23 October, 2017

At least for once, don't let politicking kill off a workable energy policy

Just for a moment, we are going to wind the clock back to 2009. Confronted by repeated requests from Kevin Rudd’s office to go hard against the then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull over climate change, the then junior climate change minister Greg Combet asked a sensible question.

 If Malcolm Turnbull’s new energy idea is to see the light
 of day, he must first persuade the states to implement it.
Combet recalls in his memoir, The Fights of My Life, that he asked Rudd and the office why Labor would “shit on someone you are trying to do a deal with?”

Well versed in the art of the deal as a union official, Combet thought Labor needed to ease off on Turnbull until it had successfully legislated the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

He feared that Rudd himself, and Rudd’s backroom “were confusing politics and policy outcomes, with the risk that Turnbull would be deposed and we would lose a chance to tackle climate change”.
Combet was spot on.


Read Katharine Murphy’s story on The Guardian - “At least for once, don't let politicking kill off a workable energy policy.”

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