Climate gamble pivots on Labor sucker punch

Barnaby Joyce and Scott Morrison confer in question time on Wednesday, under the watchful gaze of Anthony Albanese. Picture: Gary Ramage

Scott Morrison’s climate gamble pivots on a precarious belief that Anthony Albanese will do what the Coalition thinks he will do, and needs him to do.

But the Labor leader shows no sign yet of being sucker-punched into this fight.

Much like the climate targets themselves, the government’s political strategy is based on a grand assumption.

This assumption has the Labor leader capitulating to internal pressure, bowing to the Left, overreaching on a 2030 target and repeating Labor’s mistakes of 2019 by going to an election with an emissions reduction target and no plan to achieve it.

Morrison may have given the Left and Liberal moderates a totemic victory on a 2050 net zero target but, as expected, this is no longer the main game.

As far as the Greens are concerned, it may as well be a new brand of climate denialism simply because it has been adopted by the Coalition.

The battleground, which the government believes will work in its favour, is now the medium-term 2030 target.

On this, Morrison desperately needs Albanese to outbid him. More than that, the government’s entire political strategy depends on it.

Yet there is considerable risk for the government in underestimating the potential for Albanese to be rational.

The government has sought to define a scare campaign against him before and failed.

Albanese denied Josh Frydenberg a fight over the stage three income tax cuts for higher income earners when, to the surprise of the Treasurer, he confirmed Labor would not rescind them in government.

Having abandoned the tax measures on franking credits and negative gearing, the climate wars now remain the last vestige of Labor’s failed 2019 election campaign with which Albanese has to contend.

There is no question that for Albanese it is the most difficult policy issue for his leadership, and one in which he must apply the same level of pragmatism.

Morrison will in coming days release the government’s projections on what emission reductions will be achieved by 2030.

They are likely to be in the order of 32-36 per cent on 2005 levels – higher than the current target of 26-28 per cent – but achievable within the government’s policy settings.

In other words, the government’s argument will be that for Labor to set targets above these projections would require intervention – such as a carbon price.

There will be no compulsion on the Labor leader to articulate any target before the government announces what its Nationally Determined Contributions will be post-Glasgow.

And that may well be after the next election.

In the end, the internal politics may well become too difficult for the Labor leader and he may be forced into a position that hands Morrison the point of difference he will need to mount an effective campaign.