Treasurer Jim Chalmers will use today's Intergenerational Report to declare Australia's budget position hundreds of billions of dollars better than expected by 2066. But Parents for Climate is warning that the report's improved bottom line hides a debt it doesn't measure at all, the cost of continued coal and gas expansion, which is landing on families right now.
Parents for Climate CEO Nic Seton said a smaller number on the Treasury's ledger doesn't mean a smaller burden on the next generation.
"You can celebrate paying down your credit card while ignoring the insurance costs that are skyrocketing. That's what this report risks doing. A better-looking budget in 2066 means very little to a family who's watching their insurance premiums climb, their grocery bill climb, and their sense of a safe future slip away because Australia continues mining and burning planet-heating coal and gas," Mr Seton said.
"Treasury's previous long-term modelling shows climate change will hammer the Australian economy by $135 to 423 billion dollars. So, you can't then turn around and claim debt will magically be lower in 40 years' time by ignoring inevitable spending on climate harm. Either you're being honest about the cost of climate impacts, or you're cooking the books." The claimed improvement in the fiscal numbers is being driven by stronger revenue and spending restraint, not by any reckoning with the cost of climate change. Deloitte Access Economics estimates unchecked climate change will shrink Australia's economy by 6%, or a $3.4 trillion loss in GDP, and cost 880,000 fewer jobs by 2070. (2)
The Actuaries Institute finds unnatural disaster costs to the Australian economy are already $38 billion a year, and forecast to rise to at least $73 billion by 2060. (3) That's a compounding cost to the economy and major risk to revenue sources and rising expenditure needed to keep people safe.
Meanwhile, Australian families are already carrying that cost: rising insurance premiums, mounting disaster recovery bills, and a global economy that the UN's own science warns is exceeding the globally agreed limit of 1.5 degrees heating. That cost is also evident in the growing anxiety young people feel about the future they're inheriting, and in parents' own fears about what kind of world they're leaving behind.
"As families, we don't get to look away from this. Treasury can balance a spreadsheet, but it can't balance a childhood spent worrying about bushfires, floods and a future that feels smaller every year. None of us can fix this alone, but all of us - as parents, as decision-makers - have an obligation to make sure the ledger we hand our kids counts more than dollars," Mr Seton said.
Parents for Climate is calling on the Treasurer and government leaders to use this report as an urgent driver for ruling out new coal and gas approvals and putting the true, uncounted cost of climate inaction at the centre of every major economic decision.
