Australia’s climate change and energy “information ecosystem” is fuelling conflict in communities, with misinformation and disinformation confusing the public, slowing renewable energy projects and undermining policy responses to the climate crisis, a cross-party Senate inquiry has concluded.
The inquiry’s final report, released on Tuesday evening, recommended the government do more to make tech companies liable for “psychosocial harms” spread on their platforms.
In schools, the inquiry recommended media literacy be strengthened through the national curriculum with greater oversight needed when corporations engaged with classrooms.
Elsewhere, the inquiry recommended more funding for research into mis- and disinformation with a funding model to be developed for an independent effort to “track hidden digital influence systems”.
The Australian government should also sign a UN declaration, launched in Brazil in 2025, promising a series of actions aimed at combating climate mis- and dis-information, the committee said.
The National Health and Medical Research Council should also fund “new research” on “the effects of wind energy on human health”, the committee recommended.
The use of artificial intelligence by groups looking to block progress on climate change was likely to further threaten the integrity of information the public received, the inquiry heard.
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The inquiry was called by the Greens in July last year to examine the “prevalence and impacts of misinformation and disinformation” on climate change and energy.
Eleven days of public hearings were held and more than 240 submissions were received from a vast array of stakeholders – from academics and fossil fuel lobby groups to thinktanks, conservationists, renewable energy companies, UN representatives and groups both supporting and seeking to block local renewables projects.
Tech groups including Meta, TikTok and Google also gave evidence, as did Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which rejected accusations it was part of a climate “denial machine” while defending its platforming of climate science deniers.
Committee chair, the retiring Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, said the inquiry heard evidence that a “denial machine” of conservative thinktanks, PR firms, consultancies, interest groups and “some conservative media outlets” had worked to obstruct climate and energy policy in Australia for decades.
“For those who care about a safe climate future, this is deeply concerning,” he said.
“Protecting and strengthening information integrity in our politics and exposing the groups who serve to benefit from undermining it must be a priority in the battle for our democracy and for a safe climate future.”
He said the Greens would have liked stronger recommendations from the report, including on laws to force greater disclosure of funding from third-party groups engaging in campaigns. Urgent reforms were needed to govern truth in political advertising, he said.
The inquiry’s report was endorsed by the committee’s Greens and Labor members, but the independent senator David Pocock and the progressive Liberal senator Andrew McLachlan said while they backed the report it should have gone further.
The two senators wrote: “The evidence presented to the committee does not point to a marginal problem requiring modest adjustment.
“It points to a systemic failure, one that is already distorting public debate, undermining trust in institutions, and delaying urgent policy action.”
The Guardian has approached the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, for comment.
In a dissenting report the new Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, claimed the inquiry had been biased, writing: “The heart of this inquiry’s approach has been to supress [sic], ridicule and silence anyone who expresses different views from the current scientific consensus.”
The One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts in his own dissenting report said the inquiry’s true motive was “for every western nation to have censorship controls in place over their people” and falsely claimed human emissions had “no effect on atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels”.
On Monday the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, a network of defence, security and policy experts, released a report saying climate disinformation was “evolving from a communications issue into a national security challenge”.
Retired admiral Chris Barrie, a former chief of the Australian defence force, said Australia was facing an “unprecedented energy crisis” made worse by fossil fuel dependency.
He said: “Layered on top is a climate disinformation war globally and in Australia that is actively undermining the capacity to build a renewable, clean-energy future and curb coal and gas exports.”
