ALP net-zero plan sensible, workable: business

Business leaders have welcomed Labor’s more ambitious net-zero game plan, stressing it will promote investment certainty, while calling on Canberra to work closely with the states.

Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Business leaders have welcomed Labor’s more ambitious net-zero game plan, stressing it will promote investment certainty, while calling on Canberra to work closely with the states.

With an election due by May, the message from industry to the next government on climate policy could well fit on a T-shirt: Aim high, power down, tool up.

Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott said Labor’s plan was “sensible and workable”, giving companies “the certainty they need to get on with the work they’re already doing and do even more”.

“It will be important for Labor to work closely with business on the detail, including measures to ensure export-exposed jobs aren’t unfairly put at risk by a tightening of the emissions baseline,” Ms Westacott said.

“Australia is already on track to meet and beat our interim targets, so more ambitious short-term targets make sense. By getting the heavy lifting done earlier with a strong 2030 target we can avoid a steep tail with higher costs.”

Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox said a 43 per cent cut by 2030 would be consistent with that of Australia’s trading partners and the directions ­industry had called for.

He said building on the existing safeguard mechanism was an obvious place for any government to deliver the “ambitious, predictable and efficient” policies needed to help industry make the leap to net zero.

“While hardly the perfect climate policy tool, the safeguard is a familiar system established and refined by the current government over the past seven years,” he said. “Industry has long ­expected that sooner or later baselines would ratchet down to drive abatement. Making that reduction firm and predictable can help underpin transformative industry investments.”

The chief executive of The ­Investor Group on Climate Change, Rebecca Mikula-Wright, said Labor’s target was more closely aligned with global capital market expectations of what was needed to unlock multi-billion-dollar investments in the Australian economy and avoid a disorderly transition to net-zero emissions.

“Australia failing to update its 2030 targets in line with the Paris Agreement and major global economies has been of deep concern to investors,” she said.

Ms Mikula-Wright said a ­bipartisan pledge of 45 per cent was needed to align targets with Australia’s partners and to “join the global investment boom that is under way this decade”.

“A nationally co-ordinated plan is vital to drive the investment, manage the structural changes under way and alleviate adverse impacts on communities disproportionately affected by domestic and global shifts from fossil fuels,” she said.

Mr Willox said “bending the arc of emissions reduction will require working both harder and smarter” and called for better governmental co-ordination.

“Building a new energy ­advantage will be much harder if the National Electricity Market continues to fragment,” he said. “It will be much easier if transport electrification, hydrogen ­industry development, power network planning and built environment policy work together towards an agreed coherent strategy.”