No teeth, no accountability, no amendments: Government response to Climate Change Act review is a huge let-down for Tasmanians.
MEDIA RELEASE 12 AUGUST 2026
No teeth, no accountability, no amendments: Government response to Climate Change Act review is a huge let-down for Tasmanians.
The Government's response to the 2024-25 Independent Review of the Climate Change Act confirms what we already knew: this is a Government that doesn't listen to the community, doesn't listen to the experts, and only listens to business. You can see it in the Minister's own message at the start of the response.
This Independent Review took two years. It received almost 100 submissions. It handed the Government carefully considered recommendations that recognised the economic climate we're in — including a full best-practice option, with an independent statutory authority to provide real oversight, and a cut-down "Temu" version that wouldn't cost the Government much at all, but would still require legislative change.
The Government couldn't even bring itself to accept the cut-price version.
It won't legislate, because it doesn't want to be forced to actually do anything. It would rather keep writing its own policies and action plans — full of sizzle, no sausage.
This response is the epitome of weasel words. The Government says it "supports in principle" five of the recommendations, while declining to act on the substance of each of those five recommendations. It's the kind of spin this Government is sadly well-known for.
Recommendation by recommendation, the pattern is the same:
Recommendation 1 — establish an independent statutory authority, or at a minimum, legislate an advisory board: declined. Without legislation, a Minister can simply abolish any advisory body the moment it says something they don't want to hear - just as Minister Ellis did with the firearms advisory group he set up, then abolished when he didn't like its advice.
Recommendation 2 — extend the review period from four years to ten: the Review itself said this was only appropriate if Recommendation 1 was fully implemented. It isn't. The Government wants a longer timeframe without the accountability that was supposed to come with it.
Recommendation 3 — legislate a separate adaptation planning process: declined. Business as usual continues, while communities are left without a real plan to adapt.
Recommendation 4 — legislate to increase transparency and accountability for sectoral emissions performance: declined. This was about giving teeth to the Government's claims on emissions reduction — and it has chosen not to.
Recommendation 5 — require climate considerations in major government decisions, especially those with significant investment or emissions impact: ignored completely.
The only recommendations this Government intends to act on relate to community engagement and communication. Nice words. But better community engagement won't reduce a single tonne of emissions, and it won't make a single community better prepared for the climate impacts already on our doorstep.
Shame on this Government.
This response would be laughable - the kind of thing you'd expect to see satirised in an episode of Utopia - if it weren't so serious. This isn't about box-ticking. It's about the future hellscape that awaits us if we don't act.
Unless this Review leads to a genuinely more comprehensive, ambitious and detailed Act, that failure will continue - and Tasmanians will pay the price - economically, environmentally and socially.