“Another lie:” It is time to call out Coalition’s climate modelling con

It’s back – the now predictable feature of Coalition election tactics – a scare campaign against Labor’s climate and energy policy.

Tuesday saw the latest example of the Coalition making astronomical claims about the costs of Labor climate policies courtesy of federal energy minister Angus Taylor and the Murdoch media, both citing unpublished modelling.

It is the latest in a long history of climate policy scare campaigns run by the Coalition, claiming that Labor’s policies will lead to a surge in electricity prices.

It is a tactic  kick-started by Tony Abbott’s attacks on the Gillard government’s carbon price in the lead up to the 2013 campaign.

It helped Abbott win that campaign, and so every federal election since has seen concocted modelling used to produce fanciful claims about the costs of Labor policies and which are then provided to and run uncritically by favoured media outlets.

It is designed to scare voters and has been a major factor in Australia’s failure to take meaningful action on climate change for the last decade. It has been responsible for setting Australia back in the global transition to clean energy.

When pressed about his latest climate policy attack on Tuesday, Taylor refused to commit to releasing it publicly. Taylor has not yet revealed who produced the analysis for the Coalition or whether it was even produced by independent experts.

The analysis, however, received a front-page treatment by The Daily Telegraph, trumpeting a “Labor price surge” and “claims ALP’s power plan will add $560 a year to your bill.”

Like previous scare campaigns, the latest claims do not stand up to public scrutiny. Rather than reveal the source of the modelling, the stories include quotes from analysts who had nothing to do with it.

Labor’s climate and energy spokesperson, Chris Bowen, dismissed it as “pretend modelling” and said the claims being made by Taylor were a lie that undermined the integrity of the Coalition’s own climate policies.

“After a decade in government, and with no plan of its own to cut power prices or create new energy jobs, all the Morrison Government can offer is another lie,” Bowen said.

“Today’s so-called “Government modelling” just shows that the Morrison Government does not believe renewables are the cheapest form of energy, or that the world’s climate emergency is Australia’s jobs opportunity.”

“It also shows that the Morrison Government’s last-minute conversion to net zero is a fraud,” Bowen added.

“Where is the modelling? Who conducted it? What are its assumptions?”

Taylor led a similar scare campaign during the 2019 election campaign, commissioning his preferred political modeller, BAEconomics’ Brian Fisher, to produce modelling that suggested Labor’s policies would cost $542 billion to implement – a figure widely viewed as fictional.

That modelling, once realised publicly, was derided as being misleading and predicated on embellished assumptions about the costs of clean energy technologies and ignored the costs of failing to act on climate change.

It was accompanied by an absurd campaign against electric vehicles – that they would “ruin the weekend” and claims that Labor’s 50 per cent renewables target would “wreck the economy.”

So predictable is the tactic that it was pre-empted by Labor this time around, with the opposition commissioning energy consultancy Reputex to produce modelling of its new climate and energy policy platform.

That modelling was released publicly last year, showing Labor’s policies would reduce average household electricity costs of $378 a year by 2030.

The modelling shows that these cost reductions are achieved by supporting the increased use of renewable energy technologies – projected to grow to a market share of 82 per cent by 2030, contributing to a 43 per cent cut to Australia’s emissions by the end of the decade.

The results are broadly consistent with other energy market modelling produced by market bodies like the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Climate and energy program director at the Australia Institute, Richie Merzian, said the Coalition’s attack on the Labor policy platform did not stack up to scrutiny.

“Australia’s electricity grid is not fit-for-purpose and requires additional investment. The long-term benefits include a more stable grid and cheaper power prices thanks to onboarding more renewables,” Merzian said.

“The evidence shows that wholesale electricity prices have increased in every jurisdiction in the National Electricity Market (NEM) since the Coalition Government came into power.”

“If the Government is going to make sensationalist claims about price rises ten years into the future they should release the full economic modelling so that it can be subject to appropriate scrutiny,” Merzian added.

While Frontier Economics managing director, Danny Price, was cited in the Murdoch media reports, Price told RenewEconomy that his company did not prepare the modelling for the Coalition.

Price, however, did add that he has questioned the modelling conducted by Reputex produced for Labor.

“People should stop trying to make out that spending billions will mean prices will go down or taxpayers won’t pay,” he told RenewEconomy.

“Policymakers should be honest and just tell the community that it is the cost of avoiding environmental damage, and then voters can figure out whether that’s a cost they wish to bear.”

But he also pointed out that there was little difference between the Coalition and Labor in implied costs.

“Both parties have similar policy positions (net zero by 2050), but Labor wants to make gains a bit faster,” Price said.

“That will cost a bit more. Both policies will mean more money spent on replacing thermal and building networks. In practical terms, there is probably very little separating the different policy positions cost-wise.

“Policymakers the world over, on all sides of politics, should come up with a better approach than we are currently following to make the inevitable transition more orderly, cheaper and fairer.”