Climate change policy has become the graveyard of Australian prime ministers, both Liberal and Labor, during this century. So when Malcolm Turnbull was struggling to unite the Coalition on the adoption of a credible climate change policy in December 2009, Tony Abbott seized the main chance and challenged the leadership.
The flashpoint for the contest was the Coalition's position on the ALP government's Emissions Trading System (ETS) legislation that would have put a price on carbon. Turnbull's team was not with him when, in 2009, he sought to amend the Rudd government's ETS bill. Turnbull unwisely said: "I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am".
Many of his colleagues took him at his word.
The ETS policy struggle triggered a party room vote for the leadership in December 2009, which Tony Abbott won by one vote. My successor in the senate supported Abbott. If I had won a third term, I would have voted for Turnbull, and he would have won by one vote and survived as the leader. History sometimes pivots on such obscure minutiae.
Turnbull has commented on the ramifications of this near-miss in his 2020 autobiography A Bigger Picture. "If I had prevailed, the CPRS would have been passed (in 2009) and Australia wouldn't have embarked on a decade of climate wars and destructive indecision about energy policy. Business would prefer the issue settled, I told Tony. No one wants a perpetual war about climate change. But Abbott did, and he ensured we got one and it rages on today - a decade later," Turnbull wrote.
As the newly elected Opposition leader, Tony Abbott proposed to match the Labor government's emissions reduction target in 2012 by implementing a direct-action plan involving financial incentives for emissions reductions by industry.
"Direct action was a short-term 'fig leaf' to get the Coalition to the election. Unfortunately, it became entrenched as Coalition policy," Turnbull says.
In 2018, Turnbull's final year as PM, the Coalition government had still not resolved these climate change policies. It failed to agree to pass the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), which was a comprehensive government plan to reduce greenhouse gasses and stabilise energy prices. As a result, Turnbull lost his NEG policy and the prime ministership to Scott Morrison.
Climate policy again shifted after the 'miracle' return of a divided Coalition government at the 2019 election. Morrison did a slow, soft shoe shuffle towards a net-zero by 2050 policy. He finessed this by subtlety changing his language over time from "preferably" to "definitely", and redefined climate change as an economic challenge and opportunity.
Both coalition parties and the cabinet finally signed off on the new policy the week before Morrison flew out to the COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. That was a close call, given the intensity of the debate and division in the National Party room over recent weeks.
So, after the demise of four prime ministers in eight years, triggered mainly by climate change policy, are we there yet?
Maybe, but the Nationals are far from united internally on this issue due to the existential threat they face at the 2022 election in regional seats on their right flank, from Hansen's One Nation and Palmer's UAP.
This time the government might survive intact until the election because of the 'flexibility' in Morison's Australian way to net-zero by 2050 policy. This has neither been legislated nor regulated, and the modelling to support it is still not released. It will be implemented via the government's technology road map, the bare bones of which was laid down in September 2020.
Getting to net-zero is likely to rely heavily on the government's new $20billion Research and Development investment fund to kickstart new and emerging technologies such as green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. Breakthroughs will need to occur with large scale storage batteries. Next-generation nuclear reactors may be needed within the next 30 years.
Over this time, it is expected that heavily polluting fossil fuels will be phased out. The workers employed in such industries will transition to jobs using green and renewable energy sources. It is claimed that Australia will implement this net-zero industrial revolution without significantly disrupting Australia's upward jobs and GDP trajectory. It is believed that the green revolution of the Australian economy may even improve these growth trends.
But will this all come to pass, or is it another 'fig leaf' to get the Coalition past the 2022 election?
The successful implementation of Morrison's Australian way to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 may require a lot of luck and a lot of faith.
