Governments in Australia have been put on notice – as the climate crisis escalates, so will we.
Fri 2 Jan 2026 06.00 AEDT
Image: AAP/Darren Pateman
Paddling at the beach at Broulee this summer holidays, I can’t help being reminded of the last time I kayaked.
It was in Newcastle for Rising Tide 2025 – but then I was surrounded by hundreds of other kayakers chanting at a passing coal ship.
The energy was high – kids splashing in the shallows, drummers providing protesters with a beat to chant to, the Oldies Rising crew helping people into kayaks, and young people cruising down the art raft water slide into the ocean.
This joyous event brought people together from around the country to call on the Federal Labor Government for real climate action, with three key asks:
These calls go to the heart of our biggest contribution to climate change – our fossil fuel exports.
Including emissions from exported fossil fuels, Australia, a country with only 0.3 per cent of the global population, controls 5 per cent of global emissions.
That is our biggest opportunity to tackle the climate crisis, but the Albanese Government won’t touch it.
I attended Rising Tide with my ACT Greens colleagues, all of us decked out in broad-brimmed hats, sunscreen and huge grins. If you didn’t look at the police hovering close by, it really did feel like a festival.
Beyond a series of yellow buoy markers were three different kinds of police boats, including the ominous, black balaclava-clad marine forces-style zodiacs, plus a handful of police jet skis for good measure.
All waited threateningly for those who dared stray past the buoys into the marine exclusion zone and risk arrest.
Things were calm until I heard sudden chanting through megaphones: “Go, reds go! Reds, go!”, and suddenly there were dozens of people beyond the buoys.
A coal ship was coming and the protesters were determined to stop it.
This was the third time I’d heard the ‘red’ signal at this year’s Rising Tide.
This year, Rising Tide’s strategy and execution sharpened.
There were multiple arrestable actions in waves across the weekend.
Swimmers weren’t part of the original plan until just days before the event, but the idea was quickly incorporated into the strategy.
Greenpeace took one coal ship into their own hands out at sea, leaving protesters free to focus on other incoming ships.
In total, 10 coal ships were rescheduled, three turned around, and eventually the port was closed for the weekend.
Almost the same number of people were arrested, despite over 1,000 more attendees, but many more coal ships were stopped and delayed than last year.
Police activity was notably different, with people being given ample opportunity to return to the beach before they were arrested, and less antagonism and confrontation on the beach and at camp.
People suspect this is an attempt to take the wind out of our sails by giving us fewer arrests to draw attention to.
It didn’t work.
In 2026, Rising Tide is ‘levelling up’, transitioning from civil disobedience to civil resistance.
Rising Tide describes this as “commencing waves of sustained, escalatory and disruptive actions”.
This is a warning sign to governments and industry that the status quo is not accepted by a growing constituency, and people are increasingly willing to do something about it.
This is because people are worried about their survival and the future of the planet.
Stakes are high.
In the first term, the Albanese Government approved 27 new coal and gas projects.
There have been four already this term, including the North West Shelf climate bomb that will pollute for decades, well beyond the net zero target of 2050.
Here in the ACT, previously a nation-leading jurisdiction on climate, Labor has announced it will miss its interim climate targets and struggle to meet net zero by 2045. There have been no new climate change policies announced yet to remedy this.
It’s hardly surprising that people are resorting to direct action and peaceful protest.
People are losing faith that governments will take the necessary steps to phase out the fossil fuel industry.
Amongst the overwhelm of organisations asking for people to sign onto their calls, engage and donate – Rising Tide provides a unique flavour of activism that is both effective, and inclusive.
Rising Tide has something for everyone – the oldies and youngens, the people hanging out to get arrested, and the families wanting to contribute by sitting on the beach and cheering them on.
Rising Tide is a true people-powered movement and it’s not backing down.
Governments in Australia have been put on notice – as the climate crisis escalates, so will we.
Jo Clay MLA is Deputy Leader of the ACT Greens, Member for Ginninderra and spokesperson for the environment, planning, finance, circular economy, arts, heritage and animal welfare.
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Last week’s Budget gives some insight into how the federal government intends to regulate logging of native forests going forward, setting aside millions in public funds to “progress a landscape-scale approval pathway for jurisdictions with RFAs”. This signals the government is planning for native forest logging to continue.
Budgets are not communications exercises. They are statements of priorities, the most literal answer a government can give to the question: what do we value? Ask that of the 2026–27 federal budget, and the answer, for nature, for Australia's irreplaceable native species, for the ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve on this continent and exist nowhere else on Earth, is clear. Nature is not a priority.
