, issued by the UN last week.
And has there been anyone around the world in terms of going to bat governments here, that have really been able to connect to enact on in this space?
Well, I think some countries are doing better than others. I think Europe is is trying. But I've got a set of issues, which we don't we don't have those issues here. In the United States, it goes up and down all the time. But to come back to last week's Global Report. The fact of the matter is that even in developed countries, we failed to grasp this nettle, and deal with it comprehensively. And if you look at the greenhouse gas emissions, the trends, they're going towards three degrees of warming in our future, and I can't find a sensible account of what that is going to look like, other than horrific. So I think we're in very serious trouble. And the fact of the matter is, when I look around Australia, ask myself these questions. What's the plan look like? What's the strategy that we should be employing, as a well developed country in this part of the world, there doesn't seem to be a climate security strategy that I know about. And if I don't know about it, I dare say, ordinary citizens who are out there busy doing their daily lives, have no idea what the plan looks like, and where we plan to go. And we will have lofty vision statements. But if you go back to the Paris 2015, cop 21 conference, and look at all those objectives. According to the report issued last week, we have failed manifestly to meet any of them. And that's true of the globe. And it's true of the individual countries on the globe. I think we're in very serious trouble when it looks to our future. And I think it's time that our young leaders started to take account of the situation, we're asked the opportunities to provide the leadership we need, and to make the tough decisions. I'm not under estimating how tough it is to reinvigorate an economy on a totally sustainable way. But it's got to be done. Otherwise, the future looks very bleak.
And in terms of security, how do you see that because we have with the increasing frequency of climate change and bushfires and the like, the deployment of the emergency services, the ADF, in times of need, is only growing in demand. But when we talk about security, how do you see that? Does that also include here? You know, the well being of the people? What's your definition of security and what maybe a strategy would entail?
That's a really good question, because, you know, as the former Chief of the Defence Force and being associated with the work we've done helping communities before, I sometimes think our community is being very complacent, waiting for things to go wrong and then expecting somebody to come in and clean up a mess. Now, that's a huge generalization. I know but that The impression you sometimes get, it worries me when you look at recent events that sort of catastrophic bushfires followed by the floods, and communities having to self organize because they hadn't been organized before. And frankly, communities that are still in trouble as a result of those things that went wrong. And so I asked myself, What does security really look like in the future? Well, my answer to that is we have to look after ourselves. And when Our communities need to build the systems, they need to look after their own interests in the future. Now, I heard of some small groups being created around the country, that here, here's the dilemma, where where are the small groups? Where are the local government activities? Where are the state governments and territory governments? And where's the federal government in this chain? I mean, if our if our system of government means anything, all of those levels have got to be involved. But, you know, and I look around, most of them were missing in action. You know, I don't want people watch that 730 report, which was when, you know, Premier McGowan in Western Australia had a phone call from Woodside and canceled the EPA is principal rules, simply like that. So what are we seeing big money still talks, our political leaders who are afraid to step out of the of the paradigm, and do something about it. And we know and understand from all the signs and all the economists working on it, that transitioning to a sustainable economy is going to be hard, it is going to take tough action. And it's going to require fundamentally first class leadership to bring communities along and to organize properly. I'm afraid I think time is really short. And that's another message that comes from last week's report. All the things that are urgent to be done, have to be done a lot more quickly than they needed to be done nearly 10 years ago. Now, we need to mobilize money. We need to know mobilize our energy, and we need to mobilize our people. If we're going to do successfully, and avert a lot of the disasters we can foresee.
Would you argue I mean, the government has held disaster preparedness summits, they've announced national coordination bodies to coordinate fire response and inquiries to have a look at what wasn't done. What are your thoughts on the benefits and the strengths of having a strategy on climate security would have, to just tie the threads all together in a space where at the moment, you've got the EPA, and you've got your various state based and territory based bodies trying to do the best they can?
Look, I think we're stuck. We have fought as an example, we know that the Office of National Intelligence prepared a report on threats to national security from climate change consequences. And the government has persistently kept secrets to itself. And at least a lot of us in the public domain wondering why they're not being transparent about that. And to return to last week's report, the UN Global Report talks a lot about transparency, because we understand that people won't, they won't do what's needed if they don't really understand why they have to do it. So transparency becomes very important. Now I I think the I when I report is probably pretty frightening. But nonetheless, that doesn't need to be shared. We do need to understand what it is we're trying to avert. And only by that way, well, we know what we have to do.
And I mean, if the government isn't going to release that report, would you just say sail, you know, sail ahead and really get what you get to work on this strategy?
Well, you know, this does come back to I'm afraid. My 42 years being in the Defence Force and thinking through, you know, how do we manage to organize and train and equip a defence force? You know, what it requires you to do is sit down and make some really hard decisions based on good evidence, evidence via an intelligent system and what I call nouse, you know, what you think might be going on. So here we have a push we made beginning in 2021, to say, one of the first steps our government should do is carry Yeah, climate security risk assessment, go around the country and find out where the really difficult problems lie. And then once you've got that data, you can start to think about priorities, resources timings, it can, it can be the creation of a plan that flows from the strategy. But if you haven't bothered to collect the evidence in the first place, what you're doing is making this up on the run. And that will mean, some of the decisions will probably carry a risk, that's a bit a bit too high, to be sensible. And there'll be lots of things not done that ought to be done. So you know, the left behind articles. But you know, if you go down to the south coast, in New South Wales, you go for the Northern Rivers will go into Queensland and talk to people affected in 2019, 2020 and subsequent floods, and ask them what they want. They're going to talk about, we can't wait for all of these wonderful organizations to come along and help us and, you know, it's a bit like the fast train, every time we think about a fast train system, we have another review, so we can put it off. And it just takes far too much time to do. Here, we are already halfway through the Albanese government's first term in office, and not much has happened.
