Category: Politics

What’s stopping the Australian federal government from acting on climate change?

Background: The ‘civics’ part aka the “two party” system:

Dominance in the House of Representatives:

The House of Representatives (aka ‘the Reps.’ which is the ‘lower’ house of the Australian Parliament) presently has 151 members – 76 members required for a majority. Electorates have a small population typically around 100K voters (currently, the smallest, Lingiari, has just 65K electors and the largest, Canberra, has about 144K

Australia’s electoral system uses preferential voting (aka ‘alternative voting’) for elections to both houses of parliament. In the Reps, this system has tended to entrench power in the hands of one of the two dominant parties, the Australian Labor Party (the ALP) & the Liberal/National Parties (a.k.a. ‘Coalition’) as the small population of any electorate has a tendency to dilute a minority party’s voters, ‘cracking’ them amongst seats in such a way that they are seldom likely to win the most votes in any given seat.

Thus either the ALP or the Coalition tend to receive a majority of votes in each seat in the House or Representatives and it is exceedingly rare for the governing party to not hold a majority, occurring only twice since 1943 (the 2010 Gillard & 2018 Morrison governments). Minor party candidates are rarely elected to the House of Representatives – by my count, only 20 minor party or independent candidates have been victorious in seats since 1946.

Irrelevance of the Senate (for the purposes of originating climate change action):

The Upper house (the 76 member Senate) also uses preferential voting but more accurately reflects voters intent (splitting voters into a small number of states rather than 151 districts, a normal election sees votes elect the six candidates with the highest vote share in each state).

However, the senate tends to act as a ‘house of review’ and seldom originates legislation, because:

“…Bills which authorise the spending of money (appropriation bills) and bills imposing taxation cannot originate in the Senate. The Senate may not amend bills imposing taxation and some kinds of appropriation bill, or amend any bill so as to increase any ‘proposed charge or burden on the people’ but it can ask the House to make amendments to these bills…”

Source: APH info sheet 7 – Making Laws

As most effective climate action requires either spending money or imposing a price signal/tax on carbon pollution, the senate is of secondary consideration (although the senate notoriously blocked action on climate change on at least one occasion).

Also, while it is technically possible for Reps legislation to come from a private members bill (bills from backbenchers, minority parties or the opposition) this has rarely happened in practice:

“…Since Federation 30 non-government bills have passed into law—23 introduced by private Members or private Senators and 7 by the Speaker or President of the Senate…”

Source: APH Infosheet 6 – Opportunities for private Members

Only two Private Members bills were adopted in the recent 45th parliament, the first being a bill on Marriage equality by Senator Warren Entsch (a government back-bencher), and the second, the controversial ‘medevac’ bill, passed by parliament in February 2018 against the wishes of the Morrison minority government, the first such loss to a government in the house of representatives since 1929

The usual fate of private members bills is to lapse (dying in committee or having debate deferred) or to be withdrawn. So we can probably discount the possibility of action arising from a private members bill.

And so…

Legislation tends to originate in the Reps, from either one of the dominant parties (ALP or Coalition) whose majority allows them control of the agenda, passing their own bills and closing debate on other bills.

So what influences the dominant parties, and what might be dissuading them from acting more on climate change?

Influences on dominant parties:

Interest groups influencing our two dominant parties can be broken down into:

  1. electorates voters,
  2. external lobbyists.
  3. political parties & ideology

Interest Group1: the voters! (jobs & $ for services):

Revenue – royalties and corporate taxes:

Mining is a major contributor to Federal and State coffers. For example, royalties of over $5 billion for QLD and $1.8 Billion for NSW in 2018 – similar revenue to that attributeable to taxes on the gaming industry.

Federal corporate tax payable for all mining companies with an income over 100M, based on Tax transparency: reporting, seems to be approximately $4 billion in the 2017-2018 financial year. Forgoing all of this revenue would require governments to borrow, implement unpopular service-cuts or new taxes…

While a disincentive, this would not be an insoluble problem (after all, the Carbon tax collected $15.4 billion in revenue in it’s few years in operation) and it seems unlikely to be driving force behind inaction.

Export Income:

Coal is on track to be Australia’s most valuable export in 2018/19, potentially reaching $67 billion, equivalent to 3.5% of nominal GDP.

However, it’s debatable how much benefit Australia is reaping from this trade – our overwhelmingly multinational coal mining companies seem adept at tax minimisation (e.g: Glencore & again Glencore) and while some revenue undoubtably flows into Australians hands via dividends, capital gains in super funds etc, but it’s difficult to determine how much of the earning stay in Australia. For example, some reports suggest that 79% of all Hunter Valley coal mines in 2014 were entirely foreign owned with only two majority Australian owned and only six with any substantial Australian ownership.

Also, it has been argued that huge mining exports may be undermining the rest of the economy (the so-called ‘resource curse’) by keeping the Australian dollar artificially high – here’s the Reserve Bank on the mining boom:

“…It has also led to large changes in relative prices, most noticeably an appreciation of the exchange rate. The combination of changes in income, production and relative prices has meant large changes in the composition of economic activity. While mining, construction and importing industries have boomed, agriculture, manufacturing and other trade-exposed services have declined relative to their expected paths in the absence of the boom…”

Discussion Paper – The Effect of the Mining Boom on the Australian Economy

Employment:

Conservative politicians often stress that coal mining is is a major employer, directly providing 54,000 jobs – the ABS estimates the number as more like 38,100 jobs. To put this in perspective, a single company in banking, Westpac, employs more people in Australia than coal mining.

