Labor’s climate pledge: not one miner’s job lost

Labor has pledged to protect coal workers from any job losses under its climate change policy and has ruled out increasing its 2030 emissions reduction target.

Opposition climate change spokesman Chris Bowen says ‘not one’ job in traditional industries would be lost under Labor’s policy. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Labor has pledged to protect coal workers from any job losses under its climate change policy and has ruled out increasing its 2030 emissions reduction target.

Opposition climate change spokesman Chris Bowen said “not one” job in traditional industries would be lost under Labor’s policy, which would increase Australia’s 2030 emissions reductions target from 26-28 per cent of 2005 levels to 43 per cent.

Mr Bowen said Labor’s plan would not lead to the early closure of coal-fired power stations, ­despite the party’s modelling predicting more than 80 per cent of electricity would come from renewables by the end of the decade.

“Not one coal-fired power station closure comes forward. Some people will criticise that and other people will not. That is the fact,” Mr Bowen told the National Press Club in Canberra.

“The mix will be a result of whatever (coal generator) closures have already been ­announced.

“Coal-fired power stations are scheduled to shut, Liddell and Yallourn and others will follow. The market will determine that. The market is determining that.

“Is there any policy lever that a Labor government will pull which will bring any of those coal-fired power station closures forward? No.”

Mr Bowen said the coal and gas export sectors would not be impacted by Labor’s target, with trade-exposed industries to be protected from a toughening of the safeguard mechanism.

While Australia is not responsible for the carbon emissions of the electricity generated from ­exported coal and gas, the process of mining causes fugitive emissions which could come under the safeguard mechanism.

“We will not make any policy decisions to impact on that (coal and gas exports). Those decisions are made in the boardrooms in Tokyo, Beijing, New York, New Delhi, London. They are not made in the cabinet room of Australia,” Mr Bowen said.

“No emissions intensive trade-exposed facility will be facing a constraint greater than their competitors. That’s factored into the modelling.”

The Australian understands Labor will consider carve-outs from the safeguard mechanism for coal and gas exporters if their international competitors do not face carbon constraints.

Opposition assistant climate change spokesman Pat Conroy, who represents the coal electorate of Shortland, said the policy was “very carefully designed” to ­ensure people in the sector would not lose their jobs.

“Our policy will not impact on coalmining jobs one iota, and the truth is that we designed it to do that,” he said. “So until our competing coalmines internationally, until places like Mongolia, Zimbabwe and Indonesia require their coalmines to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, we won’t do that for our coalmines.

“And that’s really important because we need to reduce emissions, but we don’t want to ship them overseas.”

With Scott Morrison claiming Labor’s 43 per cent target was an “opening bid”, Mr Bowen ruled out negotiating on the target with the Greens and independents if there was a hung parliament.

“We’re not negotiating about it, we’re not changing it and amending it,” he said. “There’s the legislation with the target. The parliament can vote it up or down. That will be the legislation that we put to the parliament.”

Mr Bowen also said Labor would resist any international pressure to increase the target.

“We’ll set a 2035 target at an appropriate time,” he said.