Extract from The Guardian
Notes for Labor leader’s opening address to party conference include a
vow not to succumb to ‘ridiculous scare campaigns’ and declare that an
ETS is not a tax
Bill Shorten
was due to recommit to an emissions trading scheme in his first speech
to Labor’s national conference as party leader, vowing not to succumb to
“ridiculous scare campaigns” by Tony Abbott’s “society of flat
earthers”.
The Labor leader intended to stare down the prime minister’s warnings about a return to the Gillard government’s carbon tax by declaring emphatically that “an ETS is not a tax” and Australia must not be a laggard on climate policy.
Shorten was also signalling that he would resist pressure from the Murdoch press – which has already begun campaigning against a return to carbon pricing – and pragmatic elements within his own party which question the political wisdom of re-embracing the policy.
In his speech on the first day of the three-day party forum in Melbourne on Friday, Shorten planned to rally Labor’s members to help make Abbott’s Coalition the first one-term federal government in more than 80 years.
“Usually, with their ingrained sense of fairness, Australians give a government a second go, but – just like in Queensland, just like in Victoria – one term is enough,” he was to say.
Delegates were set to debate changes to Labor’s national platform concerning a series of policy areas before the next federal election, due in 2016, with refugee policy shaping as a key flashpoint after Shorten’s call for the party to adopt the option of turning back asylum-seeker boats.
But extracts of Shorten’s speech, circulated to media before the conference, indicated he planned to directly confront the government on climate policy.
Shorten intends to promote his proposal to draw 50% of Australia’s electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030, saying the party platform “must set an ambitious new goal” to restore the sector’s confidence and certainty which had been “smashed” by the government.
“Climate change is an economic and environmental cancer – and it demands early intervention,” the speech notes said. “This isn’t a question of Australia leading the world – it’s a matter of keeping up.”
Shorten planned to say that if the world’s biggest capitalist nation – the US – and the world’s biggest planned economy – China – could agree climate change was a priority “it’s time Australia did too”.
“Mr Abbott’s society of flat-earthers talk a lot of nonsense about Labor policies – but they’re right about one thing,” he was to say.
“There is, absolutely, a clear-cut choice between Labor and the Liberals on renewable energy. This Coalition government has done everything in their power to try and destroy Australia’s share in one of the world’s fastest growing industries.”
Shorten was to say he wanted Australia to get its fair share of the $2.5tn in expected investment in Asia-Pacific renewables to 2030.
But in a nod to union concerns about job losses in the fossil fuel sector, Shorten planned to pledge to “work with businesses and unions to look after workers affected by modernisation, to retrain and reskill for new opportunities in new industries, as Australians find new ways to live”.
And he was to seek to allay concerns about an ETS, which Abbott has argued would be equivalent to a “carbon tax” even if there is no fixed price period.
“Around 1 billion people and more than 40% of the world’s economy have already embraced the opportunities of emissions trading schemes,” Shorten was to say.
“We must give Australian businesses the opportunity to engage with this global market. Instead of giving big polluters fistfuls of taxpayer dollars to keep polluting, Labor will cut pollution with a market solution.
“This is the promise I make you, and our nation, today. A Shorten Labor government will build an emissions trading scheme for Australia. And we will not be intimidated by ridiculous scare campaigns.
“Let me say this to our opponents, in words of one syllable: an ETS is not a tax.
“And if Mr Abbott wants to make the next election a contest about who has the best policy solution for climate change, I’ve got a three-word slogan for him: bring it on.”
Abbott placed his opposition to carbon pricing at the centre of his campaign against the former Rudd and Gillard governments.
The Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme began in 2012 with a three-year “fixed price period” before it was due to move to a floating price.
Gillard, who promised in 2010 not to introduce a carbon tax, once said she regretted not contesting the “carbon tax” description that was applied to the policy she negotiated in the hung parliament.
