To Bill Shorten and Labor's credit, the party is not shirking from an election fight over climate change.
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| Cutting emissions is already an election issue before the formal hostilities have begun. Photo: Bloomberg |
While groups such as The Climate Institute and the Greens will question whether targets for emissions cuts – close to double the Coalition's by 2030 – go far enough, Shorten is sending a clear signal he's willing to make climate a centrepiece of the 2016 election campaign.
Labor's strategy, including an emissions trading scheme, has its risks.
The success of Tony Abbott's scare campaign against the carbon tax prompted then environment spokesman Greg Hunt to predict the 2013 election would be the last in a generation to feature climate change prominently.
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| Environment Minister Greg Hunt, left, confers with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen |
That assessment has been an early casualty in this campaign.
Elements of the media have resurrected their "zombies from the grave" cartoons to freak out voters about "a carbon tax designed to hit both industry and households".
Liberal YouTube ads have been launched from Wednesday, seeking to resurrect the ghost of Julia Gillard.
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| Opposition Leader Bill Shorten with environment spokesman Mark Butler and MP Gai Brodtmann at a solar farm near Canberra last year. Photo: Andrew Meares |
Malcolm Turnbull, who lost his job as opposition leader in 2009 for his strident support of an emissions trading scheme, knows well such a market does not equate to tax. Labor expects no revenue.
That, of course, didn't stop the Prime Minister railing against Labor's proposal on Wednesday, even if he didn't sound entirely convincing: "What Labor is proposing to do is another – a, effectively another tax."
Finding his footing, Turnbull declared Labor's 2030 target would "very significantly increase the cost of energy, the cost of electricity and all other power".
"So that is going to be another brake on the economy."
On cue, Hunt revived the largest number he could find: Wholesale power prices would leap 78 per cent by 2030, according to Treasury modelling "when Labor was in government".
Hunt, though, is stretching things. The Climate Change Authority, which sought the modelling in 2013 said it "did not project the costs to Australia of pursuing a 40 to 60 per cent emission reduction target by 2030 (or any other 2030 target for that matter)".
Labor, though, believes it can weather whatever storm the Coalition or right-wing sections of the Australian media whip up.
Polls suggest concern about climate change is bouncing back. That suggests if people haven't made up their mind about climate change, they are more likely to favour taking action when they do.
Disengaged voters may not be aware of the torrent of global heat records in recent months but few would have been able to ignore another season of severe bushfires in regions from Tasmania to Western Australia, the horrifying video clips of the bleaching Great Barrier Reef, or unusual late-season warmth that has a way to run yet for many parts of the nation.
Labor also senses Turnbull's vulnerability.
Abbott would never have said, as Turnbull did on Wednesday: "I take climate change very seriously. I take global warming very seriously. I take the challenge that the world faces to reduce emissions very seriously."
As Labor's environment spokesman, Mark Butler, told Fairfax Media on Tuesday: "We want climate change and renewable energy to be part of the election debate. Malcolm Turnbull knows in his heart of hearts that Direct Action [policy to pay polluters to cut back] isn't working, and was one of the earliest people to call it out as an environmental fig leaf."
He knows you can't have a position where you don't have a renewable energy policy beyond 2020. You can't have a return to this return to broadscale land clearing that we're seeing in Queensland but he's not willing to do anything about."
The early polarisation of positions, while predictable, doesn't send a very reassuring message about the prospects of climate politics becoming less partisan soon.
Should Turnbull lose, does anybody expect his successor to take climate policy as seriously?
Should Shorten lose, will his replacement likely move closer to the Coalition's policy and risk ceding more ground to the Greens? (The Greens, for instance, want 90 per cent renewable power by 2030 versus Labor's 50 per cent.)
Frank Jotzo, one of Australia's most innovative thinkers on climate policy based at the Australian National University, finds much to like in Labor's policy platform.
Adopting the ALP's goal of cutting 2005 level carbon emissions 45 per cent by 2030 is "in line" with the so-called "high ambition coalition" nations at the Paris climate summit. Turnbull is stuck with Abbott's 26 per cent to 28 per cent target.
Jotzo also notes that while much detail remains to be added to Labor's policy, the government has committed to its own climate change policy review next year.
"My hope is that climate change policy will not once again become a political football between the two major parties, but that there will be a serious contest of ideas and proposals," he said.
Even the Business Council of Australia saw merit in Labor's policy, which "could provide a platform for bipartisanship to deliver the energy and climate change policy durability needed to support this critical transformation", BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said.
On what we've seen so far, both Jotzo and Westacott's bipartisan hopes aren't looking good: the political football is already in play.
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