ALP revolt over climate policy: ‘we may never win another election’

A growing number of Labor MPs are urging Anthony Albanese to adopt the Coalition’s 2030 emissions reduction targets.

Labor senator Alex Gallacher, with workers, from left, Mark Bennett, Craig Stanton, and Michael Vogt. Picture: Morgan Sette

A growing number of Labor MPs are urging Anthony Albanese to adopt the Coalition’s 2030 emissions reduction targets, with one warning the party may never win another election unless it takes a more moderate position on ­climate change. 

Amid concerns Labor needs to broaden its appeal, senators Alex Gallacher and Glenn Sterle have backed resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon’s calls to adopt the government’s ­medium-term target to lower emissions by 26-28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030.

“If we don’t accept that, we may never get back into government,” Senator Gallacher told The Weekend Australian.

“The reality is, we are going to have a deficit that you can’t jump over. We can’t constrain our economy in terms of what some of the people on the Left want to do. Just do it and move on.

“It may tear the heart out of some of the people in the conservation world but really it isn’t going to tear the heart out of the electorate. And it certainly won’t tear the heart out of a lot of people we want to vote for us.”

Senator Sterle, from the West Australian Right, said: “Joel is on the money. I support Joel’s ­position”.

Senator Gallacher, from the South Australian Right, took aim at opposition climate change spokesman and Left faction heavyweight Mark Butler, who has flatly rejected adopting the government’s 2030 emissions targets. “The beauty of (Labor) is on one side you have got Mark Butler and the other side you have me,” Senator Gallacher said.

“We will never see eye to eye. Somewhere along the line he has got to come my way a bit.

“We can’t keep dodging and weaving to some band of bloody followers who want to save the planet. We all want to save the planet but we need to do it sensibly and pragmatically and not cut our nose off to spite our face.

“All of us bear the responsibility of the last (election) loss because we all knew there were faults with some of our policies, franking credits and the like, and we never made enough noise. No one is going to ever do that again.”

Senator Gallacher and Senator Sterle joined the chorus of pro-coal federal MPs, including Mr Fitzgibbon and Queensland Right MPs Shayne Neumann and Anthony Chisholm, calling on the Queensland Labor government to approve the stalled $900m extension of the New Acland coalmine.

Mr Albanese last month moved to end the climate wars by proposing Labor and the government co-operate on a bipartisan energy policy framework that could be “scalable” for the parties’ different levels of ambition.

Labor has committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 but is yet to land on a medium-term target, which is likely to be set for either 2030 or 2035. The party went to the 2019 election with a 45 per cent emissions-reduction target by 2030.

West Australian frontbencher Matt Keogh, an early backer of Mr Fitzgibbon’s push last year to reach a “political settlement” on the 2030 targets, said his position had not changed.

“The key focus has to be on the net-zero by 2050,” Mr Keogh said.

“There is no benefit having an argument over what the ­Coalition’s target is while it is currently in government.”

Mr Neumann, Labor’s veterans affairs spokesman, said any medium-term target needed to be realistic. “We have to look at the fact that the government is taking virtually no action on climate change and it makes it harder for us,” he said.

Senator Gallacher, who was elected to parliament in 2010 after a 22-year career at the Transport Workers Union, warned that Labor’s primary-vote drop in the Eden Monaro by-election showed the party had failed to broaden its support since the election.

He said the party needed to “have a few rednecks among us” as it sought to win back working-class and regional voters.

“We appeal to a base that is too narrow,” Senator Gallacher said. “The tragedy of Eden-Monaro was the Shooters and Fishers getting people we should have. I’m quite comfortable with those sort of voters. Not everyone in the Labor Party is.

“We are losing swathes of people who used to be rusted on to us because we just don’t sound like them anymore, we don’t look like them anymore.

“We have to be a very broad and inclusive crew and, heaven forbid, even have a few rednecks among us. I wouldn’t be unhappy with that.”

Senator Gallacher, who began his working career in the 1970s as a labourer and a truck driver, said the party had lost its way by focusing too much on winning the support of social progressives.

“I honestly look at some of the positions we take and I wonder who we are talking for,” he said. “I have been a Labor Party member for a very long time. I think we have moved significantly away from where we used to be. That is not a bad thing but you have always got to keep your followers within arm’s length. We are a mile ahead of some of our followers. That is why they are looking for other places to put their vote.”

Victorian senator Raff Ciccone, meanwhile, called for an overhaul of state and federal environmental laws to create new blue-collar jobs in the forestry and mining sectors. He said there needed to be changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to limit the ongoing legal injunctions lodged by ­environmental groups.

“There is dignity in all work, including in industries like resources, forestry and agriculture,” Senator Ciccone said. “Unfortunately, workers in these industries are not always offered the respect and acknowledgment that I believe they are owed.”

The Labor MPs backing the shift in climate change policy were all identified in February as being part of a pro-coal Otis Group, led by Mr Fitzgibbon and South Australian right-wing heavyweight Don Farrell. Mr Fitzgibbon last month confirmed the group was still running but denied it was focused solely on coal.

“It‘s a group that has a focus on a Hawke-Keating model, an efficient and productive economy, on aspiration, making sure that as a party all of our policies reward aspiration and provide incentives to work,” Mr Fitzgibbon told Sky News last month. “And of course we do have a deep focus on our traditional base. Labor was built on blue-collar workers … and we should never lose sight of that.”