So, the Greens aren’t too sad that the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) was blocked in the Senate – indeed they were a key component of that blocking. From the GreensMPs website:
“The collapse of the Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme provides Australia with a great opportunity to move ahead with ambitious action on the climate crisis,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.
“The CPRS would have locked in failure on the climate crisis with its inexcusably weak emissions target and its $16 billion handout to polluters. Three in four Australians support the Greens’ decision to reject the bill if the Government refused to toughen it up.
“The collapse of the CPRS opens the door to a suite of other measures that can be implemented immediately, before an amended CPRS returns to the Parliament, in order to begin reducing Australia’s emissions without delay.”
The Greens are probably mostly correct that the proposed measures were too timid, but was their strategy of blocking this bill in hopes of getting a more effective one the right strategic choice? Xenophon agrees with them that the targets were too low, with extra opprobrium for what he considers unnecessarily expensive plans.
Family First’s Fielding voted with the Greens to block because he still isn’t convinced that human activity is causing global warming at all. (Question for the Senator: is it possible for humans to ameliorate the effects of phenomena they don’t actually cause? e.g. floods, fires, earthquakes? Yes? Why not do something in this situation then?) The Senate Nationals seem to be of the same mind.
So now the Government have to turn to the Senate Liberals to get this bill through, and those Senators appear to favour waiting to see what the rest of the world has to say in Copenhagen (at the U.N. Climate Change Conference) rather than have Australia show any initiative in implementing our own effective scheme.
So there’s two camps of people standing on separate principles arguing that the CPRS was wrong wrongitty wrong either because it gutlessly didn’t do enough to make a difference or was recklessly diverting scarce resources into a non-existent problem, while various pragmatists are mourning a lost opportunity to at least take a first step in cutting emissions. What can we expect regarding emissions targets now?
Poor people of Australia rejoice! At least now there’s a chance your electricity and food bills won’t have to rise as part of a futile attempt to halt climate change.
Given that the Greens weren’t in a position to pass the bill, and it seems so much of their voter base is not inclined to a compromise (for right or wrong), voting no seems like a sensible political tactic for them even if they ultimately seek to negotiate with the government.
If Rudd is attracted the idea of a double dissolution, could be a win/win.
Greens will almost certainly get balance of power either way, and he’ll have a mandate to roger the liberals and anyone else with should Labor ever choose to push for a real system with serious targets. The Australian public has shown time and time again that they are overwhelmingly in favour of action over inaction.
Whether they want the best action is the question however…
What a weird coalition to defeat the bill: the God-botherer who doesn’t believe in anything unless there’s absolute proof, the greens who would like a bill that would at the very least ban all human activity on the planet, the Nats who are opposed to any form of change other than increases in farmer subsidies and the utterly clueless Libs. If I was Rudd, I’d give ‘em baseball bats and an hour or two to beat each other senseless, then hold the vote again.
PaulW, hear hear!
I can’t see the downside for the Greens in opposing the bill.
Clearly “Real action on climate change” will be a major theme – and likely an appealing one – for the Greens at the next election to try to maximise their share of the left vote, and they would hardly set themselves up to exploit that theme if they side with the government at the first opportunity.
And in the further, unlikely event that the bill is not passed in this parliament, it is likely the Greens will have the sole balance of power in the Senate. Their bargaining position will hardly have been improved if they had shown that they were willing to compromise to this extent.
As Robert says, if the Greens votes were going to make the difference between passing or not it may have been a different story.
I think there is a good chance that the Opposition (or the Libs, at least) will spend the next three months coming up with some vaguely plausible amendments to put up the next time the Govt introduces the Bill. There is still a non-zero possibility that the Government and the Libs will negotiate amendments to the Bill they can both live with, and the Libs will pass it the second time around.
The Libs have absolutely nothing to gain from putting themselves in a position where the Government can blame them, during an election campaign, for killing Australia’s policy response to climate change, whether there is a double dissolution or not. The best possible outcome for them is if they can claim some credit for ‘improving’ the Government’s climate change legislation.
And while it will be difficult for the Government to lose the next election, it doesn’t really have anything to gain by failing to fulfil its election promises on climate change either.
They don’t. Isn’t that obvious to everyone?
Rudd wants to appear to be taking climate change seriously to placate the public’s worries about climate change (Garnaut report, green papers, white papers, MRET, CPRS, Wong droning on endlessly) but he sure as hell doesn’t want to do anything that actually hurts and changes behaviour. The public wants the government to “do something” to fix climate change — a rebate here, a subsidy there, and a lot more solar panels and wind farms — but they’re not going to treat kindly a government that raises petrol prices and electricity bills.
The Liberals have done Rudd a huge favour. Rudd can happily sit on his hands for the rest of this term, and whenever the issue of climate change is raised, he can point the finger of blame at Turnbull.
“…but was their strategy of blocking this bill in hopes of getting a more effective one the right strategic choice?”
I would like to take a heartless analogy to the recent tragedy at Kokoda. Say we are in the cockpit, as pilot and copilot, there’s a break in the cumulo-granitus storm clouds and we suddenly see the mountain ridge in full view dead ahead.
We have to do something, right? No question. Umm, how about brace position and start praying? Or how about check options to decide between, say, a sharp banking turn or a steep climb to get over the ridge? (This is a hypothetical scenario, of course, not knowing the circumstances).
What would you say to a copilot that suggested we get on with the former action, because at least we are “doing something” about the problem?
