After a pretty scrappy week in federal parliament, Jim Chalmers went to the Crawford school at the Australian National University on Thursday night, speaking to an alumni event at his alma mater.
The treasurer had survived a frenetic sitting of the House of Representatives, with no fewer than 40 divisions, the most votes in a single day for at least 50 years.
Reflecting on the challenges of making good public policy, Chalmers explained how he sees the Australian economy fitting into three distinct eras: the agricultural and colonial period of the early 1900s; the post-second world war industrial boom, when the country was fenced in by trade tariffs; and the period from the 1980s to today, when the country opened up to the world and modernised.
Chalmers noted that if a new economic era dawns every 40 years or so, Australia is now overdue.
“We can’t spend our time ambling slowly along the path of least resistance,” he said. “Not when the pace of change in the world is accelerating. That path of least resistance leads to mediocrity and malaise.”
He might have been speaking to the best and brightest in Canberra, but Chalmers’ message should ring in the ears of federal parliamentarians for the next three years, especially those in the Albanese government.
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As the Coalition tears itself to shreds on the question of policies to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, Labor can’t afford to pull back on the recalibration and reimagination of the energy system required to meet Australia’s commitments, even when the going gets tough at home and abroad.
Consider the past few days.
Sunday saw the Nationals formally ditch support for net zero, a wholly expected outcome based on research by a party-aligned thinktank and a review led by coal champion Matt Canavan. The junior coalition partner initially signed on to net zero in 2021, when Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce were running the show.
The party’s current leader, David Littleproud, insisted the Nats were not walking away from the task of reducing carbon pumping into the atmosphere, but said the new policy would peg Australia’s emissions reduction efforts to OECD averages, which he said was about half the pace of the nation’s current trajectory.
An echo of the voice to parliament debate, the Nationals’ move followed six months of agitating inside the joint Coalition party room, and badly forced the hand of the Liberals and opposition leader, Sussan Ley.
‘Ley is expected to fold on net zero in the face of pressure from rightwing Liberal MPs.’ Photograph: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images
Struggling to keep her head above water, Ley is expected to fold on net zero, abandoning her previous support in the face of pressure from rightwing Liberal MPs.
A rearguard action from moderates, including key supporters of Ley, won’t be enough. Once the deal is done, after meetings of the party room and the Liberal shadow ministry next week, the Liberals and Nationals are expected to cobble together a combined Coalition policy and attempt to drive dissatisfaction with power prices and renewable energy infrastructure to rebuild the opposition’s shattered political stocks.
Labor is of the view that voters have well and truly made up their mind on climate change, best displayed by their thumping win over Peter Dutton in May.
Ley might also have had a moment of pause on Friday when disaffected conservatives continued to undermine her leadership, despite her apparent caving in to their demands. The Victorian senator Sarah Henderson, demoted to the backbench by Ley and champing at the bit to vote for Angus Taylor or Andrew Hastie in a future leadership ballot, went out of her way to fuel discontent, saying the opposition leader was losing support and stopping short of endorsing her leadership.
There was no groundswell backing in Henderson, even as Ley continues to tank in public opinion polls. Ley’s takeaway could be that her critics will tear her down even if she capitulates on the critical environmental issue of the era.
For his part, the shadow energy and emissions reduction minister, Dan Tehan, on Friday called for an urgent “reset” in the political debate around emissions reduction, “shifting from doomsday narratives”. Littleproud and Canavan should take note.
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The dysfunction was all upside for Labor.
Anthony Albanese and the climate and energy minister, Chris Bowen, gave spirited performances in question time and announced plans to hand three hours of free renewable power each day to households in three states from next year. The offer could be extended to other states.
The rolling divisions in the house saw the government advance its rewrite of the country’s environmental approvals and biodiversity laws, while in the background concerted efforts to convince Turkey to withdraw from the race to host next year’s Cop31 climate summit continue. Bowen heads to this year’s talks in Brazil next week.
‘Even more than Ley and the much-reduced Coalition, the biggest political risk is for Labor.’ Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Some observers expect countries with influence over Turkey to push the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to get out of the way, and avoid the conference defaulting to Germany. Nobody wants to end up in Bonn this time next year.
Even more than Ley and the much-reduced Coalition, the biggest political risk is for Labor. Tough economic conditions still loom, and we’re not yet 12 months into Donald Trump’s four-year presidential term. Separately, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, made a frank admission at Cop30 on Friday, telling world leaders the international consensus on climate change has been lost.
Labor needs to keep progressing its transition, because getting to its 2035 emissions target will be hard.
Among the requirements outlined by the Climate Change Authority to reach even the lower end of the 62-70% is a halving of current emissions, a doubling of the decarbonisation rate, a sixfold increase in battery storage, quadrupling of wind capacity, tripling of solar capacity, and for half of all new car sales between now and 2025 to be electric vehicles. That’s before you get to politically sensitive recommendations such as a total block on logging of old growth forests.
In his speech on Thursday night, Chalmers retold the great story of his hero Paul Keating explaining to Jim Cairns why he wasn’t wearing a Vietnam moratorium badge one day at Old Parliament House. Keating said Cairns had come to Canberra to protest, while he was there “to run the joint”.
Albanese and Chalmers shouldn’t be distracted by the chaos facing Labor from across the chamber. Running the joint, and avoiding the path of least resistance, requires a great deal more.
