Abbott government shows signs of shifting ground on climate policy
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Version 0 of 1. The Abbott government could be shifting ground on climate policy – with a more conciliatory approach in negotiations over the renewable energy target and consultative processes to set a new greenhouse emissions reduction target to apply after 2020. Guardian Australia understands the government is preparing to make significant concessions in talks with Labor to try to strike a bipartisan deal over the RET. Talks resumed last week and are set to continue. At the same time it is preparing to release a discussion paper asking for ideas about what factors it should take into consideration as it sets a target for deeper greenhouse gas reductions after 2020 – with a ministerial taskforce chaired by the prime minister to oversee the process. The government had originally signalled it wanted very deep cuts to the renewable energy target – which requires 41,000 gigawatt hours of renewable energy to be delivered from renewable sources by 2020. It commissioned the businessman and self-professed climate sceptic Dick Warburton to undertake a review, which recommended the target be slashed to about 16,000 gigawatt hours. After fierce resistance from industry and concerted criticism of that review, cabinet asked the environment minister, Greg Hunt, and the industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, to try to reach a bipartisan agreement with Labor about the future of the program that would allow continued investment without fear of policy change. Labor and the renewables industry insisted a target had to be in the mid 30,000 gigawatt hours, and when the government refused to budge from about 26,000 gigawatt hours, Labor walked out of the talks last year. They resumed last week and the government is now also in close consultation with the renewable energy industry, with a target in the mid 30,000 gigawatt hours under discussion. More talks with Labor are expected within a fortnight. The solar industry has run an intensive marginal seat campaign to protect its treatment under a special “small scale” renewable energy target, earning the ire of Greg Hunt in the process. The government has also set up a ministerial committee to oversee the task of setting Australia’s new greenhouse gas reduction target – including Abbott, the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, Hunt, the trade minister, Andrew Robb and Macfarlane. A taskforce in the prime minister’s department, announced last year, will soon ask for submissions about how it should arrive at the new target, and what it should take into account. The new target will be announced in June or July before the United Nations conference in Paris in December, where it is hoped the countries will seal a post-2020 climate deal. A separate inquiry covering the same issues is being conducted by the Climate Change Authority, a body the government wants to abolish. It was the price demanded by the Palmer United party for passing the government’s Direct Action scheme. Direct Action aims to meet Australia’s existing target of reductions of 5% by 2020. But available modelling has suggested it would cost an enormous amount to reach deeper targets under the policy. That’s the point Malcolm Turnbull was making when he explained in 2011 that continuing to use a big government taxpayer-funded scheme to reduce emissions in the long term would “become a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead”. But embedded in Direct Action is a mechanism that could be “dialled up” to set caps on industrial emissions and allow trading between emitters – effectively a baseline and credit emissions trading scheme. A discussion paper on how this so-called “safeguards” mechanism would work is also due out shortly. |