I would propose that the current ETS is a bit like Wong suggesting we use the brace position and start praying. Nine-tenths of bloody useless for solving the problem, so not worth embarking on, unless we are clean out of other options…
I would totally support the Greens action here. The next moves of each party will probably reveal their real commitment to finding the best alternative.
Sadly, Tim, I suspect you’re right.
I agree with Robert that the Greens’ stance made tactical sense. Since they couldn’t affect the outcome, they had no reason not to adopt the principled/purist stance preferred by their supporters.
But even if (or rather, when) the Greens do hold the balance of power after the next election, they’re not likely to forget how the Democrats alienated their core supporters by using the balance of power to make a pragmatic compromise.
Because of that, I reckon that any CPRS legislation will still be more likely to pass with the support of the Liberals than the Greens, even after the next election, unless the divisions in the Liberals have truly overwhelmed their desire for political self preservation.
Mind you, it’s entirely possible that the Liberals are already at that point.
I’m in agreement as well. Only asked the question as a discussion starter!
I find Fielding’s incoherence more mesmerising, in a watching-the-trainwreck-unfolding fashion, but that’s been the case for a long time.
Heres my take on how the 2 parties are positioning themselves at the moment Please feel free to prove this theory wrong…
Kevin wants the ETS.
Kevin also wants to win the next election.
Kevin knows starting the ETS at 5% will let him “prove” hes started to do something.
Kevin also knows 5% wont hit people too hard, and he still has the GFC to mask the pain of a 5% target.
He also knows that 5% is so small as to be ludicrousas a serious emmisions target.
Malcom knows he has to be seen to be doing something.
Malcolm also knows what Kevin knows.
Malcolm wants the ETS brought in as the rough end of the pineapple, 25% to maximise the pain. At the same time hes not “responsible” for the pain and will claim the Libs would have done it better somehow…
Malcolm knows a ETS started at 25% will hand him the next election on a platter.
Malcolm also knows 25% immediate introduction would cause massive economic and social upheval.
Kevin knows what Malcolm knows as well….
So there we have it, Kevin starting an ETS, not with an eye to effectiveness, good god no, that would make him unelectable, and Malcolm, handing Kevin an opportunity to “be effective” and put himself out of power.
Not a very nice reflection on either sides credentials as serious players in anything but politics.
I agree with the consensus too. The Greens had everything to lose and nothing at all to gain by voting to pass this legislation.
This way, they retain their credibility and can remain a pole of attraction for all those who want Australia to take this issue seriously.
Christine Milne is right. This would have locked in a bad scheme until 2020. When it failed — as it surely would have — all subsequent schemes would be discredited.
IMO if we can’t have a proper scheme, then none at all is preferable. If we have to wait 12 more months or 2 years, then so be it. Sooner or later (perhaps after another dreadful drought or bushfire season), the pressure to act will force something reasonable to emerge from parliament.
I’m obviously a partisan player on this question and will leave the commentary to others, but just a clarification on this principle/pragmatism question: The Greens’ policy is to move to a zero net emissions economy as quickly as possible, with a minimum 40% cut in emissions by 2020. Notwithstanding this, in an effort to get an effective ETS, Greens Senators wrote to the PM and Sen Wong back in May offering to support targets with a minimum of 25% by 2020, provided that the legislation left open the option of moving to 40% cuts depending on the outcome of the Copenhagen conference at the end of this year. 25-40% was the range set in Bali as the negotiating range for rich countries. So, there was a significant and demonstrated willingness to reach agreement before the legislation reached the Senate. The gov’t obviously wasn’t interested.
Where now for the CPRS?
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My humble suggestion.
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Carbon tax etc – I won’t labour it.
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The Greens’ fuck-ups are showing here. If they had a clue they’d realize there’s no purity to be had in parliament and that the ALP would inevitably compromise. They should’ve okayed it and then worked to boost it later. They don’t seem to be aware that there’s such a thing in the world as strategy.
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That said, good riddance, this scam, um scheme, sucks.
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Kevvie can try again in 12 weeks and if it goes down he’ll have the perfect excuse to add three years to his reign. He’ll be able to portray the Libs as fubar because all he has to do is point. And he can portray the Greens as extremists and the independants as obstructions.
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Maybe he’ll get control of the senate. Wouldn;t that be fun. Wasn;t it great when Johhnie had control of the senate?
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Oh? It’ll be the ALP who has control and that’ll make it toally different. The ALP is sugar and spice.
Adam – The Greens’ policy is to move to a zero net emissions economy as quickly as possible, with a minimum 40% cut in emissions by 2020.
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Adam have you and your party given deep consideration to what that will do to the economy? It’s too fast. I know that the situation is urgent but it’s not that urgent. And putting a huge break on the economy will damage people and, given that this is a democracy, people will react. The result will be that these kind of policies will end up being electorally unpopular and we will go back to the way things are.
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If your response is that green jobs will replace current ones, I’m afraid I’m highly skeptical of that assertion.
Adam
Please pass on my encouragement to the Greens … 40% is a good target, though if your read Lester Brown’s Plan B, some say much more could be done.
100%’s a good target. You won’t get there with a Carbon Pollution Rorting Scam tho’. You need new tech.
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And if you think people are gonna go back to the rustic Romantic ideals without a collosal bloodbath well…
The voting down of the bill was to be expected. The point that the Greens were making was that the bill was actually two bills in one, one being the subsidy of the renewables and the other the CPRS. The failure of the CPRS part of the bill was inevitable, but by locking the two together, the government has damaged the newly emerging renewables industry. The government should have put the renewables bill up first and seen how the coalition handled that. The government may have figured that there was still a good chance that the coalition would have voted down a renewables bill, because a renewables industry could be seen as a threat to the coal industry. In fact, it could be argued that a renewables industry could be more of a threat to the coal industry that the proposed CPRS. It could even be argued from a more cynical point of view that the government did not want their own bill to pass because they themselves want to protect the coal industry.
