‘Worse than Scott Morrison’: PM attacks Dutton over revival of climate wars

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of being worse than former prime minister Scott Morrison on climate change, in a direct attack on the Coalition’s plans to ditch Australia’s 2030 emissions-reduction target.

Albanese’s criticism, during a press conference in Canberra on Monday, comes after Dutton declared he would reverse Australia’s legally binding climate target to cut emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have butted heads on climate targets.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

On Sunday, this masthead revealed analysis that the opposition’s nuclear energy plans would force Australia to fall massively short of its emissions target and that it would generate more than 2 billion tonnes of extra greenhouse gases by 2050. This would break Australia’s commitments to the Paris Agreement.

“[Dutton’s] decision to abandon the target means him walking away from the Paris Accord. If you walk from the Paris Accord, you’ll be standing with Libya, Yemen and Iran and against all of our major trading partners and all of our important allies,” Albanese said.

“Peter Dutton is worse than Scott Morrison on climate change. He is all negativity and no plan, and what we’ve seen now for two years under Peter Dutton is a reluctance to announce any policies.”

The Coalition further inflamed the climate wars when Dutton told The Australian on Saturday that the government’s renewable goal was unattainable and “there’s no sense in signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving”.

He pledged to meet only a goal of net zero emissions by 2050, earning swift rebukes from Albanese and climate change experts.

Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien on Monday said Labor had “Buckley’s chance” of meeting its emissions-reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030 and should abandon it.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s office released projections on Monday compiled by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water showing Australia’s emissions were on track to be 42 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, falling just short of the target.

Credit: Matt Golding

The government has pledged to raise the share of renewables to 82 per cent by 2030, which is a key component of its legislated climate target to cut emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels in the same time frame.

Australian Industry Group climate change and energy director Tennant Reed said Australia had “all the tools, policy- and planning-wise, to achieve that target”.

“It is plausible that we will achieve it, and if we don’t, it will be because we haven’t been approving and building new construction – particularly energy infrastructure, as fast as we need to. So that is collectively up to us.”

Albanese said business, industry and Australia’s Pacific neighbours needed certainty in the nation’s emissions-reduction targets.

“Australians know that the world is moving towards a clean energy future. The whole global economy is in a transformation. This is an opportunity as well as a challenge,” he said.

Built into the Paris Agreement are commitments that countries do not revise their targets down from previously agreed targets.

Smart Energy Council acting chief executive Richie Merzian said if a future Coalition government sought to do so, “Australia would breach the spirit, if not the law, of the Paris Agreement”.

“It would ruin our international standing, and it would also be really economically harmful,” he said.

“Right now, there’s a race upwards to invest in building climate solutions. So right now, when we’re competing for global investment, we’re competing to even just keep Australian businesses here who want to build the solutions and the products of the future, this would just be the absolute worst signal that we could send them.”

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