Political Mish-Mash – An Energy Debate in Australia and Theresa May becomes the latest senior Conservative to announce she will not be contesting the next UK Election

It has been another busy week in Australian and world politics, In USA Politics news just briefly Donald Trump and Joe Biden both officially locked away enough delegates to officially be each parties nominees, locking in a rematch of the 2020 US Election. But I have covered USA Politics enough recently so I wont cover that this time. Instead I will focus on Australian Politics and the ongoing Energy and Climate Debate that just wont go away in this country while I will then focus on the momentous decision of Theresa May not re-contesting her seat at the next election and have a look at her political legacy.

So first on Australian Politics and we are apparently going Nuclear, well at least that’s what the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton wants us to do. Now David Littleproud to his credit has long been an advocate for Nuclear Energy, indeed it was his parties policy to go Nuclear before the last change of government but the Liberals under Peter Dutton and Climate Spokesman Ted O’Brien have finally jumped on board. Before I continue down this line of thought I must say whether you agree or not with Nuclear Energy it is good to see the Liberal and Nationals finally have a coherent policy on Energy and Climate which is a change from the past when the Liberals and Nats were mostly running well we wont do what Labor and the Greens are doing in this space. So where do I stand on Nuclear as an energy source for powering our country? Well, I am probably broadly in favour of it being part of the transition to cleaner Renewables as a stopgap to bridge the gap between having dirty coal and gas projects and going full renewables immediately which would kill the Economy in some regions. Don’t get me wrong Australia have an abundance of Sun and Wind, we also have an abundance of rocks and could use Geothermal Energy but that’s a debate for another day. Look this debate is going to be easy to run a scare campaign on, it has a high set-up cost, it takes time to build and you have the problem of where you are going too store the Nuclear Waste. I get that and Labor and the Greens are already prosecuting the lines of a; Where are you going to build the plants and b; how are you paying for this site and this is just a smokescreen too stop action on going renewable. The fact is I think AUKUS which is a bipartisan topic for Labor and the Coalition on Nuclear Submarines which will have a problem of down the line of where are you going to store the waste does mean that we can have a mature discussion on the merits of a Nuclear Power as more than weapons capability. Now the Coalition were saying lets go with Small Modular Reactors and that has now been debunked by the US Experience for that technology as not ultimately being feasible, so Ted O’Brien has now said look lets build a proper site in six locations that we think can be built the first one within ten years. Now I have my doubts on that timeframe, we don’t have the capabilities, the workers or safety standards that other countries had when they delivered their projects in the ten year timeframe but that I don’t think means we shouldn’t consider it. I do think Renewables while useful as part of the mix are not able to be the only solution going forward, the reason for this is because Sun and Wind while useful are only feasible if you have batteries to store the sun power when its cloudy and wind turbines to store the wind. Both of those things are problematic at the moment, be it that batteries currently just don’t have a long enough shelf life to last long term and wind turbines are not universally loved by those who end up having them in their electorate. Look I think the real problem for the Coalition on Nuclear Energy is that it would mean keeping dirty coal sites on until the Nuclear Power Plants are built and I don’t think that’s a popular proponent, it also needs to happen soon ie in the next term of Parliament and that would require getting bipartisan support in the Lower and Upper House which is problematic. I will say this too, Labor who claim to be strongly opposed to such a metric clearly have not always been so, because it was a Labor Premier Jay Weatherill who proposed Nuclear Energy late in his term of office but ultimately he was opposed by the public by a scare campaign by opponents of the proposition and I think that’s the problem with this debate, the scare campaign is too easy to generate. So in conclusion Nuclear Energy is a worthwhile discussion point that has pros and cons, and I think if the Coalition win office then they will have an opportunity to implement their plan.

Now onto UK Politics, and Theresa May announced in the last week that she was not going to re-contest her seat of Maidenhead at the next UK General Election, most likely later this year. It puts an end to the career of a 27 year MP which she served as the longest ever Home Secretary and then became only the second woman to become PM of the UK. I have always liked Theresa May, she was a hard head on Foreign Policy and Immigration in her six years of being Home Secretary and then she took on the unenvious task of being PMM after the Brexit vote which not only divided her country but also divided her party. Ultimately her time as PM will be remembered sadly as the PM who could not unite her Party on Brexit and ultimately was taken down by a group of hard headed men on the Right of her party that ultimately got Brexit done but screwed the party and the country up on almost every policy area. I think Theresa May’s greatest impact though was setting up Woman2Win an initiative to get more Woman into Politics, particularly in the Conservative party which was notoriously bad at getting woman into winnable seats despite being the only party to have a Woman PM.

Thanks for reading my blog, stay tuned next week as I preview the messy shitshow that is the Tasmanian Election.

The week in Federal Politics – Great week for the Government, an Annus Horriblis for the Opposition