However, while coal mining is a small employer nationally, it is a significant employer locally concentrated in and around the handful of seats where it operates, directly supporting sizeable portions of the electorate with well-paying jobs and indirectly stimulating employment via economic activity and local-buying programs. By contrast, jobs in renewables (reaching 17,740 in 2017/2018) are likely to be widely dispersed amongst electorates due to the the dominance of rooftop solar in renewable employment.

The following diagrams demonstrate coal minings concentration, and the proportion of registered voters likely to be employed in or otherwise dependent on coal mining (based on an approximation of coal mining jobs situated in-electorate or via population centres in close proximity to mining jobs in neighbouring electorates). I’ve provided estimates of total jobs from industry but rely on lower and more impartial benchmarks for employment ‘multipliers’.

Six seats are held by the Coalition, providing the base of MPs resistant to climate change policies within the Coalition – those wary of losing rural votes while being perceived as ‘anti-coal’. Labor’s wipeout in QLD at the 2019 election is widely attributed to QLD voters voting for job security).

Before the 2019 election, Dawson was a marginal seat held by LNP on a margin of 3.6% but became a safe LNP seat (margin 14.6%) at the 2019 election

Near Dawson, Sonoma Coal mine employs 250 and Newlands Coal mine employs 645 and Drake employs 150. The QLD Resource Council claims that mining provides 4639 full time jobs and 40,000 indirect jobs via ‘flow on benefits’ in the Dawson electorate. A more conservative estimate based on an employment multiplier of 3.9 would suggest 18,000 indirect jobs. This estimate would have approximately 25% of the sub 90K electorate owe their livelihood to mining.

Capricornia, was a marginal seat held by the LNP on 0.6% but became a safe LNP seat (margin 12.4%) at the 2019 election.

In the seat of Capricornia, the QLD Resource council claims that mining provides 7070 direct jobs and 29,000 FT jobs in flow on benefit. Roughly 35% of this 103K electorate owe their livelihood to mining.

Flynn was held by the LNP on a margin of 1.0% but became a fairly safe LNP seat (margin 8.7%) at the 2019 election.

In the seat of Flynn, The QLD Resource council claims that mining provides 8,194 jobs in Flynn and 38,500 FT jobs in flow on benefits. Roughly 45% of the sub 103K electorate owe their livelihood to mining.

New England and Parkes remained very safe LNP seats at the 2019 election.

Between the seats of New England and Parkes, mining provides over 1300 direct jobs and perhaps up to 5200 FT jobs in flow on benefits. Roughly 5.8% of the 112K New England electorate owe their livelihood to mining.

Hunter, a safe Labor seat with a margin of 12.5%, became a marginal Labor seat (3%) after suffering a massive 9.5% swing against Labor in the seat at the 2019 election.

The NSW Resource council claims that mining provides 13,300 jobs in the Hunter Valley (10K verifiable). With a multiplier of 3.9, this would equate to approximately 50K jobs in flow on benefits. Roughly 52% of the 122K electorate make their living based on mining.

While less impacted, coal mining supports significant numbers of people in two more coalition held seats with almost 8% in the seat of Calare and almost 4.5% of the seat of Hume making their living based on coal mining.

Interest Group 2: External Lobbyists(Political Donations and the revolving door)

Politics is an expensive business. Political parties are expensive to run and political campaigns are costly, with both major parties spending more in advertising than they receive in public funding.

The 2016 Federal election is the most recent example for which we have full information for declared income (it can take up to 19 months for donation information to be published: spending & receipts are declared to the AEC by June each year and published by the AEC the following February in it’s Transparency register).

In the 2016 example, the parties declared the following:

At the 2019 election, public funding may deliver $33M for the Coalition and $27M for Labor – approx. $A2.76 per no.1 vote, or $A5.50 if the party is no.1 preference in both houses) – costs are unknown at time of publication.

Membership:

The shortfall is unlikely to be made up by membership dues. It is difficult to know exactly how much membership contributes in undeclared income (memberships are not treated as donations and so not declared to the AEC) but it is likely a small proportion of the whole. Assuming membership numbers below (see next section, ‘Political Party and Ideology’) contributions of $100 per member for both the Coalition and the ALP would yield $8.0M per year for the Coalition and $5.0M per year for the ALP. Income shortfalls are not being made up by members dues and the parties are soliciting donations from different sources.

Political Donations: Declared Income:

 “…the amount over which donations must be disclosed, under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 is Consumer Price Index (CPI)-indexed and from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019 is $13,800…”

Source: Election funding and disclosure in Australian states and territories: a quick guide

Declared income represents only a fraction of total income (it is difficult to get an accurate picture of the scale of donations to each party as much of party income is not declared). As Hannah Aulby puts it in her 2017 publicaton: tip of the iceberg: Political donations from the mining industry:

“…Hiding political donations is not difficult, for example by donating multiple times below the $13,000 threshold. Scrutiny can further be avoided by donating through associated entities, or by payments to attend a party fundraising events…”

Source: Hannah Aulby, The tip of the iceberg: Political donations from the mining industry

Some more recent methods involve dubious new membership classes that appear to have been created to get around donation laws.

