We’ll keep having climate elections until a safer climate wins

For anyone concerned about the climate emergency, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s shock victory on Saturday is depressing. 

It was supposed to be a climate election, and the coal-hugger won. No ambitious action against climate change will be taken at the federal level over the next few years – in fact, the government will be doing its best to cook the planet faster by underwriting a new coal-fired power station or two, and revving the start-up of Adani’s still-giant Carmichael coalmine. 

Shock victor - Scott Morrison.

Parliament can’t do much, because neither policy requires legislation. Arch-denier Tony Abbott has gone, but so too have moderates like Julie Bishop, Christopher Pyne and Kelly O’Dwyer, and on balance the Liberal Party is likely to be more conservative, not less. 

The Nationals appear to have defied the predictions and hung on everywhere. Just about everyone, except a few pundits in the Murdoch press who sketched out Morrison’s improbable path to victory, called it wrong.

The silver lining is thin, but there is one. Simon Birmingham and Arthur Sinodinos have both flagged a potential reach across the aisle on energy, perhaps via another look at the National Energy Guarantee; self-styled “modern Liberals” such as Dave Sharma in Wentworth and Tim Wilson in Goldstein might do something, as might independents such as Zali Steggall in Warringah and Helen Haines in Indi. 

Business still wants certainty. At least there should be no more talk of pulling out of the Paris Agreement: Morrison told 2GB this morning he would do in office exactly what he said he would do, and at a minimum that means meeting the Kyoto and Paris emissions reduction targets for 2020 and 2030 respectively. 

Depending on the final numbers in the Senate, the Greens could emerge with more influence, which will be useful to the extent that the government’s agenda on climate and energy requires legislation.

The election was not all about climate change, as it turned out. The electorate had other concerns. 

As Alan Kohler acknowledged [$] this morning, Labor’s plan to abolish cash refunds for franking credits upset many more people than the tiny proportion of self-funded retirees who would have been affected. Labor presented a range of other economic policies and changes to the tax system, but many voters either didn’t like them, didn’t trust them or couldn’t be bothered learning about them. 

And Labor’s attempt to make a virtue of stability backfired by saddling the party with an unpopular leader in Bill Shorten. 

This afternoon, a popular contender in Tanya Plibersek announced that she could not contest the leadership ballot because “now is not my time”. 

Should the party necessarily straightjacket itself by making a quick and binding decision on the leadership straight after an election?

What was Labor offering on climate policy anyway? Perhaps, to be brutal about it, not so much. While the ALP presented stronger climate change–related policies than the government did, its position was pro fossil fuel, with no serious plans to phase out coal. Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon described the party’s climate policy as “light touch” on RN Breakfast this morning. 

David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red, says 2019 can hardly have been the climate election given that both major parties were committed to expanding the fossil fuel industry. 

He says that “1983 was the Franklin election, when one side was clearly for [and] the other strongly opposed.” Fairly or otherwise, Spratt blames Shorten for a “complete own goal … His climate policy was to piss off both sides.” Hallmarks were the absence of a carbon price and adoption of the NEG, fence-sitting on Adani, Labor’s commitment to a $1.5 billion gas pipeline from the Northern Territory to Queensland, which would have opened up fracking in the Beetaloo Basin, and renewable energy and emissions reduction targets that shadowed what the market was capable of doing anyway. 

The upshot? On the weekend, Labor hardly won any seats anywhere. Bob Hawke, by contrast, did not gain any seats in Tasmania when he promised to save the Franklin, but was rewarded with a swag of seats on the mainland. 

In Guardian Australia today, ANU climate centre policy director Frank Jotzo wrote that the election outcome might seem like a hard blow but “do not despair, do not retreat. Continue your work, with objectivity, integrity and dedication. Countries that produce and export large amounts of fossil fuels have an uphill battle for forward looking policy on climate. But the opportunities in the global shift to clean energy are compelling, and coal is not the future.”

The story from The Monthly by Paddy Manning - “How good’s climate change?”