It’s been a very busy week in Federal Politics which warranted a special emergency blog from me on the Aston By-election result as well as other worldwide happenings in the USA with the Indictment of Donald Trump. In this blog I will touch on the non Aston elements of the last week in Federal Politics which was still a lot. So aside from Aston it was a great week for the government, they got their key legislations they took to the election through the Parliament with the Greens somewhat backflipping to allow the Safeguard mechanism through the Parliament which should mean the end of the Climate Wars, they also got their voice to Parliament legislation introduced to the Parliament and the National Reconstruction Fund which was a key part of their election winning strategy to start making more stuff in Australia secured cross-bench support. There was also the continued focus of the government on the former government in their lack of ongoing funding for key Government departments past June of this year. Such examples of that were the My GOV website, the Question building and the War Museum. You also had Bill Shorten continue his attack on the former government on two fronts, firstly there was the ongoing Robodebt royal commission fallout which has similar to the former governments Union Royal Commission really heaped mud on a lot of former Government Ministers. You also had the alleged misuse of handing out government grants to mates by the former Social Services Minister Stuart Roberts who has become the punching bag of the new government for attacks on the former government. Back to the SafeGuard Mechanism and its a good balance I feel between getting the environmental balance right which is that urgent action is needed to avoid us going off a cliff in heating the planet and the need to balance out the Economic needs of the Country and being able to make use of the fact that Clean Renewables are becoming ever more economically beneficial to make use of. I’m sure a lot of Business leaders would have preferred to see the Coalition strike a deal on the Safeguard mechanism to allow a better phase out of coal and gas use but the Coalition are stuck in the business of saying no to everything. On the introduction of the Voice to Parliament Referendum bill it was a pivotal moment, Labor are on the right side of history here trying to improve the outcomes of Indigenous Australian’s who according to the latest Closing the Gap report are still lagging struggedly behind other Australian’s. The Coalition again in the last week continued their fake outrage of pretending to not have the details of what a Voice to Parliament would look like in practice and continued to muddy the waters as it looks increasingly likely the Coalition will either back a no vote for the referendum or at best a free vote to Parliamentarians. The National Reconstructure Fund is an important win for the government as it will boost Australian Jobs by giving an Infrastructure boost to the country and boost the Economy, to be honest I’m surprised the Libs are against the bill as it seems a commonsense approach to driving increased productivity in the Economy. The Housing Fund to secure more public housing for the homeless is the one bill that continues to look stuck in terms of passing the Parliament, the Opposition are against because they like being opposed to everything and they don’t believe its an efficient use of public funding which too me again is a pointless argument that will only feed into the Liberals being the Nasty party. The Greens are against the bill because its apparently not enough funding, so again the Greens are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, for mine the Greens are opposing this for base political reasons, they’ve given ground on the Safeguard Mechanism and the Voice Referendum and now they feel they have to product differentiate from the Labor Party on something to appeal to their base. Lastly, it’s been a slow bubbling issue but the Liberals and Nationals have been trying to push an agenda in Parliament that the Labor Party has not cleaned up the act of Parliament in terms of running a better behaviour standard this term, well that was smashed during the week when it was revealed a number of Politicians pushed through an attendant to get out of a vote in the Parliament and ended up injuring the attendant. Not a good look for a party that didn’t do enough to fix the bad culture in Parliament during their last term in office. Now onto what happened in the week of Parliament and then a review of what the polls are saying after a monumental week in Parliament that ended with a monumental once in a century By-Election result.

So Monday saw the Albanese Government get closer to passing the Safeguard Mechanism bill go through the Parliament as they struck a deal with the Greens on the policy, meanwhile the former Greens leader Bob Brown criticised the Labor Party for not going further on the Safeguard Mechanism. In Victorian Politics John Pesutto the Liberal Opposition leader buckled to pressure and didn’t expel Moira Deeming from the party with an imposed suspension being the compromise position. That takes us to question time and the first Liberal question was on the apparent cost of living crisis. Then there was another Liberal question on Power Prices and Cost of living. Then there was a question from the Nats on the Regions and Communities Grant Program. Then the Liberals asked a question on the Abolition of the Cashless Debit Card. Then the Liberals asked a question about the release of Solicitor General’s advice regarding the Voice to Parliament. Then there was one last Liberal question about the Voice to Parliament and to quote former PM Julia Gillard “I can confirm the leader of the opposition was present in question time today”.

Tuesday saw David Pocock announce he would vote for the Safeguard Mechanism bill meaning it would have the numbers to pass the Senate. In NSW Chris Minns was officially sworn in as the new Labor Premier. The minister Ed Husic got support on the National Reconstructure fund meaning it too would also pass the Senate. Josh Burns the Labor MP said that the recent questions on a voice to Parliament by the Liberals was just an attempt to muddy the waters on the issue. Onto question time and Peter Dutton had the first question on the power prices promise that has been broken. Then the Liberals had a question on the Mortgages going up for Australian’s. Then the Deputy Opposition Leader asked a question on the Voice to Parliament Referendum and the Solicitor General’s advice being released. Then there was an LNP question on the Community and local infrastructure fund. Then there was a Liberal question on gas supply in Winter. Then there was another Liberal question on the Voice to Parliament. The Liberals finished question time with two more questions on what the Voice to Parliament means for specific policy areas.

So Wednesday saw the inflation data be revealed. In it, it showed the price rises in key areas had slowed showing the worst of the inflationary pressures may be over. Seven members of the LNP apologised for pushing past a Parliament attendant as the doors were ordered to be locked for a vote. Mark Dreyfus the Attorney General announced that the new National Anti Corruption Integrity Commissioner would be Paul Brereton. Then onto question time and the first question again was on the broken promise of Power Prices. Then there was a Liberal question about consumer confidence on ANZ relating to cost of living pressures. Then there was a Liberal question on the energy prices increasing particularly on gas. Then there was two more question on the cost of living pressures being faced by average householders. The last question of the day from the Libs was on the legal implications of the Voice.

Thursday saw the Voice to Parliament referendum bill introduced to Parliament. The safeguard mechanism bill passed the Parliament. Onto the last question time of the month and it was started again with a Liberal question on Power Prices. Then the Opposition asked a question on the voice to Parliament. Then the Shadow Treasurer asked a question on the Budget and any proposed tax changes. Then the Liberals asked a question about the cost of living crisis question. Then the Liberals asked their last question time question on the cost of living crisis and its affects on Small Businesses.

