“This is what Jennifer Westacott, the CEO of the Business Council of Australia, has said—that this legislation has ‘brought Australia a step closer to ending the climate wars that have put a handbrake on progress and become a serious economic barrier.’”
John Connor, chief executive of the Carbon Market Institute, an industry association of companies leading the transition to net-zero, says: “It is a historic moment, and it is exciting now to move into the reality of policy.”
That reality must include an investment boom. The National Australia Bank published research last week estimating that about half a trillion dollars in net new investment will be needed in Australia to achieve the 2050 target of net-zero emissions.
The Liberal Party, however, chose to stand outside all this – outside the unifying policy, outside the consensus, outside the business community, and outside half a trillion dollars’ worth of new investment.
Peter Dutton made a captain’s call months ago that the Liberals would not oppose the 43 per cent and net-zero targets, but they would not vote to legislate them, either. Instead, the Liberals decided to follow their Coalition partner, the Nationals, into a fringe fetish.
The Coalition has decided to investigate nuclear power. Not that this is a fringe in the global energy system. It’s simply unrealistic in this country’s. Nuclear power has never been economic in Australia. It couldn’t compete with cheap Australian coal; it can’t compete with even cheaper Australian solar energy.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese endorsing the government’s Climate Change Bill in the lower house on Thursday.Credit:alex ellinghausen
The Liberals’ decision opened them to Albanese’s ridicule. He not only mocked them for ignoring the power of “the biggest nuclear reactor of all” as he pointed skywards, he also brought simpsons into Question Time.
Giving the opposition’s energy spokesman Ted O’Brien carriage of an inquiry into nuclear power “bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr Burns putting Homer Simpson in charge of nuclear power safety in Springfield” Albanese jibed. “No one loves a reactor like a reactionary.”
He went on: “Remember when the Liberal Party used to have a relationship with business? Remember that? But what we saw today was them isolated and alone, stuck in the same old trench fighting a fight that has passed them by. They were by themselves with their arms crossed, saying, ‘No, no, no.’”
The May 21 election showed that Australia was ready for a more active climate policy. By standing against it, the Coalition government chose oblivion. Now that it has refused to negotiate on the climate bill, it has chosen irrelevance.
If the Liberals ever hope to win another election, “they have to have the conversation about restoring the broad church,” a church embracing moderates and not only conservatives, argues Walter. “They can’t only follow a small nutty segment” on the populist fringe.
“They have to be able to bring back the disaffected Liberals who voted for teal candidates, and still manage to persuade people in the region that they have their interest at heart.”
Even after Dutton’s captain’s call, the leaders of the moderate faction in the Liberal Party argued that they should change position and support the 43 per cent target. It would be a sign that they’d heard the voice of the electorate. But Simon Birmingham, Marise Payne and Paul Fletcher lost the argument in the shadow cabinet on Monday night.
One moderate said, “we picked the wrong fight – the fight shouldn’t be about the 43 per cent target, it should be about how we meet the target”. Because that will be the hard part.
Is Dutton missing the unmissable message from the electorate? Not at all. For him, it’s about priorities. Does he try to win the next election today, or does he try to hold the Coalition together as it regroups after a devastating loss?
Opposition leader Peter Dutton addresses his coalition colleagues in Canberra on Tuesday.Credit:James Brickwood
“Dutton’s calculus was that if we supported 43 per cent we’d have more trouble from the Nationals and from Liberals crossing the floor than we’ll have from moderate Libs by opposing it – and he was right.” Only one Liberal, Tasmania’s Bridget Archer, crossed the floor to vote with the government on the emissions target.”
“The next election will not be fought on the 2030 emissions targets,” observes the Liberal. Indeed, the government soon will need to start working on Australia’s targets for 2035, which must be lodged by 2025. “If it suddenly looks like we are struggling to meet the 2030 target, then the picture changes.”
The other major force in Parliament now are the teals. How did they conduct themselves? They, much like the Greens, campaigned for more ambitious targets but chose to support the government bill as the only available route to any progress at all.
All of which tells us what to expect from all these groups in the future. The Greens will continue to push for more, yet compromise in the service of practicality over ideology.
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So, for example, on Albanese’s draft proposal for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, “we will take the same approach on the Voice that we did on climate,” says the Greens leader in the Senate, Larissa Waters. “We said we want progress on all elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and we are heartened by the minister [Linda Burney] saying that’s possible.
“We will push to get improvements and push to get practical progress for Indigenous justice” including deaths in custody and the Bringing them Home Report, Waters tells me. Unsaid is that the Greens won’t veto possible gains in pursuit of impossible ones.
Albanese will continue to operate from the political centre, seeking to advance center left priorities such as climate policy and the Voice, while also working on center right areas such as a firmly defending Australian interests against Chinese Communist Party demands. Labor intends dominating the centre; the intention is to force the Coalition to either support the government or move further to the right fringe and unelectability.
And Dutton will continue to do what he can to hold together a shattered Liberal party, to survive as a leader long enough to regroup and refocus on the next election. Leading a defeated government into opposition is a high-risk task. For Dutton, survival, not relevance, is today’s imperative. Three years is a long time in politics.
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