Guesstimating the world in 2050 is truly model politics

In a nation where climate-change politics has largely been played as a blood sport by insiders, there is no shortage of expert advice being offered on Scott Morrison’s net-zero by 2050 ambition by many in the media class who have little real skin in the game. The towns where workers will be most affected by decisions on industry transition are a far cry from the Canberra bubble inhabited by press gallery correspondents or inner-city suburbs, where many commentators work and reside. As a result, the reaction to the Morrison government’s transition plan for net zero by 2050 has, for many insiders, become an obsession over modelling and demands for a level of detail on what things will look like three decades into the future.

Anthony Albanese used question time to pressure the Prime Minister to release the modelling. Didn’t Australians deserve to see it? he asked. Mr Morrison said it would be released in coming weeks. Josh Frydenberg said Treasury had provided assistance with modelling, including an assessment of the risk premium of not joining the global consensus and long-run assumptions such as population growth. By the government’s own admission, some of the technologies that will help decarbonise the industrial world do not yet exist. This is not a cop-out – it is a fact of life and recognition of how the powers of innovation and Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction operate.

The government gave two examples of how the adoption of new technologies explode once they reach a critical mass of efficiency and cost competitiveness with the status quo. One example is the transition from valves to transistors that led the way in the mass adoption of consumer electronics; another is solar panels. There is every reason to believe that at least some of the low-emissions technologies being pioneered today will follow a similar price reduction and explosive growth path.

History provides a guide but it does not necessarily provide the granular detail needed to model. The best guess is that $20bn invested by government over the next decade through clean-energy bodies the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will unlock between $60bn and $100bn in co-investment from the private sector and the states. Government suggests the economic modelling will show that individuals will be $2000 better off by 2050 because of gross national income being 1.6 per cent higher, with an extra 62,000 jobs created in regional mining and heavy industry.

These guesstimates should be seen for what they are – politics. So, too, should opposition claims that the Morrison plan is all about style over substance be called out for the brevity of their hypocrisy. While opposition climate spokesman Chris Bowen lampoons the government’s “Australian Way” sloganeering, he rattles off a list of pithy one-liners of his own, including an observation that the Morrison government plan is a “steaming pile of nothingness”.

In reality, it is more than the Labor Party has seen fit to put on the table but is now being challenged to do so.

We understand that politics is a conflict business but we believe that voters are far less interested in the gritty detail of issues that intelligent people find hard to comprehend than the political insiders suggest. Australian workers and families want to know the things that concern them, such as climate change, are being taken seriously and that issues will be handled in a way that makes them more financially and emotionally secure, not less.

Beyond the Glasgow COP26 summit, the imperative is to deliver on the opportunities that exist for the future across all areas. Just as actions are better than words when it comes to pledges of climate action fidelity, results will always trump models whatever they might predict.