So Friday saw the Attorney General disagree with the human rights commissioner that the Voice to Parliament would add to inequality in the society. Sydney Independent MP responded to the vile tweets of Mark Latham and said he would do more to reform the rights of LGBTQI people in the next Parliament.

That takes us to the weekend. Saturday saw the Aston By-Election which I talked about a lot in my last emergency blog. Labor won the By-Election in Aston the first time an opposition lost a seat to the Government at a by-election since 1920. It was also revealed Saturday that Chinese and Australian Officials would meet to discuss the trade negotiations next week. There was also a highlight of the ugly behaviour in Parliament this week. Sunday saw Insiders occur and Peter Dutton was the guest on Insiders which showed to me at least that while Dutton took responsibility for the Aston loss but he was not going to change his political technique.

So where do we stand on the polls after another monumental week in Federal Politics? Well, Newspoll came out on Sunday night and showed that the Labor Party were now ahead 55-45 2PP. What I think is important for the Labor Party is that their primary vote which was languished at 32.5% at the last Federal Election has recovered and the fact that they got over 40% 1st Primary vote in Aston should send shivers down the spine of the Liberal Party. Meanwhile the polls are showing the Coalition which was already languishing at a low base has gone backwards again since the Federal Election which is a real problem also. The Newspoll result showed that Liberals have gone backwards to the left since the Election, namely the Labor Party, the Greens!!! and Teal Independents and to the right with One Nation again looking appealing to angry and grumpy Conservatives. Lastly, I commented on a Psephology blog on the weekend that the Liberals had stopped being an effective opposition. I was countered on that front with oh that’s ok, the Liberals may not be the opposition but the Greens and Teal Independents are providing an effective opposition. A few points on that, firstly the Liberals are the major opposition party and as a bigger bloc than the Greens and the Teals have far more voice on issues than what the Greens and Teals can. Also and more importantly the Greens and Teals are not centric focussed on the whole on Economic and Social Issues and there’s a sea of people who are quieter Australian’s who are not being represented properly at the moment by the Teals and Greens being the effective Opposition Party.

Thanks for reading my blog, stay tuned in the next few days with another emergency blog this time on the Voice to Parliament being opposed by the Liberal Party.

Australian Politics – A month into life under Albanese

It’s now been just over a month into the Labor government, and a lot has already happened. The final 2 PP count came out this week and the final winning margin for Labor over the Coalition was 52.1-47.9. That is despite the Labor recording a record low vote, although in the end Labor’s vote was only down 0.8% from 2019. Enough on the election result, Labor have now been governing for a month and there have been a few major themes that have popped up already. The Economy is the first major theme and Labor are a wait and see on that regard. Inflation is heading through the roof and interest rates are starting to rise up at a very quick rate. The Labor Parties response to this is we will bring forward the Budget to later in the year and we will probably put more sweeteners in that budget for cost of living pressures but pain to the hip pocket is coming in the next budget in May as with increasing debt and an increasing interest rates the high debt levels will have to be paid for. Labor’s response to this so far has been to say they will end the rorts and the waste and yikes if that’s all the budget repair Labor have planned its not going to do much. Labor have pressed the minimum wage argument and have given minimum wage earners a 5.3% pay increase in line with inflation, that’s ok but it does open Labor up to the argument from the left that if inflation goes to 7% should minimum wages also increase by 7%. I don’t think Labor would argue that but if they are saying minimum wage earners should keep up with inflation for their pay then you could argue that minimum wage earners pay should keep going up. Never mind that increasing the pay of workers will push the price of things up and put extra pressure on inflation but it’s the symbolism as much as anything. The next pressure point for Labor is the woman’s pay gap which Labor put on their high priority list for sorting out. I think again it will be a case of picking winners in certain job markets that are female dominant which will help them out but will a; put inflation pressure on the economy and b; leave other industries saying what about us. For example a lot has been said about rising the wages of front line workers who have done so much during the pandemic, and my argument to that is who do you classify as front line, if its only aged care workers and retail and medical staff what about teachers, what about disability care workers, its a dangerous game to start picking winners because you inherently create losers. Energy is the next big issue and that’s reared its ugly head in the last few weeks as private energy companies have tried to price gouge (shock and horror in a market economy) it has led to AEMO taking over the market and setting their own prices. There was a worry that this would lead to power shedding and blackouts for customers but thankfully the government has dodged that bullet at the moment. That has been because coal and gas power generators have come back online and that could be a flashpoint of what is to come in terms of the push to renewables that the government is going to have to make due to the pressure that will come from the Greens and the Teal Independents. The Liberal Party for their part have said lets go nuclear which as a Scientist I am actually for longer term, but if you do that you will need a climate price on carbon because the initial setup will be very expensive. The other issue with that is the scare campaign that will be run on what to do with the Nuclear waste and also what to do if there’s a nuclear reaction problem. Labor for their part are pushing ahead with their own climate change target of 2030 which is good to see as it would be easy in an energy crisis to crab walk away from action now. Actually, what Labor did was smart they thumbed the blame onto the Coalition for this Energy Price as well as say they need to go green to avoid something like this happening in the future. It’s intriguing the Green debate, everyone says oh if you go green you’ll rise prices, my argument against that is the ACT which just saw their power prices go down for the umpteenth quarter in a row and they are net zero emissions already. Then there’s the International Relationship that Labor have made a real priority of fixing under this new government. The Pacific was a huge priority for Albanese and Penny Wong and they have visited a number of countries already to push their commitment to the region in terms of Climate ambitions and also in terms of smoothing out the Chinese security pact. They have also tried to smooth things out with France after the bungled submarine deal by the Coalition and so far I think they have done well on what is usually a weak spot for the Labor Party. Lastly is an issue that I think will be soon talked about a lot is Indigenous Reconciliation and a voice to Parliament. On this maybe the best chance of bipartisanship in the long run as Peter Dutton has appointed Julian Lesser to the Indigenous Affairs Portfolio who is in favour of a voice to Parliament. The only thing Dutton raised which is fair enough as long as it isn’t a smoke screen to ultimately doing something on a voice to Parliament is the domestic Issues that Indigenous People are facing.

