The Honourable Julia Gillard AC, who spoke at Climateworks Centre’s launch in 2009, reprises her role 15 years later, celebrating Climateworks’ milestone anniversary – on 17 October 2024 at the State Library of Victoria.
Good evening.
I first want to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

I’m thrilled to be here with you in Melbourne tonight to celebrate all that Climateworks has accomplished since I was given the privilege of launching the organisation back in 2009. Incredibly, none of us look a day older!
More seriously, it’s been 15 years of remarkable achievement of which you should all be very proud.
Expanding into Southeast Asia… Developing our first national low carbon growth plan… Helping create Australia’s first net zero emissions plan… And developing the powerful AusTIMES model with CSIRO to explore future energy and emissions scenarios. They’re just to name a few.
You have all proved that meaningful action on climate change is doable – the incredible progress you’ve made has clearly demonstrated that. Climateworks continues to be the independent leader in bridging the gap between research and climate action which is ever more critical given how far behind we are on decarbonisation.
I would like to take a moment to pay special tribute to Chair, Professor John Thwaites, who I have known since I served as John Brumby’s Chief of Staff when he was the Leader of the Opposition in the 1990s. This was the era when the key Labor team was Brumby, Thwaitesy, Bracksy and Hullsy. While Gillardy was never really going to take hold as a nickname, I learned a great deal working with this talented team before I went into Federal politics. Thank you, John, for your leadership from then to now.

Friends, tonight, we not only celebrate what has been achieved but look ahead to the pivotal role Climateworks will continue to play.
And gathered here tonight, we all know that there is still much work to be done, and, personally I want to play a role in ensuring it happens.
I am incredibly proud that some of the agenda I enacted on climate change in government continues and is making a difference. I am thinking specifically of the work of Clean Energy Finance Corporation. As you know, when the incoming Abbott Government took a wrecking ball to the initiatives enacted by my government, including the emissions trading scheme which was delivering results, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation survived. Across its life, it has committed $12.7 billion across more than 300 large-scale transactions, taking lifetime total transaction value to $48.8 billion. Each $1 of its capital attracts an additional $5.02 from the private sector.
As impressive as this is, hugely more is needed.
Our decarbonisation challenge is significant and, due to a decade of inaction under the prior Federal Government and despite the strong progress made under the current government, concerningly, Australia is not on track to halve carbon emissions by 2030, nor achieve net zero by 2050.
By 2030, renewable energy must increase an incredible three times – and that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
To meet net zero emission targets, we require $1 trillion of investment.
That means we need to unlock more capital including institutional capital. To assist with this, as some of you may know, earlier this year, I accepted the role as Chair of HMC Capital’s Energy Transition Fund, which is seeking investors for a portfolio of assets across the energy value chain, including wind, storage, solar and emerging technologies, as well as the decarbonisation of industrial processes.
The benefits of decarbonising the economy are plentiful, including more regional jobs, cheaper energy costs and the opportunity to secure Australia’s economic future in a net zero emissions world.
I see this opportunity as a natural extension of my commitment as Prime Minister to do all I could to fight climate change and I am looking forward to working with Angela Karl, who is leading these efforts and joins us in the room tonight.
But as daunting as the scale of the challenge is in Australia, that is dwarfed by what is needed in Southeast Asia.
The ASEAN ten-member states now constitute the fifth-largest economy worldwide. But that trajectory has come at significant environmental cost, with emissions growth rates among the highest globally.
And, countries including Vietnam and Thailand are among the most impacted by extreme climate events, with millions who live in densely populated areas at greater risk of rising sea levels, heat waves, floods and droughts.
Like us, their lives – and livelihoods – depend on action, nationally, regionally and globally.

As does their health. In my current work, as Chair of the global foundation, the Wellcome Trust, I have a particular vantage point to understand the impacts of climate change on human health.
We exist because Henry Wellcome, who died in the 1930s, left his fortune for health and medical research. Henry could not have foreseen that one of the urgent health challenges a hundred years later would be the intersection of climate and health.
But today the science is unequivocal.
Because of climate change, millions will die sooner than they should, billions will live less healthy lives.
It’s spurring the spread of infectious diseases, reducing the nutritional value of staple crops, making it more difficult to grow enough fruit and vegetables and contaminating drinking water in low-lying areas with salt.
It’s not hard to see that the human costs of climate change are measured in people’s lives and quality of life. It’s also measured in the economic cost of a population with more health issues, lower employment, lost productivity and the increased costs of health and social care.
Increasingly, the intersection of climate change and health is becoming recognised and discussed. I represented Wellcome at last year’s COP meeting in Dubai and for the first time ever there was a dedicated day on health.
Yet more needs to be done to understand the impacts on human biology. That’s why last year, Wellcome spent £100 million on research to understand the effects of climate change on health, and how to protect people, because every possible response to climate change has a health dimension. We intend to continue these efforts.
I would also ask you to deeply consider the health dimensions in your climate change work. I am hopeful that better understanding of these impacts will spur political and community appetites for both climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Winning the battle for hearts and minds in politics and the community matters. I live with the fact that the government I led didn’t win that battle. Partisanship, denialism, scaremongering won the day.
I wish I could say we have moved on from that kind of politics but I can’t. Indeed, the US election, in a little over two weeks’ time, presents another fork in the road moment on our path to decarbonisation.
If re-elected, Donald Trump has promised to pull out of the pivotal Paris global climate change agreement, end all payments to the UN Green Climate Fund, facilitate new coal and oil projects – in his words ‘end the war on coal’ and ‘drill baby drill’ – and stop all US government spending on renewables research and development.
With the election effectively too close to confidently call, this grim vision of the future may well become a reality.
Polling from the US election tells us that while there is community concern about climate change, it is not as important in driving voting intentions as cost of living, other economic issues, and immigration.
We can’t impact the results of the US election. But we can and must be out in the community redoubling our efforts to make the case for change.
We are yet to win the argument that a cleaner, greener future can be one of greater prosperity and equity. In the minds of many today, cleaner and greener means less job opportunity and more costs for them.
It is understandable that fear takes hold given the struggles of life today. Families are already pressurised by the battle to make ends meet, finding a way to cope in a rapidly changing world, the impact of partisanship, the fragmentation caused by the new media environment and a sense of insecurity because of violent conflicts around the world.
We know that all these pressures have led to a troubling downward trend in people’s belief that their children will get to live a better life than they did.
Once the sense of social solidarity that we are building a better future together gives way, the ability to get people to accept big change programs like the need to combat climate change is hugely jeopardised.

It is incumbent on all of us who care about the future of our planet to double down on our advocacy for renewable energy and a net zero future, demonstrating not just the environmental benefits.
We can and must win the moral argument, the economic argument and the health argument.
And that brings me back to where I started. Climateworks has never been more needed than it is right now, especially with the potential for Australia to host COP 31 in 2026.
Sometimes, the enormity of the task that’s before us can seem overwhelming.
But despite the size and gravity of the challenges ahead, I truly believe there is great cause for optimism and hope. Your track record of achievement to date is part of what gives me hope.
We owe it to the many generations who will come after us to create a greener, better, healthier future.
And I know all of you will be helping to lead us there.
Thank you.
Climateworks Centre: 15 years