Undeclared Income:

Declared income is a diminishing share of the parties total income (in 2013-14, for example, only 25% of the Liberal party’s total income of $78.6m came from declared donations. For the ALP, only $11.6m of its total income of $46.3m came from declared donations).

I’ve been unable to locate total income figures for the parties for other years, but a recent Grattan foundation report estimated that Parties received more than $100 million from undisclosed sources in the two financial years spanning the 2016 federal election.

Quid Pro Quo:

Those making either transparent or less visible contributions want something back for that donation – for example, the industry lobby group The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) saying that they donate money to get access to politicians. With access comes influence. As Andrew Michelmore, MCA Chairman, boasted in it’s 2013 annual report:

“…The MCA was at the forefront of the debates over the carbon and mining taxes; and their abolition (expected after July 2014) will be in no small part due to the council’s determined advocacy on both issues…” – Minerals Council of Australia

Source: 2013 Annual Report, ‘Chairman’s review’.

Hannah Aulby has a good illustration of disclosed donations made to achieve policy outcomes, spiking with the election cycle. Over 81% of these donations went to the Coalition that advocated for regulation and taxation of mining companies.

Source: The tip of the iceberg Political donations from the mining industry

In 2016-17, mining companies declared donatations of $968,343 to the main parties. Aulby also notes that declared political donations are just part of a much larger budget the mining industry uses to exert influence (with many industry groups, like the MCA, able to outspend political parties in advocacy of their interests).

The MCA continues to influence both sides of politics, with Figures like the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg quoting MCA fact sheets in 2015 to state the ‘moral case’ for coal, and the Coalition including a HELE coal plant for consideration is required in North Queensland.

A small number of donors can wield a disproportionate influence on policy – just 5 per cent of donors contributed more than half of the big parties’ declared donations at the 2016 federal election.

The Revolving Door:

Another method of influence comes from the rotation of staff from industry -> Parliament –> back to industry. The Grattan institute looked at the lobbyist register and stated that, in 2018, 36% of Lobbyists had spent time in Government (figure 2.5).

“…more than one-quarter of politicians go on to post-politics jobs for special interests, where their relationships can help open doors…”

Source: Who’s in the room? Access and influence in Australian politics
by Danielle Wood and Kate Griffiths

Technically, ‘Ministerial standards prevent former ministers from lobbying or holding business meetings with members of the government, parliament, public service or defence force on any matter for which they held ministerial responsibility for 18 months after leaving parliament’ but these standards are rather flexibly enforced and do not cover other staffers.

Interest Group 3: Political party & ideology

A narrow base:

Both the ALP and the Coalition have a narrow membership base (party officials state that the Liberal membership is 80,000 members across Australia with their coalition partner, the Nationals, ‘in the tens of thousands’. Labor states that they have 50,000 members, and the Greens approximately 12000 members). Back in 2013, News site crikey suggested that membership numbers were much lower than the parties wanted to admit.

This narrow membership base makes the parties more susceptible to capture. With small numbers of people involved in individual branches, small changes in membership have can have larger effects.

On both sides of politics, special interests and ideologues, more motivated to join a political party than the population at large, can capture a particular party branch and acquire the power to pre-select candidates and influence policy.

Unrepresentative representation:

In the Coalition case, capture has led to promotion of views outside those held by the community at large, and delayed action.

Example 1: Australia’s views on same-sex marriage were closely balanced (with a plurality opposed) in 2004 when the conservative government legislated to prevent same-sex marriage with the “Marriage Amendment Bill 2004 “. Shortly thereafter, public opinion shifted emphatically, with a majority in favour of same sex marriage.

Conservatives spent the next 13 years attempting to prevent popular will from being implemented. Several bills supporting same sex marriage were defeated, often with refusal to allow MPs a conscience vote to prevent them passing. Delaying tactics included the mendacious insistence that any change would require a referendum or plebiscite (at some point in the distant future) despite the 2004 change having been made without one. When a plebiscite was scheduled, a number of conservative members of government stated they would not respect the result of the plebiscite if it supported same sex marriage. When a plebiscite was held in 2017, the public duly voted in line with ten years polling, favouring changing the law 6l.6% to 38.4% against. Only then was a change to the law able to pass.

Example 2: In the case of climate change, unrepresentative representation continues to thwart response to climate change even as 61% say ‘global warming is a serious and pressing problem [and] we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs.

Ideology:

But why has conservative politics in Australia embraced climate denialism? There most prosaic reason for the Coalition slow-walk on climate action might be One Nation. Aligning climate change policy with parties such as One Nation mitigates the danger of Coalition voters bleeding away to the fringe right (One Nation scored 3.1% of the primary vote nationwide in the 2019 election). This, together with coal jobs, might explain the stance in QLD, however it doesn’t seem sufficient to explain it nationally, given that aligning policy with One Nation also costs the Coalition mainstream votes in other states.

