Why Peter Dutton’s reignited the climate wars

Sam Hawley: Politics is all about reading the electorate, knowing how voters feel, what they’re thinking, what their fears are. So when Peter Dutton decided to escalate the climate wars again, he was reading the room, if you like, with one eye on the coming election. Today, ABC Radio National Breakfast and the Party Room podcast host, Patricia Karvelas, on whether Australians will really stomach a watering down of our emission reduction targets. I’m Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. PK, we’re going to chat through this later stage of, I guess, what is the climate wars and I think it’s good to step back just to understand the journey that we’ve been on and Peter Dutton and the Coalition’s new position on this. Back in 2017, Scott Morrison, when he was Treasurer, he brought in a big chunk of coal to the Parliament, didn’t he?

Patricia Karvelas: Oh, it was show and tell like you’d never see.

Scott Morrison, former Treasurer and Prime Minister: This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. The Treasurer knows the rule on crops.

Patricia Karvelas: So he turns up with his chunk of coal and it was about demonstrating that they were the party of coal in some ways, that they weren’t scared of coal.

Scott Morrison, former Treasurer and Prime Minister: So on this side of the House, Mr Speaker, you will not find a fear of coal. For what you will find is a passion for the jobs of Australians who work for businesses…

Patricia Karvelas: He said Labor had a pathological fear of coal. I think he called it coal-ophobia? Yeah, clever.And that was not the start of the climate wars. Really, the climate wars had been never more intense than when Tony Abbott won an entire election on getting rid of the carbon tax. We have a long fought along these lines, so there’s really nothing new about any of this.

Sam Hawley: But it did have a shift back in 2021 before the election. The Coalition did start softening its message and Scott Morrison started changing his language, didn’t he?

Patricia Karvelas: That’s because they were getting the message from the electorate. The electorate was telling them, particularly in metropolitan areas, that they were in significant trouble with voters who were tired of the climate wars, who were tired of some MPs and their climate change denial. And so before that key United Nations climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, the Morrison government announced that it would sign up, that it would reach net zero emissions by 2050, and they announced Australia was on track to beat their 2030 targets, which are clearly lower than what Labor has now committed to. But they were trying to send a message, particularly, as I say, in metropolitan seats where they were in massive electoral trouble, that they were going to take this seriously, that they were going to sign up, and they were signing up to an international agreement and doing our part with fighting climate change.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, right, okay, and no more lumps of coal. And there was this hope after the election, of course, that Labor won, that the climate wars were over, they were finished, that Peter Dutton came to the leadership of the opposition, really agreeing that we had to reach these targets, that net zero emissions is what we’re after.

Patricia Karvelas: Well, the last election, the electorate did send a really strong message on climate. The Liberal Party doesn’t deny that, can I say. They lost a whole bunch of seats, as we know, to independence, teal independence, and they largely campaigned on climate change. So coming out of that, the view was that the Liberal Party was sent a giant message, particularly on climate change, and so when Dutton came to the leadership, there was a feeling that that version of the climate wars might be over, but in the interim there’s been a lot of shifting.

Sam Hawley: That brings us to today, of course, because Peter Dutton now has an entirely new message, and I think he started to lay the groundwork for this in the last few months, when he started advocating for nuclear power.

Patricia Karvelas: Well, the advocating for nuclear power was a pretty significant moment for the Coalition.

Peter Dutton, Opposition Leader: We can underpin nuclear energy and security and deliver electricity at a cheaper cost for decades to come. That is part of our vision for our country.

Patricia Karvelas: Why it’s so significant is they’d previously dabbled in perhaps the concept, but had always then ruled it out themselves on the basis that it was too expensive, essentially, right? And so by putting it on the table as actually something they would do in office, with sites to be announced, we’re still waiting for them as we record, but it was a big, big change. But it also was a political play in some ways by Peter Dutton, because he continues to say he doesn’t want to pull out of Paris, that he wants to get to net zero by 2050 still, but that nuclear must be the way to get there.

Peter Dutton, Opposition Leader: There is only one party with a credible pathway to net zero by 2050, and it’s the Coalition, and I’m going to have a responsible approach.

Patricia Karvelas: He says that the renewables transition won’t get us there.

Peter Dutton, Opposition Leader: Labor has no chance of meeting their target by 2030. Electricity prices under Labor will go through the roof, and that’s what Mr Albanese is promising at the next election.

