Abbott’s ‘climate policy’: the good news for corporate polluters just gets better

February 4, 2010

"Tony Abbott’s 'climate policy', like Labor's, means the good news for corporate polluters just keeps getting better", Socialist Alliance National Environment Coordinator Simon Butler said today.

"It replaces the completely feeble carbon price stick of Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) with an even worse bribe-the-polluters carrot.

"For both major parties there's one thing that’s irrelevant to 'climate policy', and that's climate science. In the Coalition’s new 30-page document, the global warming crisis doesn’t rate one mention."

Butler added: "The Coalition claims that over four years its 'direct action' approach can achieve for $3.2 billion what will cost $40.6 billion under the 'great big new tax' of the CPRS.

"It's a good joke to see the neo-liberals of the Coalition rejecting market mechanisms for once. But Abbott's alternative of bribing the polluters to clean up their act would probably mean that even the miserable 5% reduction target he shares with Labor wouldn’t be reached.

"It will depend most of all on whether he can successfully bribe the private owners of the debt-laden, run-down, brown-coal based La Trobe Valley power stations to convert to natural gas."

The Socialist Alliance spokesperson described the Coalition approach, of which key details have still not been costed, as an 'obscene parody' of an effective climate plan. In particular:

20 millions trees would be planted by 2020, while the forest corporations would be allowed to continue to log millions more (Butler contrasted this to the 100 million trees planted in Venezuela between 2005 and 2010);

The older, most polluting, power stations would be allowed to wind down at their own pace, while new coal-fired power stations aren't mentioned;

Other big polluting industries—coal, power generation, road transport, and energy-intensive production like aluminium, cement and steel—would also be free to carry on as usual;

There is no mention of coal mining or road transport, two of the biggest emitters of carbon pollution.

Butler explained that 60% of the Coalition's planned reduction in carbon is to come from increasing soil carbon. "Increasing soil carbon is a very important component of any serious climate plan, but the Coalition approach raises the real possibility of rorts that would dwarf Great Southern's tax-breaks-for-olive-tree scams."

Butler stressed: "The Coalition's plan is covered with the palest greenwash. There is hardly a mention of large-scale industrial conversion to sustainable technologies. Besides bribing the private power companies to convert from brown coal to gas, the 'green shift' under an Abbott government would see tiny increases in the energy efficiency, recycling and composting, and modest boosts to "solar energy roofs on homes" and tree-planting.

"Working class communities dependent on polluting industries, like the La Trobe Valley, Hunter and Central Queensland, would get the peanuts of 'Clean Energy Employment Hubs', worth an insulting $60 million.

"Meanwhile the big polluting industries—coal, power generation, road transport, and energy-intensive production like aluminium, cement and steel—would be free to carry on as usual."

Butler concluded: "This isn't a climate plan, it’s a vote-grabbing marginal seats plan aimed at working-class communities where jobs depend on carbon-polluting industry, and where Labor has no serious plan for alternative green job creation.

"The only answer to both Coalition and Labor climate greenwash is for the grassroots climate movement to ally with climate-conscious unionists and workers in a powerful campaign for a publicly funded and run industry conversion plan for climate sustainability.

"That would introduce green technologies at the rate the climate crisis demands and create green jobs at the rate that working people and communities need."

Media contact: Simon Butler 0421 231 011