Concern and “Stay Safe” Tweets aren’t Climate Policy

As I write this on 11 January 2026, Australia’s in the grip of a brutal heatwave and Victoria is on fire. Houses have been lost, farms destroyed and people are unaccounted for as out-of-control fires rip through communities. Conditions are officially “catastrophic” with temperatures well above 40°C across much of South Australia, Victoria, the ACT and NSW.

This isn’t an abstract “extreme weather event”. It’s heat that strains bodies and systems. It’s wind that turns embers into missiles. It’s Country being cooked, then scarred. It’s emergency responders being asked to do the impossible.

In moments like this, our national leaders have always reached for the familiar script: Tweeting our warnings, gratitude to firefighters, the plea to “listen to advice”, and “stay safe”.

Here’s the problem and hypocrisy: you can’t “prepare for the worst” while actively approving more of the cause.

Accountability: the approvals that make the next heatwave worse

No-one can pin any single heatwave on one Prime Minister. Weather is messy. But the climate as a whole isn’t a mystery. When you add more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, you load the dice for more severe heat extremes, and you turn bad fire days into catastrophic ones.

And while the PM tells us Aussies to be careful in the heat, his government keeps approving more coal and gas.

Climate Council’s analysis says that across its first term and into this term, the Albanese Government approved 32 new coal, oil and gas developments, with lifetime pollution that will exceed 6.5 billion tonnes of CO₂-e.  That’s not “take care”. It’s “take more”.

The Australia Institute points to a wider pipeline of 94 new coal and gas projects waiting for approval.  Even if only a portion proceed, the direction of travel is unmistakable: more extraction, more exports, more combustion, more heat, more fire weather.

This is why those soothing social posts from Anthony Albanese land as offensive. Not because care is bad. But because care without responsibility is!

“We’re are having the hottest years we have ever had”: the context the PM cannot tweet away

The Bureau of Meteorology has just reported that 2025 was Australia’s fourth-warmest year on record. That heat did not vanish on New Year’s Day. It continues into this summer, and here we are.

The public is being asked to adapt to danger as if it’s a random visitor. But danger is being built into the system. Every new coal and gas approval is a decision that the next decade will be hotter and more dangerous than it needed to be.

So yes, Albo: people should listen to your emergency warnings. But people are also angry about your disregard for the maths of carbon and atmospheric physics.

When will the fossil fuel madness stop?

It stops when our Government stops pretending it can be two things at once: a climate government and an approvals machine for new coal and gas.

If Albo wants to be taken seriously, “take care” must become “take responsibility”, and that starts with decisions that are fully within his control:

• No new coal and gas approvals: not “managed”, not “offset”, not “netted out”. Stopped.

• A real climate test in environmental law so projects cannot be waved through while their climate harm is treated as someone else’s problem.

• A national plan to phase down production and exports, with an honest just transition for workers and regions that doesn’t sacrifice them to denial or delay.

Because here’s what is morally untenable: urging Aussies to “prepare for the worst” while continuing to approve the worst.

Anthony Albanese posing for a photo and looking concerned.