The politics of climate change in Australia

Companies or other groups within Australia that need to emit carbon to do business will need to purchase permits (or may be issued with permits) that represent the right to emit a specific amount of carbon pollution. The total amount of permits issued overall cannot exceed the government-set cap. Businesses can trade permits among themselves if they find they have more than they need - or if they don’t have enough - ensuring that abatement (reducing emissions) occurs at least cost. The CPRS would affect about 75 per cent of Australia’s total emissions and will directly affect around 1,000 entities.

It was necessary for the government to get this legislation through Parliament. It does not have a majority in the upper house (Senate) and so it was necessary to do a deal with one or more of the other parties.

The Greens did not approve of the legislation because they argued it did not go far enough and so they would not do any deal with the government. They therefore marginalised themselves very early on in the process.

The government therefore had to work with the main conservative Liberal-National Opposition. This is where its problems really began.

Climate change and “wedge politics”

John Howard quit politics the moment he lost the November 2007 election. The conservative side of politics fell into disarray.

Kevin Rudd had skilfully grabbed the political middle ground and the conservatives did not know how to respond.

No doubt Kevin Rudd really does believe that climate change is human induced. But the role of politicking cannot be overlooked. This is currently his best “wedge issue”. A “wedge issue” is an issue on which one’s own party is united and the other side is not. It can therefore be used to further divide the other side.

Howard was equally brilliant in using “wedge issues” to divide Labor and so it is ironic that now it is his own party that is a victim of the technique.

The more the Rudd government has spoken about climate change, the more tensions have been generated within the Liberal Party and its minority partner the rural-based National Party. The proposed CPRS legislation has brought those tensions to the boil.

The Liberal-National Coalition opposition

After getting rid of one short-lived leader (Brendan Nelson) in September 2008, the Liberal Party selected Malcolm Turnbull. He had been Howard’s last Minister for the Environment and had tried forlornly to get Howard to accept the Kyoto Protocol and so negate Labor’s exploitation of the climate change issue.

(Ironically Howard had been a supporter of the Kyoto Protocol at the beginning. But then the Australian energy lobby changed his mind. The details are in a book by a disillusioned member of the Liberal Party who saw this happening from the inside: Guy Pearse High and Dry: John Howard, Climate Change and the Selling of Australia’s Future, Melbourne: Penguin, 2007)

Turnbull did not doubt that climate change was human induced. He then set about negotiating with the government to tone down (as he saw it) some of the proposed CPRS legislation.