Labor president says party must work against PM’s PR strategy and get on with ‘solving the bloody problem’

Labor’s federal president Wayne Swan will accuse Scott Morrison of engaging in “predatory centrism” on climate policy by styling himself as the pragmatist between the extremes of climate emergencies and denialism, when the government has no intention of driving meaningful emissions reduction.

In a speech to be delivered on Sunday, Swan will argue Labor will only win the decade-long climate wars if it approaches the challenge with “pragmatic policy and ruthless organisation”.

According to speech notes, Swan will say Labor needs to articulate a roadmap for the domestic coal powered industry “which manages its decline”.

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“There must be a strong dialogue between government, industry, and the unions, and operate on the principle that no one gets left behind. We have to work closely with coal-dependent regions and put in a plan so that everyone gets a good future.”

Swan will also warn his former parliamentary colleagues to apply “large doses of healthy scepticism about the hand-on-heart last minute conversion of the Business Council of Australia to the cause”. The BCA criticised Labor policy at the last federal election, but has recently backed a legislated target of net zero emissions by 2050, which aligns with the policy outlined on February 20 by Anthony Albanese.

Swan will say Labor is a party that accepts the science of climate change, supports blue-collar jobs, and has sought a way forward to reduce emissions across the economy with “no help from the right or the extreme left”.

“Proposals that talk about shutting down the export coal industry instead of focusing on the hard and tough policy which includes reducing emissions across the whole of our economy are entirely counter-productive,” the ALP president will say.

“Over the next 20 years there will be a dramatic reduction in coal production delivered by the market, and we will see coal-fired power generation provide less and less of our electricity”.

“But the notion put forward by some green groups that we could phase out coal-fired power by 2030 is impossible and a recipe for blackouts and the further erosion of public support for strong economy-wide action on emissions reduction.”

Swan will argue Morrison does not have a serious climate policy, and will not develop one, “but as you would expect from a marketing guy, [he has] a clearly articulated PR strategy to use climate as a wedge aimed not just at coal miners but working people more generally and particularly the elderly”.

He will say Morrison’s approach will be to argue he is “the reasonable guy in the middle who says the climate is changing” but do little or nothing about it. “We in the Labor party need to expose this marketing strategy for what it is.

“And we need to set against it our hard work on what I simply call solving the bloody problem.”

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The Morrison government has blasted Labor for adopting a 2050 target without a roadmap to get there. On Friday the government signalled plans to shift investment from wind and solar to hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, lithium and advanced livestock feed supplements, as part of a “bottom up” strategy to reduce emissions by 2050.

The government will shortly release a technology roadmap outlining its investment strategies, and further policy work is under way. As well as the roadmap, the government is reviewing its much-criticised emissions reduction fund and the operation of the safeguard mechanism, and is working on an electric vehicles strategy, despite blasting Labor during last year’s election, claiming measures to drive the takeup of EVs were a “war on the weekend”.

Despite blasting Labor for adopting net zero, the government has not ruled out following suit and adopting a mid-century target. As a signatory to the Paris agreement, the Coalition has implicitly adopted a position of carbon neutrality by mid-century.

Albanese spent Saturday in coal country in New South Wales. In a speech to the country Labor conference, Albanese said net zero meant opportunity for regional Australia, not catastrophe.