National power guarantee could swallow government whole if states don’t unite
TUESDAY’S joint party room meeting could be a deal maker or breaker for PM Turnbull’s power guarantee.
Opinion
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WITH a sense of gallows humour, a minister this week sent an image from a new film called The Meg.
The movie is about a massive prehistoric shark, the “Meg”, roaming the modern-day Pacific.
The promotional poster features this Jaws-on-steroids bearing down on a hapless diver.
It was a rather bleak reference to what the NEG has come to represent for the government.
After a decade of political war over climate and energy policy, the National Energy Guarantee holds the promise of peace.
If the states, territories, Coalition party room and federal Parliament fail to unite behind it, the NEG could swallow the government whole. But it probably won’t.
After months of negotiation, the states were finally meant to come on board yesterday.
They met Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg in Sydney at the Shangri-La Hotel, named after the mystical land of harmony and happiness.
In the end there was no blissful embrace of the NEG but, importantly, no state took the opportunity to kill it off. In fact, even the Labor states agreed progress was made and all may eventually come on board.
The main complaint is that the 26 per cent emissions reduction target is inadequate.
Victoria is leading the charge, demanding it should be possible to lift the target in the future without a requirement to pass legislation through Parliament.
That’s despite the fact the national target is not a matter for the states.
That’s despite the valid concerns of industry about the target being ratcheted up too easily when big investment decisions are being made.
That’s despite Victoria’s own energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio conceding her own state’s renewable energy target requires legislation to “give investors the confidence that they need”.
It would be frankly insane for Victoria to kill off this chance for a policy settlement simply because it doesn’t think the federal Parliament should have a say on the future of Australia’s emissions target.
The next step for Frydenberg is the meeting of his federal Coalition colleagues on Tuesday.
Malcolm Turnbull overstepped this week when he said the NEG had “been endorsed by the party room already and will be endorsed again”.
It’s never a good idea for a prime minister to pre-empt the party room before everyone’s had their say. But he’s no doubt right.
Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce and a handful of others have serious concerns about the NEG.
They simply don’t believe the energy regulators who say this policy they’ve designed will help drive down prices by $550 a year.
They fear it will force coal-fired power stations to close sooner than they otherwise would.
It’s unclear though whether they have any alternative plan to encourage badly needed new investment in power generation, beyond throwing taxpayers’ money at new coal plants, which take years to build.
Tuesday’s Coalition party room meeting will be another chance to test where the numbers lie within the government on climate and energy policy.
A defeat for Frydenberg and Turnbull with their own colleagues would spell the end for both. For that reason alone, such a defeat is unthinkable and won’t happen.
Tony Abbott knows he will be in the minority on Tuesday, but he can’t afford to be completely humiliated.
Right now, there are roughly a dozen Coalition MPs who hold concerns of varying degrees about the NEG. In a joint party room of 107, that’s not many.
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They will voice their concerns in the meeting on Tuesday, but it’s unclear if any will cross the floor when it comes to a vote in Parliament. If the government can hold its troops together and avoid a messy breakout, it then has a chance to put some pressure on Labor.
Right now, Bill Shorten is making the most out of the Coalition’s internal divisions.
If they can be settled, the scrutiny will turn to Labor’s own, rather vague, position.
Is Bill Shorten willing to vote down the NEG because the 26 per cent target isn’t strong enough?
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Does he really think he could start this process all over again after the next election and convince the states and territories, Labor and Liberal, to get behind it?
Does he think the Coalition would then give him a free pass? Good luck.
Even the Turnbull government would surely be able to mount a strong campaign against Shorten as the man who sided with the Greens to prevent a plan to cut power prices.
A far more likely outcome is a noisy debate in Parliament, before Labor allows the government to legislate its 26 per cent target, while promising to take a more ambitious 45 per cent target to voters at the election.
Having not watched The Meg, one can only assume this Hollywood offering ends with a determined hero prevailing over the giant shark.
There’s still a good chance Josh Frydenberg can do the same with the NEG.
David Speers is political editor at Sky News.