Christopher Pyne: Ignore the green propaganda, Australia is beating our climate change targets

Too many countries are all talk, no action when it comes to climate change targets. Australia is the opposite, argues Christopher Pyne.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is in Glasgow representing Australia at the COP26, the “Conference of the Parties” on global action to address climate change.

In many ways it’s the creme de la creme of talkfests, where some countries come along to lecture others about what they should be doing while not doing anything themselves. Some countries are helpless in the face of climate change and are sincere about their hopes to address it, others make commitments to binding targets that they don’t even try and reach, while others make commitments and reach them.

Australia is in the last category. Despite being fed a daily fare of guilt by elements of the Australian press about our record on addressing climate change, Australia has done remarkably well.

True to form, if we have made a promise, we have kept it. In fact, we have exceeded our climate reduction targets.

While it will never be enough for the Extinction Rebellion activists (goodness knows why one protester holding up traffic in Victoria Square chose to wear a pair of underpants upside down on his head the other morning, but, as they say, each to their own), Australians have been making great progress in reducing our global carbon footprint.

The government I was a part of committed to reduce our carbon emissions by between 26-28 per cent by 2030. In fact, Mr Morrison can boast that our projected emissions reduction by 2030 will be 35 per cent.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor chat in the boardroom ahead of the COP26 Climate summit in Glasgow. Picture: Adam Taylor/PMO

While New Zealand, Canada and the United States under President Biden are podium finishers at lecturing Australia and the world about doing more about climate reduction, their rhetoric has not matched their action.

Australia has surpassed all three in actually meeting our targets.

Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada only recently announced another new target for reducing his country’s greenhouse gas emissions, which the luvvies of the Left all dutifully applauded on cue. The problem is, Canada is far behind reaching the target it has announced before.

Mr Morrison has also announced that Australia is committed to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Despite all the argy-bargy in the Canberra bubble in recent days about whether the coalition partner, the National Party, would agree to such a policy, I never thought it was in doubt.

The Nationals have their own constituency. They can’t be seen to be too easily accepting of what the larger coalition partner, the Liberals, put to them as policy.

That said, few political parties in a modern democracy would be against a net-zero target in 30 years from now. With huge new investments in technology in areas such as clean hydrogen, transmission infrastructure, battery storage and soil sequestration, I imagine we will reach that target with years to spare.

Given that I will be 83 in 2050, I am hoping my only carbon footprint might be some unsurprising methane emissions.

From a political standpoint, what is more interesting is how much, if at all, this recent debate about Glasgow has recast the next Australian election. While Australian voters are firm about the need to act on climate change, in my experience they only want to do so in a way that preserves their high standard of living, their jobs and the wider economic good health of the nation. That’s not because they are environmental vandals, it’s just because they are practical and use common sense. There’s no point in “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”, so to speak.

The Liberal and National parties, not Labor, have been much better at convincing the voters that they understand this nuance in the past two decades.

Since 1996, the Coalition has won more seats in the house of representatives than Labor in eight out of nine elections.

Unfortunately for Labor, its left wing will not allow the party to talk about climate change through the prism of the economy. In other words, “what is it that we can do which is both right, helpful and economically wise”. The Labor Left seems to trail off in the discussion after “helpful”.

The climate activists talk about the world being in a “climate emergency”, that we are “one minute to midnight”, or that humans will be “extinct” in a matter of years from now.

It’s scary and unsettling for Australian voters who basically want to do the right thing. But they don’t respond well to hyperbole.

That’s why former prime minister Kevin Rudd ran into the rocks when he described climate change as “the greatest moral challenge of our time”, and yet 18 months later dumped his signature emissions-reduction policy.

Just how much this affects the election remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure: getting the response to how to approach Glasgow was critical for the Coalition’s chances.

Having done so, all eyes will be on the alternative prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to see if he can manage the politics of climate change within the Labor Party.

A prize that has eluded his predecessors for many years.