John Kerry to turn up climate heat on Scott Morrison’s government

John Kerry has never shown much interest in Australia — unlike many senior Americans. Picture: AFP

The orthodoxy that Joe Biden’s executive team will make Australia comfortable is spectacularly wrong in one respect: the appointment of former secretary of state and presidential nominee John Kerry as special envoy for climate.

There is one certainty. Kerry will create problems for Australia and the Morrison government as a consequence of his brief from ­the incoming president.

It is obvious Biden has selected Kerry as a special global envoy not just to return America to the Paris Agreement but to champion stronger international action from the parties.

It will be Kerry’s rhetoric, his symbolism and his close ties with Europe on climate change that will put inevitable pressures on the Morrison government.

Kerry is a natural Atlanticist who was involved in negotiating the Paris Agreement and believes climate change is a global security imperative. Biden and Kerry in tandem will intensify the climate-change tempo across the developed world with many leaders joining the conga line.

Kerry’s political history gives him a special status, though his reputation stands in contrast with few concrete achievements.

But he will transform global perceptions of the US after ­Donald Trump’s hostility to the Paris accord and the entire progressive movement in Australia will have a rich series of messages from him with which to hound Scott Morrison.

Kerry, by the way, has never shown much interest in Australia — unlike many senior Americans — making his first visit here only in 2014 when he was secretary of state. His first overseas visit in that high office was, significantly, to the UK and Europe.

Tony Abbott as prime minister had to deal with Kerry as ­secretary of state and found him relentlessly focused on climate change as a security issue, a priority not shared by the Abbott government in its hierarchy of security concerns.

In this sense Biden has picked his man. Kerry said he was returning to government “to get America back on track to address the biggest challenge of this generation”. As envoy for climate, Kerry will sit on the National Security Council — a pointer to the Biden-Kerry view that climate change is a security issue and that Kerry’s job will be to persuade others nations into faster action.

In recent days Morrison has sent signals that he will be moving on climate change — rejecting carry over credits and using the language that Australia wants to get to net zero carbon emissions as early as possible. Such flexibility will only become more imperative.

Biden and Kerry have inherited a huge problem in America with COVID-19 but watch how much they reshape the political agenda back to climate-change action.