Hysterical Bill Shorten headlines miss the point: no credible climate policy exists

Extract from The Guardian

Lenore Taylor

It’s been hard to miss the hyperventilating news coverage about Labor’s new emissions ‘aspiration’, but neither major party has a plan for climate change

Bill Shorten opens the 2015 ALP national conference in Melbourne on Friday. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

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Friday 24 July 2015 19.51 AEST 

It was hard to miss the screaming headlines as I arrived home from an overseas holiday Thursday. Bill Shorten had apparently committed a gory and unfathomable act of political harakiri with a “loony … lurch to the left” climate policy that had guaranteed Tony Abbott victory at the next election. The Labor leader was a “zombie” with a “death wish” (I thought zombies were already dead, but anyway...) and was advocating a “massive” carbon tax, or perhaps two or three massive carbon taxes all at the same time, in a bloody-minded multitaxing attempt to bankrupt hard-working Aussie families in the interests of appeasing inner-city families (who apparently also eat a lot of goats cheese).

Goodness, I thought, what policy could that crazy Labor leader be proposing?
To my surprise, an examination of the facts revealed he hadn’t actually proposed any policy at all. Bill Shorten and his environment spokesman Mark Butler had announced that Labor “wants to see” 50% of Australia’s electricity generation come from renewables by 2030. In his speech to Labor’s national conference Friday Shorten said 50% renewables by 2030 was an “aim”.
A few phone calls and a quick look at various interview transcripts revealed that Labor had not yet said how it would reach this new “aim” – it remains committed to the bipartisan and mandatory renewable energy target for 2020 (recently agreed after torturous negotiation with the government), but was now aspiring to go further in subsequent years.
But the 2050 “aim” does not rely solely, perhaps not even primarily, on the existing mandatory target policy. Labor imagines a bunch of policies will help it reach the goal – state government schemes, regulated limits on pollution that might speed up the mothballing of old brown-coal-fired plants, energy efficiency policies and some kind of gently-does-it carbon market – perhaps even one based on the government’s existing legislation.
To the extent that the new “aim” does rely on the mandated renewable energy target, Labor has promised to talk that through with industry and business groups. Understanding how little by way of concrete policy has actually been announced explains why the “goal” has not been modelled and why its costs are unknown.
Also prompting hyperventilating zombie headlines was a leaked “secret” Labor options paper on climate policy – which basically said only what we already knew – that Labor would have an emissions trading scheme of some sort in combination with other policies (the same ones that could help meet the renewable energy goal) as well as things like vehicle emission standards.
The actual headline message is that Labor is looking for a credible, low-cost way of meeting reasonably tough post-2020 emission reduction targets, is desperate to minimise their impact on household budgets to head off the Coalition’s political attack, but hasn’t yet announced the policy or the overall internationally-pledged emissions reduction target it is designed to reach. Oh, and that Labor may perhaps have announced a new “goal” or “aspiration” to look determined on the whole climate issue at its national conference, even though it didn’t yet have an actual policy.

Bill Shorten tells the Labor conference he wants to build an emissions trading scheme. Link to video

By comparison – if you block the shrieky analysis for two seconds and think about it – the government has also announced no long-term international target and does not seem to even be looking for a credible, low cost policy to reach whatever target it does announce.
Tony Abbott’s cabinet discussed possible post-2020 targets in July but was divided – with the environment minister, Greg Hunt, and the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, pushing for a credible target similar to those announced by the US and Canada, but other ministers arguing the government would be given no credit anyway and may as well aim low. Internal jockeying continues. The matter will be discussed again in August.

Apparently less urgent for the Coalition is how it might reach any target.
It turns out Australia wildly over-estimated its emissions projections and may reach its 2020 target despite Direct Action’s limited effectiveness. But unless it starts to impose limits on industrial and electricity emissions – which would involve a price passed on to consumers – the cost of using Direct Action to reach tougher targets after 2020 would very quickly become utterly unaffordable.
It’s hard to find anyone in business or the bureaucracy who thinks Direct Action, as it stands, is an affordable way to reach a reasonable post-2020 target. Reputex, for example, says it has far too little cash, and Hunt’s own hand-picked adviser Danny Price recently told Guardian Australia that Direct Action had been “viable transitional tool” but that if it was not amended would involve resource costs of between $35bn and $40bn to meet a post 2020 target similar to Canada or America’s.
Despite criticising Labor for not modelling its policy-in-progress, the Coalition can’t point to any modelling of its own policy because it has never done any – not when it was in opposition, nor when it was in government. During the last election campaign Abbott said he preferred to just “have a crack”.
And in its frenzy to attack Labor’s plans the government keeps blaggarding policies it has itself been contemplating.
Hunt, for example, seized upon the mention of vehicle emission standards in the leaked Labor document to claim transport costs would go up, even though the government is itself reviewing vehicle emission standards and fuel standards and was at one stage intending to announce new rules alongside its new 2020 target – to provide some credibility for the notion that it could in fact be met.
Hunt also quite deliberately inserted into Direct Action the possibility that it could be “dialled up”, that caps could be imposed on industrial carbon emissions forcing companies to buy emissions permits. But that would be a form of emissions trading, and according to the government’s new political attack lines, any kind of trading, any carbon market at all, amounts to a job-killing, greens-appeasing, household-budget-destroying tax.
“The Coalition keeps digging itself into a bigger hole,” said one alarmed industry observer on Friday, bemoaning the absence of clear and workable policy from either major party.

The government’s dire warnings about the cost of Labor’s vague pronouncements seem to assume the Coalition has itself found a magical, cost-free way to meet the new targets the cabinet is debating. Or perhaps they assume that, having gotten this far with extremely limited scrutiny of a half-baked policy, they’ll manage to pull off the same trick during the next election campaign.
(Whether the whole “great big new tax” thing will work again is also a matter of political disagreement – the Coalition is supremely confident, Labor points to polling that shows Australians want governments to prioritise renewables over fossil fuels and are prepared to pay more to combat climate change.)
Hunt said on Friday: “The choice at the next election could not be clearer. A vote for Bill Shorten is a vote for higher electricity prices and a carbon tax … Only the Coalition will combat climate change without hurting Australia’s standard of living.”
In other words, the Coalition is claiming to have found the climate policy equivalent of a free lunch. You really would have to be a zombie to believe that.