Thanks for reading my blog, stay tuned next week for my summary of the two UK By-Elections that were counted our time today.

The week in Federal Politics

It’s been a busy week in Federal Politics as Parliament returned for the first of two sitting weeks. It’s been a week where the Federal Government has been under pressure on a few fronts. Firstly on the vaccination roll out with new figures showing that Australia is one of the worst countries at vaccinating people particularly in the aged care sector and disability sector. Another issue that crept up for the Government was Hotel Quarantine as a bungle in the SA Hotel Quarantine led to another lockdown in Victoria. Lastly, a report landed on the desk of the PM Cabinet about Brittany Higgins alleged sexual assault and that was a weak report that led to the government being back under pressure on the treatment of women. So why is the Federal Government not in serious trouble? Well, the opposition continues to tear itself apart particularly on Energy Policy and Taxation reform with two groups now forming that appear in no way reflects on the performance of Anthony Albanese as the leader but looks entirely like a reflection on Anthony Albanese as Opposition Leader. The mood of the Opposition is grim, to say the least, and it’s going to take a lot to avoid as one Labor shadow frontbencher said the Opposition sleepwalking to another election loss. Lastly, Question Time continued to be rowdy this week and Tony Smith finally got sick and tired of the behaviour kicking out members left, right and centre and sitting the Minister for Health and PM when they defied his rulings. In this blog, I will talk about what happened in Politics this week before moving onto analysing where we stand currently in Federal Politics.

Monday saw four Victorians contract Covid-19, 3 of which were close contacts of the original case, despite that the acting Premier said there were no plans for a lockdown at this stage. Grace Tame said the PM reacted to her Australian of the Year acceptance speech with the comment “gee, I bet you felt great getting that out of you” and lastly a federal colleague of Joel Fitzgibbon told him to shut up and stop complaining about Labor’s policy direction. That takes us to question time and Labor went straight to the Grace Tame comments. Labor then asked about the Jobs numbers and wages before Labor then went back to Brittany Higgins. After that Labor asked several questions about the assumptions of the budget of wages cuts before Bill Shorten was called from his slumber to ask a question about the slow rollout of vaccines in the disability sector. Lastly, there was another question about the vaccination take-up of over 50’s.

Tuesday saw another four cases of Coronavirus in Victoria. As a result of this Victoria announced new restrictions would come into place affecting residents of Victoria. In Preselection news 5 Liberals are facing serious battles to retaining their candidacy in NSW with the right of the Party staging something of a coup on sitting members to try and uproot several sitting members. Staying in NSW for a minute the Labor State Party are having troubles post the diabolical Upper Hunter by-election result. Jodi McKay said she was not going anywhere despite the leadership war drums starting to beat louder. Onto question time, and Labor started their question time attack on Ms Higgins and the report that came out today that both did and didn’t clear the PM’s staff of backgrounding the family of Ms Higgins. The Labor Party asked more questions on that topic before moving on to the issue of hotel quarantine. Labor then asked a question about the government’s energy policy which is ironic given the issues around Energy in the Labor Party currently. There was then another question about hotel quarantine and whether it was a federal responsibility before Labor then switched its attention to the vaccination of the disability sector. Question time ended with another question on wages.

There were six new cases of Covid-19 in Victoria on Wednesday. SA has decided to shut its borders to Victoria and NSW Premier has advised residents to reconsider travel to Bendigo and Greater Melbourne. The Uluru Statement of the Heart speech won a peace prize in Sydney putting constitutional recognition of Indigenous people back on the map. Question time started on Hotel Quarantine and then moved swiftly onto how many Victorians were vaccinated out of the ones who had contracted Covid-19. Labor then moved back onto Vaccines and Hotel Quarantine. Labor then asked a question about the Ms Higgins report, showing that Labor is desperately trying to keep this issue in the public’s mind. Labor finished Question Time asking several questions about wages for workers.

Thursday saw 12 new cases of Covid-19 in Victoria, as a result of this Victorian’s entered a week-long lockdown starting from Thursday at midnight. The Disability Discrimination Boss said that his NDIS Independent assessment was inadequate. On Disability it was found that the Coalition’s job program for the Disabled had ballooned out to 40k per job placement. ASIC has launched action against AMP for charging fees to dead people. That takes us to Question Time and Labor went straight to Quarantine and Vaccination roll out. Labor then asked about the vaccination rollout to Victorians in Aged Care. Labor then asked a question about what constitutes the full vaccination of the population before the Greens leader Adam Bandt asked a question with the killer line of what will the PM do to stop his lockdown from being repeated. Labor then went back to vaccinations in specific aged care facilities and also in the disability sector. Then the Health Minister was asked how many people who contracted Covid-19 had been vaccinated. Labor jumped back and forwards in this question time asking about Vaccination and the Hotel Quarantine.

Friday saw the state of Victoria record four new cases of Covid-19 as they entered the first day of the seven-day lockdown. In a teary speech, Jodi McKay resigned as Opposition Leader of NSW. Scott Morrison flew to NZ to have a face-face meeting with Jacinda Ardern. China and the deportation of NZ criminals were set to be the big talking points in the meeting.

