Labor questions Turnbull's conviction: Labor is accusing Malcolm Turnbull of compromising on core beliefs including climate change, marriage equality and water reform. (Courtesy of ABC News 24).
It used to be politically hard work for an Australian government to sell the case for policy action on climate change when the world's two great emitters were opting out of the game.
Now that China's President Xi Jinping has arrived in Washington with an emissions trading plan, policy inaction has become the harder sell.
Quixotic campaigns against wind farms and other acts of enviro-economic sabotage are now politically untenable, if they weren't already.
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| President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House in Washington on Thursday ahead of crucial talks. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta |
And the global headwinds on climate policy that helped destroy the Rudd and Gillard governments, and bring Abbott to power, have turned into a tailwind for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Mr Xi's national cap-and-trade emissions reduction scheme, which he will reportedly announced on Friday Washington time, will not be without problems.
Details will be hard to come by, and anyone who watched the development of other complex markets in China will rightly wonder whether it can be done.
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| Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Photo: Andrew Meares |
Efficient emissions trading schemes require a degree of trust, transparency and regulatory autonomy which simply does not currently exist in China.
China's scheme will risk being rorted and possibly paralysed amid the contradictions of Chinese market-Leninism, if recent travails in the markets for shares, futures, bonds and currencies are anything to go by.
But Mr Xi's new emissions trading plan is symbolic of changes already made as much as a promise of things to come.
Climate change has become the centre of US-China cooperation under Mr Xi and Mr Obama, at a time of otherwise darkening relations.
Both leaders have relied on tough administrative edicts to meet energy-intensity and emissions commitments, in combination with underlying economic structural change. Together, they have altered what had been a catastrophically steep global emissions trajectory.
Emissions growth in China has been slowing for several years and may have even peaked. In the US, emissions have been declining since 2007.
The old Australian excuse of waiting for the world's two great emitters is no longer viable.
The world's most powerful leaders are giving Mr Turnbull a chance of working with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Environment Minister Greg Hunt to restore Australia's constructive role in the global fight against global warming, without upsetting the delicate chemistry of the Coalition party room.
Action in this area would have the important side-benefit of re-opening a productive channel of cooperation with China, at a time of rising regional tension.
The modest commitment to the Paris climate change conference later this year will become a floor for Australia's ambitions, rather than a ceiling.
In short, the geo-political climate is changing rapidly in Mr Turnbull's favour.
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