Extract from The Guardian website:
Former Labor government’s climate adviser tears into Coalition’s direct action policy and green paper
- Lenore Taylor, political editor
- theguardian.com,
Ross Garnaut says Australia’s climate change debate is like a
“Martian beauty contest” where some flaws in the existing carbon tax are
on full display but the still-hidden Coalition “direct action” policy
“contestant” would certainly be far worse.
In a withering critique of the government’s alternative greenhouse policy, the former Labor government’s expert climate adviser says the government’s direct action green paper “shoots the breeze” instead of outlining a serious policy, and that the plan will quickly cost an unaffordable $4bn to $5bn a year. He advises the Senate to stick with a floating carbon price until the Coalition comes up a sensible alternative.
In a submission to a Senate committee investigating the direct action policy, before which he will give evidence Friday morning, Garnaut says “the government has placed the Senate in the situation of a judge of a Martian beauty contest”.
He says: “The Senate was introduced to some indelicate features of the first contestant (the established policies) and invited to award the prize to the second contestant (direct action) while the second was still hidden from view. In the green paper on the emissions reduction fund, the government has lifted part of the veil which has hidden the second contestant.
“We have seen some gnarled toes, and people who are expert in these things can guess at the shape of the rest of the body. The glimpse of the second contestant should make us cautious about awarding the prize to the Martian under the veil until the second contestant is in full view.”
He accuses the government of demanding the repeal of the existing policy before it has explained even the most basic aspects of its alternative.
“Rather than a green paper, what is before the Senate is a shooting of the breeze: the raising of a few of the questions that would need to be answered along the way to preparing a green paper,” Garnaut says.
“Considerable time will pass before the Senate has before it the basic documentation upon which a responsible decision could be taken on whether to replace established policies by direct action. The green paper does not specify the objective of the emissions reduction fund. It does not attempt to analyse the costs of meeting even a minus 5% target through direct action and the emissions reduction fund.
“In this it is an unusual document, lacking any semblance of the framework of public interest analysis that is a characteristic of Australian policy-related papers of modern times. It is not a green paper in the sense that the term has been used in Australian public policy.”
The Coalition has promised $300m, $500m and $750m to direct action over the next three years and indicated there would be around $1bn a year after that. None of this money appeared in the mid-year economic statement late last year. The Coalition said it was contained in the “contingency reserve”.
But, according to Garnaut, in order to reach the same emission reduction targets as the carbon pricing scheme, direct action would need at the very least $4bn or $5bn by the fourth year, and would very likely require a lot more than that.
If, for example, the government weakens the renewable energy target, which Garnaut notes is subject to a review led by the businessman Dick Warburton – “who is on public record with statements that modern science is wrong in its knowledge that human activity is a major contributor to global warming” – then direct action would need to find more greenhouse gas abatement and would become much more expensive.
The cost would also be higher if Australia is forced to accept a 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target of more than 5%. The independent climate change authority has said it should be between 15% and 19% and Garnaut broadly endorses that assessment.
And the cost would also rise if emissions increase from any of the businesses or sectors that don’t choose to “bid in” to the government’s emissions reduction fund for grants to help them reduce their greenhouse gas output.
He says the absence of any across the board caps on emissions is a “large and obvious” flaw, which could only be rectified by the enormous bureaucratic exercise of setting an emissions baseline for every factory or business.
He concludes that to meet Australia’s target, direct action would result in a “massive deterioration in the budget outcomes – rendering much more difficult and perhaps practically impossible the fiscal adjustment which is required for sustained economic stability in Australia after the resources boom”.
And even if Australia paid this enormous price, it would still be less certain of meeting its emission reduction targets than if it had used a floating carbon price to get there.
Garnaut prepared a series of reports for the former Labor government on the carbon pricing scheme.
The Coalition minister Malcolm Turnbull made similar points about the long-term cost of direct action when he explained in 2011 that continuing to use a big government taxpayer-funded scheme to reduce emissions in the long term would “become a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead”.
In his evidence to the committee, Garnaut said Australia’s direct action policies appeared weaker than the “muscular” version pursued by the Obama administration in the US, where regulations were restricting emissions from power stations, among other things.
The only Coalition senator at the hearing, the Nationals’ John Williams, did not address the content of Garnaut’s submission, but asked the professor whether he “believed in Australia’s democratic practice”, whether he considered himself a “vested interest” in the carbon policy debate and how much he had been paid to write the reports for the previous government.