That takes us to the weekend. Saturday saw 6 new cases of Covid-19 in Victoria. Kabul embassy guards said they were being threatened by the Taliban for doing that work and said they would need more protection. Anthony Albanese marked two years in the top job this week and there are mixed messages as to whether Labor is closer to government now than they were two years ago in the aftermath of losing the unlosable election. Sunday saw another 5 cases of Covid-19 in Victoria including a concerning case in Aged Care. Dan Tehan the Trade Minister was the guest on Insiders and he had a shocker of an interview stumbling when it came to what supports were available to casual workers in the current Victorian Lockdown. In NSW Politics Michael Daley announced he wanted another tilt at the top job after being the leader who lost the last State Election and he will take on up and coming member and twice failed candidate Chris Minns.

So, where do we stand politically right now? Well, both sides are clear on a warpath now for an election coming soon although reports say that the election won’t happen until next year although an election in the second half of the year is still not out of the question. Right now the Coalition are the favourites I feel which is a miracle given twice now first with the bushfires and then with Miss Higgins alleged incident it looked like the tide had irreversibly turned against the government. For me, there’s a clear general positivity about the way the Government has handled the Pandemic notwithstanding issues with Hotel Quarantine which the government have tried to share the blame with the states and vaccination rollouts which is an intriguing one because there are mixed views in the community about the urgency to have vaccines. On the Economy, it’s a mixed bag the recovery has gone a lot better than most expected post the JobKeeper ending although wages going down is a problem and there are sectors of the economy that have been left behind in the last budget. Despite this Labor can’t stop arguing with itself on Energy which is silly given the government have lost several leaders on the issue and Taxation which to me is a clear ideological battle between those who want the problem to go away and those in Labor who believe in taxing the wealthy a higher amount.

Thanks for reading my blog, stay tuned next week for my next blog on the week in Federal Politics.

The Week in Politics

This week in politics was the first week back for Politicians after a long Winter break that included the 5 by elections. As the Parliament started the week with a nothing to see here Newspoll that saw the LNP still just behind 2PP 51-49 it looked like the Liberal Party may have escaped the worse of the post by-election swing away from the LNP as a result of the worse than expected results. Although that being said the poll numbers for Turnbull personally dropped which would be a worry based on the hope that his popularity over Bill Shorten is a way to win the next election. By the end of the week as the 4 returning MP’s had returned from their section 44 woes as well as the new member for Perth the Liberals fell over on a number of issues and today there have even been some rumblings of a leadership challenge. This blog will focus on the main issues raised this week in Parliament namely the National Energy Guarantee, The Great Barrier Reef Foundation donation and then the push to allow Territories to control whether assisted suicide/ euthanasia is legal or not. There was also debate about the discourse of the Senate and Parliament in general after Fraser Anning invoked the Holocaust in his first speech as a means of dealing with Muslim immigration but it was so disgraceful and disgusting I don’t want to give it anymore airspace here.

The National Energy Guarantee was the real issue of the week as Energy has continued to dominate the Political landscape for the last ten years. The NEG was a good example of how the week shifted for the LNP as the week went on, Tuesday everyone was happy that the NEG had passed parliament, By today there were 12 MPS on the backbench from the Lower House and Senate who were threatening to resign and there has been talk that Keith Pitt an assistant National’s Minister might be willing to walk away from the ministry over the issue. Before I talk too many specifics about what happened this week it is worth reminding ourselves what the NEG is. (1) has a good summary of what the NEG is and essentially it seeks to ensure there is enough reliable energy available to provide cheaper power. Energy providers will have to make sure they have enough energy supply to meet reliability targets while reducing emission levels over time.

The real argument to be had now is on two fronts. The more Conservative members of the Liberal Party who say this policy does too much on reliable energy and they want to see a new Coal Fired Power Station built. The problem with that argument and is well articulated by Scott Morrison in (2) is that by time a Coal Fire Power Station is built in 8 years time the cost of producing Renewable Energy options will have become cheaper. Indeed it currently costs a coal plant 30 to 40 dollars an hour to produce a megawatt of power versus a new plant that would cost 70 to 80 dollars per hour. I think Scott Morrison’s argument as well as other more centrist Coalition members argument is that keep current Coal Power Plants open for as long as possible to not suddenly force a jolted transition to more renewable energy sources but building a new plant that then has to start up from scratch is not feasible. I think the Conservatives and Barnaby Joyce said this the other day was we keep hearing these Energy Policies will reduce power prices as we increase our reliance on renewables, but so many recent policies have not done this. This argument ignores the Science which is that renewables are getting cheaper and Coal is not!

The other front comes from the Labor and the Greens where the Greens are absolutely against the NEG and that’s not surprising and Labor are swinging on what their views on the policy are. I think the big problem the Greens have and the problem Labor have is the lack of rise in reliance on Renewable Energy in the next 10 years. As (3) says the NEG effectively only raises emissions cuts by 2 percent from 24 to 26%, that effectively is a cut of 2% in 10 years which is not good enough for Labor and abhorrent for the Greens with the Labor Party wanting to cut emissions by 45%. Now there’s an argument to settle this debate for both sides by the next election by allowing the motion to pass but Labor have not locked this in yet and there’s a reason for that. What happens if at the next election Labor win the lower house Election as expected but we have a Conservative cross bench in the Senate. If that’s the case the simple amendment of raising the cuts post the election may not be there. To that I argue that in this case if there’s no energy policy then you will still have nothing for the next three years of government anyway and that 70% of something is better than 100% of nothing as Derryn Hinch has termed. (4) has a good podcast with Mark Butler talking about the possibility of Labor supporting the NEG.

