Victorian Labor took a clear lead among the major parties last week in what Environment Victoria (EV) called a “race to the top” on net-zero emissions.
With November’s state election just weeks away, Premier Daniel Andrews and Environment and Energy Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, pledged a carbon emissions reduction target of 75-80 per cent by 2035, and net-zero emissions by 2045, five years ahead of the government’s previous commitment.
Labor went on to promise 4.5 gigawatts of publicly-owned energy from sun, wind and other natural sources, with a renewable energy target of 95 per cent by 2035. Critical to achieving these goals would be a revived, publicly-controlled State Electricity Commission (SEC) which would play a pivotal role in allocating a pledged $1 billion on renewable energy projects.
As such, the SEC – which would open an office at Morwell in the Latrobe Valley – would be central to facilitating a transition to carbon-neutral jobs for Gippsland-area workers currently employed in the doomed coal sector. The government estimates these promised projects would support 59,000 jobs through 2035.
“Having this clear timeline and the state government re-establishing the SEC will help provide the certainty and confidence to the Latrobe Valley community that has powered our state for a century,” EV’s chief executive officer Jono LaNauze said.
“The Victorian government is giving its clearest indication yet that the transition from coal to renewables will be properly planned – in a way that will look after workers and will keep Victoria’s lights on”.
That’s not the view from all observers. Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett who privatised the SEC labelled the move something akin to rabid socialism. Andrews was a “dangerous socialist who will return Victoria to a “rust bucket state”. The counter accusation from Andrews was that Kennett was engaging in “hysterical abuse”. Kennett’s plan had in fact got it wrong to privatise the SEC, he said.
“I [will] just say this: it was wrong, it was a mistake, to sell our energy companies. That privatisation has failed – it’s failed pensioners, it’s failed families, it’s failed Victoria.
“These coal-fired power stations have made $23 billion out of all of us – that’s profit, $23 billion in profit, that’s what these private companies have made over that period since Mr Kennett sold off these electricity assets to the highest bidder,” The AFR reported.
The newspaper then dug up companies such as Brickworks who said it might be forced to migrate offshore, say to America, if the renewables transition resulted in higher prices.
It was already facing price spikes of $20 to $30 a gigajoule for gas in Australia when it comes off contracts in 2025, compared with $3 a gigajoule in the US. The company was not asked if this was not a bigger driver of any threat to move offshore.
The transition needed 5o to 75 years, Brickworks said.
The timing of Andrews’ public ownership announcement was masterful, coming just as private electricity retailers, widely seen as price gougers, send out bills on average five per cent higher ($61 annually) than in 2021.
“Consumers loath electricity companies [so] handing back their ability to purchase power from the government gives them control [as voters/taxpaying stakeholders] and addresses the cost of living via renewable energy,” pollster Kos Samaras wrote.
The politics of the promise were just as profound, Labor’s comprehensive announcement and pledge of 75-80 per cent emissions reductions by 2035 clearly trumping the opposition LNP’s detail-deficient July vow to legislate a 50 per cent reduction by 2030.
“We call on LNP climate change spokesperson James Newbury to step up and match these commitments,” EV’s Jono LaNauze said.
But what’s happening at the federal level?
While Victorian Labor was bold and ambitious in this net-zero “race to the top,” the same, sadly, cannot be said of their federal Labor counterparts. The state Labor target of 75-80 per cent reductions by 2035 would, if uniform, average out at around 68.5 per cent fewer emissions by 2030.
This compares with federal Labor’s now-legislated 43 per cent national reduction by 2030, to be “enforced” by a safeguard mechanism we’re yet to see details of, (but have assurances they are working through it with industry consultation) and amid a proliferation of new carbon-emitting ventures in places like Beetaloo (NT) and Scarborough off the northern WA coast.
Federal Labor’s renewable energy target of 82 per cent by 2030 seems more-than-respectable when compared to Victorian Labor’s goal of 95 per cent by 2035. But while Melbourne seems willing to make a necessary investment in the infrastructure needed to harness renewable energy, Canberra’s rollout of announced or promised projects, such as modernising Australia’s ageing electricity grid, 85 solar banks, 400 community batteries and large-scale investment in renewables metals, simply isn’t fast enough to achieve that target.
