Former PM’s speech follows months of campaigning against national energy guarantee and Malcolm Turnbull • Turnbull calls on Abbott to move past ‘ideology and partisanship’ on energy

Tony Abbott, the prime minister who signed Australia up to the Paris agreement before losing the Liberal party leadership in 2015, now says Australia needs to pull out of the treaty to end “the emissions obsession that’s at the heart of our power crisis”.



In a significant escalation of his campaign against the national energy guarantee, and in an overt political attack on Malcolm Turnbull, Abbott used a speech to a group of climate sceptics on Tuesday night to claim he would not have signed up to the Paris treaty had he known the US would withdraw from it.

Despite saying in 2015 that Australia was making a “definite commitment” to a 26% reduction in emissions and “with the circumstances that we think will apply ... we can go up to 28%” – Abbott says now he didn’t anticipate, as prime minister, “how the aspirational targets we agreed to at Paris would, in different hands, become binding commitments”.

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On Tuesday night, Abbott said the impact of emissions policy on economic outcomes “wasn’t widely grasped”.

“I didn’t anticipate how agreeing to emissions that were 26% lower in 2030 than in 2005 would subsequently become a linear progression of roughly equal cuts every year over the next decade,” the former prime minister said.

Abbott said withdrawing from the Paris treaty “that is driving the national energy guarantee would be the best way to keep prices down and employment up; and to save our party from a political legacy that could haunt us for the next decade at least.

“As long as we remain in the Paris agreement – which is about reducing emissions, not building prosperity – all policy touching on emissions will be about their reduction, not our well-being.

“It’s the emissions obsession that’s at the heart of our power crisis and it’s this that has to end for our problems to ease.”

Abbott’s speech is the culmination of months of campaigning against first the clean energy target recommended by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, and then the national energy guarantee, which would impose emissions reduction and reliability obligations of energy retailers from 2020.

His campaign is an effort to exploit divisions within the government on the Neg, with some Nationals demanding a transitional fix on coal-fired power as the price of supporting it; and also an effort to rally the Liberal party’s conservative base.

But Abbott’s antics have dismayed many colleagues in the Liberal party, including some colleagues who have doubts about the merits of the Neg. He also failed to trip up Turnbull and the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, in the final sitting fortnight of the parliament before the winter recess.

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Abbott attempted to demand a special party room meeting to consider the Neg before it went for sign off at a meeting of state and territory energy ministers, but that push was rebuffed by Turnbull and repudiated directly by many colleagues, who urged the government to stay the course and settle the toxic political fight that has created problems in the national energy market.

Abbott said on Tuesday night he never conceived of climate change as a moral challenge.

“It was an issue, that’s all, and – at least on the actual changes we’ve so far seen – not a very significant one compared to man’s inhumanity to man; maintaining and improving living standards; and even to many other environmental issues such as degraded bush and waterways, particulate pollution, water quality in the third world, deforestation and urban overcrowding.”

He contended that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from roughly 300 to 400 parts per million over the last century had not triggered “dramatic consequences”.

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“Storms are not more severe; droughts are not more prolonged; floods are not greater; and fires are not more intense than a century ago – despite hyperventilating reportage and over-the-top claims from Green politicians,” he said.

“Sea levels have hardly risen and temperatures are still below those of the medieval warm period. Over time, temperature change seems to correlate rather more with sun spot activity than with carbon dioxide levels.

“And even if carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring trace gas that’s necessary for life, really is the main climate change villain, Australia’s contribution to mankind’s emissions is scarcely more than 1%.”

Abbott framed his contribution not as a deliberate wrecking exercise but as an effort to “save” the government.

“Far from wrecking the government, MPs worried about energy policy are trying to save it, with a policy that would be different from Labor’s and would give voters the affordable and reliable power they want.”