Labor’s biggest climate problem is itself

Anthony Albanese doesn’t need to convince the majority of Australian voters to support his plan for net zero emissions by 2050. Let me say that again: Labor doesn’t need to “sell” its climate change policy. Instead, it’s an issue that needs to be managed.

Anthony Albanese.

The assumption that every prescription taken to an election must get majority support is just one of those fallacies of political analysis. As noted before, no one would seriously assert that Labor’s tenth-order campaign promise to “increase the numbers of doctors in remote, rural and regional Australia” got a thumbs down from the voters when they elected the Coalition in May last year. People voted primarily on other stuff. Not everything in a campaign is a vote decider; in fact, most of it isn’t.

It is revisionism of the highest order to describe climate policy as meaningfully responsible for Labor’s 2019 defeat. The fault for the loss of that winnable contest lies with the big juicy targets the party presented to the government, most importantly the thing the Coalition (and some in the media, helpfully) dubbed “the retirement tax,” along with the fictional “death tax” and the very real housing policy — probably in that order. Throw in Bill Shorten’s evasive demeanour and longer-term doubts about Labor and the economy (which both Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd also had to deal with to win office), and it was a perfect storm.

Read the story from Inside Story by Peter Brent - “Labor’s biggest climate problem is itself.”