Garnaut replied that he did believe in the democratic process in which the support of both houses of parliament were required to make a law, that he considered himself “part of the independent centre of the Australian polity” and that he had been paid half the salary of a departmental secretary during the time he wrote the reviews, which had involved “quite a large reduction in income”.
In a withering critique of the government’s alternative greenhouse policy, the former Labor government’s expert climate adviser says the government’s direct action green paper “shoots the breeze” instead of outlining a serious policy, and that the plan will quickly cost an unaffordable $4bn to $5bn a year. He advises the Senate to stick with a floating carbon price until the Coalition comes up a sensible alternative.
In a submission to a Senate committee investigating the direct action policy, before which he will give evidence Friday morning, Garnaut says “the government has placed the Senate in the situation of a judge of a Martian beauty contest”.
He says: “The Senate was introduced to some indelicate features of the first contestant (the established policies) and invited to award the prize to the second contestant (direct action) while the second was still hidden from view. In the green paper on the emissions reduction fund, the government has lifted part of the veil which has hidden the second contestant.
“We have seen some gnarled toes, and people who are expert in these things can guess at the shape of the rest of the body. The glimpse of the second contestant should make us cautious about awarding the prize to the Martian under the veil until the second contestant is in full view.”
He accuses the government of demanding the repeal of the existing policy before it has explained even the most basic aspects of its alternative.
“Rather than a green paper, what is before the Senate is a shooting of the breeze: the raising of a few of the questions that would need to be answered along the way to preparing a green paper,” Garnaut says.
“Considerable time will pass before the Senate has before it the basic documentation upon which a responsible decision could be taken on whether to replace established policies by direct action. The green paper does not specify the objective of the emissions reduction fund. It does not attempt to analyse the costs of meeting even a minus 5% target through direct action and the emissions reduction fund.
“In this it is an unusual document, lacking any semblance of the framework of public interest analysis that is a characteristic of Australian policy-related papers of modern times. It is not a green paper in the sense that the term has been used in Australian public policy.”
The Coalition has promised $300m, $500m and $750m to direct action over the next three years and indicated there would be around $1bn a year after that. None of this money appeared in the mid-year economic statement late last year. The Coalition said it was contained in the “contingency reserve”.
But, according to Garnaut, in order to reach the same emission reduction targets as the carbon pricing scheme, direct action would need at the very least $4bn or $5bn by the fourth year, and would very likely require a lot more than that.
If, for example, the government weakens the renewable energy target, which Garnaut notes is subject to a review led by the businessman Dick Warburton – “who is on public record with statements that modern science is wrong in its knowledge that human activity is a major contributor to global warming” – then direct action would need to find more greenhouse gas abatement and would become much more expensive.
The cost would also be higher if Australia is forced to accept a 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target of more than 5%. The independent climate change authority has said it should be between 15% and 19% and Garnaut broadly endorses that assessment.
And the cost would also rise if emissions increase from any of the businesses or sectors that don’t choose to “bid in” to the government’s emissions reduction fund for grants to help them reduce their greenhouse gas output.
He says the absence of any across the board caps on emissions is a “large and obvious” flaw, which could only be rectified by the enormous bureaucratic exercise of setting an emissions baseline for every factory or business.
He concludes that to meet Australia’s target, direct action would result in a “massive deterioration in the budget outcomes – rendering much more difficult and perhaps practically impossible the fiscal adjustment which is required for sustained economic stability in Australia after the resources boom”.
And even if Australia paid this enormous price, it would still be less certain of meeting its emission reduction targets than if it had used a floating carbon price to get there.
Garnaut prepared a series of reports for the former Labor government on the carbon pricing scheme.
The Coalition minister Malcolm Turnbull made similar points about the long-term cost of direct action when he explained in 2011 that continuing to use a big government taxpayer-funded scheme to reduce emissions in the long term would “become a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead”.
In his evidence to the committee, Garnaut said Australia’s direct action policies appeared weaker than the “muscular” version pursued by the Obama administration in the US, where regulations were restricting emissions from power stations, among other things.
The only Coalition senator at the hearing, the Nationals’ John Williams, did not address the content of Garnaut’s submission, but asked the professor whether he “believed in Australia’s democratic practice”, whether he considered himself a “vested interest” in the carbon policy debate and how much he had been paid to write the reports for the previous government.
Garnaut replied that he did believe in the democratic process in which the support of both houses of parliament were required to make a law, that he considered himself “part of the independent centre of the Australian polity” and that he had been paid half the salary of a departmental secretary during the time he wrote the reviews, which had involved “quite a large reduction in income”.
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