The other ingredient to the NEG is the states who also have to sign off on the deal. As of today some Labor states are starting to lose their solidarity on emissions targets believing it is Federal Labor’s job to set the emissions targets. Victoria are not budging at this stage as they want to set their own emissions target seperate to the Federal Government but me thinks the state Election in November is a large motivating factor to their refusal to budge. Certainly if they appear to weak on this issue the Greens are ready to pounce in inner metro Victorian state seats and I think the Greens are in a good position in the state branch of Victoria having won Northcote comfortably from Labor last year.

The second issue of the week is the Government’s nearly half a billion donation to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. When this was first announced in the budget it looked like a sound investment to a struggling Reef that would help it’s electoral fortunes in Queensland where the Government has consistently struggled in polling. As with a lot of good policy under this Government the government have stuffed up the actual implementation of the policy and then screwed up the politics handing out all the money to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation a small 6 person employee company and then defended rather lamely the lack of due diligence in choosing said company over other more well established companies like The Marine Foundation and the CSIRO. To this claim the government have come up with some good explanations saying the CSIRO and Marine Foundations are connected to the company as board members and the company has to have some reputation because Labor donated money to the Foundation when it was in power albeit 12 million as opposed to half a billion dollars. The Government tried to say it didn’t need a tender because the company was reputable enough and had gone through the due diligence with the Environment Department but there’s a few problems with that line. Firstly appearance, one of the board members is a close friend of Malcolm Turnbull, a tender process would have partially avoided the appearance of you helping a mate. Secondly that due diligence per (5) was for a different project and that it had no conversations about this project before the 9th of April when the money was announced to be in the budget. The Government also tried to say it gave the money as a lump sum so that the company could leverage it’s a ability as a great fundraiser where again per (6) the government got the amount it fundraised wrong claiming the amount was 80 million when it was actually closer to 25 million. The last word on this issue can be left to Kristina Keneally who has updated her Twitter about me section to (7) “There is no buggy parking at the helipad.” – Great Barrier Reef Foundation written advice to its Chairman’s Panel, May 2018.

The final big issue of the week that has now been resolved in the Negative although I think it will return as an issue at some point is David Leyonhjelm’s Assisted Suicide bill. Per (7) the bill was to overturn a bill enacted in 1997 that no longer allowed Territories I.E the ACT and NT to have the say on legalising Euthanasia. The original bill in 1997 was passed because the NT legislated to briefly legalise Euthanasia and it was seen as a wrong thing at the time for the Territories to be out of lockstep with the states. Ironically now as States are starting to debate Euthanasia laws and Victoria are now the first state to allow Euthanasia. The debate in the Senate was close only going down to 36-34 and probably is what Turnbull secretly wanted as the more Conservative wing of the Party did not want to see this bill go to the Lower House for a free conscience vote. There was also some controversy when Turnbull entered the debate saying he would vote no in such a debate because according to some that would lead other MP’s to feel pressured to vote the same but that is harsh because it’s not like he could avoid answering the question.

Lastly I just want to briefly mention the leadership rumblings that started today with Ray Hadley 100% guaranteeing a leadership challenge to Turnbull by Peter Dutton in the next two weeks. Now just putting to one side that Ray Hadley is a known Turnbull hater who has wanted Abbott back in charge of the ship from day one of Turnbull’s Prime Ministership I offer this warning: If Turnbull is replaced by Peter Dutton then you might see an improvement in keeping seats that One Nation are strong in in Queensland but inner city people don’t like Dutton and his time as Immigration and now Home Affairs minister. If the Liberal’s make the change Labor win the next election in a 30 to 40 seat landslide win! Thankfully I think the Liberal Party are smarter than that so I don’t think Leadership is an issue but there’s clearly a unity issue particularly on Energy and as Barrie Cassidy says in (8) that can be just as dangerous.

Thank you for reading my blog, my next blog will be at the end of the next sitting week.

References

(1): https://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/faq-the-national-energy-guarantee-and-lowering-power-prices#NEG

(2): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/apr/04/scott-morrison-new-coal-fired-power-station-not-the-answer

(3): http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-17/explainer-energy-policy-what-is-the-coalitions-new-plan/9057158

(4): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/audio/2018/aug/16/will-labor-support-the-neg-or-let-it-fail-australian-politics-live-podcast

(5): https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/aug/13/great-barrier-reef-foundation-not-aware-of-due-diligence-for-444m-grant

(6): Australian Financial Review – Paywalled article after first click.

(7): https://twitter.com/KKeneally?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

(8): https://www.facebook.com/InsidersABC/videos/469234213561412/?q=insiders%20abc

Climate Change Policy, A brief history and where we currently stand

Last week came the report of Dr Alan Finkel the Chief Scientist of Australia on how to transition from traditional sources of energy to a more modern renewable source of energy. This week as Parliament has returned the Liberal Party have once again shown signs of division on how to proceed on the issue of Climate Change and future energy security. The Liberal Party has had a number of positions on Climate Change over the last ten years and before discussing the current situation it would be worth re visiting how the Liberal Party has progressed on the issue over the last 10 years.

In 2007 with Kevin Rudd having secured an election winning lead in the polls for a sustained period John Howard released his plan to bring in an Emissions Trading Scheme (1). This policy was aimed at lowering the popularity of Kevin Rudd and Labour on the issue of Climate Change and was a practical measure investing money in incentivising Businesses to use lower emission methods for energy and water use as well as seek to invest in Nuclear Power. Given the announcement of the policy occurred so close to the election and given that Howard did not invest as much money as what the Labor Party proposed the idea was seen as not to go far enough. Indeed the Liberal Party went on to lose the 2007 election which led to his plan becoming redundant.