The government can show its commitment to the renewables industry by talking it up instead of playing silly political games over climate. I’m all for political games – I would dearly love to see Abetz and Turnbull go through the wringer over Grechgate – but please spare us the games that give f-wits like Tuckey a voice on TV.
Pragmatically speaking, however, the bill has failed, so my preferred option at this stage is to get it the bill up again as quickly as possible, and bring on the double dissolution. In the meantime, i.e., for the next three months, I want to hear more from the government about practical energy solutions, including efficiency measures, and less about the politics of climate change. As far as political controversies is concerned, give us more of Grechgate. Let’s use this opportunity to clean up our democratic processes.
Question for the Senator: is it possible for humans to ameliorate the effects of phenomena they don’t actually cause? e.g. floods, fires, earthquakes? Yes? Why not do something in this situation then?)
The key difference there is that sending in ambulances and emergency response teams after a fire/flood etc actually does something to help the people affected.
This bill will do absolutely nothing to ameliorate the effects of global warming, since whatever economic activity Australia forgoes will be enthusiastically picked up by other countries.
It is a purely symbolic action that will not affect the Earth’s climate at all. The only effect it will have is to punish Australia’s economy, and give that money to our competitors.
I think there maybe something suspicious about the Kokoda matter.But I haven’t talked to any pilots of light planes that fly over these mountainous areas yet.And I am delaying my feelings about that,because I have a personal connection with the reasons people go to do the walk..it was my idea..taken up by a Liberal member of the N.S.W. Parliament. O.K.THIS IS A MATTER OF PROVEABLE FACT.The emotional faces of politicians left me drained..I thought however the more genuine feelings came from Turnbull as his heart was truly sounding….It has been a week or more culminating today with an endless attack on him…I wont join it.I don’t vote,and I certainly don’t vote Liberals.Turnbull showed admirable courage,that the ABC couldn’t emulate amongst its beying dogs like O’Brien.So what has happened in the Lower House and the Upper House was reinforced by events outside of both Houses.And then you can see a need for something other than a straight flight to location or understanding of the failings on these Bills, and wether they had any value.A reconnaissance flight is more the insight,and what can be seen is not a wreckage but potentials lost.The Lobby Groups seem to think the public is behind them a hundred percent.I read Renew Magazine,it isn’t always necessary to have large wind power machines,and Silicon Chip provides often other telescopic-binocular vision beyond the tawdry ever going on phoney war,that kills incentive.I am not anti-Green in what they are trying to achieve in that waiting endlessly for some review of the carbon emissions as either asset or liability direct seems to muddy the waters. The price one puts on these emissions can be turned into a valuable asset.If these bloody companies don’t stop wasting it..the taxpayers should own it,via penalty to these companies and safe alternative investment at the same time.Wrong decisions technically about coal and emissions and lack of maintainance on coal fired power stations shows how pathetic government has become.Surely there are both apprentices and retired technically equipped ,even students needing a bit of extra income to insure maintenance continues..There is the real possibility that Education facilities can fill the gap with others on maintainance. There is so much copping out going on by Government that surely the citizenry can ask legitimately..as in the Victorian Maintainance matters, that if the system breaks down that would then be an emergency circumstance.If that then occurs it would seem a provocation by government for that to occur.One dead cop will be provocation back to those who cop out.Seen in this way there is a need of the citizenry to stay alert and support each other whilst the non-camera shy bloat and gloat and float all their irresponsibility.
If the Greens want an opportunity to put their mouth where their money is they need this to get blocked twice and Rudd to call a double dissolution. If they have the support they say they do, all they need to do is campaign on a slogan of “send the message, we want action on climate change” and they’ll get a dozen Senate seats.
While there’s probably a mind in the Liberal Party (not literally, I know) to block renewables, my sense is that Turnbull and Hunt have won the day in the party room and have dragged the party with them to support renewables – as an idea. Possibly also the Nats – there’s lots of farmers with big roofs in very hot places.
Hunt’s being pretty clear that they’ll support the RET. They’ll even move amendments to remove the stupid phantom RECs caused by Garrett’s 5 RECs for every 1Mw of solar PV. Not sure whether they’re also removing solar hot water from the 20% tally of renewables. Damn well should be.
Hunt’s also talking about quarantining 5% for baseload renewables like geothermal and solar thermal. Originally he’d hoped to add that 5% to the original 20% but that was a step too far for the party.
If Wong would just stop playing silly buggers by coupling the RET, which is at least a step in the right direction, to the CPRS, which is complete load of horsey-do-do, we could get some much needed progress on the renewables front.
@Yobbo,
I was thinking of more preventative measures such as dikes, levees, seawalls, quake-proof foundations and firebreaks. Pre hoc measures that ameliorate the effects of natural phenomena, not post hoc measures that clean up the mess as best they can afterwards.
I was discussing Sen. Fielding’s apparent conviction that if global warming cannot be proven to be due to human activities, then we can just ignore it instead of building the GW equivalent of dikes, levees, seawalls, quake-proof foundations and firebreaks. An argument that a particular bill is insufficient in the dikes, levees, seawalls, quake-proof foundations and firebreaks provisioning is not at all the same as saying that dikes, levees, seawalls, quake-proof foundations and firebreaks are not needed at all.
