Almost every group with a financial, intellectual or ethical interest in salvaging a workable climate policy is now deep in an urgent debate about how Australia can break a decade of policy paralysis. Everyone except the Turnbull government, that is.



The debate, involving big business, small business, investors, the government’s own independent climate advisers, academics, environmentalists, the welfare lobby and the unions, is predicated on the obvious conclusion that our policy – as it stands – cannot deliver the cuts to greenhouse emissions that are domestically necessary and which Australia has promised internationally.

But like the emperor with no clothes, continuing with the grand parade even after the whole crowd has finally declared him naked, the new environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, still insists Australia is “transitioning successfully with the policies we already have in place”.

Every stakeholder is hoping – based on plenty of nudges and winks from Frydenberg’s predecessor Greg Hunt – that a review scheduled for next year will turn the existing Direct Action policy into a workable policy, probably a type of emissions trading scheme. Labor’s election policy edged closer to what the Coalition’s policy could eventually become, offering, according to the Business Council of Australia, a “bridge to bipartisanship”.

But Frydenberg has now described the 2017 review as a “sit rep” (situation report), insisting no major changes are under consideration. His language is stuck back in the “climate wars”, like the late night rerun of a particularly bad movie. This week he revived the long-discredited claim that Labor’s proposed higher greenhouse gas reduction target would increase electricity prices by 78%. The supposed authors have described that calculation as “incorrect” and “weird and misleading”.

It was just another example of the gaping chasm between the government’s lines and the argument everyone else is having.

The government’s own independent advisory body, the Climate Change Authority, released a report on Thursday, which was also based on the premise that policy will have to change very significantly, and it has recommended a version of emissions trading for the electricity sector and a much more rigorous “Direct Action” style policy for high-polluting industry.

This was not the musing of what conservative warriors like to deride as the “green left” but rather the first report from the authority since Tony Abbott made several appointments to its board, including John Sharp, a former Nationals minister; Wendy Craik, a former National Farmers Federation executive director; Kate Carnell, a former chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry; and Danny Price, the economist who modelled Malcolm Turnbull’s old climate policy and was on Greg Hunt’s advisory panel.

In the real world, the report sparked a furious discussion about whether the recommendations were aiming for sufficiently ambitious targets. The Business Council of Australia (BCA) and other business groups welcomed it, but as Guardian Australia revealed two CCA board members, Clive Hamilton and David Karoly, will release a dissenting report arguing that its recommendations were inadequate to meet Australia’s international obligations. Many other respected analysts and some environment groups made similar criticisms.

But while this argument raged, Frydenberg implied there was no need for any change at all, insisting the report was just something the government had been forced to commission to get the votes of the Palmer United party for its “Direct Action”, a policy that was working just swimmingly.

Meanwhile, the “climate roundtable” – an unprecedented alliance of business, welfare and environmental groups, and trade unions, which began secret meetings in 2014 to try to break the political impasse over climate policy and emerged publicly in 2015 – is again actively lobbying both major parties.

The group, which includes the BCA, the AI group, the Australian Aluminium Council, the Climate Institute, the Australian Council on Social Service, the Investor Group on Climate Change, the Australian Conservation Foundation, WWF, the Australian Energy Council and the ACTU, has recently written to Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten, reminding the leaders that a bipartisan workable policy is more urgent than ever, and that they will not give up their efforts.

That line-up would provide pretty useful backing (and cover) for both big parties if they wanted to reach a compromise – if, of course, the impediment to that compromise was actually public opinion.

But, as with so many policy areas flummoxing this government, the real impediment to reaching what Turnbull calls the “sensible centre” is the rightwing of his own party.

With so many voices telling them, Turnbull and Frydenberg obviously know that Direct Action in its current form is no longer even passable as a fig leaf.

But on this, above all other issues, Turnbull also understands the threat from the conservative right.

And in case the horrors of 2009 were fading in his memory, Tony Abbott emerged last week with a speech reminding Turnbull what was expected.

“I’m sure the government will strongly support the coal industry which will provide base load power here and abroad for decades to come – and continue to employ tens of thousands of Australians. I’m sure it will work hard on the Queensland government to ensure that green sabotage and law-fare doesn’t stop the Adani mine: a $20bn investment to create 10,000 jobs here and power the lives of tens of millions in India,” he said.

The former minister Eric Abetz has attacked Turnbull’s election strategy for not “going harder” on Labor’s proposed carbon tax (that would be the policy that was actually very similar to the one the experts are hoping will emerge as a bipartisan consensus).

The Queensland senator Ian MacDonald, who famously addressed the Senate wearing an “Australians for Coal” boiler suit, berated 154 scientists who signed an open letter calling for urgent climate policy action in muddle-headed fashion.

“I … wonder how many of those 150 scientists rely on government research grants for their ongoing livelihoods? And those who do should be declaring any grants they receive directly or indirectly. Both these scientists, and the media who happily report their predictions, need to take a dose of reality. I keep asking and keep waiting for an answer to the question: why it is that Australia which emits less than 1.2% of the world’s carbon emissions, can possibly do anything to limit the emissions from the rest of the world,” he asked in a press statement, demanding that the scientists “get real”.

Meanwhile, a climate change denier, Craig Kelly, has been appointed chair of the Coalition backbench environment and energy committee, which is consulted on policy changes, and began his tenure by questioning subsidies for solar and wind power.

In the real world, in which business, financial, environment, welfare, academic and union leaders argue about exactly how radically Coalition policy needs to change to start Australia’s economic transition, the implicit assumption is that Turnbull and Frydenberg will soon be forced to face their inevitable day of reckoning with the right, and that the wisest lobbying stance is to give them as much backing and room to win it.



But the climate-change denying right resides somewhere else altogether.

With 2017 approaching and nothing obvious changing, the assumptions that have resulted in so many lobbyists giving the government the benefit of the doubt and calculating that it is better to work behind the scenes, is being sorely tested. In the fairytale, the emperor never did admit he was starkers.