News broke recently that nearly $2 billion in public subsidies for polluting fossil fuel projects promised under the previous Coalition government have not been spent.
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Ahead of next month's budget, the Albanese government has a golden opportunity to scrap these wasteful subsidies and instead fund essential renewable energy projects.
Taxpayer subsidies for dirty coal and gas projects have benefited few, with the majority of companies foreign-owned and paying minimal, if any, tax. But they have damaged many through worsening climate change.
My partner and I know first-hand what climate-related disasters look and even smell like, having had our home south of Batemans Bay in coastal NSW reduced to charred rubble in the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.
Most of the 75 houses in my local streets burned down that day. I knew in my gut climate change had crashed from the future right through into a terrible present.
In my shire people galvanised around our experience and accelerated community-generated climate solutions. And we called upon the government to show leadership nationally and internationally. We wanted to reduce the chance that what had happened to us would happen to anyone else.
These megafires were an alarming wake-up, telling us we are all now under greater threat from fires, floods, droughts, storms, sea level rise and cyclones that have been worsened by climate change.
The bushfires led to unprecedented waves of protest and community calls for action - including a group of bushfire survivors like myself protesting outside Parliament House with the burnt remains of our homes.
But instead of heeding these calls, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, former prime minister Scott Morrison established the national COVID-19 commission. It was supposed to guide our economic recovery after the pandemic, but Morrison handpicked a number of his personal friends from gas companies to lead it.
Unsurprisingly, what followed was $2.45 billion in handouts to their favourite gas companies, many with links to the Liberal Party, at a time when the Australian community was crying out for climate action and funding for renewable energy, aged care, education, the arts and healthcare.
This was on top of the estimated $19,000 per minute the federal government had already given away in taxpayer subsidies to fossil fuels.
People in my community can see no benefit for them in new coal and gas projects - we see greater destruction down the track. This community frustration laid the groundwork for the 2022 "climate election".
After a decade of inaction, communities like mine who have survived climate-driven bushfires and worsening floods, and everyday voters across the continent, were fed up. We demanded our government take climate change seriously. Now, for the first time, we have a national climate policy and legislated emissions reduction target.
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But this national climate policy must be matched by a commitment from the Albanese government to stop pouring taxpayer money into the very companies who want to open up new polluting coal and gas projects, fuelling more severe bushfires and floods like the ones that devastated so much of our continent over the last few years.
That is why I am adding my voice to calls by 350.org for the government to cut subsidies to fossil fuel developments in the coming budget. Otherwise the hard work by our communities will be so easily undone.
We need to turn off the flow of our taxes to the sunset fossil fuel industry and redirect it to clean energy solutions that create the world we want to live in.
- Jack Egan lost his home in the Black Summer bushfires and works with 350.org Australia.