Tim Dean argues that to conservatives, climate change is not about science or economics. To conservatives, climate change is a moral issue. The Conversation proposed that:

“…people’s motivations prevent them from attending to and perceiving climate change evidence accurately, which influences their subsequent actions. Specifically, conservatives may focus selectively on climate data that confirm their beliefs, leading to inaction on mitigating climate change…”

Source: https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-why-are-climate-change-skeptics-often-right-wing-conservatives-123549

or as Malcolm Turnbull put it, after being deposed for the second time:

“a factual matter has become an issue of identify… climate denialism started to take root initially in the United States and what should have been, again, been a practical issue of… taking insurance became one of identity instead of fact…”

Source: Former PM and Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull on climate denialism

A psychologist might argue that it as a case of plan-continuation-bias whereby the government will believe anything that allows them to maintain a pretence that their current plan (do as little as possible) is working, discounting all contrary evidence. In short, they just can’t help themselves – as former PM Turnbull puts it:

“…Like somebody who is told by their physician that they should lose weight, stop smoking, eat a better, healthier diet and says no, I won’t do that because I was talking to a guy down at the pub and his uncle Ernie smoked a carton of cigarettes a day and drank a dozen schooners and ate meat pies and lived to ninety… that’s essentially where we’ve got to…”

Source: Former PM and Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull on climate denialism

This explanation fits neatly with Scott Morrison’s contorted response to the unprecedented bushfire season (nothing to do with climate change, move along, move along).

Regardless of why it has happened conservatives in Australia and the USA have signalled that acting on climate change is akin to capitulating to progressives. The Coalition have twice torn themselves apart over the issue, deposing a leader, while they were in opposition for supporting Labors climate action plan, the ETS, and dumping a PM Turnbull, while in government for pushing even modest climate policy, even after he dumped the policy to stave off a leadership revolt.

“…This is coal…don’t be afraid…”

The battle being waged within the Liberal party between moderates and conservatives will continue. The conservative faction so far appearing the more ruthless (having proved willing to destroy a party candidate and threatened to damage the party unless they get their way. They’re even willing to endanger the parties electoral chances rather than seeing the moderate faction win.

I’m not going to go into branch stacking here – examples of the practice are easy to find, for both the ALP and the Coalition, come by. However, it is worrying that fringe figures are explicitly attempting to infiltrate the Coalition, one of our two dominant parties.

Haha! Coal is funny!

The public at large needs to catch-up – the mainstream needs to recapture their parties.

What can we do?

Transition away from coal, replacing coal mining jobs:

We need a plan transition away from coal domestically and for export and to replace (rather than eliminate) the jobs in coal mining areas. We could do worse than emulating Germany’s phased and orderly example by providing both workers and industry certainty and the lead time necessary to plan the transition to viable alternative employments. Given the size of the coal mining industry in the communities in which it operates, this will likely involve significant support and a longer transition than that provided to in other transition plans.

The Greens announced such a policy (with an aggressive 2030 timeline) but both major parties seem wary of the political cost.

There are enormous opportunities for transition, particularly with some government support. One example:

“…Australia is by far the world’s largest exporter of iron ore and aluminium ores. In the main they are processed overseas, but in the post-carbon world we will be best positioned to turn them into zero-emission iron and aluminium… converting one quarter of Australian iron oxide and half of aluminium oxide exports to metal would add more value and jobs than current coal and gas combined…”

Ross Garnaut, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-06/australia-could-fall-apart-climate-change-theres-a-way-to-avoid/11673836

Our coal-mining regions have space and a ready supply of heavy transport infrastructure, along with an abundance of solar and wind power potential. If we move fast, Australia would be well placed to lead the electrification of smelting and replace any loss in coal jobs.

Reform Donations law and police the law:

We should follow George William’s advice:

“…in addition to banning foreign donations, the federal government should adopt a NSW-style electoral finance system with caps of $5,000 on donations, real time disclosure and caps on political expenditure…”

Source: George Williams, Dean of the University of New South Wales’ law school

Limiting or eliminating donations by special interests and providing transparency is great, but we also need a Federal anti-corruption body to police politicians and lobbyists and to punish those working around the donation laws.

Stick a spanner in the revolving door:

Ministerial standards on lobbying and working with industry could be legislated, and policed by the new Federal anti-corruption body (not holding breath for this one).

Political party – Capture:

The main action I’m suggesting here is ‘participate more fully in your democracy – join a political party’. If the base membership of our major political parties grows substantially enough, the parties will inevitably be more representative and harder to capture.

Political party – Ideology:

“…It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it…”

Upton Sinclair

Respond to the conservative fears on climate change and identify outcomes of mitigation efforts that climate change deniers find important. People have strong interests in the welfare of their society, so deniers may act in ways supporting mitigation efforts where they believe these efforts will have positive societal effects the fears include:

1. We’re only a small contributor to emissions –

“…Although Australia contributes only 1.4 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions we want to play our part in meeting this challenge. But pulling our weight does not mean carrying more than our share of the burden. Only with all countries working together, carrying equitable burdens, can we achieve an effective global outcome…”

Source: John Howard Speech to Parliament 1997: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22chamber/hansardr/1997-11-20/0016%22

This is the ‘collective action’ problem. Why should we act when we can only contribute a fraction of the problem. This is a fair point although a little sophistic as the picture is less flattering if we consider Australia’s emissions per capita, where we are a much bigger contributor.

