Josh Frydenberg refuses request for RBA deputy to speak on climate change

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, knocked back a request for the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank, Guy Debelle, to address a meeting of state treasurers on climate change.

The federal treasurer knocked back a request for the Reserve Bank
of Australia’s deputy governor, Guy Debelle, to speak to a state
 treasurers’ meeting about how climate change could affect monetary policy.

The Queensland treasurer, Jackie Trad, wrote to Frydenberg in June asking for Debelle to talk to treasurers at the October meeting of the council of federal financial relations in Canberra on Friday about how climate change could affect monetary policy, inflation and economic growth.

Trad’s request was part of a push for a new “clean economy agreement” that would commit Australian governments to act together to meet targets set under the Paris climate agreement.

“As governments we have a responsibility to provide for the future,” Trad told Guardian Australia ahead of Friday’s meeting.

“That’s why it was so disappointing that Mr Frydenberg was unwilling to allow deputy RBA governor Guy Debelle to address the [council] on the way in which climate change could impact monetary policy, inflation and economic growth.”

Read the story from The Guardian by Sarah Martin - “Josh Frydenberg refuses request for RBA deputy to speak on climate change.”

Coal baron and LNP donor blasts RBA for sounding alarm on climate change

The coal baron and Liberal National party donor Trevor St Baker has blasted the Reserve Bank deputy governor, Guy Debelle, for sounding the alarm on climate change, branding a significant speech on Tuesday warning of risks to Australia’s financial stability “totally inappropriate”.

 ERM Power founder Trevor St Baker (right)
has suggested the RBA deputy governor
Guy Debelle lacks technical understanding
 of how the electricity market works. 

The politically connected founder of the business electricity retailer ERM Power, who has approached the Morrison government to underwrite new coal developments in Victoria and New South Wales, including a high-efficiency plant on the site of the AGL-owned Liddell power station, told the ABC on Wednesday Debelle’s intervention was out of order.

The RBA deputy governor on Tuesday noted businesses and policymakers needed to consider climate change as a trend and not a cyclical event, and said climate change-induced shocks to the economy would be “close to permanent” if droughts were more frequent and cyclones happened more often.

Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Coal baron and LNP donor blasts RBA for sounding alarm on climate change.”

(Trevor St Baker is obviously ideologically deaf and blind as all the news I can see and hear, along with the irrefutable science, illustrates that climate change is going to make life startlingly difficult with the prime cause of that being our flagrant use of fossil fuels, mainly coal. Beyond that, Mr St Baker needs to be aware that there is no such thing as a “high-efficiency” coal plant - Robert McLean)