Malcolm Turnbull urges Coalition to back ‘green new deal’ on energy

Malcolm Turnbull has urged a rapid shift from coal and gas power stations to solar, wind and, ultimately, ‘green ­hydrogen’.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: AAP

Malcolm Turnbull has called on the government to back a “green new deal” to lift the economy out of the coronavirus recession, ­urging a rapid shift away from coal and gas power stations to solar, wind and, ultimately, “green ­hydrogen”.

Mr Turnbull, speaking alongside former British prime minister David Cameron, also lashed out at “lunacy, ideology and idiocy” in parts of the Coalition and “right-wing” media.

“Saying you believe or don’t believe in global warming is like saying you believe or don’t believe in gravity,” he said, speaking in an online forum organised by ­the Liberal-aligned, non-profit Coalition for Conservation.

“If you want to pump-prime the economy after the pandemic then start a green new deal agenda, which will accelerate retirement of old coal-fired clunkers,” he said.

The former prime minister’s comments came ahead of a major speech in Canberra on Wednesday by Labor leader Anthony ­Albanese, who dumped support for Mr Turnbull’s failed National Energy Guarantee — which had proposed an implicit price on carbon — and backed the Morrison government’s new “technology road map”. “To ensure the framework is enduring in the context of future scientific advice, it must be scalable to different emission reduction targets by future governments,” the Opposition Leader said, seeking to end trenchant disagreement between the two parties on climate policy since Tony Abbott became Liberal leader in 2009.

The concept of a “green new deal” — an allusion to the Roosevelt New Deal in the 1930s — has been popularised by far-left Democrats in the US as a way to slash carbon dioxide emissions and revive economic growth.

“With a bit of government subsidy, it will move us to greener and cheaper energy more quickly,” Mr Turnbull said, arguing that ­surplus energy from solar farms could be used to generate “green hydrogen”.

“There is no way you’d build a new coal station even if global warming was irrelevant. Even if denialists were right, you still wouldn’t do it,” he said.

Mr Cameron, who was Britain’s prime minster for six years until 2016, said British conservatives had a “much better inheritance”, given former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s support for initiatives to reduce global warming in the 1980s.

Cristina Talacko, the event moderator and organiser, said ­Liberals could “learn from the UK experience on how to drive a green agenda in line with what Liberal voters want, and exercise the same leadership that the UK Conservatives exercise on climate”.

Mr Cameron, speaking from rural Oxfordshire, said he’d enjoyed a “better inheritance”, given Mrs Thatcher’s position. ­

He resisted Mr Turnbull’s suggestion that News Corp, the publisher of The Australian, was opposed to policies to mitigate global warming.

“They own The Times, The Sun, about 36 per cent of news­papers by circulation here, but they haven’t by and large been proselytising in favour of climate denial,” Mr Cameron said.

Mr Albanese backed carbon capture and storage technology in his speech, but Mr Turnbull and Mr Cameron said such technology had so far failed.

Mr Turnbull said emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes “had tended to work better in ­theory than in practice”.