However, there are gains to be found in reducing carbon pollution, even unilaterally. For one, reducing carbon pollution and air pollution are closely related, with many pollutants entering the atmosphere due to burning of fossil fuels. The WHO states that approximately 7 million premature deaths occur annually due to the effects of air pollution, so tackling this would both positively effect community health and reduce health expenditure (& incidentally strengthens our position when negotiating carbon reductions with other nations)

If everyone waits for someone else to act first, everyone will suffer – but Australia will suffer disproportionately highly..

2. Action will have too big an impact on the economy.

“…The benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs…Mitigation – taking strong action to reduce emissions – must be viewed as an investment, a cost incurred now and in the coming few decades to avoid the risks of very severe consequences in the future. If these investments are made wisely, the costs will be manageable, and there will be a wide range of opportunities for growth and development along the way…”

Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Matthew_Turner/ec1340/readings/Sternreview_full.pdf

This argument has been dealt with above. Coal mining is not a large employer nationally, its economic output not irreplaceable. A carefully planned and phased approach would help both industry and workers transition with minimal disruption, and there are economic opportunities to be grasped that are far more substantial than coal.

Failing to act promises to be far more impactful and disruptive.

“…While the science is clear that any delay in implementing effective and substantial mitigation measures increases the risks of damaging climate change, it is also clear that the costs of mitigation will be higher the longer we wait. Acting early enables businesses and industries to adjust gradually to make the transition to a low–carbon economy, with time for new technologies to emerge and compete to replace old carbon–intensive technologies…”

Dr Julia Styles, Climate change: the case for action

3. We’re a special case:

“…Our economy has evolved on the basis of our abundant supply of natural resources and efficient production and processing of fossil fuels and mineral resources. Fossil fuels currently provide 94 per cent of our energy needs—far more than that of any other OECD country...We will continue to experience stronger economic and employment growth than most OECD countries… Our cities are decentralised and widely separated, resulting in high transport use per capita compared to the smaller, closely populated European Union countries…”

Source: John Howard Speech to Parliament 1997: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22chamber/hansardr/1997-11-20/0016%22

We’re not that special. Other countries with similar issues been making the same case – examples:

  • Canada is a similarly geographically large country, has similar energy consumption and economic contributions from energy exports (for Canada, oil rather than coal).
    Yet Canada set more ambitious emissions targets (30% below 2005 levels, rather than 26-28% and set a long term goal of 80% reduction in net emissions by 2050 (Australia has not set a longer term goal)
  • Indonesia, who export almost as much coal as Australia – have a slightly more aggressive unconditional Paris target 29% below 2005 levels by 2030

We are special in some ways – we are among the group of countries likely to be most impacted by climate change.

Sources:

See also: A summary of Australian in-action on climate change

A goal without a plan is just a wish: A history of climate Change (in)action in Australia

Source: Australian Greenhouse Emissions Information System, Department of the Environment and Energy & with thanks to Dr. Alastair Fraser’s blog for the inspiration…

The Early Years:

Climate change began garnering scientific, media and public attention in Australia in the mid 80s…

Following two major climate change conferences and community forums organised first by the CSIRO in 1987 and again, along with the federal Commission for the Future, in 1988, a study called the Australian public the best informed on the planet on this topic. This was also stated publicly at a United Nations’ Global 500 Award ceremony during that period.

Source: Global Warming and Climate Change – what Australia knew and buried… by Maria Taylor.pdf

So what, exactly, has been the Australian federal government’s response over the past thirty plus years?

1984-1991 – Wait and see – The Hawke government and Liberal opposition:

Ex-science minister Barry Jones claimed that the Hawke Government knew about the risks of climate change in 1984 but did little about them). However, both public and politicians began taking more notice of Climate change around the publication of the first UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a.k.a. IPCC) report in 1990

Both sides of politics saw the need to act (or at least be seen to be act). In October 1990 the Hawke Labor Government adopted a ‘interim planning’ emissions reduction target aiming to lower greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 1988 levels by 2005. This came with a soon-to-be-familiar-caveat that:

“…the Government will not proceed with measures which have net adverse economic impacts nationally or on Australia’s trade competitiveness in the absence of similar action by major greenhouse gas producing countries.”

Source: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/media/pressrel/2209922/upload_binary/2209922.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22media/pressrel/2209922%22

The Liberal Party opposition (under leaders Andrew Peacock and John Hewson) went to the next two elections with a comparable reduction target, even committing to cutting greenhouse gas emissions sooner (by at least 20 per cent by 2000 if they won office).

‘Other’ things to worry about – The Keating Government (1991-1996)

By 1991, the Labor Government had a new leader, Paul Keating, and a recession had pushed climate change to the back of both voters and politicians minds.

Australia signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Rio in 1992 (where Australia was the only OECD country not to send their Head of government), and considered a Carbon Tax, but took little action, sticking with Hawke’s “no regrets” policy. Australia would continue to consider only measures that involved cutting emissions without any adverse impact on the economy or trade competitiveness.

