Tony Abbott, Craig Kelly and Matt Canavan argue government should cut off support to some renewable investments in 2020

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Dissident government MPs, including the former prime minister Tony Abbott, are continuing to stir the pot on energy despite last week’s party room sign off on the new national energy guarantee.



The chairman of the backbench committee on environment and energy, Craig Kelly, used Tuesday’s party room meeting to argue the government should cut off support to some renewable energy investments in 2020, rather than the current plan, which is to run down the scheme until 2030.

Kelly was backed in his view by the former resources minister and now Queensland backbencher Matt Canavan and by Abbott who, according to accounts of the exchange, said the government needed to be prepared have a fight with political opponents about subsidies for renewables.

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The three MPs argued that people who entered the renewable energy scheme when John Howard set up the mandatory renewable energy target in the early 2000s only had an expectation the scheme would continue until 2020.

The Rudd government later extended the scheme out to 2030.

Kelly is understood to have argued on Tuesday that projects in the scheme before Labor extended it for another decade in 2010 should be subject to the Howard era rules and not be given support after 2020.

But the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, rebuffed the push, telling the meeting changing the rules would trigger sovereign risk issues. He said the policy change the three were seeking would never get through the current Senate.

In response to that comment, Canavan is said to have told Frydenberg that pre-2010 investments continuing through to 2030 were little more than windfall profits and Abbott told colleagues the Coalition needed to be prepared to have a fight and stare down Senate opposition.

Turnbull pushed through internal opposition and secured party room support for the national energy guarantee policy last week but the continuing rumbles suggest opponents will continue to argue the toss as various components of the policy come back before the government for consideration.

The government needs the support of the states to implement the new policy and it will also need to legislate an emissions reduction trajectory for the electricity sector.

The dissent over energy came as the former federal Labor environment minister and Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett used a speech to the National Press Club to criticise the Queensland Labor government and the Turnbull government for their support of the controversial Adani project.

With Queensland on the brink of a state election, and Adani a sensitive subject among Labor MPs in Canberra, Garrett used a visit to the national capital to argue good environmental stewardship meant no more new coalmines and it meant a “drastic” reduction in carbon emissions.

He said Australia’s emissions reduction target for the Paris climate agreement was “grossly inadequate and will lead to 3 degrees or 4 degrees of warming”.

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“This is a temperature rise that will destroy all the world’s coral reefs,” Garrett said. “Good stewardship means no more new coalmines, because the carbon budget is spent.”

Garrett said the UK government had committed to stop burning coal by 2025 and “good stewardship” meant phasing out coal-fired power stations by the early 2030s.

He said Australia had to pursue a switch to renewables and an orderly transition in coal mining regions.

He said Adani proceeding would be “a nightmare scenario for the world’s coral reefs and oceans” and he criticised both the Coalition in Canberra and Labor colleagues in Queensland for remaining “in thrall to Adani”.

“Unfortunately, premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has lined up with the prime minister, both flying over to India to shake hands with Adani’s leader,” Garrett said. “This is all about being seen to support jobs in North Queensland.

“The Queensland government’s first priority should be protecting the future of the existing 64,000 jobs dependent on healthy reef, most of them in regional Queensland.”