Howard would have delivered
It is an article of faith for environmentalists in Australia that Labor governments are better on such issues as climate change than the Coalition. Based on recent history, however, it is time to challenge this assumption.
The unpleasant reality is that anyone who thinks the most important climate action needed in Australia is a price on carbon, would have been better off voting for John Howard at the last election, not Kevin Rudd.
Saying so at the time would have drawn ridicule. Howard had, for years, demonstrated his lack of belief in climate change by actively blocking action, whereas Rudd was clearly a passionate believer and a man committed to taking action. For climate change advocates Rudd was a breath of fresh air after a decade of denial.
But in the cold light of day we must accept that the vote for Rudd failed to deliver, whereas a vote for Howard would have seen us with an ETS, probably along the lines of what Rudd himself proposed.
How would this have unfolded?
Towards the end of his tenure, Howard made a clear commitment to introduce an ETS. It is true he had been sceptical about the need for action, but under pressure from the business community and from opinion polls showing even Liberal voters were concerned, he accepted the mood for change. He directed his department head Peter Shergold to lead a committee, with heavy business representation – including the alumina and coal industries – to design an ETS policy; which they duly did.
If Howard had been re-elected, he would have put the legislation through parliament and it would have passed through the Senate with Labor support. It would have been a Nixon-to-China-moment, with Howard no doubt delivering the support of big business as well. Carbon costs would now be making their way onto every corporate balance sheet in Australia.
Then what? During the most recent term of parliament, Howard would have resigned (surely by then!) and been replaced with Peter Costello, a long-term supporter of action on climate. We would now have Prime Minister Costello, climate change believer, with a legislated ETS under his arm thumping the podium and arguing something like “we will decide who emits from this country and how much they can emit.”
The contrast with the present debacle couldn’t be starker. We now have a known climate sceptic leading the coalition, who opposes an ETS but has a plan for 'direct action' on the margins of the economy.
As our alternative, we have a Prime Minister who is a climate change believer, but won’t put an ETS in place... and has a plan for direct action on the margins of the economy. Hmm.
The truth is that on climate change, it will now make no material difference which major party you vote for. Yes, the Greens may control the Senate and that will give the major parties a fright, but given the Labor and Liberal parties have reached consensus on not doing very much, they are more likely to stick together than to vote with the Greens.
But surely, you cry, Labor has always been more committed on green issues, so must be a better bet? I’d always assumed that, but I think I was wrong.
It is time to face the truth. The Labour party does not understand sustainability, they have just learnt, since Graham Richardson, to talk the language and do just enough to look a greener shade of brown than the Coalition.
In a Gillard Cabinet, Peter Garrett will be the only person who understands the significance of the issue and the economic transformation required. We can safely assume his knowledge and public credibility will be wasted by Gillard, just as it was by Rudd.
Gillard and rest of the Cabinet are steeped in the Labor view of the environment held since the 1980’s. They see this as an important marginal issue to manage along with many other social questions, but not one that matches their true loves of industrial relations and education.
It’s good to know that, as our economy goes into terminal decline under the weight of ridiculously high CO2 emissions per $ of GDP, the workers losing their jobs will be highly educated and treated fairly.
An Abbott Cabinet is likely to only have one true believer as well – Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull understands the issue from an economic perspective, as well as having strong and long-demonstrated personal belief in the need to act on climate change. He really does get it, but while Abbott would be crazy not to have him in Cabinet, he’s sure to control him carefully given he only lost the leadership by one vote.
So what are climate advocates to do? We should certainly engage the Liberal and National Parties more effectively on these issues. For far too long Labor has taken it for granted that, in the end, preferences from people concerned about environmental issues would flow through to them.
Until we have both parties genuinely supporting action, as is seen in the UK, Germany and France, nothing much will happen. This means supporters of climate action in business, of whom there are now many in senior and influential roles, need to stand up and speak. They have been absent from this debate in the past few years, leaving the field open to the fossil fuel lobby to take their usual approach of opposing everything. We need business and Liberal Party supporters to make their views known, both publicly and privately.
Most importantly, we need to face the truth that in this age, politicians – with a few very rare exceptions – don’t lead, they follow. Until the public demands action – not just by saying yes, it's of concern in opinion polls but by throwing governments out who fail to deliver – and until business stands up to be counted, nothing of any consequence will change.
Reality often stinks, but it's still reality.
Comments on this article
The "Faceless Men in the Coalition" torpedoed the ETS.
"Rudd failed to deliver" is only because:
The "Faceless Men in the Coalition" torpedoed the ETS.
Too true
Sad but true, Paul.
A referendum on a price on carbon is an excellent idea Roger! I'd just hate to see it voted down due to question rigging c.f. the referendum on the republic - Howard rigged it so the options were:
1. Monarchy?
2. Republic model A?
3. Republic model B (only slightly different from A)?
And the vote was split three ways and we all know what the result was .
This time I can see it being worded as (if we are not careful):
1. No price on carbon?
2. Carbon tax?
3. Cap and trade system?
Again splitting the vote and seeing a price on carbon disappear down the gurgler, just like the republic.
The Minchin effect
It may be true that Howard/Costello would have delivered, we'll never know, but the 4 Corners programme aired just after the Liberals leadership spill showed that Minchin, Bernardi and others had no intention of letting the ETS go through and were either asleep at the wheel when Howard proposed the ETS in June 2007 or saw it as a matter of political expendiency that could easily fall into the "non-core promise" category post-election. Can you honestly believe that the same people that tore down Turnbull to kill bipartisan support on the ETS would have allowed this to go through once the legislation had been drafted up?