Post the election loss Brendan Nelson became the Liberal leader (quite the feat given video footage of him addressing a crowd saying he’d never vote Liberal in his life), under his leadership the Liberal approach to climate change appeared to be a wait for America or China to move on Climate Change to take a policy position. This approach was not popular with the Shadow Treasurer at the time Malcolm Turnbull and he would continually make visits to the oppositions office to call Brendan Nelson weak and useless. As a result it was with little surprise that in September of 2008 Malcolm Turnbull challenged for the leadership and won.

Malcolm Turnbull started his leadership well and was able to land some blows on Kevin Rudd for claims of going too far with spending in reaction to the financial crisis that had hit the global society. His leadership took a terminal turn however when a treasury advisor created a fake email that claimed electoral fraud on behalf of Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd that became known as Utegate, the fallout of the matter was that the public believed that Malcolm Turnbull had a tendency to react ferociously to policies without considering the impact of an issue rationally. The final straw on Malcolm Turnbull’s first leadership however was the issue of climate change and in particular his support for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. (2) The CPRS scheme essentially looked to place a cap on how much emissions could be released by businesses and then sets up a trading scheme for businesses to trade greenhouse emissions. How the trading scheme works is that if a business was at their cap for greenhouse polluting then they could pay money to buy more emissions from a company who were below their emissions cap. This effectively penalises companies who emit too many greenhouse gases and reward the companies that emit less greenhouse gases. When the government announced this scheme Malcolm Turnbull announced that he would support the scheme with some amendments which he was able to secure through the shadow minister Ian McFarlane for Agriculture sectors. However by this point the Conservative base of the leadership had grown tired of Turnbull’s leadership and spoke out against the issue. This led to a Coalition cabinet meeting that ended in Turnbull saying the issue had passed the party room despite their being clear opposition to the policy. This led to the famous quote by Peter Slipper saying that Malcolm Turnbull had acted like a Zimbabwe election being set up by Robert Mugabe. Shortly afterwards there was a three way contest between Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull and given Joe Hockey’s non committal view on the issue he lost in the first round of the leadership ballot which led to a shock Tony Abbott win by one vote.

Having taken the leadership and with the recent vote down of the CPRS issue by the Liberal Party conservative members and the Greens for the measure not being strong enough Abbott launched a strong negative campaign on the issue of the CPRS. With Kevin Rudd also not able to secure a global consensus at the Copenhagen climate change summit the Labor party walked away from their policy position that Kevin Rudd had once described as the biggest challenge of our generation. This combined with internal criticism about Kevin Rudd’s leadership style and poor implementation of the Mining Resources Tax led to Julia Gillard challenging for the Prime Ministership and after a night that saw the numbers drift away from the incumbent PM, Kevin Rudd chose to stand down as leader rather than lose comprehensively in the leadership ballot.

During the 2010 election Julia Gillard promised no Carbon Tax under a government I lead while Tony Abbott proposed a Direct Action policy. The Direct Action policy (3) aimed to incentivise businesses who reduced emissions as well as set up a Green army to have young people take part in conservation activities to help improve the environment directly. There was a lot of criticism of this plan for not doing enough to fight climate change and also that the cost to actually reduce emissions to the climate agreement level would be greater than what the level the Liberal Party were claiming. This scrutiny on the policy became less after the 2010 election because as a result of the Greens forming an official coalition with the Labor Party to help give Julia Gillard minority government the Liberal Party and particularly Tony Abbott could run the line that Julia Gillard had lied during the election and that this new tax would make energy prices rise through the roof and hurt several job industries. As with most political attacks there was a large amount of spin however with the Financial Crisis already having hurt Australian’s middle class society, the public were ready to revolt over this promise and Gillard spent the 2010 – 2013 period fighting off poor polling as well as an internal campaign from Kevin Rudd to return to his place as PM. With this is in mind even though the Carbon Tax was passed there was a sense that this would only be temporary as the public and businesses knew that the Liberal Party would win the next election and their first policy move would be to unwind the Carbon Tax. Indeed the Labor Party returned to Kevin Rudd just before the 2013 election but the matter of the leadership spill left him a bruised political figure compared to his first election campaign in 2007 and the Labor Party were comprehensively defeated by Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party in the 2013 Election.

On the eve of the 2013 election Tony Abbott made a promise of no cuts to the ABC, Health and Education. In the 2014 Budget Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott made a number of unpopular decisions in order to bring about budget repair and this combined with Tony Abbott already being a divisive figure to the public led to a significant drop in the polls, indeed there were significant concerns amongst Coalition MPS about the Liberal Party being a 1 term government. Before losing his leadership to Malcolm Turnbull Tony Abbott was able to get his Direct Action policy through parliament with the support of Clive Palmer (4) and his Palmer United Party senators. This was despite Clive Palmer earlier coming out to a press conference with Al Gore to present the merits for an Emission Trading Scheme similar to what Kevin Rudd had proposed back at the end of 2009. That press conference with Al Gore was a confusing one for many analysts given Clive Palmer’s history as a mine and Al Gore’s history with the environment!

