Coal catastrophe: why Scott Morrison can't give in to Queensland triumphalism

Extract from The Guardian

 

Opinion

Australian election 2019

The government would be wrong to imagine all of Australia possesses the sensibilities of coal communities in Queensland

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Thu 23 May 2019 04.00 AEST Last modified on Thu 23 May 2019 05.13 AEST

‘Scott Morrison would be smart to elevate a senior moderate to the environment portfolio who can carry the message – perhaps Simon Birmingham.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

It’s safe to observe the 2019 election was not a good election for the climate.
The basic facts speak for themselves. A government with a sub-optimal policy was returned for another term, and Labor will now go through another, likely painful, round of recalibration of its climate offering. It’s unlikely Labor will stage a dramatic retreat from climate action, but there will certainly be an internal push to temper the current policy with an eye to regional sensibilities, and by regional sensibilities I mean the sensibilities of coal communities.
While Saturday night’s result isn’t what the country or the climate needs – a government, apparently without the will to tackle the problem, back in power for three years, and an opposition licking its wounds, wondering how long it can keep going to elections championing climate action, and losing – it would be a mistake to conclude the issue is now completely off the agenda.

Climate change in Canberra remains a movable feast.
Let’s examine the dynamics inside the government. It’s absolutely true that the pro-coal faction in Queensland will be emboldened, courtesy of Saturday’s positive election result, and will have zero interest in internal arguments in favour of strengthening the government’s existing climate policy framework.
By some accounts, the north Queensland triumphalism currently extends to the resources minister, Matt Canavan, making a play to combine the energy and resources portfolios in Scott Morrison’s upcoming ministerial reshuffle, expected on Sunday.
But Liberals in safe seats who suffered negative swings on Saturday night for two reasons – because of the government’s climate change policy, and because of concerns the party has pitched too far to the right – will want Morrison to use his authority to move the dial positively on climate change.
We’ve heard a lot about the Queensland swing since Saturday night, but the fact is two things happened in the recent election campaign for the Coalition. The first is the government’s support for the Adani coalmine helped shore up the Liberal National party in central Queensland (even though if you look closely at the results, voters didn’t swing en masse to the incumbents, they parked a protest vote with One Nation and Clive Palmer that flowed back to the Coalition); and the second is voter concern about climate change forced the Liberal party to spend significant resources defending safe seats that could have been better directed to contests elsewhere.
Morrison has to balance two political realities, not one, and some Liberals believe it would be a catastrophic mistake for the government post-election to imagine the whole of Australia possesses the resting sensibilities of coal communities in Queensland, when the campaign field evidence suggests otherwise.

MPs who favour rebalancing believe Morrison has been handed a significant opportunity during this term in government to try to neutralise climate change as an electoral negative for the Coalition. The view is if Morrison can use his authority to execute the necessary pivot, that potentially sets the Coalition up for a long stint in government.
Some colleagues say Morrison has the capacity to recalibrate not only because of his enhanced internal authority post-election but because he was not a frontline protagonist in the internal climate wars of the past decade. The spiritual leader of the internal opposition to climate action, Tony Abbott, is also out of the parliament, which improves the prospects of managing a shift; not immediately, but over the course of the coming term.
Notwithstanding his explicit commitment on the hop during the campaign to keep Melissa Price in the environment portfolio post-election, Morrison would be smart to elevate a senior moderate to the portfolio who can carry the message – perhaps Simon Birmingham. It would also be smart to project more positivity about the transition to low emissions energy sources, the positivity the Coalition has been reluctant to project for fear of offending Alan Jones or the reactionary right rump.
Some Liberals argue the government needs to reframe the transition to low emissions as an opportunity for Australia, not a cost – which was the negative territory Morrison prosecuted through much of the election in an effort to curb any momentum from the Labor campaign.

Of course all of this is just talk at the present time.
We are a distance short of any concrete action that would give anybody heart, and even if Morrison is inclined to see climate change as a frontline issue where the Liberal party can be seen to be pitching its tent in the political centre, or can be persuaded to that end – any movement on emissions reduction mechanisms would be heavily contested internally.
When we move from the point of generalities to specifics, supporters of better policy in the government are completely candid. They don’t know what the new policy mechanism should be.
It would be very hard to revive Malcolm Turnbull’s national energy guarantee, even though that would be sensible, given the implosion of 2017. It is also hard to propose more ambitious targets without all hell breaking loose internally.

But it is possible, some think, to build in review structures over the coming term which point to a ratcheting up of ambition.