Labor’s Climate Mirage: Five Facts That Expose the Greenwash

Written by urbanwronski

Albanese promised a “renewable superpower.” The numbers reveal a fossil fuel republic.

Anthony Albanese stood before voters in May 2022 and promised to “end the climate wars” and make Australia a “renewable energy superpower.” Three years later, the numbers reveal a different reality, one of systematic betrayal, a climate policy dressed in the flimsiest of green costumes.

Here are five facts that tell you everything you need to know about Labor’s climate fraud.

1. The 298-to-1 Ratio of Shame

In 2024-25, the Australian government handed $14.9 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel companies. At COP29 in Azerbaijan, we contributed $50 million to the Loss and Damage Fund for climate-affected nations.

Do the arithmetic. That’s 298 times more money for the polluters than the victims.

The nations suffering climate catastrophe most acutely, Pacific islands producing just 0.03% of global emissions, get less than one percent of what we give the industry causing their destruction. And we call them family. Hope that our parsimonious, patronising, paternalism disguises our hypocrisy.

This isn’t a policy oversight; it’s a statement of priorities. As the philosopher Edmund Burke never said, but should have, “The magnitude of a subsidy is the measure of a state’s true allegiance.” Our allegiance, 298 times over, is to the arsonists, not the firefighters. This isn’t a lifeline; it’s a golden noose, and we’re handing the rope to the executioner.

2. Thirty-One Projects Creating Fifteen Years of Emissions

Since taking office on an explicit climate platform, Labor has approved thirty-one new coal, oil and gas projects. These will create 6.5 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions over their lifetimes, roughly fifteen years worth of Australia’s current annual output.

That’s approximately one-eighth of global annual emissions, locked in by a government promising climate leadership. Thirty-one new carbon bombs, each with a fuse longer than a political term.

The headstone on the grave of Australia’s climate ambition? Woodside’s North West Shelf extension, approved in September 2025, weeks after Labor’s re-election landslide. This single project will operate until 2070 (twenty years past Australia’s net-zero deadline of 2050) and create more than 4 billion tonnes of emissions. That’s an entire decade of Australia’s climate pollution approved in one signature. This isn’t a target; it’s a taunt, a promise to our children that their deadline is our suggestion box.

Environment Minister Murray Watt, a party stalwart from Labor’s Left faction, with progressive credentials from tackling live exports and the CFMEU, now presides over the machinery of climate collapse. He knew the numbers. He signed the death warrant anyway.

3. Second Only to Russia in Fossil Fuel Shame

Australia is now the world’s second-largest fossil fuel exporter by emissions, behind only Russia. We hold 61% of the world’s coal export pipeline—more than the rest of the planet combined.

While Albanese talks about becoming a renewable superpower, we are methodically building the planet’s funeral pyre, with ourselves as the second-largest contractor. In September 2024, Labor approved three coal mine expansions that will see coal burned until 2066, sixteen years past net zero.

The International Energy Agency couldn’t be clearer: new or expanded coal mines are incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C. Labor’s response? Approve them anyway, then personally intervene to kill environmental reforms that might have stopped future approvals.

Over the past 25 years, 99.9% of fossil fuel projects have been approved under Australian environmental law. This isn’t regulatory failure. It’s a conveyor belt of corporate service, a system where the rubber stamp has worn out the ink from overuse. As the comedian George Carlin might have observed, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” The fossil fuel industry is the club, and the EPBC Act is the bouncer.

4. The Pacific Demands 75%, Labor Offers the Bare Minimum

Pacific Island nations, facing literal extinction from rising seas, are demanding at least 75% emissions cuts by 2035, backed by a plan to phase out fossil fuels. This isn’t activism. It’s survival. Category 4 and 5 cyclones have doubled in the West Pacific since the 1970s. Entire nations like Kiribati and Tuvalu may become uninhabitable within fifty years.

Labor’s response? A target of 62-70%, deliberately choosing the low end of what the Climate Change Authority recommended. Five to thirteen percentage points short of what our drowning neighbours need to survive. We are offering them a teaspoon to bail out the Titanic, while we’re the ones still stoking the boilers.

Then Australia had the audacity to bid to co-host COP31 with these same Pacific nations, like a mob of arsonists asking the local CFA to host the Fireball fund-raiser. Help pay for their petrol. We’re asking them to help us showcase climate leadership while approving the projects that will drown them.

