Is there a climate of change in Australia? Australians awoke on Tuesday to a new Prime Minister: Malcolm Turnbull. Six years ago, while in opposition, Turnbull lost the leadership of his political party in part because of his support for stronger climate change policy. But as Prime Minister, Turnbull is unlikely to shift Australia’s climate change policies much in the short term.

When Turnbull was opposition leader in 2009, Tony Abbott ousted him over his support for the then Labor government’s emissions trading scheme. After his defeat, pointedly echoing Abbott’s description of the science of climate change, Turnbull wrote that Abbott’s climate change policy was “bullshit”.

The Liberal Party, with Abbott at the helm, then won the 2013 federal election and Abbott proceeded to kill the country’s emissions trading scheme and axed government climate change bodies, including the Climate Commission, thereby cementing Australia’s reputation around the world as a climate bad-boy. More recently, having failed to get the parliament to axe the government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation, he moved to stop it from financing wind energy.


But after more than a year of bad polling and a string of gaffs – including Abbott being caught laughing with a senior minister about sea level rise threatening neighbouring island nations – Turnbull challenged Abbott for leadership of the Liberal Party and won, becoming Prime Minister.

But speaking to journalists after the spill, Turnbull’s attitude to Abbott’s climate policy appeared to have warmed. “The climate policy is one that I think has been very well designed,” he said.

The deputy prime minister, Julie Bishop, quickly added: “Can I just say, we’ve already announced climate targets for Paris in December and I expect those targets to continue.”

Australia is currently the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emitter among rich nations, and its targets for 2030 are much weaker than those of the UK or the US.

But Robyn Eckersley from the University of Melbourne says Turnbull could pull the government towards better climate policies over time. “My guess is that he will try to persuade his colleagues of the merits of a more robust climate policy as his first step,” Eckersley told New Scientist.

Eckersley says the targets themselves are unlikely to change ahead of Paris, but current policies that simply pay big polluters to pollute less are unlikely to work, so those might be improved. “My bet will be that the ambition won’t change, but they’ll improve the policy to deliver it,” she says.

Finally, Abbott’s unpopular move to dampen demand for renewable energy is likely to be reversed, she says.