Labor’s last word: it’s the poor what gets the blame

The poll finding that people with fat pay packets want us to do more to stop climate change comes as no surprise to anyone who’s tried to find a parking space in Fitzroy North.

We have known for some time the strength of the green vote is closely correlated with the concentration of late-model German vehicles squeezed against the kerbstones of tastefully renovated terraces.

We know too that carbon anxiety is at its peak in seats like Melbourne, Wentworth, Higgins and Sydney where, whether they vote red, blue or green, few are short of a bob or two.

In the poorer regions of Australia they have other things on their minds.

Polling by YouGov-Galaxy finds that most of those earning more than $150,000 support Labor’s 45 per cent emissions reduction target.

Those on low and middle incomes prefer the Coalition’s lower target, as do the middle-aged, elderly and those with children. The strongest supporters of Labor’s vanity target are the wealthy and the unattached, unencumbered, unpropertied and arguably un­realistic singles in the cities.

Both parties’ targets will get us to Paris, the experts assure us, but naturally the rich want to fly first class, particularly if they don’t have to pay for it, as Labor’s Mark Butler assures them they won’t.

“Power prices under our more ambitious target would be about 25 per cent lower than under the government’s more modest target,” Butler told Leigh Sales last year, holding an impressively straight face.

The polling shows Butler has his work cut out if he expects voters to buy that line. Overall, only 26 per cent of voters want to go beyond our Paris target. When prompted about forecasts of higher power bills, support falls to 12 per cent.

Discovering what voters really think on the disputed, morally charged matter of climate change measures, as opposed to what they think they are supposed to think, is far from straightforward. Pumping greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, like feeding empty plastic bags to turtles, is a thing which right-thinking people are naturally against.

After the debacle of Julia Gillard’s carbon tax, we do know they are reluctant to pay for it if it affects their hip pocket. And thanks to the additional nought on their electricity bill that appeared after Labor started throwing around renewable energy subsidies, voters know that the ticket to low-carb land doesn’t come cheap.

Modelling by Brian Fisher of BAE Economics published in The Australian last month will add to their doubts about Labor’s promise to scale the Eiffel Tower three times when we’re meant to scale it only once.

Fisher predicts the cost of wholesale power will rise by 58 per cent, which modelling by the Menzies Research Centre forecasts will add about $150 to an average household power bill. Fisher also forecasts a drop in real wages of about $347 a fortnight.

The Coalition has not tried to hide that its target also comes at a cost, albeit considerably lower than Labor’s or, heaven help us, the Greens’, to whom nothing short of an immediate return to the Stone Age would be enough to satisfy the climate gods, with the condition, of course, that there’s somewhere to charge the Tesla.

Under the Coalition’s policies, however, the cost is borne more equitably between wealthy and poor. The Coalition is paying for much of the heavy lifting from the taxes through the $2 billion Climate Solutions Fund, the successor to Tony Abbott’s Emissions Reduction Fund.

While any new government spending tends to trample on ­Liberal sensitivities, the tax system, in principle at least, demands more from the rich than it does from the poor.

It is also transparent. Loading the cost on to power bills, however, is not only sneaky but desperately unfair.

A quarterly household power bill of $400 represents about 1.6 per cent of the disposable income of a family in the top income quintile in Canberra, for example, but would eat up 7.3 per cent of disposable cash in the bottom quintile in South Australia.

The discrepancy becomes worse the more prices rise. MRC modelling of Labor’s 45 per cent target forecasts that the poorest Australians in some states could be spending more than 10 per cent of their disposable income on electricity by 2030, a slice five times larger than the fortunate 20 per cent at the top of the income ­ladder.

Those figures don’t begin to convey the iniquity of Labor’s policy. The elderly, and pensioners in particular, will be badly hit. Small businesses, like your local milk bar, will suffer more than, say, your local bank. Dairy farmers will find their margins squeezed even further.

The price of electricity matters more to those who live on the wrong side of Homebush, Flemington or the Gabba. It is punishing for those who work the chicken sheds on the dusty, barrel-strewn South Australian plains 10km north of Regency Road that rarely feel the onshore breezes that make cafe life in Double Bay so delightful.

Forget the absurdity of thinking Australia, with its 1.3 per cent share of global emissions, can change the world’s climate by taking the path of the Starship Enterprise, boldly going where no nation has gone before.

Forget the irresponsibility of setting so high a target without first modelling its effect on the broader economy.

Forget the Indian villagers lighting their oil lamps, patiently waiting for the electricity that Australia’s abundant coal reserves could supply.

Labor’s policy is its favourite test of fairness at home and abroad. It demands that Australians carry an unfair load in the global task to reduce emissions.

It fails the test of fairness in putting inordinate pressure on power prices, which sock it to the poorest and barely touch the rich.

The same rich, incidentally, who possess properties, sufficient capital and sufficient nous to invest in solar panels and batteries, subsidised by the poor mugs in rented housing.

“It’s the same the whole world over,” as the old music hall ditty goes. “It’s the poor what gets the blame; it’s the rich what gets the pleasure; ain’t it all a bloomin’ shame?”