The question of the political morning is not why is Labor persisting with carbon pricing, but who, exactly, is making trouble for Bill Shorten?



The News Corporation tabloids on Wednesday morning published the thunderous revelation that Labor is privately working up options consistent with what it has been saying publicly: the ALP will retain a commitment to carbon pricing in the lead-up to the next federal election.

The reflection on the leak I’ve just given you is the reflection of an ordinary person who follows the debate closely, and who doesn’t come to carbon pricing from a point of view that it’s the public policy equivalent of cancer.

But whoever shared Labor’s working paper with the Telegraph knows full well they are not helping.

You don’t leak to the News Corp tabloids if you want positive coverage for Labor’s as yet unfinalised climate policy. You leak in order to provide fresh meaty fodder for their completely incoherent but powerful culture war against That Wicked Carbon Tax. Over at News, the Wicked Carbon Tax (which wasn’t actually a tax, but why sweat the small stuff?) is always just waiting to jump out of a cupboard somewhere like a masked villain in a pantomime, shrieking “boo”.

Carbon tax. Carbon tax. Echo. Echo. Cue Tony Abbott: “Labor’s wicked carbon tax.” Echo. Echo.

So, what is actually going on?

Let’s address the substance first. Where is Labor up to with its policy development?

Labor has developed a public formulation to answer the regular questions it gets about its climate policy: we will take an emissions trading scheme (sometimes it’s described as a market mechanism) to the 2016 election and a “bold plan” to increase ambition around the level of renewable energy.

That gives you the bullet points: there’ll be an emissions trading scheme with a floating price (unlike the scheme when in government, which began with a fixed price and was characterised by Tony Abbott as a tax), and a bigger RET.

People have been looking inconclusively at a range of policy options: the emissions trading scheme (tricky politically, depending on how broad the coverage is); a bunch of new American-style regulations to constrain carbon emissions (also tricky politically, depending on who bears the cost of those regulations); plus a renewables policy (flashy, easy – everybody loves solar panels).

As my colleague Lenore Taylor reported in late May, some are also pondering whether the “safeguards mechanism” in the government’s Direct Action policy could be dramatically strengthened, forcing polluting companies to reduce emissions or buy pollution permits on the domestic or international markets.

This would be another form of emissions trading, but one that would avoid the political inconvenience of having to legislate from scratch.

Privately, there are people inside Labor who would abandon the carbon policy fight altogether and follow the path of least resistance, and there are some who would go to the wall on it. Again, this is not stunning news – we’ve seen this cycle play out in Labor circles, in highly damaging fashion, since 2010.

The ALP is yet to coalesce around its final policy – a posture that will be a bit difficult for the leadership to maintain at next weekend’s Labor national conference.

The party will debate two specific motions on climate policy, including one that will attempt to lock the parliamentary party behind post-2020 emissions reduction targets consistent with advice from the Climate Change Authority.

The Climate Change Authority says Australia should reduce emissions by 30% by 2025 on 2000 levels, and aim to reduce carbon pollution by 40% to 60% by 2030 – which is a significantly more ambitious position than the one being contemplated for Paris by the Abbott government.

Shorten and the leadership will either have to accept that motion, a development that would ensure Australia’s emissions reduction target post-2020 isn’t bipartisan – or work to kill it off.

So that’s where Labor sits, broadly, in a policy sense. It’s hanging on to the bullet points, the broad framework – beyond that it reclines in a collective posture of studious inconclusion.

But never mind the inconvenience of the inconclusion. Politics is politics.

Shorten this week has faced an opinion poll in which his approval rating fell off a cliff in the wake of his appearance at the trade unions royal commission last week. Shorten’s approval also fell with Labor voters.

My analysis last week was the test for Shorten was never actually the two tough days he endured in the witness box at the royal commission – it was navigating the aftermath. I’ve seen nothing this week that makes me change that analysis.

The royal commission has opened and sanctioned a hunting season on Bill Shorten, notwithstanding his structural security as federal Labor leader, courtesy of that Rudd caucus rule that makes it extremely difficult for colleagues to blast him out of his job.

The hunting season might be just a blip and fizzle out, or it might intensify.

The environment minister, Greg Hunt, told reporters on Wednesday morning the leak on climate policy was either “an attempt to kill the tax, or kill Bill.”

Hunt is, of course, completely self-interested, and delighted for any excuse to draw attention away from the fact his government has attempted to strangle the renewables industry and seems on course to unveil the weakest post-2020 emissions reduction target in the developed world.

Self-interested, yes.

But he’s not wrong.