To be fair, Hunt is on to something with quarantining at least a fraction of the MRET for baseload renewables.
Putting large quantities of wind in the grid, without large amounts of either hydro, energy storage, or loads that can be dumped on short notice, is likely to result in the deployment of inefficient and more polluting single-cycle gas turbines rather than combined-cycle gas, undoing much of the benefits.
The same goes for solar PV, by the way.
(Note; yes, such a policy would benefit my geothermal energy shares, if they ever get their bloody act together.)
My 2 cents… I have to start by saying I find it impossible to get too worried about runaway global warming now, because I figure that eventually the human race will just build huge quasi-industrial facilities and actively drain the CO2 from the atmosphere (maybe even reconstituting it into energy-rich hydrocarbons, but that’s a later development). We’ll build millions of Lackner air scrubbers in the Omani desert, and bind the concentrated CO2 to pulverized olivine rocks. We’ll collect billions of tons of plantation biochar and dump it in old mines and the deep seabed. Or we’ll perform equivalent actions. And to some extent this will be paid for by the global carbon markets set up at Copenhagen and beyond.
Some people are taking this decade’s experience as a template for the future – namely, talk rather than action, even while the Arctic shrinks. Thus Fran says, “This would have locked in a bad scheme until 2020. When it failed — as it surely would have — all subsequent schemes would be discredited.” That is not a possible outcome, and it gets less possible with time, because the further ahead you go, the hotter things get. If in 2015 or 2018, emissions trading looks like a failure, people are not going to lie down and resign themselves to frying; they are going to get serious about doing something; as serious, en masse, as today’s climate-activist minority are – though the popular conception in ten years’ time of what “serious action” means may not be limited to the prescriptions of today’s activists.
Returning to the immediate future, I agree with the commenters who expect the CPRS to pass, with amendments, on a second run, because the Liberals won’t want an early election. But you also just know that by the time we actually arrive in November, there will be some new factor in the political calculus, as unforeseeable as Utegate, which will invalidate one of the implicit assumptions behind that predictions. Nonetheless, I do expect the CPRS to become law, in some form.
Meanwhile, in other news:
National Geographic: ‘Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?
Similar from the BBC: ‘Are the deserts getting greener?
Some good news!
Heaps of comments on a DD and how that would get us a better scheme given The Greens would have the sole balance of power.
Few points -
I think the big obstacle at the moment is not the diverse Senate but the Labor Party itself which hasn’t given any indication that they actually want a stronger scheme and would work with The Greens, even if they were given the opportunity.
The bigger point that everyone here seems to be missing is that after a DD, if the Government wins, it’s likely to have the numbers to pass the CPRS in a joint sitting anyway and won’t need the support of The Greens or the Coalition.
The other problem with your analogy yobbo@21 is that sending in the ambulances and remediation only helps the survivors mitigate losses and costs a lot more.
An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure
Unless the Greens (or possibly the Libs) self-combust as an entire party in a fashion never before seen prior to the next election, this is not possible. Situation normal the Greens win too many left votes/Senate spots to allow this to happen.
But I suspect you know this and were making a rhetorical point. (I know, the only kind.)
As discussed at length elsewhere, that’s likely after either a DD or a half-Senate election. Indeed there’s good reason for regarding it to be more likely after a half-Senate than after a DD.
Martin B, my last paragraph shows that the number of Greens senators is pretty irrelevant when it comes to the CPRS post-DD.
I was thinking of more preventative measures such as dikes, levees, seawalls, quake-proof foundations and firebreaks. Pre hoc measures that ameliorate the effects of natural phenomena, not post hoc measures that clean up the mess as best they can afterwards.
A more appropriate analogy would be an Obelisk, a Pyramid, or a row of Moai Statues. Something that costs a great deal and is grand in scale, but ultimately does nothing useful except to remind everyone how great the Pharaoh/Chief who built it is.
What value is the opinion of a 100 men if none of them have any knowledge of the subject?
The ETS has nothing to do with protecting the Environment, it is about removing basic Civil Liberties and introducing a scheme that ensures the population compensate the polluters. It is about seizing assets, acquiring wealth and enslaving the little people.
Complain not when you are living in a FEMA camp eating cockroaches waiting to be liberated from your misery.
One may indeed call it Socialism, engineered by design.
Checkmate.
The concept of ‘Left & Right’ was devised to keep the masses fighting amongst themselves in order so that the ruling class can maintain their authority, dominion and wealth. Machiavellian tactics utilised in the 21st Century.
Liberal, Labor & Green are all sub servants of fascist overlords and one only need revise the environmental policies of Nazi Germany and their Green and Happy days.
Yobbo is completely correct.
The ETS, in its current guise, will cause job losses nationwide for no observable benefit other than a symbolic gesture to the world that Australia is willing to kill its economy so its competitors can benefit.
Wong deserved the bird in the Senate yesterday. Her pig-headed refusal to negotiate, to compromise, to save jobs is an even sadder indictment on her barren intellect.
If there’s a double dissolution with the ETS as a trigger, Labor can pass the scheme it wants in a joint sitting – assuming, of course, that it has an overall majority when you put together the House and Senate (highly likely). So the Greens get cut out of the picture entirely.
The only way that the Greens get the Senate BOP with control on this issue is if there was a normal half-Senate election.
If that situation arises, the Liberals will come under immense pressure to pass the government’s scheme, and even if they’re split on the issue it only needs a few Liberal Senators to do so. The realist faction in the Libs would be able to provide the necessary few votes.
