Australia’s climate contradiction mirrors Canada’s, Senator for Quebec warns

Australia is living a climate contradiction – making ambitious commitments while continuing to expand fossil fuel production – a Canadian senator has warned, saying she recognises the disconnect because her country is doing exactly the same.

“Canada and Australia are remarkably similar,” Independent Quebec Senator Rosa Galvez told journalists at Parliament House.

“Our prosperity has been built in part on industries that now require profound deep transformation.”

Addressing the Climate Integrity Summit in Sydney earlier in the week, Senator Galvez warned that governments are refusing to reveal the true costs of propping up the fossil fuel industry, accusing politicians of failing to ask the “right questions”.

“If you ask the finance minister, ‘Walk me through your numbers,’ they will never do it because it will show that this sector is not profitable anymore,” she told the audience.

Senator Galvez said the industry remained viable only because of significant government support, pointing to estimates that Canada provided almost C$75 billion in fossil fuel subsidies and public financing over the five years to 2024.

She criticised the decision to spend billions on the government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, arguing that it mainly benefited foreign investors.

Senator Galvez said Canada sold crude oil to the United States for as little as $16 a barrel during the pandemic, only to buy it back as jet fuel and diesel worth as much as $300 a barrel.

“So, who’s crazy, and why are we not asking the right questions?” she said.

“Sometimes it’s renewable energy that we put into extracting fossil energy, which is crazy.”

She accused countries of not “measuring what matters” and said an economic model that relies on infinite growth on a planet with finite resources was “illogical”.

“It doesn’t work,” she said.

Senator Galvez and Tuvalu’s Climate Change Minister Dr Maina Vakafua Talia joined the Australia Institute and several federal crossbenchers to launch a new roadmap for Australia’s transition away from fossil fuels.

“To be clear, Australia’s hypocrisy is so great that Australia has joined the coalition of countries to plan a transition away from fossil fuels, while still opening new fossil fuel projects,” said the Australia Institute’s co-CEO, Dr Richard Denniss.

He said the first steps would be to stop approving new gas and coal mines and stop subsidising the industry, followed by taxing gas exports.

“Australia is far more generous to the fossil fuel industry than it is to our Pacific neighbours,” he said.

“We give far more in taxpayer subsidies to the fossil fuel industry than we give in green finance or indeed foreign aid to the Pacific.”

Next month, Australia will host pre-COP climate talks in Fiji and Tuvalu, before presiding over COP31 negotiations in November.

Tuvalu’s Climate Change Minister, Dr Maina Vakafua Talia, said leaders would see the “daily reality” of climate change for people living on the islands, warning that Australia could not keep claiming to “love our Pacific neighbours” while refusing to do what was needed to keep countries like his “above the water”.

“They are not waiting for the rest of the world to take action. They are leading Tuvalu, for Tuvalu,” said Greens Senator Steph Hodgins-May.

“Climate change isn’t some future distant threat. Rising sea levels are causing immense damage to homes, to livelihoods, and to culture today, right now,” she said.

Independent MP Dr Sophie Scamps said Australia needed to stop being “false friends” to Pacific nations.

“We know that their existence is threatened by climate change, and yet Australia continues to expand our reliance on fossil fuels,” she said.

The independent member for Warringah, Zali Steggall, highlighted that Australia has one of the highest per-capita emissions rates in the developed world.

“Let that sink in as you listen to the gaslighting from the government, pretending that we are leaders in trying to take action around climate change,” she said.

Another step in the roadmap is to “stop polluters hiding behind” carbon offsets.

Last week, the Greens split over the government’s new native forest carbon-credit method, which critics argue allows big industry to “greenwash” its pollution by buying offsets.

“In fact, as recently as last week, the government, in effect, held a gun to the koala’s head and said to the parliament, ‘The koala gets it unless you allow its habitat to be used as an offset, so that polluters can keep polluting’,” said independent MP Andrew Wilkie.