While
politics never sleeps, and the verbiage from Canberra never stops,
there has been a strange sense of suspended animation about the last
couple of weeks, apart from a mild frenzy on Friday, as rumours
circulated of early elections, cancelled parliamentary sittings, and
general plague and pestilence.
The reason for Friday’s startle reflex is, of course, the return of the federal parliament for the blockbuster spring session next week.
The reasons for the period of suspended animation before the startle reflex are also obvious.
All the controversial issues the government has been spinning its wheels on for months, or warily circling, will hit between now and Christmas.
The high court will determine the fate of the various dual citizens, and then, the public, potentially at least, depending on the decision, will determine the fate of the Turnbull government’s one-seat majority in the lower house.
The public will also chart a course on same-sex marriage. Assuming a
yes vote, given that seems to be the general direction of the public
opinion polls, the Liberal party will then have to indulge one more
round of handwringing about religious freedom before the parliament has
its say.
Then there’s energy, which will finally land next week.
It really is hard to overstate the contortions that have accompanied this debate, which started in its current iteration with the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, floating and then killing an emissions trading scheme for electricity in the space of 24 hours, then rolling through to the creation of the Finkel review of the electricity market, then through the process of trying to land a clean energy target, which now seems to have been abandoned, at least in the form the chief scientist suggested it.
Actually it started with wicked wind farms in South Australia, but there really is only so much torture I can inflict on you this weekend, so I’ll spare you that particular recap, which now feels about a century ago.
Let’s look forward.
On current indications, this is what will happen when the federal parliament resumes next week: the energy policy will go to cabinet, then to the Coalition party room, and if it doesn’t explode on impact in either of those places, pitching us into a whole new rodeo, it will then emerge for scrutiny by the world.
Assuming success, that the policy clears the various internal hurdles, the government will then fire up its good news machine, and bombard us all with its general magnificence, but obviously we need to ignore all that, and keep a laser-like focus on the central issues.
Next week, when we all get to making judgments about whether or not the government’s energy policy is reasonable (assuming the default unreasonableness that exists in the Coalition any time climate change is mentioned doesn’t consume it before take-off) – we need to look closely at the fundamentals.
Australia’s energy sector is operating in an environment where there is no future investment certainty because there is continuing carbon risk.
If carbon risk is a new concept for you, it just means the risk of a future government suddenly implementing serious policies aimed at reducing emissions to try to head off the worst climate-change scenario.
That ongoing policy uncertainty has a price impact. Unless the new government investment framework explicitly addresses carbon risk, the price pressure in the system – the one we all feel through our nasty, nasty, power bills – will continue to be a problem.
One way to deal with carbon risk would be to adopt the clean energy target proposed by the chief scientist Alan Finkel.
A clean energy target is certainly not the only way to address carbon risk. In fact, many people (me included) would say there are much better ways of addressing carbon risk than a clean energy target. Unfortunately the Coalition has ruled most of the sensible alternative options out.
The government may well come at the carbon problem, at the task of lowering emissions, by setting a reduction trajectory, giving more money to the existing Emissions Reduction Fund and adjusting the existing safeguard mechanism (two features of the existing Direct Action climate policy), and allowing the use of international permits.
But if that’s the broad approach, depending how it’s structured, it could well be tokenistic.
If the policy response is tokenistic – tokenistic enough, say, to subdue Tony Abbott, and the conservatives he speaks for in this wretched debate – it will not actually reduce carbon risk, which is what drives investment uncertainty, and pushes up energy prices.
The government will have fixed a problem, but fixed it in the style of Christopher Pyne’s now infamous “fixing”, as in no fix at all – as in a fix that makes people in the real world, outside the strange retro hothouse of the Coalition party room, actually laugh out loud, out of nervous despair, rather than hilarity.
To cut a long story short, the government will have produced a policy that clears the party room, but fails in the court of public opinion. Quite a risk that, given its electoral buffer, as we’ve noted, is a distance short of huge.