Given all that, the leverage of the Greens is and will remain limited.
It seems to me that the only way that the Greens can start putting pressure on Labor is if they can start knocking off some of the inner-urban Labor house seats. That might focus their minds a little…
Turnbull will cave in 3 month’s time. He wants a double dissolution about as much as he wants pancreatic cancer. Turnbull’s only hope of avoiding an early election is a rapidly deteriorating economy. This was a reasonable hope earlier in the year, but with every passing day the economic news gets better, so he hasn’t got that anymore.
The only remaining issue is whether Rudd judges it in his interests to humiliate Turnbull totally in November (thereby ensuring that he is turfed from the leadership) or whether he will throw him a face saving compromise (thereby keeping an enfeebled opposition leader until the next election).
“Marcus Aurelius” @33, you’re weird. Although the themes of your paranoia (everything in politics is part of the one great Conspiracy to create one-world government) are most commonly encountered among American conspiracy theorists, who periodically show up on Australian blogs to post rants full of references meaningful only to Americans, you speak fluently enough of “the ETS” as if you were Australian. But then you say we’ll be living in “FEMA camps”, i.e. camps run by an American federal agency which is up there with the BATF as an American conspiracy bogeyman, as if you are one of those autistic comment-bots after all. Or do you mean that the Fairfax Employment Marketing Awards are the true stalking horse of tyrannical globalism on the Australian scene?
Three points:
1. Any pragmatic compromise the Greens could make with the government would still have required the support of Fielding. Can we all agree that any deal which involves Fielding would be a waste of time? Therefore there is no scenario where the Greens can negotiate a good deal on this issue. All they can do is stand for their principles and hope a CPRS isn’t passed before an election gives them the balance of power. From there they can negotiate a deal.
2. I think Turnbull wants to compromise, but he has two problems: he may not get his party to support him on any support for an ETS, and he would need at least some minor concessions from the government if he doesn’t want his leadership demolished entirely. If I was Rudd & Wong I wouldn’t move an inch. ‘Take it or leave it’. It’s win-win for them. Either Turnbull backs down entirely or they get a stick to beat the Liberals with as being dinosaurs and the option of an election.
3. The scheme can’t be passed at a joint sitting. Much of the ETS will take place through regulation. This means that, even if the legislation is passed in a joint sitting, a hostile Senate (say, with a Coalition-Greens majority, and neither party happy with the ETS) could disallow the regulations. This is what prevented the Australia Card from being passed at a joint sitting in 1987. So after the election they will still need to negotiate with either the Coalition or the Greens.
The ABC is reporting that the Government is now considering decoupling the RET amendment bill from the CPRS bill. Hopefully the 20% renewable energy target can go through, regardless of what happens with the CPRS in the short term.
That’s likely true at least for the main raft of legislation.
OTOH there is highly likely to be supporting legislation which will not be part of a DD trigger which will need to passed in an ordinary fashion by the Senate.
It is also the case that the Government may do as Antony Green suggests and not use the DD trigger even if they have it. Again that would require the Greens in the new Senate.
However all of these are unlikely scenarios. By far the most likely scenario is that the Liberals will pass the bill in some form next time it is presented.
I think decoupling is probably a good idea all round.
Plainly, if there is a serious renewable energy target (and providing they don’t let anything that isn’t renewable into the definition) then it follows that industry should want a universal carbon price, since they are going to have to buy renewables anyway. They should at least get some pay off for whatever extra costs they incur.
This wedges the opposition.
Secondly, the government really only gets to use its potential DD leverage once. If the bill decouples, then the ETS Bill can’t be the trigger (unless they resubmit the bill with its now redundant passages in three months). They’d passed Alcopops, and if the current ETS goes away then post the next election, with a new senate, maybe a better bill emerges. In the meantime, Rudd can dream up a new DD trigger to bargain with and split the opposition.
The only disadvantage of this from Rudd’s POV is that the opposition gets to put aside its divisions over climate change for a while, though it will be interesting to see if they can all agree the same MRETs.
I see Ben Raue sneakily made my point earlier and better!
The governments strategy is to get industry to lean on the Liberals as much as possible to pass the legislation. They hope that and the double dissolution threat will lead to the legislation being passed in three months time. It is almost inevitable that the CPRS will be passed in some form or another.
For those who want a good environmental outcome, the aim should be to amend the CPRS before it is passed. And after it is passed, try to amend it more. One of the best avenues to push for amendments is to make the CPRS link more effectively with the Waxman-Markey bill (the proposed US ETS). There are a lot of good aspects of the W-M bill that would also be good to put into the CPRS legislation. The Liberals are lying when they say that Waxman-Markey is more generous to industry, the opposite is true.
Rudd will happily take an early election if need be, but not necessarily a double dissolution. A DD may make it easier for Fielding to get re-elected, this time on Liberal preferences. Xenophon will get relected easily and in a DD might well a running mate up as well. On the other hand, in a half senate selection, all the coalition senators from 2004, a high water mark for them, will be up for re-election.
It seems to me that Ben Raue’s first point about the current numbers requiring negotiation with both the Greens and Senator Fielding cuts both ways and may undermine the strength of Adam Bandt’s earlier post. If ‘there is no scenario where the Greens can negotiate a good deal’, then there is probably no way that Labor can get the Greens over the line. That the Government didn’t negotiate with the Greens over a revised demand of 25% cuts may prove nothing more than that it realizes that it will not be able to secure the support of the Senate for such cuts.
