Katharine Murphy
Fri, 17 February 2023
Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Anthony Albanese believes Australians are suffering from “conflict fatigue” so he’s sought to establish a collaborative tone in the current parliament. Not everybody is on board with that aspiration of course. But thus far, the vibe has skewed towards peace and harmony.
That changed on Wednesday. Labor arrived in the House of Representatives chamber for question time ready to rumble. Albanese and the climate minister, Chris Bowen, held themselves above the fray, but frontbenchers Madeleine King and Tanya Plibersek let rip at the Greens. The trigger was the Greens signalling through media outlets earlier in the day that the next round of climate policy negotiations needed to deliver a ban on new coal and gas projects.
Australia’s climate wars have persisted long enough to have developed their own forms of extraordinary rendition. King, the resources minister, reprised 2009 – the decision by the Greens to vote against Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme. The merest whiff of 2009 triggers indiscriminate brawling and mauling between squads of Labor and Green supporters on social media. Shots fired, in other words. Backing in King’s theme, Plibersek expressed shock that the Greens could again line up with the Liberals to vote down climate legislation.
Related: Safeguard mechanism: what is it, will it cut emissions and what role do carbon offsets play?
Labor wasn’t finished. Later in the day, the government’s Housing Australia Future Fund legislation was rammed through the house. This procedural smash and grab was a departure from the orderly chamber rituals established since last May. Labor has the numbers in the house, so can do what it likes, but the convention has been staging collaborative conversations enabling various points to be ventilated. The Greens were ready to make their points, but the government rolled right over the top.
Things moved so fast the moderate Liberal Bridget Archer almost had to jog in order to cross the floor to support the package. The four Greens MPs left the chamber and abstained from voting. The Queensland Labor frontbencher Murray Watt, who relishes a scrap, rewarded the strategic retreat with a hastily crafted internet meme which reads: “Guess who didn’t vote for Labor’s $10bn housing fund? Dutton and the Greens: the new Coalition.”
Albanese has expended so much energy developing his current style of collaborative leadership that people can forget his penchant for tactical ruthlessness if he judges that necessary in the moment.
Wednesday’s flex will have jogged a few memories.
I suspect the target wasn’t the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, because Bandt is fluent in the physics of national politics – the flow of actions and reactions. It was likely newer arrivals in the Greens party room. People who have not lived through the public policy atrocity of the past decade. People who could be inclined to see the recent departure of Lidia Thorpe as a sign the Greens need to punch up to Labor to mollify a fractious base.
The moral of Labor’s skirmish was clear-cut. The “new politics” of the 47th parliament is an active choice we all make, not some inalienable human right. The voters have given us an opportunity to pursue a progressive agenda. We can build, or we can go to war. If it’s war, there will be casualties, and consequences. Inevitable, I guess, that the opening sorties of the safeguard mechanism deliberation were bare-knuckle. This phase of policymaking was always going to be the true test of whether or not Australia’s climate wars have ended.
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The best granular explainer about the nuts and bolts of the safeguard mechanism revamp has already been written by my colleague Adam Morton. You can find that here. Read it. It’s worth your time. My less comprehensive summary is as follows.
The safeguard mechanism is a remnant of the Abbott era, regulations that allegedly curbed pollution from Australia’s heaviest emitters, but in practice did nothing of the kind. Labor is proposing to make the mechanism work. The scheme proposed would see companies cut their carbon emissions intensity by 4.9% a year, either by curbing pollution on site, or buying carbon offsets. Offsets are units of emissions reduction that has already occurred elsewhere, but credible concerns have been raised about the integrity of some credit schemes. The government commissioned a review that broadly backed the integrity of the system, but recommended systemic change to improve confidence and transparency.
The overhaul has triggered a valid debate about whether Labor’s revamp is too favourable to sections of the Australian business community that willingly abetted a decade-long climate policy atrocity by either backing in, or failing to disavow, Tony Abbott’s “axe the tax” histrionics.
Climate wars have inflicted a deep wound ... Healing isn’t an overnight proposition, particularly when the war isn’t over
Having helped bury a perfectly functional carbon price, this crowd is now screaming for policy certainty. You’d laugh if this was in the least bit funny. It isn’t funny, and it’s reasonable to query whether or not Labor is applying kid gloves to self-serving rent-seekers who, in moral terms, deserve a sledgehammer.
Fair, too, to probe the integrity of the carbon credits. Credits are an important part of the policy mix for two reasons. Where possible, we should be pursuing least-cost abatement to manage the costs of the transition, and in some sectors, practical emissions reduction is either impossible, or fiendishly expensive. But units need to be credible, otherwise all we are doing is pretending to reduce emissions.
While kicking the policy tyres is mandatory, two other things should also be understood at the level of principle. The first is progress is always better than regression; and the second is progress tends to be more linear when enough people become convinced of the merits of a particular course of action.
In political terms, Labor’s objective in this parliamentary term is to deliver a proof of concept: speed up emissions reduction, and show voters the world doesn’t end.
This aspiration sits at the heart of the safeguard redux. The government wants to change the direction of travel. If you send a signal the future is carbon constraint, investment follows, because there are deep pools of capital wanting to place their bets on the transition. Incremental success here will help reboot the arid debate about climate action. In Australia, voters have heard too much about cost, and not enough about opportunity and necessity.
Necessity brings us to science. Anyone who reads climate science knows we have to act faster because the risks of failing to act are existential. The Greens are correct to champion a ban on new coal and gas. I’ll say this again: the Greens are right on the science.
But anyone paying attention for the past decade also understands that base electoral politics, straight-out lying, manipulation and weaponisation, has made it difficult for incumbent governments to do what the science tells us is necessary. Australia’s climate wars have inflicted a deep wound on the polity. Healing it isn’t an overnight proposition, particularly when the war isn’t over.
Community sentiment is shifting. The May election result tells us more Australians understand they’ve been had by lying politicians and greedy corporates. But Peter Dutton remains fully subscribed to the Coalition’s cult of no, because he wants to chase his electoral losses by going after traditional Labor voters in the outer suburbs and regions.
So where does this leave the safeguard?
The Greens say they are prepared to turn a blind eye to the various deficiencies in the revamp if Labor will ban new coal and gas developments. Labor says if you want that ban spelled out in a neon bumper sticker, we can’t deliver it, because that exceeds our electoral mandate.
Related: The safeguard mechanism: Australia’s emissions trading scheme in all but name
I predict a supplementary conversation along the following lines. Labor will signal (as Plibersek did this week) the government will apply an environmental lens to new fossil fuel developments, case-by-case. The Greens will say great, then give us a climate trigger in environmental laws. There’s a way to go yet with this discussion. But I suspect Labor’s response to that will be you can either trust our bona fides with case-by-case decision-making, or you can overplay your hand and trust Dutton’s bona fides. Take your pick.
Key people are talking, but there is frustration in both camps. Bandt would argue Labor is more timid than it needs be – too busy fighting the last war to see that the politics have now shifted, and decisively, in favour of climate action. Albanese would argue this is naive. The politics have certainly shifted, but not uniformly in terms of geography, and parties of government have to straddle geography if they want the opportunity to change the country.
While the private punditry of a couple of party leaders remains a matter of argument, this final statement is objectively true.
Australia has blown a decade of climate action.
We can’t blow another one, and the responsibility for ensuring that doesn’t happen is a collective one for progressive forces in the current parliament, because the Coalition on these questions is no better than a laugh track; it has opted out of a core responsibility of a governing party.
The weeks ahead are going to require both maturity and dexterity.
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