Labor’s climate policies are 'unshakeable' despite election loss, Mark Butler says

Mark Butler wants to make one thing clear: the shadow minister for climate change and energy is not for turning. It wasn’t a mistake to pursue an ambitious climate policy in the 2019 election and “we are not going to change our position to get to a level of profound irresponsibility [on policy], like the government”, he tells Guardian Australia’s politics podcast.

The shadow climate minister, Mark Butler,
with the current Labor leader, Anthony
Albanese, and the previous Labor leader,
Bill Shorten.

“Our position on climate is unshakeable.”

This declaration might seem hard to square with Butler’s swingeing self-assessment of just over a week ago. The shadow minister, a leftwing powerbroker and close ally of Anthony Albanese, used a speech at a book launch in Canberra to send a message to colleagues that there can be no sugarcoating Labor’s election loss, and all policies, including the ones for which he had direct portfolio responsibility, needed to be subjected to a “ruthless and unsparing” review.

Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Labor’s climate policies are 'unshakeable' despite election loss, Mark Butler says."

Coal catastrophe: why Scott Morrison can't give in to Queensland triumphalism

It’s safe to observe the 2019 election was not a good election for the climate.

‘Scott Morrison would be smart to elevate a senior
moderate to the environment portfolio who can
carry the message – perhaps Simon Birmingham.’

The basic facts speak for themselves. A government with a suboptimal policy was returned for another term, and Labor will now go through another, likely painful, round of recalibration of its climate offering. It’s unlikely Labor will stage a dramatic retreat from climate action, but there will certainly be an internal push to temper the current policy with an eye to regional sensibilities, and by regional sensibilities I mean the sensibilities of coal communities.

While Saturday night’s result isn’t what the country or the climate needs – a government, apparently without the will to tackle the problem, back in power for three years, and an opposition licking its wounds, wondering how long it can keep going to elections championing climate action, and losing – it would be a mistake to conclude the issue is now completely off the agenda.

Read the opinion piece from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Coal catastrophe: why Scott Morrison can't give in to Queensland triumphalism.”