Malcolm Turnbull’s climate policy stance is “bullshit” according to his own searing assessment when Tony Abbott advanced similar ideas. That was back in the days when Turnbull let facts interfere with his decisions.

In 2009, just after he was dumped from the Liberal leadership, Turnbull wrote a blog in which he provided some frank and forceful thoughts about the climate change position of the man who had beaten him. Like a ghost from a more principled past, his old arguments now apply to his own position.

“First, let’s get this straight. You cannot cut emissions without a cost. To replace dirty coal-fired power stations with cleaner gas-fired ones or renewables like wind, let alone nuclear power or even coal-fired power with carbon capture and storage, is all going to cost money ... So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, ‘bullshit’. Moreover, he knows it,” Turnbull the backbencher-with-convictions wrote.

“The whole argument for an emissions trading scheme, as opposed to cutting emissions via a carbon tax or simply by regulation, is that it is cheaper – in other words electricity prices will rise by less to achieve the same level of emission reductions …”.



But when Turnbull minister Josh Frydenberg said a review of Abbott’s Direct Action policy – which the Coalition had retained all those years – would at least consider a low-cost form of emissions trading for the electricity sector, it took Prime Minister Turnbull just 36 hours to can it.

On climate change we are not simply without a policy [or] any prospect of a credible policy, we are without integrity Malcolm Turnbull in 2009

Whether or not Abbott understood the limitations of his Direct Action policy, we know for sure that Turnbull is right across those limitations now.



He ruled out the so-called baseline and credit trading scheme even though it was what the policy had been designed to possibly morph into, what the government had been privately assuring stakeholders it would consider, had broad support from opposition parties, industry and the environment movement, and had the prospect of finally ending the stupid barren years of climate wars and delivering business the policy certainty it has been pleading for for years.

He ruled it out even though – true to his own 2009 argument – it was also far cheaper for the government and for consumers. Cheaper according to the Australian Energy Market Commission and the Australian Energy Market Operator and the electricity transmission sector – based on modelling done by CSIRO – and the independent Climate Change Authority. It has been tacitly endorsed by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, in his review of the electricity sector and the experts say it is the policy most likely to avoid disruption in the electricity sector because it would provide some certainty for investment.

And he ruled it out before the review had even considered it.



Why would a leader rule out what seemed like such a logical option? Why would he rule out all carbon pricing options? 2009 Malcolm had a pretty good take on that too.

“The fact is that Tony [Abbott] and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human-caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion, ‘climate change is crap’,” he wrote.

Those same climate sceptics in the Coalition still don’t want to do anything about climate change, and even though Abbott is no longer prime minister they still seem to be calling the shots. At least Kevin Rudd tried to legislate his climate policy – an emissions trading scheme – in the face of a hysterical scare campaign, before finally abandoning it without an alternative. After a couple of stern words from backbenchers Abbott and Cory Bernardi, Turnbull decided not to even try to make the argument.

Perhaps the review will come up with other means to meet Australia’s climate change obligations. But the only obvious alternatives are more Direct Action-style direct government funding for abatement, which Turnbull has previously observed is “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale” and “a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead”. Then there is change forced through government regulation, which, as he said in his blog, is also more expensive (and goodness me, what would the Coalition conservatives say about big government and red tape?).

Which leaves us back in the “bullshit”: the insistence that existing policy is fit for purpose and that some kind of carbon pricing scheme will be more expensive and result in a less reliable electricity system. All the available evidence says the exact reverse, unless of course you are comparing the cost of the scheme with the cost of doing virtually nothing to reduce emissions.

In 2009 Turnbull described the only kind of climate policy that could win the favour of the climate sceptics in his party.



“Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing.”



First we got fake news – made-up stories that get shared so often that people start to believe them. Now that we have governments ignoring available evidence, we risk fact-free fake public policy.

If Barnaby Joyce keeps saying a carbon price will force us all to live in the dark in caves, people might be persuaded to ignore the experts and believe that he’s right. After all he got a long way with that great $100 lamb roast line. And at least he looks like he means it. When the prime minister delivers the old lines about a carbon price pushing electricity bills up – like when he was getting called out by the premiers at Coag on Friday – he sounds like he’s reading from someone else’s script.



Perhaps that is because he still dimly remembers his assessment – again in his 2009 blog – about politicians who refuse to act in line with their convictions and the available facts.



“Politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy, but we are now without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted,” he wrote.



It’s hard to put it better than that.