Rudd's dangerous climate retreat

AS retreats go, they come no bigger than Kevin Rudd's delaying of his once cherished emissions trading scheme - one of the most spectacular backdowns by a prime minister in decades.

If you want an equivalent, think of Gough Whitlam delaying Medibank, Paul Keating deferring the float, Bob Hawke folding on the abolition of the tariff or John Howard surrendering on his GST.

There will be many words written about Rudd's retreat but it is simply crystallised: he is a prime minister without the courage to champion the policy that defined him.

Deferring the ETS to 2013 almost certainly means Rudd will ditch his double-dissolution option.

Rudd has decided to acquiesce in the disintegrated consensus for his ETS rather than seek to salvage his climate-change policy. It is a tactical choice to retreat, wait for a better domestic and global setting and seek, down the track, to rebuild political support. But for what? Maybe for his ETS or a different ETS or another policy. Nobody knows. But this choice, justified by prudence, will stamp Rudd's career and cast a permanent shadow over his credibility.

Consider this present mess: he won't fight for his ETS; he won't abandon his ETS; he says on the eve of the 2010 election he will re-consider the ETS on the eve of the 2013 election; yet Labor has no more chance of a Senate majority in 2013 than it has today.

Having told the nation and the world that he would never delay Australian action on climate change, Rudd's new policy is the long delay. Having attacked the Coalition last year for political cowardice in not legislating the ETS, Rudd now shuns the chance to legislate the ETS. The brazenness is exceptional.

In truth, Rudd has lost his nerve. This is a political and policy retreat. He says the ETS remains "the most effective and least expensive" means of combating greenhouse gas emissions. His tacticians will call this smart and they may be right. But it betrays a government weak to its core. Understand what this is about: it is giving Rudd a political strategy to maximise his re-election by removing the only mechanism he had to deliver his ETS policy. He has chosen safe politics over policy delivery. Any voter who believed Rudd was genuine about climate change needs to reassess.

Rudd, in fact, wants the best of all worlds: to keep his integrity, abandon any serious fight for his policy and take the safest possible path to re-election. This is a government arrogant in double-speak yet timid in policy courage.

Yet Rudd is hung by his past pledges. Having said his ETS was one of the "most important structural reforms to our economy in a generation" and having branded climate change "the great moral and economic challenge of our time" and having insisted that his ETS bills be passed by the Copenhagen conference, Rudd cannot decide with impunity that any such action can be deferred for another three years. This suggests a lack of conviction, dangerous for any government's decision-making and public policy.

If Rudd lacks conviction on climate change - one of the core policies that won him the 2007 election against Howard - what does this say about Labor's mettle and its beliefs?

Rudd's retreat invites the judgment that he is running scared of Tony Abbott and has decided, in effect, that Australia will not legislate an ETS until the Opposition Leader agrees, or until the Greens agree. Why is the option of a double-dissolution election so dangerous compared with a normal election? Polls show a majority of the public wants action on climate change. Abbott will run his "great big tax" scare whatever form the election takes. Indeed, Abbott said yesterday he wants the coming poll to be an ETS referendum. So how far does Rudd run?

The point is that Labor is addicted to absolute risk minimisation. The era of Keating and Howard is long gone. Rudd now implies he won't impose an ETS on the nation by winning a double-dissolution election mandate and legislating via a joint sitting. He is also saying something else: he wants a domestic consensus to underpin Labor's ETS. This is now explicit. Having compromised the double-dissolution path, Rudd can legislate only by striking a partnership at some time in the future with either the Coalition or the Greens. His government is hostage to this stance. Any idea that either the Greens or Abbott will fall into line if, as expected, Rudd is re-elected, seems fanciful. The Greens will benefit at the ballot box for their obstructionism. It will require Abbott's replacement as Liberal leader before the Liberals re-assess their position. The risk for Rudd is that he becomes a leader whose inability to legislate his climate change policy erodes his standing in the next parliament, with the judgment being he missed his best chance at this year's re-election.

By this decision, Rudd has abandoned much of the policy he has championed as Prime Minister. His message was that Australia should not wait for the world; he said the longer Australia delayed, the higher the cost it would pay; he said action now was vital for investment certainty; he said Treasury modelling revealed climate change action would not damage the economy; and he sought a leadership role for Australia and himself to speed global negotiations. Now there is another policy reality: Australia wants to wait on Barack Obama's US. It is hardly a surprise.

Some people may think the judgment that Rudd has made one of the greatest backflips in decades is too harsh. Yet this judgment rests solely on Rudd's own words, actions and priorities. On December 15, 2008, he said: "Climate change is nothing less than a threat to our people, our nation and our planet." Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Howard never invoked such imperatives for their own reforms. "It [climate change] is a threat that, if left unaddressed, has the capacity to permanently affect our way of life," Rudd said. "The incontestable truth of climate change is that a decision not to act is in fact an active decision; an active decision to place the next generation at grave risk." This is the decision Rudd has now taken; he can hardly complain if he is judged by his own words.

On November 6 last year, Rudd gave a speech to the Lowy Institute, declaring: "When you strip away all the political rhetoric. . . there are two stark choices, action or inaction. The resolve of the Australian government is clear; we choose action." He attacked Coalition sceptics for risking "our children's fate and our grandchildren's fate" by their delaying tactics. Accusing Malcolm Turnbull, soon to lose his head over this issue, of an "absolute failure of leadership", Rudd said: "No responsible government confronted with the evidence delivered by the 4000 scientists associated with the international panel could then in conscience choose not to act."

Rudd will find it more difficult than he anticipates to rebuild the political consensus for climate change action precisely because his credibility is so damaged.