The Denial years: The Howard government (1996-2007)

The Howard Liberal Government succeeded Keating in 1996 and begun the Australian conservative pattern of being actively hostile to climate action (while being aware of the need to be seen to act).

In his “Safeguarding the Future: Australia’s Response to Climate Change” initiative in 1997, the Howard Government announced measures intended to slow the growth of emissions from 28% to 18% by 2010 (based on 1990 figures). Further action was limited, with the government committing $A180 million over five years (annual whole of government expenditure at the time being around $A200 billion) to seed a renewable energy innovation fund and to obliging electricity providers to generate an additional 2% of electricity to be sourced from renewable sources (by 2010).

The clear lack of ambition was bad, but the sabotage of global action was worse. The Howard government attended the December 1997 Climate conference in Kyoto, but argued that Australia was a special case, and should be allowed to increase its emissions when almost everyone else* was committing to cutting emissions (*Iceland, 10% and Norway, 1% also argued that they should be allowed to increase emissions).

At the end of the summit, Australia’s lead negotiator, Robert Hill, demanded a last minute change so that Australia could include land clearing in emissions accounting, artificially inflating Australia’s starting emission number:

“…Hill knew that land clearing in Australia had declined sharply between 1990 and 1997 because there had been a spike in 1990, mainly in Queensland. So an 8% increase would be on top of an extraordinarily high and artificial 1990 base.
Hill understood that with the inclusion of the Australia clause, the nation’s emissions from burning fossil fuels could rise by 25-30% while overall emissions would still come in at under 8%”

Source: https://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target-but-it-was-more-a-three-inch-putt-than-a-hole-in-one-44731

After setting a woeful target, Australia signed and then refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol. This made the target aspirational and not legally binding. The familiar logic behind the move, articulated by the PM:

“…It is not in Australia’s interests to ratify the Kyoto protocol. The reason it is not in Australia’s interests to ratify the Kyoto protocol is that, because the arrangements currently exclude—and are likely under present settings to continue to exclude—both developing countries and the United States, for us to ratify the protocol would cost us jobs and damage our industry…”

Source: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22chamber/hansardr/2002-06-05/0030%22

In April 2001 the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target scheme (MRET) started, incorporating the Prime Minister’s 1997 pledge on renewable energy production. By 2002, Australia’s share of renewables in energy production had increased from roughly 6% in 1997 yo 7.9%. No further target was announced.

Little other action was taken. Emission trading schemes (ETS) proposals came and went until the 2007 election, when the long running Millennium drought presence across south-eastern Australia made it expedient for both parties to rediscover the importance of the climate issue. The Howard government was defeated at the 2007 election, in part, due to the more ambitious climate change proposals by the Rudd Labor opposition).

Warfare: The Rudd (2007-2010) / Gillard (2010-2013) Labor governments and the Turnbull / Abbott opposition

The Rudd Labor government succeeded Howard in 2007 describing climate change as “the great moral challenge of our generation”.

They ratified the Kyoto protocol (committing Australia to keeping emissions to no more than 108% of its 1990 emissions level by 2012) but kept the dodgy LULUCF accounting treatment.

They introduced the Clean Energy Initiative, a $A4.5 Billion scheme with $A1.6Billion for solar to add an additional 1,000 MW of solar generation capacity and and 465 million to establish Renewables Australia to support leading-edge technology research. However, over half was dedicated to Coal Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) which has a long history of failure.

Rudd tried, and failed, to get an Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) through parliament. The left aligned Greens Party notoriously didn’t support the ETS policy, objecting that the targets were too modest. This left the Opposition Liberal Party, which had somewhat unenthusiastically promoted their plans to introduce their own ETS at the preceding election. Their leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who had managed to successfully amend the Labor ETS policy, was then deposed by his party, rather than support Labor’s ETS. The new opposition Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, characterised the ETS as a “Great big tax” on everything, and the legislation was voted down in 2009 and not pursued further by the Rudd government.

In 2009, the government increased the Renewable energy target, targeting 20% of Australia’s electricity to be provided from renewable sources (setting a target of 45 000 GWh).

Fast forward through a Labor leadership change and a closely fought election…

In 2011 the Gillard Labor government, supported by the greens party, introduced a Carbon tax in 2011 (the Clean Energy Act 2011) which came into effect on 1 July 2012 and operated until it was repealed in June 2014.

In 2012 it created the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) a fund dedicated to investing in clean energy.

The limited evidence we have (given that the carbon tax only operated for two years) suggests that both of these initiatives had some effect. Graph showing a drop in emissions during the carbon tax period

Source: Department of the Environment and Energy

What problem? The Abbott years (2013-2015):

The new Liberal Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, had deposed his liberal party predecessor and fought an election on the premise that the “cost” of fighting climate change was not worth it. Abbott had espoused the view that the science around climate change is “absolute crap.”

“…The argument is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. 80 per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger. ..”

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/the-town-that-turned-up-the-temperature/story-e6frgczf-1225809567009

Australia was back to wanting to be seen to be doing something while, in actuality, doing little and minimising the cost and disruption to industry.

