Apparently not. It’s all the way with another crazy carbon election, via the AFR:
Australia risks more energy policy paralysis and another election fought on climate change after the government signalled it was stepping away from a clean energy target, setting the scene for a new fight with Labor.
Energy chiefs at The Australian Financial Review National Energy Summit voiced frustration at the apparent policy retreat and said either a CET or similar mechanism was needed, while South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said it was time the states went it alone on a carbon price.
AGL Energy chief executive Andy Vesey, who again defended plans to close the Liddell power station and replace it with a clean energy precinct, said while a CET or some other policy was needed to help the industry transition, his company had given up waiting for the government to act.
“Can we wait for market reform? Can we wait for 49 or 50 recommendations [from Chief Scientist Alan Finkel]? No, we can’t. We can’t because we have to give certainty now,” he said.
Lol, good one! At The Australian the truth is laid bare as the true leader of the Coalition launches the election campaign:
Tony Abbott has doubled down on his scepticism of climate change science, reigniting a decade-old debate in a major speech in London after the Turnbull government moved yesterday to rule out proceeding with a clean energy target proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel.
The former prime minister has labelled the likely backdown on a CET a “belated” gesture and warned that the Coalition is courting a “political death wish” if it fails to put cost of living and protection of jobs ahead of reducing emissions.
In a speech due to be delivered early today that will further test the political fault lines over energy policy in the Coalition partyroom, Mr Abbott resurrected his 2009 declaration that the so-called settled science on climate change was “absolute crap” and claimed that any effort Australia made to reduce emissions would be futile in a global context.
In his most controversial speech on climate change since the 2009 speech to a country Victorian gathering, Mr Abbott told London’s centre-right Global Warming Policy Forum that climate-change policies had done more harm than climate change itself, suggesting global warming was “probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm”.
Likening the economic harm from climate-change policies to “primitive people once killing goats to appease the volcano gods”, Mr Abbott accused lobbyists of creating a religion out of global warning while rent-seeking on government subsidies. He warned that the Coalition was at risk of becoming captive to this new “post-Christian theology”.
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg yesterday responded to mounting pressure within the Coalition partyroom, hinting the Finkel recommendation of a CET to reduce emissions and secure generation would be dropped.
This won’t work either politically or in policy terms. Coal can’t fix the energy issues. It’s too expensive and long term. That debate has done nothing to restore Coalition polling, via Essential today:
The Guardian Essential poll has Labor retaining its election-winning lead over Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition government, with the ALP ahead on the two-party preferred measure 54% to 46% – the same result as last week.
Do-nothing Malcolm has zero credibility on energy given his history of defending renewables and a carbon price. He’ll only underline his illegitimacy all over again as he turns to coal.
Then again, the moral flexibility on display might lead him to also adopt that other very popular Abbott policy, of curbing immigration, which would work to turn around Coalition hopes. It could also smooth the way for a leadership change, though why they’d bother now is not obvious given the troglodytes are clearly controlling policy.
Coal and the Coalition, two doomed species rolled into one.
