There are strengthening signs that a super El Niño is brewing in the Pacific Ocean. Firm predictions cannot yet be made but if the event does return and is ‘one of the strongest on record’ then Australia could be in for a hot and long summer across 2026-27, with drought and unusually warm conditions beginning in Spring. The Bureau of Meteorology is already expecting below-average rainfall for much of eastern Australia and south-west Western Australia through winter.
The warming brought by a super El Niño would be adding to a higher baseline temperature than previous El Niños due to ongoing climate change, potentially making the final extremes more severe than historical precedents would suggest.
It’s worth thinking now about the political implications of the severe heatwaves, drought, and catastrophic bushfires that such a super El Niño would likely bring later this year and early next year.
Mesmerised by the threat from its right, the Coalition has been tacking more towards the kind of climate science denialism and contempt for clean energy uttered by Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce. We could expect Hanson and Joyce to make hay while the sun shines. Paradoxically, extreme climate events can fuel, rather than temper, angry rejection of climate science and denunciation of renewable energy.
We know that experiencing severe climate events does not cause the scales to fall from the most sceptical eyes. Seeing is not believing; in fact seeing often hardens disbelieving. We would expect One Nation to frame heatwaves, drought and bushfires as purely natural events, with a spike in references to Dorothea Mackellar on social media. The Murdoch media would inflame One Nation’s climate rage by recycling its stories blaming fires and blackouts on renewable energy failures and inadequate hazard reduction burns due to green influence.
El Niño hits hardest in the bush—failed crops, livestock losses, fires, mental health crises in farming communities. These hard-hit regions, and the grievance psychology already entrenched in them, are precisely One Nation’s heartland. Hanson would position herself as the authentic voice of the forgotten rural Australian and her party as the only one willing to protect farmers and workers from ‘climate alarmism’. In practice, major farming organisations accept the scientific consensus, and renewable energy projects have solid support in parts of regional Australia where they bring jobs, land lease income, and investment.
The Coalition could find itself wedged by One Nation’s extremist position. However, new National Party leader Matt Canavan has always been more denialist and anti-renewables than Barnaby Joyce. This could widen the fault line with the Liberal Party over climate, except that Angus Taylor is closer to Tony Abbott on climate issues. The Liberal Party seems to have written off Teal seats in the cities, freeing itself to shift well to the right.
But overreach on climate carries risk. Receptiveness to One Nation’s messaging is limited by how confronting the disasters appear on television. When visceral disaster footage dominates, climate denial can look callous rather than courageous to undecided voters. If a super El Niño produces imagery on the scale of the 2019-20 Black Summer—with its mass evacuations, streets reduced to ash, and distressing images of panicking wildlife—public sympathy can shift toward climate action, as it did then, at least temporarily boosting the Greens and Independents.
Black Summer redux?
The Labor government will be tempted to sit back and watch the right-wing parties devour each other, but a year of extreme weather events driven by a super El Niño would put it under pressure too. The already-bitter debate over Australia’s emissions targets and fossil fuel exports would intensify. On its left, the Albanese government would face strong pressure from Greens, Independents, and climate advocates to accelerate the energy transition, with the WA and Queensland governments pushing back arguing an accelerated transition would jeopardise jobs and raise energy prices.
Since Black Summer, Australians have become more sensitised to questions of preparedness and responsibility. More than half say that climate change makes them feel insecure sometimes or often, with much higher levels among young adults. The federal governments anaemic National Adaptation Plan, released with no fanfare earlier this year, will reassure no-one. Perceptions that governments have ignored the recommendations of the Bushfire Royal Commission could become a potent electoral liability if exploited by critics and political opponents, although federal Labor has prepared for this.
It is not certain that the Albanese government would prove nimbler that the Morrison government. The latter’s lackadaisical response to the Black Summer fires was the beginning of the end for Prime Minister Morrison. The victims, the media, and the wider public become intensely engaged with how quickly and effectively governments respond to major disasters.
If the national electricity grid were to fail during a prolonged heatwave, the clean energy roll-out would be blamed by some, putting the government on the defensive. Pressure would mount to restart coal plants and to accelerate the clean energy transition. Higher energy prices would cause electoral pain, even more so if they flowed through to the inflation numbers.
Despite these risks to Labor, extreme weather events brought by a super El Niño would work to its electoral advantage overall by heightening public concerns. While the community remains polarised, the fear of climate change and demands for stronger policies have only been growing. And climate denial is now seen by the mainstream as the domain of cranks.
In short, a super El Niño can be expected to deepen splits on the right, unless both Canavan and Taylor mimic One Nation’s rhetoric, potentially enhancing One Nation’s position. Labor would come under stronger pressure from Teals, Greens, its own green flank, as well as from climate-concerned citizens, forcing it to fend off criticism of its clean energy policies and anger over its approvals for gas exports. Luckily for Labor, Teals compete against Liberals and the Greens are no longer in a good position to exploit electorally Labor’s weaknesses on climate change.
These are the public and political pressures that a super El Niño may give rise to. In the private domain, everyday Australians will be responding in their own ways. We now have an extensive data set on what these responses will be, and I will explore this subject in a subsequent post.