Opinion: Labor's 'defensible' plan could be its biggest miscalculation

Photo by Tim van der Kuip on Unsplash

By Mark Kenny

A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.

An instinctively middle-of-the-road government has charted a middle-of-the-road trajectory to net zero via its long-delayed 2035 emissions reduction target.

Labor's gaping 62-70 per cent range has been pitched at what the Albanese cabinet assesses to be the sweet spot between policy and politics, physics and fearmongering.

The latter looms large in its memory. After the demise of Kevin Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bill and the collapse of the Labor government's standing which followed, climate politics has been as treacherous as a king tide.

This is ironic because Julia Gillard's signature vulnerability, her "carbon price", worked and might just have driven the pace of economic transformation now being shoehorned into a diminishing number of years.

Instead, Tony Abbott's win in 2013 was built largely on his ruthless demonisation of Gillard's "tax" and his promise to rescind it in the name of cost-of-living relief.

After all that, Labor knows it must act but still, it does so warily. Its already cautious view of politics as the art of the possible has become something even less ambitious: politics as the art of the defensible.

Inadvertently, this approach grants opponents, including anti-science cranks, too much of a say in what is considered.

Let's be clear, the higher number in the new band - 70 per cent - is either constructively "aspirational", or, depending on your level of cynicism, pure spin. The important benchmark then is a targeted 62 per cent reduction on 2005 emissions.

Even that won't be easy, given the structure of the economy and, of course, the aforementioned febrile politics. The current struggle to reach 43 per cent five years from now is testament to that.

Climate experts and some progressive businesses wanted more ambitious 2035 reductions, arguing the goal of net zero by 2050 requires it and only gets harder once the easiest change is undertaken.

The government accepts that the real pace of economic and social transformation needs to step up in heavily polluting sectors of the economy where decarbonisation is most difficult and most costly - first for industry and then for consumers.

Hence, there are new funds to incentivise decarbonisation in industry, accelerate electrification and drive energy efficiency.

But is this enough? Clearly, the 62 per cent mark was not agreed in a vacuum.

It is hard to imagine that a new internal push within the Coalition to scrap its formal commitment to net zero altogether has not sharpened the political contest in this area and thus affected Labor's risk assessment. But is Labor missing a fundamental shift in the electorate as baby boomers move on and new, younger voters predominate?

Anthony Albanese may possess a huge majority and have the next election already in the bag, but he is of the school of political combat that says "never give a sucker an even break".

Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.