Abbott abolished the carbon pricing laws in 2014, having spent years as opposition leader visiting businesses in high-visibility vests to campaign against the policy. News Corp tabloids last week depicted Shorten as a zombie after a leaked options paper showed the party was looking at reintroducing an ETS.
The Labor leader intended to stare down the prime minister’s warnings about a return to the Gillard government’s carbon tax by declaring emphatically that “an ETS is not a tax” and Australia must not be a laggard on climate policy.
Shorten was also signalling that he would resist pressure from the Murdoch press – which has already begun campaigning against a return to carbon pricing – and pragmatic elements within his own party which question the political wisdom of re-embracing the policy.
In his speech on the first day of the three-day party forum in Melbourne on Friday, Shorten planned to rally Labor’s members to help make Abbott’s Coalition the first one-term federal government in more than 80 years.
“Usually, with their ingrained sense of fairness, Australians give a government a second go, but – just like in Queensland, just like in Victoria – one term is enough,” he was to say.
Delegates were set to debate changes to Labor’s national platform concerning a series of policy areas before the next federal election, due in 2016, with refugee policy shaping as a key flashpoint after Shorten’s call for the party to adopt the option of turning back asylum-seeker boats.
But extracts of Shorten’s speech, circulated to media before the conference, indicated he planned to directly confront the government on climate policy.
Shorten intends to promote his proposal to draw 50% of Australia’s electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030, saying the party platform “must set an ambitious new goal” to restore the sector’s confidence and certainty which had been “smashed” by the government.
“Climate change is an economic and environmental cancer – and it demands early intervention,” the speech notes said. “This isn’t a question of Australia leading the world – it’s a matter of keeping up.”
Shorten planned to say that if the world’s biggest capitalist nation – the US – and the world’s biggest planned economy – China – could agree climate change was a priority “it’s time Australia did too”.
“Mr Abbott’s society of flat-earthers talk a lot of nonsense about Labor policies – but they’re right about one thing,” he was to say.
“There is, absolutely, a clear-cut choice between Labor and the Liberals on renewable energy. This Coalition government has done everything in their power to try and destroy Australia’s share in one of the world’s fastest growing industries.”
Shorten was to say he wanted Australia to get its fair share of the $2.5tn in expected investment in Asia-Pacific renewables to 2030.
But in a nod to union concerns about job losses in the fossil fuel sector, Shorten planned to pledge to “work with businesses and unions to look after workers affected by modernisation, to retrain and reskill for new opportunities in new industries, as Australians find new ways to live”.
And he was to seek to allay concerns about an ETS, which Abbott has argued would be equivalent to a “carbon tax” even if there is no fixed price period.
“Around 1 billion people and more than 40% of the world’s economy have already embraced the opportunities of emissions trading schemes,” Shorten was to say.
“We must give Australian businesses the opportunity to engage with this global market. Instead of giving big polluters fistfuls of taxpayer dollars to keep polluting, Labor will cut pollution with a market solution.
“This is the promise I make you, and our nation, today. A Shorten Labor government will build an emissions trading scheme for Australia. And we will not be intimidated by ridiculous scare campaigns.
“Let me say this to our opponents, in words of one syllable: an ETS is not a tax.
“And if Mr Abbott wants to make the next election a contest about who has the best policy solution for climate change, I’ve got a three-word slogan for him: bring it on.”
Abbott placed his opposition to carbon pricing at the centre of his campaign against the former Rudd and Gillard governments.
The Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme began in 2012 with a three-year “fixed price period” before it was due to move to a floating price.
Gillard, who promised in 2010 not to introduce a carbon tax, once said she regretted not contesting the “carbon tax” description that was applied to the policy she negotiated in the hung parliament.
Abbott abolished the carbon pricing laws in 2014, having spent years as opposition leader visiting businesses in high-visibility vests to campaign against the policy. News Corp tabloids last week depicted Shorten as a zombie after a leaked options paper showed the party was looking at reintroducing an ETS.
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