Tuvalu’s Prime Minister now openly talks about using the climate refugee treaty as “leverage.” When the people you are poised to drown start using their future refugee status as a bargaining chip, you have passed beyond failed policy into a special kind of moral bankruptcy, degeneracy and duplicity.

5. Seeking World Heritage for the Site We’re Destroying

The North West Shelf gas facility sits at Murujuga on the Burrup Peninsula, home to 50,000-year-old Indigenous rock art. The Australian government is currently seeking World Heritage status for this culturally priceless site.

There’s one problem: industrial emissions from the gas facility are actively damaging the rock art. UNESCO has warned about it. Government scientific reports document it. The pollution is literally eating holes in 50,000-year-old stone.

Banksy once said, “The greatest piece of art I ever produced was convincing the world I didn’t exist.” Labor’s greatest piece of performance art is seeking to preserve a World Heritage site while simultaneously authorising its destruction. You couldn’t write satire this dark. This is the kind of absurdist tragedy and theatre of cruelty that would make Franz Kafka cackle in disbelief.

The Bottom Line

These aren’t isolated failures. They’re evidence of systematic corporate capture disguised as climate action.

Labor has become a master of political sleight of hand: with one hand, they gesture grandly towards a gleaming renewable future, while the other hand signs the permits that ensure that future never arrives. Set ambitious targets, invest in renewables, give soaring speeches, then approve every coal mine and gas field that crosses your desk.

The genius is that it works politically. Progressives fixate on the renewable investment. Corporations focus on the 31 project approvals. Everyone’s happy, except the Pacific islanders going underwater and the Torres Strait Australians watching their government flood their communities.

This is more insidious than outright denial. Denial is a brute; this is a poison. The system isn’t just broken; it has been professionally captured and reprogrammed. The very institutions meant to protect us now serve the interests of our demise. As Upton Sinclair warned, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” In this case, it’s not just salaries; it’s campaign funds, political futures, and an entire economic paradigm built on a lie.

The climate wars aren’t over. They were a rout. The corporations won, and the Albanese government isn’t just a bystander; it is the prize, the battlefield, and the memorial to what we failed to prevent.

Quick Facts for Sharing:

298:1 – Ratio of fossil fuel subsidies to climate victim compensation
31 projects – New fossil fuels approved since 2022
6.5 billion tonnes – CO2 locked in by Labor
2nd in world – Australia’s fossil fuel export ranking (behind only Russia)
2070 vs 2050 – Gas approved 20 years past net zero deadline
0.03% – Pacific emissions vs 100% of their suffering

MASTERMIND: LABOR’S CLIMATE POLICY

A Political Satire in the Tradition of Clarke and Dawe

By John Darke and Brian Clawe

SETTING: A Mastermind chair. Single spotlight. ANTHONY ALBANESE sits. CLAWE approaches.

CLAWE: Your name?

DARKE: Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister—

CLAWE: Specialist subject?

DARKE: Labor’s Climate Policy and Why It’s Completely Consistent.

CLAWE: Two minutes. Starting now. Fossil fuel projects approved since 2022?

DARKE: Well, if you look at the broader—

CLAWE: Thirty-one.

DARKE: Context is—

CLAWE: Total lifetime emissions?

DARKE: That’s not the—

CLAWE: Six point five billion tonnes. Year these projects will operate until?

DARKE: Around—

CLAWE: Twenty-seventy. Your net zero target?

DARKE: Twenty-fifty!

CLAWE: So twenty years past your target?

DARKE: It’s a transition—

CLAWE: To what? How many fossil fuel projects did Scott Morrison approve in his last three years?

DARKE: (pause) More than us?

CLAWE: Twenty-eight.

DARKE: Oh.

CLAWE: You’ve approved more fossil fuel projects than Scott Morrison.

DARKE: But our rhetoric is much better!

CLAWE: Does rhetoric reduce emissions?

DARKE: Well, no—

CLAWE: Do fossil fuel projects increase emissions?

DARKE: Obviously—

CLAWE: So you’ve increased the thing while improving the words?

DARKE: We’re taking real action on—

CLAWE: Annual fossil fuel subsidies?

DARKE: We’re investing in renewables—

CLAWE: Fourteen point nine billion dollars.

DARKE: (quietly) Right.

CLAWE: Eliminated subsidies?