Rewi is quite right. The government could adopt the Greens policy on climate change, word for word, but that would not get through the Senate. If the coalition opposes, then the government needs the Greens + Fielding + Xenophon. Fielding doesn’t even believe in the existence of anthropogenic climate change, let alone the Greens policy of what to do about it, So what is the point of the government agreeing with the Greens?
Rudd’s strategy of staring down Turnbull is the only feasible strategy.
Sam@45
I agree generally but disagree with your estimation of Fielding’s chances. He has no chance in a DD because he and the Liberals would be contesting the position. He’d have to massively increase his primary vote to get ahead of the Liberal and in that case the difference to the ALP would be nought.
And let’s face it — he is not going to increase his primary vote. If anything it will decline since much of his support base thought he dropped the ball on Alcopops.
Trading schemes ? Market driven salvation?
Not going to happen at all. FFS let’s lose this market solves all ills meme.
Nothing at all is going to be done about global warming until the icebergs bump down the flooded streets of Manhattan. Get that through your heads folks.
Our kids will be in part of the the greater Inonesian co-prosperity sphere and there will only be dolphins and mutated fish in the Queen street mall. Much of the sea will be covered in green slime and any-where west of Toowoomba will be searing desert. Sorry.
Huggy
Fran 48
I disagree about Fielding’s likely primary vote. Nobody had heard of him at the last election. Next time the name recognition alone should get him 3-4%. In a DD he needs only 7.7% to get elected, so he would not need many surplus Liberal votes at all to get up.
Interesting analysis of possible senate outcomes by Antony Green under a Double Dissolution Vs normal 1/2 senate election
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2009/07/double-dissolution-versus-halfsenate-election-which-would-be-better-for-labor-in-the-senate.html
The only possible reason the ALP would desire a DD over the normal is that the 1/2 senate election won’t see the new senate lineup until July 1, 2011
But under any sort of normal level of swings one would expect, the DD would disadvantage both major parties (although the Libs more than the ALP). Of course that’s assuming not a large swing – given the poor performance of the Libs a large swing may indeed be on the cards (I’d love to know what their internal polling is pulling)
On AG’s analysis, the final Senate seat in Victoria would be a bit of a lottery in a DD. Could be ALP, could be Green, could be Fielding, could be other micro-right party.
Antony Green’s analysis assumes the results of the next election will mirror those of 2007.
“Assuming Labor repeats its 2007 election result…”
Hands up who thinks this is what will happen?
Sam@50
You forget the rule of ceteris paribus. All else has to be equal. You will recall I hope that at one point the Democrats had significant name recognition but it didn’t stop them being wiped out eventually.
If you’re nobody and you become somebody then ceteris paribus you will do better, up to a point — which is possibly the 3-4% mark. You can probably get 1% accidentally and another 1-2% if some people campaign for you and you appeal to some constituency. Brand awareness might get you reach outside the place you have boots on the ground.
But in a second time election people who have heard of you will have heard bad stuff as well as good stuff. If the stuff seen as bad is bad in the eyes of people who would otherwise have been sympathetic then name recognition might hurt you as much or more than it helps. Fielding’s comments after his deal on Alcopops went down (banning TV advertising during sporting events IIRC) “What Family First has done has actually broken the back of the alcohol hold on Australia” when the price of RTDs was going to drop undoubtedly diminished him in the eyes of his supporters. His stance on Climate Change will also be unpopular with at least some conservative Christians who see nothing wrong with the concept of looking after ‘God’s creation’. He may well pick up some votes from the denier fringe who weren’t already going to vote FF but I strongly suspect his primary vote will decline.
I guess we will see.
Well, everyone knows that it won’t happen precisely. On the other hand it’s the only reasonable place to start the analysis.
So what are likely difference in the Victorian Senate vote?
The overall left vote might be up slightly, but nowhere near current opinion polls. OTOH with an ALP government seemingly entrenched, some centrists might start tactically splitting their Reps/Senate vote. Overall, the shift is likely to be small.
The Greens are quite likely to improve their position in terms of the left vote, with an ALP government and a convenient issue – climate change. Again, OTOH there does seem to be a bit of a ceiling on the Greens vote, so their imporvement is likley to once more be less than their supporters hope.
Fielding probably will get a personal vote this time around, so maybe you can rule out the possiblity of a non-FF micro-right party getting in. Again again OTOH Fielding was well known before the 2007 election, so can he personally lift FF above their 0.33 DD quotas at that election?
So looking at it the numbers will certainly change, but the analysis – a bit of a lottery – is unlikely to.
Fran, you also can’t rule out that the cretins who run the Victorian ALP won’t preference Fielding again. Half of them are probably closet supporters.
Sam@56
Well I’d be stunned if they did this time, but then, I was stunned the first time so maybe that doesn’t mean much ;-(
Fran Barlow @42: Totally agree that the REC bill should be decoupled. More particularly, I suspect you have the makings of something important here:
“Plainly, if there is a serious renewable energy target (and providing they don’t let anything that isn’t renewable into the definition) then it follows that industry should want a universal carbon price…”
I spent a few hours yesterday combing through American musings on their proposed Cap-&-Trade ETS. It seems that quite a few US economists are saying that cap-&-trade is fiendishly hard to model, and a straight carbon tax is much more transparent. This carbon-price for the CPRS might dovetail more easily with your concept of a universal carbon price for the REC’s program. At the moment, it looks like the ETS and the REC programs sit uneasily together as two separate approaches.
