00:00This group is a collection of senior security leaders who have now all retired but who share
00:08common anxieties or really deep concerns about just how profound a threat climate change
00:13poses to Australia's national security and who believe that the government simply isn't
00:18doing nearly enough to plan adequately for some of the shocks which are already coming
00:23our way and which are likely to intensify over time.
00:26Now for example Chris Barry, the former Chief of the Defence Force, is part of this group.
00:31So these are people who have held fairly senior positions in the Australian hierarchy.
00:35What do they want?
00:36Well they really want an overhaul of the way that Australia plans for climate change disasters.
00:40They say the government and the bureaucracy hasn't yet really grappled with the scale
00:45of the challenges which are coming our way.
00:47For example they point out that if you look at the science there's a decent chance, depending
00:51on what happens with emissions, that large swathes of northern Australia could become
00:55effectively unlivable within a few decades because of the extremes of heat that people
01:00there will have to endure.
01:01They also say that we're likely to see mass displacement of people from particularly perhaps
01:06South East Asia and South Asia as rising sea levels and other shocks really force people
01:12out of their homes to look for safer harbours.
01:15Now their argument is that the government does need to do much more.
01:18Not only increase the amount of assistance it's giving to the region to help deal with
01:22climate disasters, also they say Australia needs to deal up a new intelligence unit within
01:27the Australian government, within the Office of National Intelligence, to try and better
01:31assess exactly what threats are coming and how they can be dealt with.
01:35As well as of course making more rapid cuts to emissions to ensure that Australia's doing
01:40its bit to avert a global calamity.
01:44Now let's take a listen to John Blackburn, he's a member of this group, a former second
01:48in command of the Royal Australian Air Force, speaking about some of the problems that we're
01:52already seeing, including in the US in the wake of Hurricane Helene and what the government
01:56should be doing in response.
01:59If you stand up and say to the Australian people, here's a set of risks, then rightly
02:03the Australian people say, well what are you going to do about them?
02:06So there is a reluctance there to say what the scale of the problem is.
02:11We know the government's worried about the economic impacts, we can see what's happening
02:15in the US.
02:16They're worried about the impacts on insurance.
02:17There will be people in areas in Australia in the future that won't get insurance and
02:21that's a significant problem, not just for them but for the mortgage market.
02:26What they won't talk about gets more interesting.
02:28There will be areas, science tells us in the future, where we won't be able to live.
02:33Yes, it might be decades away, but we've got to plan for that.
02:36And also, the scale of what this could look like.
02:40Talking about two or three degrees doesn't mean much to most Australians.
02:43Talking about what it was like for people experiencing Hurricane Helene, remembering
02:47what we experienced in the bushfires in 2019-20, well we've forgotten about that.
02:52We've got to tell people what it's going to feel like for them and their children to make
02:56them understand why we've got to invest in preparing.
02:59Stephen, the government has conducted a climate change risk assessment but it hasn't been
03:04publicly released.
03:05Why is that?
03:07Well, the government says it's an intelligence product and it's not typical for intelligence
03:12products to be released to the public.
03:13Now that's true, but the climate leaders that we've spoken to today say that there's simply
03:18no good reason why a declassified or an unclassified version of this couldn't be released.
03:23And they say not only do the intelligence agencies need to make their own assessments,
03:27but they also need to speak to people on the ground, people who've already been impacted
03:31by climate change, people whose homes may be rendered uninhabitable in the future, people
03:36who may struggle to get insurance as premiums skyrocket, in order to really grapple with
03:41the full scale of this problem.
03:42And they say at the moment, there simply isn't enough evidence that the government is fully
03:47seized of the scale of the challenge that's coming.
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