It’s hard to describe just how truly wretched Labor’s new climate change policy is. It makes the CPRS, its dog of an emissions trading scheme, look like a model of best practice. It is a spectacular failure of leadership.
Julia Gillard’s “citizens’ assembly” has effectively outsourced responsibility for climate policy to “ordinary Australians”, on whose “skills, capacity, decency and plain common sense” Gillard will rely to tell her about the community consensus on climate change. In effect it institutionalises what is already apparent — this is a Government controlled by focus group reactions.
Labor has been playing politics with climate change for three years and it hasn’t stopped. But whereas for most of that time it used climate change to damage the Coalition, now it is having to defend itself against the issue. It will only be with the political cover afforded by this nonsensical Assembly that the Government will take any action on a carbon price.
Rarely has so much goodwill and political capital been wasted on such an important issue.
The consensus the Government insists it needs the protection of before acting already exists. It’s not just in the opinion polls, which show time and time again that the majority of voters want action on climate change and supported the Government’s CPRS. In 2007, let’s not forget, both sides of politics told Australians they were going to introduce an ETS. The 2007 election endorsed a community consensus on the need for action.
Instead, in 2010, neither party will commit to any sort of carbon price mechanism for at least three years. Instead, they’re offering excuses as to why they don’t want to take action. We’ve done anything but move forward on climate action.
Gillard’s interim actions are little better. The new emissions standard she proposes won’t even apply to four coal-fired power stations being built or brought back on line currently. They may not apply to two more, the massive Mt Piper and Bayswater projects in NSW, which will together add 4% to national CO2-equivalent emissions when they come on line. Holding the baseline for the CPRS at 2008 levels won’t give electricity generators any more investment certainty when it remains unclear whether there will ever be an emissions trading scheme in Australia. Nor does it change the simple fact that State Governments continue to drive Australia into a coal-fired future.
Labor’s craven pandering to key outer-suburban electorates in its population and asylum seeker policies was bad enough. But abdicating executive responsibility for action on climate change is a new low in cynical politics, beyond the depths even reached by NSW Labor. Politicians are elected to lead. Deferring every controversial issue back to the electorate is a clumsy variant of leadership by polling and focus groups.
So blatant is Labor’s refusal to lead that it raises serious questions about its fitness for government. The only problem is that the alternative is an economically-illiterate party whose leader doesn’t believe in climate change at all, but who insists on wasting $3b on the most expensive possible means of addressing it.
What a choice, two major parties incapable of leadership and unfit to govern.
The only positive thing about this climate change “policy” is that it will definitely lock in a solid vote for the Greens – balance of power in the Senate and a couple of Reps seats at least.
Today is the day Julia Gillard began to lose the election. Her climate change non-policy is the biggest political hoax I’ve ever seen. The Labor Party is a joke. Julia Gillard has become a laughing stock. She lacks any credibility. She will be lampooned mercilessly. This vacuous back-to-the-2020-Summit farce is proof that she is unfit to govern. She is a pretend prime minister, a sham: full of faux and signifying nothing.
I’m actually beginning to wonder, why does Julia want to be PM?
There doesn’t appear to be *any* actual policy that she thinks is worth fighting for.
What a sad and sorry state of affairs. 🙁
hear hear, this “policy” is a monumental FAIL – I have already contacted my (labour) member Nicola Roxon and complained.
What damn good is a group of 150 “Joe Blows” when those who we elect to govern can’t even make a tough decision…. it is COMPLETE AND UTTER CRAP.
There is some irony to the fact that Minchin was just on ABC 24 saying that the greens were a “radical left wing party” and that he “fears for the country” if they are given the balance of power in the Senate… well if it does turn out that way (and I hope that there is backlash on this issue), then HE ONLY HAS HIMSELF TO BLAME.
Words fail to describe how angry I am at the current state of affairs. I did note vote Labour at the last election because I was afraid of workchoices, I voted because KRudd was going to do something about pricing on climate change… what a waste of my vote.
Well John, what do you expect. The main stream media, the LNP and the general commentariat that passes for “journalism” in this country does not want change. We have all contributed to the current situation by giving licence to the media to pore over every word and criticise every aspect that a politician utters. We reward the naysayers. Turnbull beaten by Abbott. What does that say? Rudd assassinated by a vicious media, full of journalists with huge egos trying to get the next scoop. You think Abbott would do better? Don’t think so. The Greens? They will never be in power in their own right. Get used to it. This is democracy.