According to the US economists, Cap-&-Trade with auctioned permits makes the prediction of carbon/permit prices impossible for companies to predict (which is bad for their confidence in future investments), and is open to widespread abuse with rent-seeking and exploitation of loopholes.
Furthermore the high churn factor of ETS means that it is hard to see how much the system is really costing the nation; i.e. the cost/benefit analysis will be hard to determine. All good for Rudd, but not necessarily good for Australia.
A straight carbon tax was preferred, as it would give business certainty, be easier to audit, and be less amenable to argy-bargy. The main disadvantage is a political one, since everyone hates more taxes.
The implicit tax of Cap-&-Trade can be politically hidden in a message of “market forces”, even though it is a totally artifical market controlled by the government. Smells too much like communist China for my liking.
To return to the beginning, perhaps it would be a lot more efficient to have a universal carbon price, for both the REC’s and the CPRS?
Although the ALP would likely lose a couple of senate seats to the Greens in a DD, they gain another party to negotiate with to pass legislation. Right now they have to do a song and a dance to get anything past the Liberals, and they will need to do so until July 2011. It weakens their effectiveness as a government and weakens their image in the public’s eye.
Given they will be able to push a progressive or conservative position depending on the issue’s view with voters, (eg. tough on immigration, more education, stronger security laws, more progressive income tax) it would make sense to go to DD to reinforce their centrist populist positioning.
By the way, did anyone else notice Julia Gillard’s face when Rudd was delivering his dire warning that rejecting their ETS “put Australia’s future on climate change in grave jeopardy”?
Grinning like a Cheshire cat!
Didn’t look like she thought anything of significance was in “grave jeopardy”. Looked rather more like she thought things were going nicely to plan…
Elise, I guess both approaches have their pros and cons. One of the drawbacks of cap and trade is, as you say, that it is difficult to predict and determine the overall cost. Conversely, the main drawback of a carbon tax approach is that it is difficult to predict (or control) how much (if at all) it actually reduces emissions.
The rest of the potential problems, e.g. rent-seeking, administrative complexity, and so on, are likely to be determined more by the political compromises in the development of the relevant legislation than by the essential characteristics of each concept. I don’t see any reason to suppose that actual carbon tax legislation capable of passing the existing parliament (or even a parliament where the Greens have the BoP in the Senate), as opposed to hypothetical legislation and a hypothetical parliament, will be any less complex or prone to rent-seeking than the CPRS legislation.
The stuff about ‘business certainty’ etc has also been said about the CPRS legislation. It seems to be a standard business negotiating position at a particular stage of the process. In the case of the CPRS legislation, it was followed not long after by shrieks that the policy would devastate the economy.
I do find it interesting that so many business spruikers and free market enthusiasts are now coming out in favour of a carbon tax, when it was largely them who were promoting the idea of an ETS over a tax when the issue was first debated internationally back in the nineties. Right-wing types bringing up the carbon tax option at this stage smacks of delaying tactics to me (I’m not including you in that Elise, by the way).
Tim @61, perhaps you are correct that the carbon tax is being revisited as a delaying tactic.
Alternatively, perhaps the business community has had a chance to realise the complexity of the cap-&-trade system, with all the complex accounting for emissions? I know some have been appalled by the amount of manhours required for ongoing accounting for emissions. Perhaps they fondly thought that a “market-based” system was better (it pushes the right buttons for most business people), until they realised it wasn’t a market but a political contrivance.
It seems to me that we are mostly tip-toeing around the gorilla in the room. Ultimately, we have to get rid of coal-fired power stations and dramatically decrease our consumption of petroleum for transport fuel. Any scheme that doesn’t do this, will not reduce our emissions.
Currently the Rudd government proposes effectively taxing everyone else, to compensate the coal-fired power stations. We would be shooting ourselves in the collective foot while telling ourselves that we are doing it for our own good. How rediculous can it be?
You’re certainly right about the gorilla in the room, Elise. It appears to be politically impossible, at present, for the major parties to countenance the notion that dealing with climate change will ultimately require the phase-out of coal-fired power.
In part this is because there are very real political risks in promoting a policy which could cause a large short-term shock to the economy, particularly with the present fragile economic climate, and the ongoing presence of a substantial do-nothing lobby. A policy which aggressively taxes the coal-generated electricity sector in the short term and drives up electricity costs too rapidly could not only damage the government, but also cause a popular backlash and potentially derail the entire climate change policy effort.
My take on it is that the government is trying to get a framework in place which can be adjusted as required down the track. The short term trade-off for doing this is cushioning the big emitters and the coal-fired electricity sector. I acknowledge that this view is less cynical about the Government’s policy than the views of most commenters on this thread.
Regarding the business response, there is no doubt many businesses are well intentioned and do actually want to see a policy in place (while minimising the costs to their own business, of course, which is understandable). The requirement to account for emissions, however, can’t be avoided, regardless of the type of mitigation policy ultimately adopted. A carbon tax would need it too.
The reality is that the CPRS was a dog of a system that was not going to actually start driving down emissions until after at least one or possibly two elections. Even then it is debatable whether any serious pollluters would be left in the system.
The good news is that it now looks as though the legislation will be split so that the bits the government and opposition do agree on can be passed. This will allow existing progammes to keep going as well as allowing Australia to go to Copenhagen with agreed targets.
If the government, opposition and greens are serious about driving down emissions they should all be arguing for the acceleration of the exisitng programmes. They should also be arguing for expansion of the action programme to include additional price effective action. Effective action might include regulations covering at least standby power, average fuel consumption of new cars and building standards, the issue of contracts for the supply of clean electricty as well as contracts for other action to reduce net carbon pollution.