With Malcolm Turnbull winning the leadership and Prime Ministership back in 2015 many members of the public hoped to see movement on climate policy. However that reaction ignored the practicalities of leading a party, having taken the leadership from Tony Abbott who was criticised for making “Captain’s Calls” and himself being criticised for doing as much in his first leadership tilt, any dramatic movement on issues would have seen a revolt from a large number of Coalition MPs and would have seen him replaced by another leader. This reality was only exaggerated by the 2016 double dissolution election where the Liberal Party suffered a swing against them and were left with a one seat majority. Now the argument should be that the Liberal Party were headed to a large loss under Tony Abbott and that Malcolm Turnbull deserved clear air to improve the electability of the Liberal Party but sections of the Liberal Right have shown that this is not possible and indeed the defection of Corey Bernadi to become an independent senator showed the tough balancing act that Malcolm faces now.

So that’s the 10 year history of Climate Change debate in this country, I think it speaks volumes to the divisiveness of the issue that so many politicians have lost their jobs over the issue and so many policies have been attempted to be implemented and yet we are still in the same place essentially as back in 2007. For this both major parties deserve criticism but for mine the Greens also deserve some criticism that they majorly seem to avoid on this issue. If the Greens had of accepted Kevin Rudd’s position on climate change in 2009 then the CPRS would have passed through the Senate and Kevin Rudd would have most likely won the 2010 election. Having won two elections Kevin Rudd may have then been more likely to smoothly transition to Julia Gillard at some point and given she was a popular politician before the 2010 coup she may have been a much better Prime Minister with the clear air of a united cabinet. Sometimes in order to get to the ultimate destination you need to accept a midway point and it’s then easier to negotiate to your desired position from the middle ground.

The Dr. Finkel review analysed an Emissions Intensity Scheme which is something closer to the Labor Party policy in that it penalises companies that emit too much greenhouse gas and would see coal generators and big greenhouse gas emitting companies close earlier allowing for a higher renewable energy target. This is not feasible for the Coalition Party who are against there being penalties for businesses that continue to emit at higher rates and also there is a concern about the transition from coal to renewable energy too soon. This worry is because something like solar and wind energy provide less reliable voltage and frequency than traditional energy sources then if something extreme happens weather wise power supply may be cut which leads to situation like in South Australia last year where a large amount of people lost power for an extended period of time. The bigger vote impacts of this transition are that if there is a switch to renewable energy sources too quickly then coal workers are suddenly left out of work and in a job market that has been unpredictable since the financial crisis there are worries for whether older workers will ever re find work. Also the price of gas has increased dramatically recently and the transitioning stop gap from coal to renewable energy has been gas and as the price of gas has increased it has led to price rises in electricity for public members. This has led to the government being able to run the attack that Labor State Governments are not supplying enough energy and transitioning to renewable energy too fast has led to increased power prices. With this in mind the Finkel report suggested a Clean Energy Target. This is a market initiative that sets a target on how much energy use should come from clean energy that encourages businesses to invest in cleaner energy resources. What makes this more sellable to the Liberal Party is that it does not favour one method of technology over another which means that as long as coal is used in a cleaner way that can still be used in the near future while eventually more renewable power sources are implemented. The report also ensures that if a Coal Power Plant is to close then there needs to be at three years notice which avoids a sudden gap in energy supply from an unexpected closure such as the Hazlewood and Port Augusta Power Plant. The problem for Malcolm Turnbull is that business will pass on the costs of using lower greenhouse gases to customers which then makes it another price on carbon. Given the legacy of Tony Abbott and his opposition to pricing carbon it has come as little surprise that he and other coalition members of his political persuasion have come out against the CET and Tuesday saw a heated Cabinet debate that saw the policy broadly supported by the party room but with a not insignificant amount of members opposed to the issue. If at the stage the reader is getting a sense of dejavu then that’s not surprising as their are more than a few similarities between this debate and the one that ended Turnbull’s leadership in 2009. The added difficult is that with the polls showing Turnbull behind Bill Shorten in the 2PP vote there is not the political capital to spend on this issue. In order to get this CET through Parliament Malcolm Turnbull will need Labor support and while Bill Shorten has offered some bipartisan support there is a temptation for Labor to play politics on the issue as a divided Coalition will only help Labor electoral position.

Lastly is the issue of Nuclear Power which continues to be the elephant in the room when energy supply is discussed. As I mentioned earlier when John Howard announced he would consider an ETS in 2007 part of his policy included funding towards nuclear power. This has been considered both by states and federal parties over the years however has never been implemented as any move has faced strident opposition. There seems to be general Scientific consensus that Nuclear Power is an important part of energy supply due to being able to supply a large amount of energy that will be required if we completely move away from coal in the future. This is something that is questioned as to whether renewable energy can do, can it be used as the sole energy source for a country. The Scientific argument against nuclear energy is as to how clean uranium mining is and whether there is a significant difference in emission rates for Nuclear Power considering the levels of uranium mining that would be required to provide sufficient energy. The publics concern seems to stem from issues of safety with Nuclear Power. The major concern stems from how nuclear waste will be stored and the nuclear weapon testing by the Brits in the 1950’s has led to medical issues for affected communities that rightly is concerning when any new plans for nuclear waste storage is discussed. The other main safety concern is the impact of a Nuclear Power Plant reactor spill and despite the evidence that suggests that Nuclear Power is indeed safe and that when there has been issues it been man made error, it’s hard to eliminate the images associated with the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters that are used as evidence of the dangers of Nuclear Energy.

 

 

References

(1)  http://australianpolitics.com/2007/07/17/howard-commits-to-emissions-trading-scheme.html

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Pollution_Reduction_Scheme

(3) http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-20/coalition-climate-change-direct-action-policy-explained/5067188

(4) http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/tony-abbott-gets-climate-action-after-palmer-backflip/news-story/5ca32508ce77c10fbf93328e0eeac77c