When should we put a price on carbon?
Australia should not put a price on carbon until:
1. the world agrees a mechanism to price carbon
2. Australia has removed all the impediments that prevent low-cost, clean electricity supply. That of course means removing all the impediments that would prevent us having cheap nuclear power in this country. Such impediments include regulations that distort markets such as:
- Ban on nuclear energy
- Renewable Energy Targets
- Renewable Energy Certificates
- Feed in Tariffs
- subsidies for renewable energy
- subsidies for transmission grid infrastructure to support renewable energy
- regulations that would disadvantage any generating technology compared with any other
- Regulatory and policy environment that increases the risk for investors
Who should wear the blame
What an extraordinary article. You appear to be blaming the Labor Party for the Coalition failing to uphold the policy that it took to the election, and for the Greens grandstanding about being greener than everybody else and rejecting any policy that they didn't design.
My gripe is with the Greens. Their opposition to the CPRS indirectly resulted in the replacement of a Liberal leader committed to fighting climate change with a climate change sceptic and also the demise of Kevin Rudd.
I have voted Labor in the Reps and Greens in the Senate for many years, but the Greens have lost me for good.
Fortunately it did not happen
Assume, for a moment, that enhanced greenhouse will alter Earth's climate and the net balance will be bad. There are two choices of action:
You could try mitigation but by any realistic analysis that ship sailed decades ago. China and India will double their coal use over the next 20 years and global annual consumption is expected to rise from the current 6.7billion tons to 10billion at that time. Nor will Indonesia and Brazil leave their people in undeveloped poverty and rightly so. Regardless of Western actions atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to rise throughout this century because people have no choice but to use carbon-dense fuels as the only realistic means of powering their development.
Alternatively you can go with adaptation and a no-regrets policy. This means maximizing reliable, affordable baseload power and generating wealth to underwrite expansion and hardening of infrastructure to cope with any adverse events experienced. This is what will be done because politicians can not hope to be elected on a platform of falling living standards and energy rationing.
Stop fussing about climate mitigation, it is not going to happen. Get on with preparing for anything which might happen and that means more baseload generating capacity and more infrastructure development.
Carbon constraint is a non-starter.
Rewritten History
It may be true that a re-elected Howard Govt would have delivered an ETS but if the lack of such legislation is a "failure" then the blame can only be laid at the feet of Tony Abbott and the coalition party room who stabbed Turnbull in the back. These leaders, if they deserve that title, reneged on deal to pass the ETS legislation through parliament and overturned any chance of a bi-partisan approach to a critical long term economic and social issue. It is hard to imagine a more damaging piece of political vandalism.
ABBOT SAVED US FROM THE ETS DISASTER
The whole article assumes that the ETS was by far the best approach to climate action. Yet, the harsh reality was that Penny Wong did a very good job of converting the simple ETS concept into something that actually dealt with the practical issues that need to be addressed if the uneccessary economic damage asociated with a comprehensive ETS are to be avoided. The mistake Labor made was to delay recognition that CPRS was a dog of a system that needed to be replaced by something better.
The other harsh reality is that a comprehensive carbon tax would have to deal with most of the problems faced by an ETS. The problem with any scheme that depends on "putting a price of dirty" is that the price of dirty has to be artificially increased to to the point where clean is competitve. So there has to be a sudden price jump instead of a steady ramping up is the proportion of clean increases. The other problem is that some of the price increases driven by putting a price of dirty will be unproductive in the sense that business's will find it makes more commercial sense to pay the tax and do nothing to reduce the emissions.
Where investment is involved it makes more sense to leave the price of dirty unchangeds and use a "put a price on clean" approach. With this approach the average price ramps up in line with the proportion of clean - This reduces the price pain, particularly at the beginning of the replacement process and eliminates the risk of unproductive price increases.
In the case of power generation a price on clean might involve using competitve tendering to set up a series of contracts for the supply of cleaner electricity combined with regulations to give priority to the use of cleaner power.. Gives investors price and sales certainity and customers lower price increases at different stages in the clean-up process.
Hopefully, Labor will move to a version of direct action that drives serious climate action at low costs/tonne emissions reduced.
Carbon tax
A revenue neutral carbon tax would effectively short-circuit the controversy in the science - you pay more for energy but get a tax break or a pension increase. In the short term, forget about direct government support, just get the logistics and carbon accounting in place with a $10 to 20 tax, ensure revenue neutrality, and prepare for whatever happens internationally with a carbon price. A half-smart marketer could easily sell this to climate believers and sceptics alike so that we can all get on with it.
truth vrs expedience
We should never forget that Rudd's intent was more directed as using a carbon tax as a method of wealth redistribution rather than lower corbon emissions. Not until carbon prices are directed to reducing the effect of past, present and future emissions rather than supporting current federal expenditure and populist payments will this policy have any credibility. In the same vein increased resource taxes should be applied to building for the future rather than supporting present bloated expenditure
Referendum
What Australia needs is a referendum on the issue of an ETS. That way the public could voice their belief (aka democracy), business could move on and we could all adapt to the effects of Climate Change (if any).
Howard would have delivered
Hi Paul,
You may be right, we'll never know.
But as people no longer trusted him, it's unlikely he could have provided the necessary leadership when he believed the 'Greenhouse Mafia', rather than the science.
Now we know for sure that the fossil fuel industry and their compliant bureaucracies control both the major parties policies on climate change.
So now at least we know who the enemy is and that as they say, is half the battle......./Chris