Previous policies were replaced by the “Direct Action” program, which offered $A3 billion in incentives for business and consumers to reduce emissions to 5% below 2000 level. Modelling suggested that it was unlikely to achieve even the 5% emissions target, but no revisions were countenanced. The policy was criticised by the former Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who observed that it involved spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars to pay farmers to create offsets so industry could freely pollute.

A number of editorials have examined the effectiveness and cost of the Direct Action scheme and pointed out further problems:

  • vegetation projects (regenerating degraded habitat, tree-planting etc.) expected to deliver two-thirds of the cuts have problems:
    • The permanance period of 25-100 years assumed in the contracts are optimistic (in a land of frequent and increasingly severe bushfires and droughts).
    • accuracy – there is no way of knowing if “avoided deforestation” schemes (in which landowners are paid to not clear their land) are genuinely preventing land clearing.
    • Inefficiency: in some cases, it would have been cheaper to buy the land rather than pay landowners to protect it

In any case, the Abbott Government had a new policy and immediately began with legislation to dismantle the previous government’s policies, beginning with the repeal of the Carbon Tax (a.k.a. the Clean Energy Act 2011) and it announced its intention to shut down the government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The incoming Treasurer, Joe Hockey ordered the CEFC to cease investments. The new Environment minister announced plans to dismantle the Climate Change Authority (CCA).

After a number of attempts, The Clean energy act (2011) was successfully repealed in June 2014 ending the carbon tax period. The Climate Change Authority and Clean Energy Finance Corporation CEFC proved more resilient, with bills for their abolition voted down three times.

Unable to abolish the profitable and effective CEFC, Abbott announced in July 2015 that he would ban the CEFC from investing in wind power and rooftop solar.

In 2015, after negotiation with the Labor opposition, a new Renewable Energy Target was released. The RET is reduced to 33,000 gigawatt hours, or 23.5%, of the estimated electricity generation for 2020 (reduced from the previous 45 000 GWh) 

In it’s final report in 2015 the CCA had recommended a 2025 target of 30% below 2000 levels. The Abbott Government subsequently announced it’s Paris post-2020 target, matching the USA’s commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030, but without legislation to enforce it.

Lost years – Malcolm Turnbull 2015-2018

The liberal party dumps Tony Abbott and elects a new leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who Abbot had previously deposed for supporting emissions trading whilst in opposition. Turnbull won the leadership, but was wary of conservatives in his party and obliged to continue previous policies while pushing for smaller, incremental change.

In September 2016 two tornadoes tore through SA, bringing down two high voltages transmission lines and causing several failures across the transmission network.  The ABC provides a great summary of events: as faults grew, output from nine wind-farms in SA fell by 456 megawatts over a period of less than seven seconds as protection features at the wind farms kicked in. When the wind farms unexpectedly reduced their output, the Heywood Interconnector from Victoria tried to make-up the transmission shortfall, and then subsequently activated a special protection scheme that tripped it offline.

Blackouts ensued. Conservatives blamed ‘unreliable’ renewable energy and supporters of renewables blamed the storm and Australian Energy Market regulator. After this, any path to emission reduction also needed to reassure that renewable energy could deliver reliability.

Consumers were also seething that power prices that had been rising inexorably, across the country.

Prime Minister Turnbull’s response was the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) which was aimed to delivering cheaper, more reliable power and also lowering carbon emissions. The policy was supported by the cabinet, but enough backbenchers rebelled that the policy was in doubt. Turnbull was stuck between the Labor opposition (who wanted a higher emissions reductions targets and no support for additional coal generation) and conservatives backbenchers in his own party who were aghast that the NEG intended to legislate for carbon emissions reductions… and who also wanted support for additional coal generation.

The Liberal leadership was soon again in doubt. By the end of August, Turnbull had shelved any move to implement the 26% reduction in emissions because it could not get the numbers to pass legislation in the House of Representatives. Another leadership spill ensued, and by September 2018 a new leader, Scott Morrison, led the Liberal party.

Nothing to see here – move along – Scott Morrison 2018 ->

Morrison supported the 26% Paris climate goals, but not in such a way that might make them enforceable. In language that is very familiar to Australian’s he noted:

“…Our commitment stands, but we won’t be legislating it…” & “…The NEG is dead, long live reliability guarantee, long live default prices, long live backing new power generation…”

Source: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/neg-dead-morrison-to-ditch-energy-legislation-but-keep-paris-targets

In an interview with Alan Jones early in his tenure he continued to insist, that Australia would meet it’s Paris agreement goals, saying “We met the first round of targets at a canter and this next one is out to 2030. Now, that discussion isn’t going to change anybody’s electricity prices, and that’s what I’m focused on.”

The only remaining Federal programs aimed at emission reductions were now the government’s Abbott-era emissions reduction program “Emissions reduction fund (ERF)” and the RET. This ERT was rebranded as the “Climate Solutions Fund” and it was provided an additional $2B in funding, despite having not spent its existing budget and despite emission abatements based on the program appearing to have flatlined.

In September 2019, Australia reached the diminished Renewable Energy Target of 33000 GWh of renewable generation (out of 260,000 GWh), ending a Federal government scheme that provided subsidies to wind, solar and hydro power projects. No further federal target has been announced.

