00:00 Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this morning that he's very confident Australia
00:06 will meet the Paris Agreement and that in fact Australia must meet the Paris Agreement.
00:12 So we're talking about here the target to cut emissions by 43% by the end of the decade
00:19 on 2005 levels.
00:22 Now the reason the Prime Minister has been speaking about this today is because the coalition
00:26 came out on the weekend and said that that target won't be met and suggested that a future
00:32 coalition government would dump that target, something the Prime Minister has been very
00:38 critical of.
00:39 Peter Dutton is walking away from climate action.
00:42 His decision to abandon the 2030 target means him walking away from the Paris Accord.
00:50 If you walk away from the Paris Accord you'll be standing with Libya, Yemen and Iran and
00:57 against all of our major trading partners and all of our important allies.
01:03 The Independent Climate Change Authority said last year that Australia wasn't on track to
01:09 meet this target and in fact emissions actually rose to June last year.
01:14 But analysis from the Energy Department suggests that Australia is within striking distance
01:21 of getting to that target.
01:22 That's what the government says, that the projections by 2030 are to cut emissions by
01:27 42% when the target is that 43%.
01:32 Now as for the coalition, for what targets a future potential coalition government would
01:38 set, we don't know. The Shadow Energy Minister Ted O'Brien insisted this morning that a coalition
01:45 government would set new targets and that it would still meet net zero by 2050.
01:51 Take a listen.
01:52 We are absolutely committed to the Paris Agreement.
01:55 We are absolutely committed to achieving net zero by 2050 and we will have a plan to do
02:02 so.
02:03 What we have done is we've called Labor out.
02:07 Labor legislated for a 43% emissions reduction cut by 2030.
02:13 They have Buckley's chance of achieving that.
02:17 Now we know that the coalition, if it wins, government wants nuclear energy to be part
02:22 of the energy mix and Ted O'Brien was asked this morning about the costings and locations
02:28 of nuclear reactors.
02:30 He said that would be released in due course.
02:33 But all of this really points to the fact that climate and energy are shaping up to
02:39 be two big topics ahead of a federal election.
02:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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