The current claim
Amid unseasonal fires in Queensland, climate change has once more become the focus of political debate.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has again suggested the Coalition government — through its own hard work and policies — turned around Australia’s poor record on greenhouse gas emissions that it inherited from the former Labor government.
On Monday, he told parliament:
When we came to government we were going to miss … [the second Kyoto target] by some 700 million tonnes of abatement. What is going to happen now? We are going to exceed meeting those targets by 367 million tonnes. There has been over a billion tonne turnaround as a result of the policies that this government has put in place over the last six years to ensure that we are meeting and we are beating our emissions reduction targets.
He made a similar comment on Wednesday, telling parliament: “When we came to government there was a 700 million-tonne deficit when it came to meeting our 2020 Kyoto targets, and we set to work immediately and turned that around, and we will now exceed the Kyoto 2020 targets by 367 million tonnes.”
And on Thursday, Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor repeated the claim in parliament once again:
… when we came to office, we inherited a budget deficit [and] we also inherited an emissions deficit against our obligations of over 700 million tonnes, speaker. And because of the work of this government, we are now on track to reach our 2020 Kyoto obligations, over-achieve those obligations, by 367 million tonnes. That is a 1.1 billion tonne turnaround.
Previous claims
This is not the first time senior government ministers have made this claim.
In an interview on ABC’s Insiders in March, Taylor said when the Coalition came to power it inherited a 755 million tonne emissions “deficit” needed to reach Australia’s second Kyoto target because Labor “hadn’t done the hard work”.
“We have turned that around by 1.1 billion tonnes,” he said.
“They [Labor] hadn’t got to the point where we were going to meet Kyoto. We will reach Kyoto in a canter.”
Why these claims are misleading
Fact Check previously examined this claim and found it to be misleading.
Among other things, the so-called emissions “deficit” referred to by Morrison was taken from an October 2012 report, and merely represented a forecast of the greenhouse gas reductions needed to hit Australia’s 2020 target at that time.
Soon after the Coalition came to office, it became apparent that emissions under Labor’s carbon tax had been lower than expected in a report released in September 2013, which superseded the 2012 report.
The department also for the first time factored in a significant “carryover” from the overachievement of the first Kyoto period.
Since then, emissions have been lower than anticipated as a result of soaring power prices, the states’ adoption of renewable energy and the closure of coal-fired power stations, including Victoria’s Hazelwood plant.
Coalition policies have only played a relatively minor role.
The bottom line is, when it comes to achieving Australia’s 2020 Kyoto target, the Coalition actually “inherited” a relatively strong position from Labor.
In 2013 and 2014, when Labor’s carbon tax was still in force, Australia was significantly ahead of the target for those years.
Over time, as emissions under the Coalition have steadily risen, the gap between actual emissions and the target has gradually narrowed.
As experts noted in our previous fact check, the Coalition’s “direct action” fund did achieve some abatement at a reasonable price, but a comparatively modest amount.
For these reasons, Fact Check judges the claim repeated by Morrison this week once again to be misleading.
Well, surprise surprise!
Every time Morrison says something, it is either untrue or irrelevant or both.
Problem is many will believe him. Not everyone reads a fact check. Now if he was the CEO of Westpac and lied to shareholders he would be facing civil and/or criminal action. But as the leader of our country he is able to lie to the Australian people without any consequence at all.
Hear, hear! Not only will no one get to know about this lying, but most will be told that it was “truth”, thereby confirming their opinion that they voted for the right kind of government (if they did so vote), and confusing a whole lot of others who might have thought that the “saviour from the shire” was a liar. The sheer weight of propaganda put out by the MSM and its co-opted ABC now completely outweighs any “fact check” you might do. All the government has to say is “fake news”, just the like great Orange one. Apparently this tactic (with a little clandestine help from various shadowy organisations on social media) works wonders, and therefore this news outlet and its fact check are rapidly becoming redundant.
Is “Misleading Parliament” an Olympic event?
By ‘misleading’ I assume you mean false, and a lie.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s correctness in endorsing a carbon tax is now being resoundingly confirmed. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s carbon levy “breach of promise” was the sort of “breach of promise” we need more of.
Firstly China (a big player) is to do so (denialists wanted the biggest to act before us; because they stopped us acting first, the biggest have). It was the view of twelve senior European and American economists and scientists that the carbon levy would “put Australia in the vanguard of the development of low-carbon technologies”. A sunrise industry abbott worked hard to destroy.
Secondly, not least, in making polluters not only pay but have the compensation paid by business to households. Polluter billions also reduced the Demon Deficit.
Thirdly, not least, it worked – in contrast to ever since, emissions fell. Pitt&Sherry’s energy analyst found that in its two years of life (2010-2013), emissions from electricity generation fell an exceptional 10.6%, while in next 21 months they’d climbed 5.6%. An abrupt change in the mix of electricity generation “away from hydro and back to brown and black coal as removal of the carbon price changed the relative costs”. What a surprise!
Rabid Right ideologues should have welcomed Gillard Labor’s carbon pricing, it being a classic price signal. Big Energy indicated at the COP21 Paris Environment summit, and since, that it accepts the need for decarbonisation. That it seeks a market-based mechanism to avoid regulation is only to be expected.
Under Prime Minister Julia Gillard we were leaders, now we are just followers, with our stupid politicians regularly embarrassed by Chinese action on global heating that trips them into piles of manure. Is current Energy Ministerial nonentity out there shovelling away the mountains of plastic rubbish?