Climate wars hotting up as Albanese and Dutton line up policies
There is little common ground between the two major parties, though both Labor and the Coalition are pursuing net zero emissions by the middle of the century.
When Anthony Albanese fronted reporters in his Parliament House courtyard on the King’s Birthday public holiday, he wasn’t in a celebratory mood.
Instead, the Prime Minister turned the blow torch on Peter Dutton after the Opposition Leader’s brave declaration he would go to the election – due within 11 months – rejecting Labor’s target to cut carbon emissions by 43 per cent.
The major parties are once again poles apart on the pivotal issue of energy policy and climate change.
There is little common ground, though both Labor and the Coalition are pursuing net zero emissions by the middle of the century.
In this new political landscape, it’s how Australia transitions away from fossil fuels – rather than an old-fashioned blue on whether climate change is real or the planet is getting hotter – that will be central to how the election is fought and won.
While big business and investors will judge the offerings of Australia’s political parties and independent candidates on their level of climate ambition, the number of jobs created and long-term policy certainty, voters want to know who can help them best with increasing cost-of-living pressures.
Dutton has a laser-like focus on the cost of electricity bills, crafting an energy and climate policy that he believes will help him win the hip pocket argument.
“We’re not going to do things that hurt Australians,” the Opposition Leader said last week while confirming he would not take a new 2030 or 2035 target to the election.
The Coalition says Labor has failed on affordability, security and sustainability, telling voters they are paying among the highest electricity prices in the world amid a rocky renewables rollout, that there’ll be blackouts as soon as summer comes and Australia’s emissions are now rising.
But the Opposition has vacated the field on medium-term targets, asking voters top trust them to set responsible targets if they form government. After Teal candidates won six seats off the Liberals in 2022, it’s a high-risk move.
Albanese and his Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen insist the country is on track to reach 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 under Labor’s plan.
They want to be seen as a government for tomorrow, embracing clean energy while the economy transitions, and paint the Coalition as being “afraid of the future”.
“New policies will be added (to achieve 43 per cent),” Albanese said from his prime ministerial courtyard earlier this month.
“I’m very confident not only that we can get there, but importantly, that we must get there.”
Bowen recently declared the election would be a referendum on nuclear power in Australia.
The man charged with selling the Opposition’s case for replacing retired coal-fired power plants with nuclear reactors is the relatively new Liberal frontbencher Ted O’Brien.
The 50-year-old, who was first elected in 2016 and appointed to the shadow ministry in 2022, has three children at home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, including a baby.
By 2050, they’ll be well into their 20s and 30s and the winners or losers of Australia’s transition to net zero.
“What type of Australia are they going to live in? How we manage energy will largely determine the answer to that question,” O’Brien says.
The Coalition under Dutton has embraced nuclear, but O’Brien fails to give a direct answer when pressed on whether he’s convinced it will be a vote winner.
“I am convinced that the only way we can successfully navigate Australia’s path to net zero where we remain prosperous, strong and fiercely independent is with a balanced mix of technologies. It’s all about the balance,” he says.
“I reject outright any suggestion that the upcoming political battle is one where Labor is for one technology and we’re for another.
“I believe our future electricity grid will include renewables, will include gas and as our coal-fired power stations exit the grid, they should be replaced with zero emissions nuclear power plants.
“That doesn’t mean that every technology gets a prize. All that means is our approach as a Coalition is let’s make sure we are genuinely being technology agnostic.”
Dutton is still to map out most of his policy detail but the government also must release key planks of its energy and climate platform, such as its 2035 emissions reduction target and sector-by-sector decarbonisation plans to reach net zero.
“Anyone who says the politics of climate change is settled, is either wilfully blind or naively optimistic,” Bowen tells The Australian.
“Only the Albanese government has a policy to transform our economy to a renewable energy superpower while backing the most affordable and reliable form of energy – renewables backed up with transmission, storage and flexible gas.
“The LNP’s nuclear plan is a foil to extend ageing and increasingly unreliable coal-fired power to well past 2040.
“Experts have shown time and again that nuclear is too slow to keep the lights on. Asking the public to seriously consider a risky reactor plan without providing any details on location, time frames and huge cost, is disrespectful and hopeless – Australians deserve better.”
There’s no doubting Bowen – who is taking advantage of the vacuum left by the Coalition on energy policy and has already kickstarted a scare campaign focusing on where nuclear reactors might be placed – has jumped on the renewables bandwagon and wants green hydrogen in the mix too.
He says getting more renewable energy into the grid is good for electricity prices, pointing out that the 25 per cent increase in renewable generation in the first term of the Albanese government has been critical to declining wholesale and retail prices.
Erwin Jackson, Investor Group on Climate Change’s policy managing director, says alternatives to fossil fuels – including renewables, storage options and critical minerals – are becoming one of the biggest investment opportunities in human history as the cost of clean technology rapidly declines.
IGCC members manage more than $30 trillion in assets for more than 7.5 million Australians and New Zealanders.
“We have pretty much universal commitment across the world that it’s in our best economic interest to transition in an orderly and well planned way. Australia can be an active participant and leader in that process or it can continue to stagnate,” Jackson says.
“The core thing that investors really need is we need to stop having technology beauty pageants and we need to have, first of all, bipartisan agreement on how we’re going to undertake this transition.
“Most investors are focused on those technologies which are proven, which are low cost, like renewables, storage options, critical minerals and low-carbon transport.”
In 2022, Albanese vowed to “end the climate wars”, but the reality is they are far from over.
The focus now is on how Australia can get to net zero while keeping energy bills low.