Not-so-great-expectations, as at Dec 2019:

The current Federal liberal government exhibits behaviour that suggests that it is aware of the potency of the issue of Climate change, even as they dispute the urgency or the science (see ipcc 2018 summary for policymakers Projected Climate Change, Potential Impacts and Associated Risks). Some examples of recent government behaviour supporting this assertion:

  1. Cynical timing in releasing climate data on Christmas eve, before football finals (and while the Banking royal commission was delivering his interim findings into the financial services industry or seeking to avoid releasing the data at all
  2. The PM’s response to a furious speech by Swedish environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg at the United Nations Climate Summit, implying that people had lost ‘context’ and ‘perspective’, and had subjected their kids (like Greta) to ‘needless’ anxiety
  3. The PM’s response in Parliament when told of school students participating in a climate-strike “What we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools.”
  4. The PM threatening that the government would seek to apply penalties to those targeting businesses who provide services to the resources industry, highlighting the “worrying development” of environmental groups targeting businesses or firms involved in the mining sector with “secondary boycotts”.
  5. Attempting to divert commentary regarding the link between climate change and the frequency and severity of drought and fires (implying the fires were due to ‘eco tourism’ was somehow blocking parks management of fire fuel load) and castigating those who raised the link on the grounds that Australia only accounts for 1.3% of global emissions. Worth reiterating that scientists have been making this link for over 20 years: e.g. the CSIRO in 1995 “…any impacts of climate change are likely to be experienced firstly, and most significantly, in terms of changes in the frequency and magnitude of extreme events, namely floods and droughts..” & CSIRO in a 2005 study assessing potential changes from fire-weather risk, associated with climate change in south-east Australia)
  6. Senior government figures like Liberal MP Katie Allen & Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor touting ‘success’ in lowering emissions using falling “Emissions per capita” to a domestic audience (progress against Kyoto & Paris targets are measured in total emissions) whilst simultaneously using Australia’s low share of total emissions to international audiences to justify Australia’s reticence to act (Australia is the top few per-capita emitters in the world but accounts for just 1.3% of total emissions).
  7. Their insistence that nothing more needs to be done, despite evidence to the contrary: emissions reduction based on the ERF program appearing to have flatlined and tje government is relying on LULUCF to show emissions abatement (they’ve been offsetting rising emissions in other areas since 2014-2015)…

    But further abatement may not be possible, based on the forecasts:

Source: Department of the Environment and Energy – Australia’s emissions projections 2018 figure 14

Tellingly, the government continues to insist that it is meeting it’s Kyoto Period2 target because it is under the total cumulative budget for the period (4488 MTCO2, 2013-2020). However, it omits embarrassing contextual information, such as:

  • that the trend is going in the wrong direction – Australia will finish the Kyoto2 period exceeding the desired level, 524Mt CO2 annual emissions (5 per cent below 2000 levels) in 2018 and forecast to do so again in 2019 and 2020).
  • that we are only meeting the target because years early in the decade came in under budget (such as two years where a carbon tax was in operation!)
  • we’ve even used accounting tricks, such as a “carry-over” credit of 128 Mt CO2 for ‘over-achieving’ on the modest Kyoto 1 period, to meet the target.
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-16/fact-check-analysis-emissions-morrison-taylor/11020106

All of this is setting Australia up for an epic fail for the Paris 2030 targets:

Source: Department of the Environment and Energy – Australia’s emissions projections 2018 figure 15

The Future:

Clearly the trend line is going in the wrong direction. The Federal government is ominously silent about how it will meet the Paris 26-28% 2030 target, and it’s worth reiterating that this was an inadequate target in the first place: The Latest UN IPCC report states that Global emissions must fall by 7.6% every year from now until 2030 to stay within the 1.5C ceiling on temperature rises that scientists say is necessary to avoid disastrous consequences:

“…Our collective failure to act early and hard on climate change means we must now deliver deep cuts to emissions [of] over 7% each year, if we break it down evenly over the next decade. This shows that countries simply cannot wait…”

Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/26/united-nations-global-effort-cut-emissions-stop-climate-chaos-2030

Well… this is all a bit depressing… but what can we do?

Fortunately, the policy constipation only seems to be afflicting the Federal government. almost all the states and territory governments in Australia are acknowledging the need to do more and are, in many cases, both planning and opening their wallets to pick-up slack from their federal counterparts:

Australian households are also playing their part. Australia has the highest proportion of households with PV systems on their roof of any country in the world and installations are growing rapidly, with falling costs and state subsidies boosting the number of solar and battery installations. In fact, solar uptake has been so rapid that it’s created other issues for the Australian Power Distribution network service providers to solve.

Lastly, governments do change. The last government to obstruct the public’s desires to act on climate change during the millennium drought didn’t do so well in the 2007 Election (the Prime Minister at the time, John Howard, being the second Prime Minister to lose their own seat at an election). If they are paying attention, then the public is again getting increasingly restless for action…

For More information:

The Australian Parliamentary Library has a comprehensive history of Australian policy action on climate change: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1516/Climate2015

& Australia and Greenhouse Policy- A Chronology

Source Data for graphs from: