‘No choice’ but to step aside over 2030 emissions target: Fitzgibbon

Joel Fitzgibbon has threatened to quit shadow cabinet if Labor adopts an emissions reduction target he cannot live with.

Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon has threatened to quit shadow cabinet over a medium-term emissions reduction target that is not supported by blue-collar workers, warning he’d have “no other choice” but to step aside.

The opposition resources spokesman, who is pushing for Labor to back new gas infrastructure, said he would not quit the party over the issue but could leave the frontbench if Labor adopted a 2030 target he found “offensive”.

“If it didn’t keep faith with our traditional base, if it was fundamentally wrong and harmful, I would not criticise it from the shadow cabinet, I would have no choice but to go and do so from another position,” he told The Guardian.

The climate and energy debate within Labor has raged since the election and last week escalated over the party’s position on gas, leading Mr Fitzgibbon to say he would continue to stand up for blue-collared workers despite internal criticism.

But opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler used an address at the Carbon Market Institute to declare that coal and gas “won’t underpin continued prosperity” for Australia.

Scott Morrison seized on the issue on Saturday and called out the opposition’s infighting over energy.

The Prime Minister, who last week unveiled a new technology investment road map that will back new energy-efficient power sources to reduce Australia’s emissions by 2040, blasted Mr Butler’s remarks as “extraordinary”.

“That is not a healthy debate that’s going on inside the Labor Party when it comes to energy. They are torn and they are riven and they are divided,” Mr Morrison said.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor also took aim at Labor over its energy policy on Sunday, declaring that unlike the policy the opposition took to the last election, the Morrison government was not prepared to slash jobs and incomes in the pursuit of emission reduction.

He refused to commit to a net-zero energy emissions target by 2050, but said that Australia’s emissions would dramatically reduce if the government succeeded in its technology road map.

“The focus is on getting the technologies to work and as the Prime Minister said last week, the precondition to getting these emission reductions is ensuring that these technologies are successful, that they come into parity with their higher emitting alternatives, so we don’t see economic losses and economic damage in any community in Australia,” he said.