If you only followed mainstream coverage of the Pre-COP Leaders' visit to Tuvalu, you could be forgiven for thinking the big issue was headwear.
Wed 7 Oct 2026 11.59 AEDT
Photo: AAP Image/Lukas Coch
A federal Nationals MP from Queensland has expressed concern about changes to state mining and environment laws proposed by the state Liberal National Party Government. A controversial Crisafulli government proposal would restrict landholders’ rights to information and to challenge mining projects affecting their communities.
When a gas project can't win on the facts, it goes shopping for a new story. Last week, Woodside's CEO Liz Westcott told a Perth business breakfast that the proposed Browse gas and CCS project could power AI data centres and keep AUKUS shipyards humming. The same project was once sold to keep the lights on in WA.
If you only followed mainstream coverage of the Pre-COP Leaders’ visit to Tuvalu, you could be forgiven for thinking the big issue was headwear.
The ABC reported that Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen declined to wear the hand-made floral garland handed to leaders in the traditional welcome. It was a small and ungracious moment. It was also the one the cameras wanted.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said something far more important. Speaking in Fiji, he warned of a summer of floods, cyclones and extreme heat, with a super El Niño on the way. Climate change, he said, “is not a problem for the future”.
He is right. But that science is the science of fossil fuels, not the science of solutions.
At the close of the Leaders’ segment in Tuvalu, Climate Minister Maina Vakafua Talia spoke to visitors who had just seen the frontline.
“During your stay, you have witnessed firsthand what we have been telling the world for decades,” he said. Climate change is “an existential threat to our very survival”. The 1.5°C goal must stay within reach, because “we simply cannot afford an overshoot”.
COP31, he said, “cannot be another talk shop or a debate over agendas”. The discussions in Tuvalu and Fiji “must deliver strategic action”.
Then he turned to fossil fuels. We must urgently phase them out and call out the financial institutions still underwriting expansion. If expansion is not addressed immediately, it spells total demise.
The Minister did not ask for more dialogue. He asked for an end to expansion.
He told leaders to reject false solutions like geoengineering and deep-seabed mining. And he backed the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels (TAFF) process, a coalition of doers willing to move faster without abandoning UN consensus.
The Pre-COP plenary discussion on October 6 shows what sits behind the diplomacy. Leaders voiced frustration with what it calls the patronising paradox of finance. Rich countries acknowledge the crisis, then package aid in red tape and high-interest loans that deepen vulnerable nations’ debt.
Those in attendance at the plenary noted that the world spends roughly $7.43 trillion a year on fossil fuel subsidies and nearly $3 trillion on militaries, while climate finance struggles to hit its targets.
And not everyone is on board. Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo noted that a minority of leaders still have reservations about the Taku Pakasoa Declaration. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale said it was “hard to sign onto” unless paragraphs 6, 8 and 11 demand bolder domestic emissions cuts and deeper accountability from G7 and BRICS nations.
Quality research, analysis, explainers and factchecks from experts you can trust.
Australia lost the bid to host COP31 and was handed the role of President of Negotiations instead. We can lead from that position.
Yet our government is weighing approvals for coal and gas projects that would lock in decades of new emissions, with most new approvals depending on so-called carbon offsets. Offsets do not reduce emissions. They are exactly the false solution Minister Talia told leaders to reject.
Minister Talia was clear on what that leadership looks like in The Saturday Paper: “We cannot just put money on the table and then do the opposite.” New coal mines and LNG plants, he said, are the root cause. Is Australia a good neighbour to the Pacific? That is the question we should be pondering.
In Tuvaluan culture, a neighbour, the tuākoi, owes sharing, reciprocity and care for the vulnerable.
One of the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporters has some explaining to do.
It starts with the first step that the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative has put on the table: a global halt to new fossil fuel extraction, led by wealthy nations. Australia is one of them.
That means no new coal and gas approvals. A roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, built with Pacific nations. An end to fossil fuel subsidies, so public money stops fuelling the problem. Grants, not high-interest loans, for the front line.
And it means saying plainly at COP in Türkiye next month that the agreement to transition away from fossil fuels is not open for renegotiation.
Talia closed the Leaders’ gathering on resolve. One day the crisis may seem too hard, he said, but it shall not be this day. He also thanked Australia and Fiji. That grace should not be mistaken for a lack of expectation.
The garland will be forgotten by Friday, after Pre-COP has closed and the media moves on. Tuvalu’s question will not be.
Are we paddling in the same direction?
Right now, Australia is holding down the other end of the canoe. It is time to start paddling with our neighbours, for 1.5C, to stay alive.
Louise Morris is Head of Fossil Fuel Transition at the Australia Institute, with 20 years’ experience encompassing climate, energy, forest protection, and law reform in the not-for-profit sector, and federal politics.
