Scott Morrison backs the ‘Aussie way’ to get job done on climate

‘We have to ensure all Australians have a future with any plan’: Scott Morrison at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: Gary Ramage

Scott Morrison has used the emergency climate change report to momentarily step out of the politics of Covid-19 pandemic management to offer a “practical plan” to cut carbon emissions and pointedly drawing a political bead on Anthony Albanese.

The Prime Minister’s response to the IPCC report was to declare Australia would achieve its 2030 targets on emissions reduction in “an Australian way” with technology, not taxes.

Morrison’s response has multiple aims: to reinforce what Australia has achieved so far; to reject carbon taxes and pricing schemes; to seek to reduce emissions in developing economies; to reassure regional and mining Australia that they will not suffer disproportionately; and, finally, to jam Labor over its great failing at the last election of an uncosted long-term target for carbon emissions.

At the broad philosophical and economic level, Morrison’s argument is that global emissions cannot be cut without providing the means for developing economies – specifically Indonesia, India and Vietnam – to cut their emissions through new technology.

Ironically, Morrison’s response to a report stating the technology of the industrial revolution created the current level of global warming is to say technology can address it through innovations such as clean hydrogen being made available to developing economies.

Domestically, without committing to a target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 beyond achieving the objective “as soon as possible”, Morrison continued to push Australia’s “meeting and beating” the 2020 and 2030 targets as world leading.

Leaving open the opportunity to change the targets before the November global climate change conference, Morrison and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor continue to argue the “Australian way” has led to world-leading results on solar panels, renewable investment and develop­ment of new energies such as hydrogen.

With the emphasis on technology not taxes as the Coalition’s way forward, including helping developing economies cut their emissions, Morrison stressed practical solutions where “regional Australia doesn’t have to bear all the burden” of meeting targets. He went further to say he would not provide a “blank cheque” on cutting emissions because taxpayers always ended up paying the bill if there was a blank cheque.

This directly targets Labor’s fatal failure at the last election to offer any costing for their targets and throws out a challenge to Albanese to provide a medium-term target and a cost of that target.

“The cost of inaction is the point. It’s quite clear my government understands the need to take action,” Morrison said. “We have to ensure all Australians have a future with any plan.”

Morrison told parliament the Coalition’s plan would not be “unfunded, uncosted” as Labor’s was.

He continues to try to bring his colleagues and the public with him on his practical approach by defending jobs in regional Australia but also leaving open the chance to go to the Glasgow climate summit with a new target for 2035, arguing the 2030 target will be met.

He has eyes on international and domestic policies and politics and is looking beyond the pandemic as he responds.