“I just do not feel that this realisation [of the scale of the task] is anywhere near real in the corridors of [Canberra] power,” Bruce Mountain, head of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, told The Guardian.
“Never mind, we can still get to net-zero by 2050,” is the refrain of the rusted-on, but it ignores the whole point of reducing emissions: to help keep global warming since pre-industrial times to under two degrees Celsius, as per our Paris Agreement obligations.
“The complex mathematics of Federal Labor’s 43 per cent cut by 2030 mean that, to keep overall temperature rises under two degrees Celsius, we’ll have to curb emissions on a timetable that achieves net-zero by 2041, not 2050.”
But a 43% cut by 2030 means we will have used up more of our 2C budget by then so will need harsher cuts afterwards – we will need to get to net zero by 2041 pic.twitter.com/wEfgrtR4Ke
— Greg Jericho (@GrogsGamut) December 2, 2021
Given the failure of both major federal parties to seriously tackle climate change, such a slashing of our emissions post-2030 is hard to imagine. Perhaps they’ll only be convinced by the consequences of inaction – disastrous sea level rises, unprecedented summer heatwaves, out-of-control bushfires and the like – by which time it will be too late.
Faced with righteous criticism at media conferences, federal Labor ministers aren’t above the odd Jedi mind trick. Ergo, what Australia exports is “clean coal,” and Labor would be breaking an “election promise” if it exceeded its 43 per cent emissions cut.
The Monthly’s Rachel Withers wasn’t about to be discombobulated by it all. “Nothing, it seems, will sway Labor from its ‘promise’ to not do enough to combat global warming,” she wrote.
The casualties of Learned Helplessness (LH, described above) are many and varied. For people in a controlling or abusive relationship, for instance, it’s when they go through the same, traumatic or demeaning event over and over and they knuckle under and play the role assigned by their repressor.
“I can’t change this, so why try?” has been the howl of the helpless for centuries. To a long list of the beleaguered you can now add a group not typically assigned victim status but who most certainly belong there: federal Labor politicians.
Repeated trauma? Try three climate-related election losses on the trot, culminating in the “Shorten wants to end the weekend” debacle of the 2019 election, which convinced federal Labor to go “small target” on climate change.
Systematic, controlling abuse? Try the brutal headlines facsimile coast-to-coast on those rare occasions federal Labor flirts with defying the elites’ orthodoxy on fossil fuel projects, tax policy or, Lachlan forbid, a judicial inquiry into our ridiculous concentration of media ownership. Here’s some News Corp front pages from this month when (i) stories surfaced that Treasurer Jim Chalmers planned to dabble with the stage-three tax cuts skewed by the previous government to benefit wealthier Australians (below, left) and when (ii) Chalmers reportedly backed away from these unannounced changes (below, right). Such campaigns are especially vicious on issues around climate change, and by golly they work:
Then there’s the money. With federal Labor bringing in almost half a million dollars from fossil fuel interests last year, and further support from unions whose members work in coal, energy or forestry, there’s every incentive for Prime Minister Albanese to throw up his hands and exclaim: “I can’t change this, so why try?”
Victorian Labor faces many of these same issues, yet it went big on net-zero.
Emboldened by the progressive proclivities of Victorians, who recorded the highest “yes” vote of any state on marriage equality in 2017, state Labor is also looking over its collective shoulder at the Greens, who already hold three inner-Melbourne seats and want to add to that next month.
There is, of course, no “race to the top” among the major parties in Canberra, and federal Labor’s “don’t scare the horses” approach on net-zero is at least partly motivated by its holding just 77 seats (or 51 per cent) of the new parliament.
But that wafer-thin 2022 majority is arguably of its own making, Labor’s uninspiring approach on net-zero and other issues driving away younger voters and leading to the party’s lowest first-preference vote since the Great Depression.
Ironically, the very “small target” approach that gave us a federal Labor government in May also leaves the party (and, more importantly, the environment) in deadly, immediate peril.
If ever there was a time to unlearn Labor’s Learned Helplessness, that time is now.