The Age Year in Review: Call for leadership on the climate crisis

Political heavyweights at The Age have called for leadership on the climate crisis after years of failures.

Speaking at The Age Live: 2019 Year in Review on Monday night, group executive editor James Chessell said climate change was now the biggest cause for anxiety in the community.

“The political class is failing us on this issue,” Chessell said.

Senior writer Tony Wright said Australians were looking to Parliament for action after weeks of deadly bushfires in NSW and dangerous air pollution in Sydney.

“During these fires, people have been looking for leadership and haven’t found it,” Wright said.

The panel, hosted by national editor Tory Maguire, agreed that climate change had become a toxic political issue.

“We’ve seen this political wrecking ball that’s been climate change policy ... demolish all in front of it,” Chessell said.

Chief political correspondent David Crowe said every party had made mistakes on the issue, including the Greens.

“There’s scar tissue in every party over climate change,” Crowe said.

“Climate change was the issue that broke leadership in the past and could break it again.”

Strengthening the government’s climate policies could pose Prime Minister Scott Morrison “huge political risks within his own party”, Crowe said.

“[Climate change is] just so toxic within that party.”

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the Rudd Labor government’s failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), voted down by the Coalition and the Greens, spelling the end for then-prime minister Kevin Rudd.

His successor, Julia Gillard, went onto negotiate a price on carbon but the so-called carbon tax was quickly repealed when the Coalition formed government under Tony Abbott in 2014. In Opposition, Mr Abbott had earlier taken down Malcolm Turnbull as the Liberal leader over his deal to support Mr Rudd’s CPRS.

There are still climate denialists in government, Wright noted, and Labor lost credibility on the debate in the doomed May election by jumping between positions on coal depending on the electorate.

On Monday, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said Australia should not stop exporting coal in order to grapple with the climate crisis.

“We’ve got to consider what the actual outcome is from any proposal, and the proposal that we immediately stop exporting coal would damage our economy and would not have any environmental benefit,” Mr Albanese told The Age.

About 1000 readers packed in the Melbourne Recital Centre in Southbank for the annual Year in Review on Monday night.

Readers applauded when Chessell promised The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald would ramp up its reporting on the climate next year.

Other speakers included business journalist Adele Ferguson, crime reporter John Silvester, investigative journalist Nick McKenzie and investigations editor Michael Bachelard.