Matt Kean and Gladys Berejiklian must explain how 35pc emissions reduction plan will work
Plastic bags are the next target of a minister who has already gone out on a limb to blame bushfires on climate change and has committed NSW to drastic emissions cuts, writes Anna Caldwell.
Opinion
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Matt Kean, the NSW Environment Minister who became the unlikely hero of the Left this week for his comments on climate change, is on the verge of announcing a “plastics strategy” that will pave the way for the state to phase out single-use bags.
This column can reveal that cabinet has signed off on the wide-ranging plastics plan, which intends to see the bags banished from the state by 2022.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Kean were intending to make an announcement on the new plastics policy, but the events of the past 48 hours could delay those plans.
That’s because Kean has made himself a few enemies in the party as a result of pushing a line that his critics say wouldn’t be out of place in a meeting of the Marrickville Greens.
Kean not only directly linked climate change to the bushfires choking the state, but he committed NSW to a lofty new emissions reduction target and even pledged his intention to make the state the “Saudi Arabia of solar”.
This new plan to reduce emissions by 35 per cent by 2030 was never explicitly taken to the election, nor has the government released any details on precisely how this will be achieved.
In fact, when the target was leaked yesterday, the Premier’s office decided not to release detail of how it would be achieved, wanting to wait until the new year to explain it.
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Kean is a young Environment and Energy Minister from the moderate arm of the Liberal Party. In many ways, his policy positions are not stunning or shocking from a minister who is one of the most small-l Liberals in Berejiklian’s cabinet.
Nevertheless, Kean’s announcements, and their timing — as NSW burns and Sydney is choked with smoke — have enraged both his conservative and bush peers who see no votes in his strategy, only division.
The young minister from Hornsby has risked starting a bloody internal war with both conservative and rural MPs who are trying to grapple with electorates terrified by bushfires.
One problem for Kean is that there is little doubt that a comprehensive failure to manage hazard reduction is a more immediate and tangible cause of the fires, and that failure falls squarely at the feet of his own department.
Nationals MPs, in particular, have decried the fact that vegetation in locked national parks has been allowed to grow hectically unchecked for years.
Speaking from London last night, Nationals Leader John Barilaro said: “Drier conditions mean a greater threat of fires. But for fires to have real devastation, there must be fuel and the more fuel, the more devastating the fire.”
“So will those who call for action on climate change and cutting emissions, will they also demand increase hazard reductions programs in National Parks to reduce that fuel load? Or will they go quiet?” he said.
Multiple ministers — both Liberal and National — yesterday privately accused Kean of trying to shift the conversation to climate policy to divert from his department’s own shortcomings in causing the fires.
Not one of them denied the reality of climate change, but they all noted that the state’s impact on the global climate problems is less than minute.
These ministers were also deeply concerned about the message the government was sending to coal mining communities with its pledge to cut emissions by 35 per cent by 2030.
The government has long had an “aspirational target” of net zero emissions by 2050, but this interim measure is new.
While Kean has previously declared his support for coal, neither he nor the Premier took steps yesterday to explain how coal and coal jobs would be protected in the face of this new target.
It all echoes Bill Shorten’s details-phobic federal election campaign.
And now, in many ways, the Berejiklian government appears to be making the same mistakes in office.
What will be the cost to the economy of a 35 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030?
How will it be achieved?
How will they ensure the security of coal jobs and mining towns?
If the government wants to set lofty targets it must be prepared to explain them to the electorate.
And they need to do that on the ground in places like the Hunter, not out the front of 52 Martin Place.
The Berejiklian government talks privately of creating jobs in the renewable sector over time, but there is a false equivalence here that even federal Labor frontbenchers are pointing out.
Federal Labor frontbencher Terri Butler questioned this week how many environmentalists would be “willing to take an $80,000 pay cut” when they made “blithe” comments about transitioning coal and resources workers into renewable sector jobs.
NSW federal Labor MP Meryl Swanson also noted that miners, a traditionally respected job, did not want to “screw solar panels on roofs for $40,000 a year”.
And federal Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, who suffered a massive swing against him in his coal electorate of Hunter has launched similar defences of coal and coal jobs.
If a renewables-obsessed NSW government lets Labor steal this ground, it will be very sorry come polling day.
Kean wants to stand up for the environment. He has made that clear and he’s doing just that — from plastics policies to climate change advocacy.
But the onus is on the Premier and her minister to detail just how their emissions reduction plan and commitment to clean energy will work for all families.
You only need to look to Bill Shorten to see what happens when you can’t.