Pat Conroy lashes Greens’ decision to side with the Coalition as a ‘massive error’ with far-reaching consequences

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Australia’s carbon emissions would be more than 200m tonnes lower and electricity prices would be cheaper if the Greens had supported the carbon pollution reduction scheme a decade ago, the Labor frontbencher Pat Conroy says.

Speaking on the 10th anniversary of the 2009 parliamentary defeat of Labor’s emissions trading system, Conroy has lashed the political failure to develop a national energy policy as “perhaps the most consequential policy failure of the modern era in Australia”.

While taking aim at interest groups on “both sides” for the impasse over national energy policy, Conroy said the Greens’ decision to side with the Liberal and National parties to defeat Labor’s CPRS in the Senate in 2009 was a “massive error of political judgment” with far-reaching consequences.

“The Coalition and the Greens bear a heavy responsibility for the fact that, a decade later, Australia still does not have an effective policy to tackle climate change by reducing emissions,” Conroy, the shadow minister assisting for climate change, will say in a speech at the Australian National University in Canberra on Monday.

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“It has had disastrous and long-lasting consequences for Australia’s ability to respond effectively to climate change.”

“The costs of this failure are being born by Australian households and businesses facing higher prices, risks to the reliability of energy supplies and missed economic opportunities (and) these costs will only grow into the future.”

Conroy says that had the CPRS been implemented, emissions for 2020 would have been reduced to 459m tonnes compared to the 540m tonnes projected by the department, which are on track to keep rising to 563m tonnes by 2030.

“That is 81m tonnes lower than now projected, or more than all of the fugitive emissions from the Australian coalmining and oil and gas production industries combined,” Conroy says of the 2020 figure.

“That means that by voting to defeat the CPRS, the Greens voted against cumulative additional emissions reductions of 218m tonnes between 2010 and 2020 – emissions reductions which would have come on top of the actual outcomes we have seen over the last decade in Australia.

“And by voting against the CPRS, the Greens also voted against a mechanism putting Australia’s emissions on a downward trajectory beyond 2020.”

Conroy further argues that environmental groups should also take responsibility for Australia’s climate policy impasse, saying green groups had made “perfect the enemy of the good” in opposing the CPRS.

“As a result, Australia is still in the midst of a ‘climate war’ with no real climate policy and has higher emissions today than under a scenario in which the CPRS was implemented.”

Conceding that Labor had also made mistakes in its handling of the vexed issue of climate policy, Conroy said the party should have gone to a double dissolution election in 2010 after the defeat of the CPRS.

He also pointed to shortcomings in the election campaign this year, saying the party failed “to win the confidence of the voters” for its climate policy, which became the subject of a Coalition scare campaign targeting coal seats in Queensland.

“Climate and energy policy were not everything in our election loss, but the way the issue was framed by our political opponents, certainly did cost us electoral support in parts of the country,” Conroy says.

Labor is reviewing all of its policies following the election defeat, but Conroy said the party remained committed to action on climate change.

“In the current parliamentary term Labor will review its policies in the light of developments in energy markets and in the wider economy, and international efforts to tackle climate change.

“A basic lesson from the last several years is that you can have a first-best policy solution, but unless you earn the confidence of the public you will never be in a position to implement it.”

But Conroy also called on the Greens and activist groups to reflect on their campaign activities, arguing that progressive forces were also to blame for the political stalemate over climate policy, along with “climate deniers, right-wing ideologues and vested interests who act as a cheer squad for delay and inaction”.

“The Greens are a party which seeks to increase its electoral support from progressive voters by attacking Labor on climate change,” Conroy says.

“(And) in this year’s election campaign, some environmental organisations preferred to pressure Labor to commit to closing down the coalmining industry rather than focusing on the Coalition’s inadequate policies.”

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Conroy said the anti-Adani convoy was a good example of an “opportunistic tactic” aimed at boosting the Greens’ Senate vote, but one which also helped the Coalition hang on to marginal seats in central Queensland.

“The question for the Greens is whether they place a higher priority on winning votes at Labor’s expense than on supporting action to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.”

The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, has defended the Adani convoy, accusing Labor of wanting to retreat on climate change policy because of the election result.

Di Natale also defended the party’s climate record, saying the party supported Julia Gillard in 2010 to introduce world leading climate legislation that reduced emissions.

He said the legislation “was internationally lauded as template legislation until Labor infighting allowed the climate denialists in the Abbott government to scrap it.”

“Prior to the last election, the Greens reached out several times to Labor in the hope of working together on climate policy but they weren’t interested,” he said.

“We’ll continue to try and work with Anthony Albanese to get a climate policy that reflects the science but we remain concerned that Labor is preparing the ground to weaken their policy at a time when we need stronger and more urgent action.”

On Sunday, Labor’s leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, said the 10 years since the CPRS defeat had reinforced her view “that we have to find common ground” to act on climate change.

“The thing that is quite clear is that neither the Coalition nor the Greens political party have learnt the lessons of the last decade,” Wong told the ABC’s Insiders.

“The Coalition is still in denial, and division, and the Greens political party have to decide – are they actually prepared to look for change, to look for common ground, to act for change? Or are they really going to make it their political objective to take votes off the Labor party and have a political fight with the Labor party?”