Tony Abbott calls on Malcolm Turnbull to pull out of Paris Agreement, take over Liddell power station
TONY Abbott has called for Australia to exit the Paris climate agreement in a provocative speech in which he also demands the Turnbull government take over the Liddell power station and abandon the National Energy Guarantee.
NSW
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TONY Abbott has called for Australia to exit the Paris climate agreement in a provocative speech in which he also demands the Turnbull government take over the Liddell power station and abandon the National Energy Guarantee.
The former prime minister’s intervention into the debate, delivering a lecture at the Australian Environment Foundation, a group sceptical about climate change, comes after Malcolm Turnbull warned it was time to “get out of the realm of politics and ideology” in energy policy.
Mr Abbott, who has repeatedly criticised the NEG, the government’s centrepiece energy policy, told the Melbourne event it is the “emissions obsession that’s at the heart of our power crisis and it’s this that has to end of our problems to ease”.
“As long as we remain in the Paris Agreement — which is about reducing emissions, not building prosperity — all policy touching on emissions will be about their reduction, not our wellbeing,” he said
“Withdrawing from the Paris agreement that is driving the National Energy Guarantee would be the best way to keep prices down and employment up; and to save our party from a political legacy that could haunt us for the next decade at least.”
Mr Abbott said he had signed up to aspirational targets under the Paris climate agreement in 2015, but that this had now turned into a binding commitment.
He has spoken out at Coalition party room meetings against the NEG, which imposes strict emissions and reliability targets for energy retailers.
“A good start to real change would be to threaten compulsory acquisition of the Liddell coal-fired power station so that it can be kept running until new high-efficiency, low emissions plants are brought on line,” Mr Abbott said.
“The now-federal-government-owned Snowy already runs gas-fired power plants as well as hydro ones, so there’s no reason why it couldn’t add to its thermal capacity by building some coal-fired plants to guarantee supply and to drive down price.”
Mr Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg announced earlier today the federal government had taken full ownership of the Snowy Hydro after striking a deal with the states earlier in the year, paving the way for the Snowy 2.0 project to start.
The Prime Minister earlier today said the NEG would lower prices.
“You don’t have to take my word for it … the Energy Security Board has said it will reduce wholesale generation costs by 23 per cent and it will reduce household bills as a result,” he said.
“Politics, partisanship, ideology, have not served us well.
“Engineering and economics are the only guides that will ensure that we have a reliable and affordable energy system.”
Mr Abbott also pointed to the decision about President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, although this move won’t take effect until 2020.