Climate Law 1 (2010) 325–327 325 DOI 10.3233/CL-2010-015 IOS Press
Notes from the field
Reflections on climate politics in a sunburnt country
Greg Picker1
The Australian polity has shifted dramatically on climate change policy, moving—in less than a year—from a committed bipartisan support for an emissions trading system and strong action on climate change to something that is a reflection of the previous level ambition.
The purpose of this note is to briefly explain what has happened in Australia about climate change policy, the implications that this has had for Australia meeting its Kyoto Protocol and 2020 targets, and some thoughts on the future of Australian climate politics and how this may impact Australia in the future.
As Australian negotiators prepared to leave for Copenhagen in early December 2009, domestic Australian politics focused on the passage of an emissions trading bill. In a series of dramatic political maneuvers and negotiations, the Labor Government and the Liberal (Conservative) Opposition had reached agreement on draft legislation ending six months of highly contentious political debate. The level of disquiet within the Opposition to this compromise remained very high.
Then, on the morning the bill was to be considered in Parliament, there was a leadership challenge within the Opposition party. In a stunning decision, a new leader, Tony Abbott, was elected by one vote on the basis of his opposition to the ETS. As a result of the change in leader, the Opposition’s policy shifted and its promised support for the ETS bill dissipated.
The political consensus at the time—a consensus that remained in place even after the disap- pointment of Copenhagen—was that Kevin Rudd, the then Labor Prime Minister, would return from the Christmas break and call a so-called “double-dissolution election” to pass the ETS into law. But instead of calling an election, in April 2010 the Prime Minister announced that he was postponing consideration of the ETS until at least 2013.
1 Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland, Australia ([email protected]).
1878-6553/10/$27.50 © 2010 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved 326 G. Picker / Reflections on climate politics in a sunburnt country
The public was stunned. All of a sudden, the man who had proclaimed climate change to be “the greatest moral challenge of our generation” was walking away from a tough choice.2 This event was pivotal, and in large part as a result of this decision Rudd’s support quickly eroded to the point where this past June, his deputy, Julia Gillard, successfully challenged him and became herself Prime Minister, although without promising anything substantive on climate-change policy.
Australia struck a favourable deal for itself at the Kyoto negotiations, and because moreover land clearing in this country has ended, Australia remains on track to meet its Kyoto Protocol targets. However, any sensible analysis of the Labor Government’s and the Opposition’s stances on climate change policy displays an unbelievable lack of ambition in policy choices. While both sides of politics have accepted the targets Australia enunciated in the months leading up to Copenhagen (a five per cent reduction in emissions from 2000 levels by 2020 if the world fails to agree on substantive action, with a possibility of the cap tightening to minus fifteen or even minus twenty-five per cent if a comprehensive international deal is reached and REDD is included), neither party has detailed policies that will bring Australia anywhere close to these reduction levels.3
Each party has instead identified a series of “direct actions” to reduce emissions through abate- ment funded by either regulation or direct payment in a range of areas including energy efficiency and soil carbon. The Climate Institute—a leading Australian think tank—is conducting an ongo- ing analysis of the proposed policies and has determined that, if implemented, Labor’s policies would see Australia’s emissions rise by nineteen per cent over 1990 levels by 2020, whereas the Opposition’s policies would see an eight per cent increase.4 Quite simply, these emission reductions are neither sufficient nor internationally credible.
Unless the Government introduces a carbon price before 2013, given the likely time-requirements to prepare for implementation and the need to soften the blow for Australia’s emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries, it will take several years before a market mechanism can really deliver significant emission reductions and alter the trajectory of this country’s projected robust BAU emissions growth.5 Accordingly, it is likely that the current delay will threaten Australia’s capac- ity to deliver the amount of emission reductions that the world reasonably expects of it by 2020. Perhaps Australia will do better with its 2050 targets.
2 Peter van Onselen, Peter, Politics trumps a moral challenge, The Australian, 29 April 2010. 3 Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, National Targets, available at