Greens push for clean air laws as Abbott hails “bulldozer” economy

Two political party launches on the weekend gave an insight into two visions of how the Australian economy might evolve in coming years. To put it simply, one was based on clean energy, and clean air, and the other was not.

The Greens made their official campaign launch in an event all but ignored by the mainstream media, which is extraordinary given that the party has had a key role to play in a minority government over the last three years, and played a key role in some of the most important legislation – the carbon price and the creation of the Climate Change Authority, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and the Clean Energy Finance Corp.

On Saturday, Greens Leader Christine Milne added a “clean air act” to her policy suite, which includes emissions reductions targets of up to 40 per cent by 2020, and a 90 per cent renewables target by 2030. The clean air act will ensure things like coal wagons are properly covered to

No doubt, the mainstream parties will lump this latest policy initiative as an example of the Greens “extremism” and “marginal” policies – but clean air initiatives are mainstream policies in the world’s largest economies – the US, China, and Europe.

Tony Abbott, meanwhile, said he wants to be known as an “infrastructure prime minister who puts bulldozers on the ground and cranes into our skies”, and for building lots and lots of roads.

But that equipment will clearly not be used to build wind farms or solar farms, if it can possibly be avoided. Abbott’s received one of his biggest cheers when he repeated his vow to stop funding from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation on day one of his election. Rather than providing loans to building wind farms and solar farms, an Abbott government would provide loans to apprentices instead.

His choice of words on the CEFC was interesting. Abbott said the CEFC would be required to “cease making non-commercial loans with taxpayers’ money.” So far, almost all of the $500 million allocated by CEFC have been on a commercial basis – as it needs to be to satisfy its mandate.

In any case, a Coalition government can’t make the CEFC stop work just by shouting at it. It needs to rescind its mandate through an act of parliament, and the Coalition will not have a majority in the Senate until July 1 next year, if at all. Still, it’s not entirely clear that a decimated Labor would stand in the way of the Coalition policies, now that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said that Labor did not have a mandate to introduced the fixed carbon price in the first place.

Still, it’s ironic and somewhat disturbing that the Coalition should get a cheer to bring clean energy funding program to a halt.

The Coalition and their boosters like to dismiss the ambitious renewable energy and low carbon policies from The Greens as As our Graph of the Day shows, those economies with the cleanest profiles are likely to be the ones that generate the most GDP into the future, and will probably have the least amount of stranded assets.

Meanwhile, The Climate Institute has published an update of its pollute-o-meter  – its rankings of the policy assessment of various parties and independents, including those that could hold the balance of power in the Senate.

The big development is that Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie has jumped ahead of the ALP after publishing a more comprehensive policy including: 60 per cent reduction target by 2030; support for ratification of Australia’s second Kyoto target; an ongoing minimum carbon price in line with current levels; a 30 per cent by 2020 renewable energy target, and; a requirement for future government projects to be planned to comply with credible climate risk scenarios and for government agencies to regularly report on their preparations for extreme climate events.

Elsewhere, the

  • Coalition moved from 1 to 1.5/5 stars after it announced funding for the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, which helps the coordination and public sharing of adaptation research to help better manage climate impact risks, and the

Australian Katter Party  is no longer sits at zero stars due to its support for extending the Renewable Energy Target.  Senator Nick Xenophon and the Democratic Labor Party still languish between 0 and 0.5/5 stars.

 

 

Comments

6 responses to “Greens push for clean air laws as Abbott hails “bulldozer” economy”

  1. RobS Avatar
    RobS

    I hope the Abbott government mandates that dozens of coal plants are built in the next four years and then become entirely stranded assets as solar and wind continues to be built regardless. Conservatives and the industries that cling to them are so willfully ignorant and blind to the evolving revolution that the only thing that can bring them down is a smack in the face with commercial reality.

    1. suthnsun Avatar
      suthnsun

      That would have to be my least preferred option to teach so-called good economic managers a lesson, commercial reality should be smacking them in the face right now.
      It’s hard to see how Abbott can be cast as a good listener when he seems to have surrounded himself in a cone of dark silence (synthetic liberal environment)
      If they were proposing building new roads with the Korean wireless charging infrastructure embedded, and investing a billion or two for locally owned EV manufacturing using Australian technology I’d be on board. Are the Greens up for that?

      1. RobS Avatar
        RobS

        It would be the ultimate retribution, hoisted by their own petard of fear and overconfidence, a flurry of new fossil fuel generators at this point if they try and take advantage of the window of opportunity an Abbott government will give them in terms of planning approvals will almost certainly result in a hastening of bankruptcy in the near future for fossil fuel generators.

  2. Alistair McCaskill Avatar
    Alistair McCaskill

    Interesting that the ad at the bottom of the post (at least when I viewed it) was for the Liberal Party.

    1. Giles Avatar
      Giles

      those are google ads, so with the google algorithms they reflect the recent viewing habits of the individual reader!

      1. Alistair McCaskill Avatar
        Alistair McCaskill

        Must be a bug in their algorithm 🙂

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