There is one other reason to want Finkel’s clean energy target, and it’s this.
The advantage of a clean energy target as a mechanism (as opposed to other means of lowering greenhouse gas emissions that may well be included in the government policy) is it had a prospect of securing a bipartisan consensus.
The lack of bipartisan consensus is a big problem in climate and energy policy, not just a minor inconvenience.
To understand this, you just have to stick with carbon risk, and push your mind through the various steps that would follow the government producing a policy that Labor can’t support.
I know people inside the Coalition who equate public life with bar brawling see opportunity in having another zero sum bout with Labor – but standing on the fringes of the big stupid-off are a bunch of serious corporate interests who have to make decisions very quickly about new energy infrastructure, and a bunch of businesses that might well go to the wall if power prices keep rising.
If Labor rejects the Coalition’s energy fix, then we have another brutally contested election, followed by a new government.
Let’s stick with the current poll trend and speculate that the new government might be a Labor government. (You saw the might in that sentence, right?)
Let’s say then that prime minister Shorten tries to navigate a climate and energy policy through a parliament where the Coalition is led by Peter Dutton, or let’s just pull a name out of a hat, Tony Abbott.
In those circumstances, an outbreak of carbon peace seems unlikely, unless the Coalition has just suffered a major electoral bout, which results in someone in team centre-right twigging to the fact that governing for the nervous sensibilities of Andrew Bolt doesn’t really win you elections.
But pushing on with our basic thought exercise, let’s assume in the next parliament that the Coalition again refuses to implement a climate policy that actually does anything.
Then we are back with a Labor government, trying to get a policy through the parliament, with the Greens driving a hard bargain, which sounds a lot like Groundhog Day, and a Groundhog Day that doesn’t settle anything for the energy sector, because they just need to get off this damn roundabout.
They need a policy that won’t be ripped up at the next election.
They need this stupidity to stop.
So does the country.
In fact, we needed that at least a decade ago.
So the question Malcolm Turnbull faces next week is much bigger than the bobble head preoccupations: who won or lost, who had the best line, who had the best tactics.
Our prime minister needs to look the country in the eye and answer this, very simple, question: are you the political leader who can deliver what Australia needs?
The reason for Friday’s startle reflex is, of course, the return of the federal parliament for the blockbuster spring session next week.
The reasons for the period of suspended animation before the startle reflex are also obvious.
All the controversial issues the government has been spinning its wheels on for months, or warily circling, will hit between now and Christmas.
The high court will determine the fate of the various dual citizens, and then, the public, potentially at least, depending on the decision, will determine the fate of the Turnbull government’s one-seat majority in the lower house.
Then there’s energy, which will finally land next week.
It really is hard to overstate the contortions that have accompanied this debate, which started in its current iteration with the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, floating and then killing an emissions trading scheme for electricity in the space of 24 hours, then rolling through to the creation of the Finkel review of the electricity market, then through the process of trying to land a clean energy target, which now seems to have been abandoned, at least in the form the chief scientist suggested it.
Actually it started with wicked wind farms in South Australia, but there really is only so much torture I can inflict on you this weekend, so I’ll spare you that particular recap, which now feels about a century ago.
Let’s look forward.
On current indications, this is what will happen when the federal parliament resumes next week: the energy policy will go to cabinet, then to the Coalition party room, and if it doesn’t explode on impact in either of those places, pitching us into a whole new rodeo, it will then emerge for scrutiny by the world.
Assuming success, that the policy clears the various internal hurdles, the government will then fire up its good news machine, and bombard us all with its general magnificence, but obviously we need to ignore all that, and keep a laser-like focus on the central issues.
Next week, when we all get to making judgments about whether or not the government’s energy policy is reasonable (assuming the default unreasonableness that exists in the Coalition any time climate change is mentioned doesn’t consume it before take-off) – we need to look closely at the fundamentals.
Australia’s energy sector is operating in an environment where there is no future investment certainty because there is continuing carbon risk.
If carbon risk is a new concept for you, it just means the risk of a future government suddenly implementing serious policies aimed at reducing emissions to try to head off the worst climate-change scenario.
That ongoing policy uncertainty has a price impact. Unless the new government investment framework explicitly addresses carbon risk, the price pressure in the system – the one we all feel through our nasty, nasty, power bills – will continue to be a problem.
One way to deal with carbon risk would be to adopt the clean energy target proposed by the chief scientist Alan Finkel.
A clean energy target is certainly not the only way to address carbon risk. In fact, many people (me included) would say there are much better ways of addressing carbon risk than a clean energy target. Unfortunately the Coalition has ruled most of the sensible alternative options out.
The government may well come at the carbon problem, at the task of lowering emissions, by setting a reduction trajectory, giving more money to the existing Emissions Reduction Fund and adjusting the existing safeguard mechanism (two features of the existing Direct Action climate policy), and allowing the use of international permits.
But if that’s the broad approach, depending how it’s structured, it could well be tokenistic.
If the policy response is tokenistic – tokenistic enough, say, to subdue Tony Abbott, and the conservatives he speaks for in this wretched debate – it will not actually reduce carbon risk, which is what drives investment uncertainty, and pushes up energy prices.
The government will have fixed a problem, but fixed it in the style of Christopher Pyne’s now infamous “fixing”, as in no fix at all – as in a fix that makes people in the real world, outside the strange retro hothouse of the Coalition party room, actually laugh out loud, out of nervous despair, rather than hilarity.
To cut a long story short, the government will have produced a policy that clears the party room, but fails in the court of public opinion. Quite a risk that, given its electoral buffer, as we’ve noted, is a distance short of huge.
There is one other reason to want Finkel’s clean energy target, and it’s this.
The advantage of a clean energy target as a mechanism (as opposed to other means of lowering greenhouse gas emissions that may well be included in the government policy) is it had a prospect of securing a bipartisan consensus.
The lack of bipartisan consensus is a big problem in climate and energy policy, not just a minor inconvenience.
To understand this, you just have to stick with carbon risk, and push your mind through the various steps that would follow the government producing a policy that Labor can’t support.
I know people inside the Coalition who equate public life with bar brawling see opportunity in having another zero sum bout with Labor – but standing on the fringes of the big stupid-off are a bunch of serious corporate interests who have to make decisions very quickly about new energy infrastructure, and a bunch of businesses that might well go to the wall if power prices keep rising.
If Labor rejects the Coalition’s energy fix, then we have another brutally contested election, followed by a new government.
Let’s stick with the current poll trend and speculate that the new government might be a Labor government. (You saw the might in that sentence, right?)
Let’s say then that prime minister Shorten tries to navigate a climate and energy policy through a parliament where the Coalition is led by Peter Dutton, or let’s just pull a name out of a hat, Tony Abbott.
In those circumstances, an outbreak of carbon peace seems unlikely, unless the Coalition has just suffered a major electoral bout, which results in someone in team centre-right twigging to the fact that governing for the nervous sensibilities of Andrew Bolt doesn’t really win you elections.
But pushing on with our basic thought exercise, let’s assume in the next parliament that the Coalition again refuses to implement a climate policy that actually does anything.
Then we are back with a Labor government, trying to get a policy through the parliament, with the Greens driving a hard bargain, which sounds a lot like Groundhog Day, and a Groundhog Day that doesn’t settle anything for the energy sector, because they just need to get off this damn roundabout.
They need a policy that won’t be ripped up at the next election.
They need this stupidity to stop.
So does the country.
In fact, we needed that at least a decade ago.
So the question Malcolm Turnbull faces next week is much bigger than the bobble head preoccupations: who won or lost, who had the best line, who had the best tactics.
Our prime minister needs to look the country in the eye and answer this, very simple, question: are you the political leader who can deliver what Australia needs?
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