DARKE: We’re reviewing—

CLAWE: Zero. Annual Pacific climate finance?

DARKE: We’re very committed to—

CLAWE: Two hundred and sixty million. Ratio of fossil fuel subsidies to Pacific survival funding?

DARKE: I don’t think that’s a helpful—

CLAWE: Fifty-seven to one.

DARKE: When you put it that way—

CLAWE: Is there another way to put fifty-seven to one?

DARKE: The previous government—

CLAWE: Increased their subsidies by thirty-one percent under you.

DARKE: That’s not—

CLAWE: Your government. What percentage of global emissions do Pacific islands produce?

DARKE: Very small—

CLAWE: Zero point zero three percent. Emissions reduction they need by 2035 to survive?

DARKE: Seventy-five percent!

CLAWE: Australia’s commitment?

DARKE: Sixty-two to seventy percent!

CLAWE: Will that save them?

DARKE: (long pause) …Pass.

CLAWE: No. Which conference are you hoping to host?

DARKE: COP31! With the Pacific—

CLAWE: While approving projects until 2070?

DARKE: We can walk and chew gum—

CLAWE: Can you drown the Pacific Islands while co-hosting their climate conference?

DARKE: That’s not fair—

CLAWE: It’s their assessment. First decision by Environment Minister Murray Watt after re-election?

DARKE: He approved an important—

CLAWE: North West Shelf extension to 2070. Emissions?

DARKE: It will provide—

CLAWE: Four point four billion tonnes.

DARKE: Jobs—

CLAWE: How old are the Murujuga rock art sites this project threatens?

DARKE: We have strict—

CLAWE: Fifty thousand years. Engravings at risk?

DARKE: Environmental protections—

CLAWE: One million. Can you protect fifty-thousand-year-old sacred sites while destroying them for gas?

DARKE: These are complex trade-offs—

CLAWE: For the rocks?

DARKE: For the economy—

CLAWE: Will the rocks care about the economy?

DARKE: That’s absurd—

CLAWE: It’s geology. What did PNG say about your climate finance?

DARKE: I don’t recall—

CLAWE: Quote: “Peanuts.” Annual emissions from approved projects in 2035?

DARKE: I’d have to check—

CLAWE: Twelve point eight million tonnes.

DARKE: But the Safeguard Mechanism—

CLAWE: Reduces nine point eight million if everything goes perfectly.

DARKE: So we’re making progress!

CLAWE: You’re adding twelve point eight while removing nine point eight.

DARKE: That’s still a reduction of—

CLAWE: Nothing. It’s an increase. Emissions avoided by your climate policies to 2030?

DARKE: Significant! Thirty-nine million tonnes—

CLAWE: Emissions from your approved fossil fuel projects?

DARKE: (very quietly) …More?

CLAWE: Six point nine billion tonnes. That’s seven tonnes added for every tonne you cut.

DARKE: Over different timeframes—

CLAWE: Does the climate care about timeframes?

DARKE: Science tells us—

CLAWE: What?

DARKE: We need urgent action!

CLAWE: What action have you taken on fossil fuel subsidies?

DARKE: Renewable investment!

CLAWE: How many subsidies eliminated?

DARKE: (pause)

CLAWE: Zero. How many approved?

DARKE: All of them.

CLAWE: While increasing them thirty-one percent.

DARKE: It’s a transition!

CLAWE: To more fossil fuels?

DARKE: That’s not how—

CLAWE: Mathematics works? Can you simultaneously claim climate leadership while approving more fossil fuel projects than Scott Morrison, subsidising the industry at fifty-seven times the rate of Pacific survival funding, and operating projects twenty years past your net zero target?

DARKE: (long pause) …Yes?

CLAWE: How?

DARKE: By hoping nobody does the Mathematics.

CLAWE: You scored zero. But you did demonstrate the subject.

DARKE: Labor’s Climate Policy and Why It’s Completely Consistent?

CLAWE: Labor’s Climate Policy and Why Mathematics Doesn’t Apply.

DARKE: That’s not what I—

CLAWE: (walking away) It is now.

[BLACKOUT]

—END—

Clarke and Dawe understood: the best satire doesn’t mock. It exposes. The comedy comes from watching someone try to defend the indefensible using logic that collapses under the weight of simple arithmetic.

The Pacific Islands aren’t a punchline. They’re the proof.