Australia’s climate chief promises harder line on misinformation
Por Miriam Webber — POLITICO – TOP Stories
CANBERRA — The public servant in charge of Australia’s climate change policy says his department must “take on the public debate” and tackle mis- and disinformation that threatens progress on government policy, including the renewable energy rollout.
Mike Kaiser, secretary of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, on Wednesday urged public servants not to fall silent on policy matters, backing July comments from Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson.
Wilkinson said public servants have a duty to explain the evidence base for policies they have developed, even though “there will be people who interpret that as advocacy.”
Unusually for a departmental secretary, Kaiser is a former Australian Labor Party official — serving as secretary of the Queensland branch of the Labor Party from 1993 to 2000, and briefly as a member of state parliament. More recently he held Queensland’s most senior public service job.
Australia’s center-right federal opposition last week announced a plan to wind back much of the work of Kaiser’s department if elected — including repealing targets to reach net zero emissions by 2050 — while right-wing nationalist party One Nation has called for the department to be abolished.
“I strongly believe we should be more vocal in the public arena,” Kaiser said, when asked at an Institute of Public Administration Australia ACT event about policy advocacy while remaining apolitical.
“There’s a red line that you can’t cross as a public servant but it’s pretty bloody obvious where it is, it’s hard to cross it.”
Kaiser’s comments come after his department set up a cross-agency working group to develop a more collaborative approach to addressing climate misinformation.
The senior public servant said misinformation was “slowing the renewable energy rollout, which is demonstrably to the detriment of the country and energy.”
“Policy advocacy is important in circumstances where there’s strong irrefutable evidence, and where the mis- and dis-information has the potential to slow our progress.”
“We’re building up capability to take on the public debate in circumstances where there’s clear misinformation that risks the progress to government policy,” he said.
In addition to promises to trim the federal bureaucracy, parties of the right are also campaigning against renewable energy zones and electricity transmission projects at the state level, leading renewables investors to warn that Australia is putting billions of dollars of projects at risk due to policy uncertainty.
A paper released by the Climate Change Authority in August found climate misinformation was “increasingly focused on delaying or disrupting climate and energy action rather than denying climate change.” This included promoting uncertainty about climate action in relation to cost of living, jobs and energy prices.
The paper defined misinformation as referring to unintentionally false and intentionally false information, as well as true information used with the intent to mislead.
Prominent examples have included importation into the Australian debate of fake news about offshore wind farms killing whales, a claim made by President Donald Trump.
In Australia, the model of an apolitical public service is supported by legislation requiring secretaries and staff to be impartial in the course of their duties, or face sanctions or sackings.
In a 2019 High Court finding, a former public servant lost a free speech case arguing she had been unlawfully fired from the Immigration Department over social media posts about Australia’s treatment of people in immigration detention she had made under a pseudonym.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faced scrutiny after appointing Kaiser in July 2025. Kaiser resigned from the Queensland Parliament in 2001 after an electoral fraud inquiry demonstrated he was falsely enrolled to vote in a state seat in 1986.
“I have a political background, you know I’m a target [of criticism] as a result of that. Fair game, it’s fair cop I think,” Kaiser said Wednesday.
Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories
