Scott Morrison, Labor tied up in knots over energy, emissions target

Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the Hunter Valley on Tuesday. Picture: Joel Black

The energy and emissions reduction debate in this country has degenerated into a swirling mix of contradictions.

In truth, this has long been the case. We are global laggards when it comes to energy price settings and emissions reduction targets, and unnecessarily so.

The Prime Minister travelled to Newcastle yesterday to announce he would build his own gas power plant if the private sector didn’t “step up”. It was half threat half political puffery.

But more significantly, it was riddled with contradictions and conflicts. Opinions are divided over whether it’s a bluff without substance or not.

Putting to one side that the government is therefore planning to pick winners in the energy mix (something it pledged not to do) and intervene in a way Liberals should find economically abhorrent, a new gas power plant isn’t exactly an emissions reduction strategy. Not when compared to renewable options on the table.

Yet who was the first minister to spruik the decision on morning radio yesterday? Why the emissions reduction minister, of course. Yes that’s part of his official title. The script could have been torn straight from a Yes Minister episode it’s that absurd.

Then the same PM whose government admonished Chris Bowen for suggesting the Coalition should guarantee domestic gas supplies not all that long ago as too interventionist, formally announced the most interventionist policy of all: plans to build a government owned and operated gas power plant in competition with the private sector.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there. At least gas is less dirty as an energy source than coal-fired power right? That is certainly the spin that was coming from the government. Enter former Resources Minister now Nationals backbencher, Matt Canavan, to condemn the PM’s plans from far North Queensland because it promotes gas, not new coal-fired power.

Former Resources Minister Matt Canavan. Picture: Sean Davey

The PM made the announcement in Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon’s electoral backyard, a normally safe Labor seat he almost lost to One Nation at the last election because of Labor’s emissions targets. Fitzgibbon came out in favour of what the PM announced, in fact wanting credit that it was his idea in the first place. “What he’s announcing is our plan. My plan as the local member”, Fitzgibbon proudly told Sky News.

Meanwhile, Labor’s spokesman on all matters climate change and energy, Mark Butler, told Radio National something entirely different. “There is not much in this plan. It is heavy on spin, light as a feather on substance”, Butler claimed.

Yesterday it was also revealed that Labor plans to go to the next election without an emissions reduction target for 2030, instead only having an aspirational target for 2050. That’s because it is widely believed in Labor circles that Bill Shorten’s 2030 target was a key factor that cost him the 2019 election.

Maybe, maybe not. But Labor seems to have forgotten one important thing: if it wins the next election without a 2030 target, and that naturally then becomes the new Labor government’s policy, that will put Australia in violation of our Paris agreement on emissions targets.

For a party that claims to do better than the Coalition when it comes to the environment and climate change, that’s not a great look at all. Surely a leading left wing factional player like the responsible shadow minister Butler realises that?

Peter van onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University