We would have little problem meeting a 25% reduction in emissions by 2020 if all we did was concentrate on cleaning up electricity. So if we did this plus a few of the other high gain low pain actions suggested above we may find that we can do quite well without CPRS for at least the next 10 years.
However, it is important to keep talking about CPRS. The threat of CPRS will encourage business and the public to support the more sensible alternatives.
Adam Bandt – Thanks for your reply to my question. I know it was a little harsh and I really appreciate you giving it some consideration and I was impressed by your grasp of the compexity…
.
Oh wait. You didn’t reply.
Tim @63: “In part this is because there are very real political risks in promoting a policy which could cause a large short-term shock to the economy, particularly with the present fragile economic climate…”
Why doesn’t the government audit the existing coal-fired power stations, to establish which are the oldest, highest maintenance, and lowest thermal efficiency? i.e. Make a ranked list of the worst dinosaurs?
Then why don’t they arrange to use some of that infrastructure Australia funding for a PPP (Public Private Partnership) or somesuch, to build a new combined-cycle gas station nearby these dinosaurs?
Then they can switch over without this large short-term shock that everyone fears.
Elise @66:
The economic shock comes from depending on putting a price on carbon. With this approach investment in clean alternatives depends on the price of the dirty alternative jumping above the price needed to justify this investment. The shock can be avoided by leaving the price of the dirty alternative unchanged while offering price and sales guarantees to potential investors in the clean alternative. My understanding is that the MRET system uses separate markets for the clean alternative to achieve this end. This is why the Howard system has allowed us to build clean generating capacity without price shocks.
You also talk ranking the power generation dinosours to determine which ones should be shut down first. The probelm is that it is a bit more complex than this. If we are using wind or solar power we need to retain power stations that can change their output quickly to respond to demand. Unfortunately, the coal fired power stations that do this best are not the large, efficient base load plants. (This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t resolve this problem by installing lower emmission, fast response gas fired capacity instead of keeping the dinosaurs.
JohnD @67, Where is the “shock” is in replacing old inefficient coal-fired power with similar new, highly efficient, gas-fired power? Those old power stations will have to be replaced one day, anyway.
My understanding is that the power cost for combined-cycle gas turbines is not much different to coal-fired power.
Incidentally, the coal lobby are being highly dishonest in talking about the merits of “clean coal” without telling everyone how much this “clean coal” would cost.
They damn well know CCS doesn’t pay, which is why they haven’t used it yet.
Elise @ 68, they know CCS won’t work.
Mitchel Porter @ 38,
How sporting of you to label me as a ‘Conspiracy Theorist’.
When all else fails resort to the Goebellian defence.
Hottest August day on record in Melbourne this week, 29 degrees in Brisbane winter.
Nothing to see here; constantly exceeding record maximums is apparently ‘normal climate variation’ these days, according to several non-scientists who ought to know.
We have an interesting situation, it seems, where the coal lobby:
(a) wants compensation for hardship under ETS,
(b) won’t invest in CCS itself (despite SAYING it will work), and
(c) doesn’t even invest in long-term maintenance of its power stations.
They don’t put their money where their mouths are…
Doesn’t that tell us something important about their own belief in the claims of their highly-paid lobbyists and spokespeople?
Now that the CPRS has gone down the proverbial crapper and the polity is seized (Rudd TM) of MRETs …
I think we need a serious target for 2020 so the big polluters don’t get off the hook completely:
50% of stationary power to come from properly defined near zero emission renewables (not including run of the river hydro)
50% reduction in fossil fuel per vehicle mile by 2020
No direct financial compensation to commercial operations. Assistance in kind to those individuals and businesses who need assistance tooling up. e.g. provision of quality public transport, creation of suitable energy storage infrastructure which would be leased at levelized cost to energy generators, usw.
For roads, I’d favour something rather like that put to the Henry Tax Review by Professor Harry Clarke of Latrobe — essentially a user-pays system.
With the exception of GS$T I’d abolish all State and Federal government excise on car-related products. In its place would stand a system of user charges levied at the point where vehicles were registered. Vehicle registration would be a purely nominal charge. Instead, there would be a sharply progressive unladen weight tax on all private vehicles and it would be assumed at the start that each vehicle would travel on average what the user had previously averaged and adjustments made at the next registration moment. (Where data was absent, a community average for the residence locality would apply). There would also be a petroleum-based fuel usage charge applying to all fully liquid fuel vehicles. Those who could show that they had purchased a benchmarked biofuel could have the full footprint of each fuel compared with the footprint of the most common fuel for the vehicle or the fuels they otherwise used (perhaps a swipe card could record this) and secure a concession for the differential.
Hybrid vehicle operators would get a charge based on the likely proportion of fuel in their energy mix. For plug-ins the charge would be lower than for non-plug-ins.
My quarterly electricity bill has just gone up $70 (from $190), mainly due to the increases allowed by the NSW govt on July 1. This would be OK if the electricity generators were producing less CO2, but they are not. It’s a simple price gouge by the utilities. Today Tonight ran a useless segment the other night telling people they can do nothing about it other than to save money by switching off devices such as the TV at night, rather than leaving them on standby. I’ve made all the changes I can make, and I’m never going to retrieve that extra $70 the utilities have ripped off me. When the CPRS finally kicks in, does this mean my elctricity bills are going to go up yet again, or are the current price rises just in anticipation of the CPRS?