Peter Dutton is railing against renewable energy and promoting fossil fuels, in an echo of Donald Trump’s climate denial. But Anthony Albanese is doing little to challenge him, desperate to hide his own climate inaction.
Australia recorded its hottest 12 months on record in the year to March. Extreme weather events like Cyclone Alfred are becoming increasingly common.
But in the face of the cost-of-living crisis, Dutton has dishonestly blamed rising power prices on what he calls, “Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen’s reckless renewables-only policy.”
Renewable energy is not responsible for soaring power bills. These are mainly a product of breakdowns at the country’s ageing coal power stations and the global increase in gas prices.
Dutton’s own plans for nuclear energy are a fig-leaf designed to allow the Coalition to stop renewable energy projects and extend the life of coal power stations. The Smart Energy Council estimates his seven proposed nuclear reactors would cost the government $600 billion and supply less than 4 per cent of the country’s energy by 2050.
Even based on his own optimistic predictions, nuclear power would not come online until 2035, with no impact on power prices for a decade. The plan has become such an embarrassment that it has virtually disappeared from Dutton’s campaign.
Instead, Dutton announced plans to further expand fossil fuel extraction through mining more gas. He promised to audit possible gas projects on the east coast to speed up new mines, and fast-track the approval of Woodside’s North West shelf project in WA.
But there is no need for any more gas. Currently 80 per cent of Australia’s gas is exported, ironically leading to fears of a local shortage in coming years.
Dutton also promised a gas reservation policy that, he said, would, “Prioritise domestic gas supply, address shortfalls and reduce energy prices for Australians.” He has even proposed a new tax on mining companies to force them to supply gas to the domestic market at cheaper prices.
A gas reservation policy is a good idea in principle. It would mean reserving a certain amount of gas production for domestic use, as WA has done since 2006, resulting in lower prices.
But the claim this would reduce power prices looks very shaky. After a week of confusion, the Coalition eventually produced modelling claiming their policies would lower household power prices by 3 per cent, or $1 a week, and gas prices by 7 per cent.
Yet they failed to include the cost of shipping the gas from Queensland to where it’s needed in NSW and Victoria, which would wipe out any price reduction.
The Coalition have also suggested increasing the amount of power produced using gas, currently just 6 per cent in the east coast market, as a stopgap until nuclear power comes online.
This would push up power prices, since electricity produced from gas costs far more than using renewable energy or coal. The cheapest option is to cut back the use of gas altogether.
Labor’s climate failure
Anthony Albanese promised “to take the country forward on climate action”. But he has avoided the issue during the election campaign.
This is no surprise given Labor’s record. It has also thrown its weight behind expanding fossil fuel mining, approving 12 coal developments and five oil and gas projects since it came to power.
Last year it released a “future gas strategy” that saw its Resources Minister Madeleine King declare that mining had to continue “out to 2050 and beyond”.
This committed Labor to opening huge new gas fields like the Pilliga/Narrabri in NSW and Scarborough in WA and handed $650 million in subsidies to the industry.
Labor has also put up $1.5 billion to build a new gas hub at Darwin’s Middle Arm precinct.
Since Labor won office in 2022, Australia’s emissions have barely moved.
The latest figures show they are down just 0.7 per cent. At this rate it would take between 355 and 426 years to reach zero emissions—well beyond the 2050 target in 25 years.
Its Safeguards Mechanism, designed to deal with emissions from industry, allows companies to buy their way out of action through purchasing carbon offsets. Studies have repeatedly called into question whether these offsets schemes actually do anything to reduce emissions.
Initial data from its first year of operation shows “zero noticeable difference”, according to analyst Ketan Joshi.
Labor even postponed a decision on a 2035 emissions reduction target to push it beyond the election. Countries are supposed to take targets to the global climate summit this year.
The large protests for climate action we saw before the last election may have died away. But the fight for action is most urgent than ever.
By James Supple