Patricia Karvelas: They’re not really obsessed with what’s going to happen with climate targets in the interim, because they think you can ratchet up and get to net zero at the end. Then they’re going to campaign against the fast-paced transition to renewables under the Labor Party, and that’s what this is all about.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, right, so they want to actually get rid of the 2030 target, which is Labor’s target to cut emissions by 43% from 2005 levels by 2030, and that’s part of the Paris Agreement, right? It’s this legally binding international commitment on climate change that Australia is part of.

Patricia Karvelas: Yeah, and they’re saying, they’re being a bit sneaky here, they’re saying, oh, Labor’s not going to meet their target. Now, they are right that the last report showed that Labor was on track to get to 42% reduction. That’s 1% short. Labor’s answer is that they are accelerating other elements. They’ve been making other announcements since the last report, and they still have the ambition of getting to 43% reduction by 2030. Either way, your question, though, what are the Liberals now saying? Well, they’re telling us that they’re going to go to the next election without any interim measures, without telling us what they are, and that they will define what they are, the 2030 and the 2035. Sorry, everyone, for all these years. I know it’s baffling, but they will define it in government.

Peter Dutton, Opposition Leader: We’ll make our announcements in relation to our targets in due course, but I think it’s very clear that we have absolute commitment to Paris and our commitment for net zero by 2050. It’s important.

Sam Hawley: So just so I’ve got this straight, Peter Dutton says he’s going to chuck out Labor’s 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, but he’s going to stick to the 2050 target, which means he still wants to stay in the Paris Accord, which is slightly different, of course, than what Donald Trump did, PK, when he came to power because he dumped out of the Paris Accord altogether.

Patricia Karvelas: Such a good point about Donald Trump. And he is the wild card here. He’s running again.What’s he going to do if he wins? And I think so much of this is framed around that and it’s the unspoken part. And so watch that space. Is this a positioning? Right? And I’m just speculating here, but I’ll watch it pretty closely, as do you. Is this about that November election? What will the U.S. do then? Peter Dutton makes the assessment that the world could look pretty different by the end of the year, but, again, the devil will be in the detail and I think they’ll come a little unstuck if they’re not giving any detail out.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, all right. Well, PK, it does sound like the climate wars are well and truly back then. A handful of Nationals MPs, they’ve been very busy attacking the Paris Accord, haven’t they?

Patricia Karvelas: They’re so busy. They’re always busy.And they were busy in government too. And it’s the same people, so it’s not new. But now, again, busy in opposition. A point to make about all of this is some of the people in the Liberal Party who would be traditionally pushing for a stronger position on climate change didn’t win their seats. And so this party room that Peter Dutton is presiding over is a different party room. Of course, there were some moderates in there, not many. And so the louder voices, it’s not the split it used to be, are actually these National MPs you talk about.

Keith Pitt, Nationals MP: Well, I want to keep qualified power for as long as possible because it works and the taxpayer owns a great big heap of it, so why would you turn it into scrap?

Patricia Karvelas: Now, Peter Dutton’s trying to walk a line saying, well, stay in Paris and not doing what they’re asking, but also kind of, sorry, but calling a spade a spade, doing what they’re asking because he’s getting rid of all the interim stuff.

Sam Hawley: And just to note that the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, he’s been on the ABC saying that Australia should stay in the Paris Accords, so he’s singing from Peter Dutton’s tunebook at this point, just not to confuse everyone even more.

Patricia Karvelas: And I’m glad you said not to confuse everyone because it is really confusing and I worry that people, so I hope we brought you with us. A lot of dates, a lot of figures. I find them pretty confusing. The opposition’s telling us they believe in Paris, but just not Labor’s version of Paris. They want their own version. What does David Littleproud call it? A special Australian version.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, and of course they’re doing this because they think it will resonate with some voters. They’ve got an eye on the election. It might for some, but then for others, we saw in the last election with the Teals being elected, the Teal Independents being elected, that it could go either way.

Patricia Karvelas: So I think it does resonate with some parts of the community. I don’t think they’re on a complete loser here. They have detected, and there is some evidence of this, can I say, it’s not all just them just talking, that there is concern in the community about renewables, about the actual rollout of them in some regional communities, and the fact that, of course, people are really worried about their power prices during a cost-of-living crisis, but they need to also make gains. Those urban seats, they matter, and people aren’t only interested in power bills there. They do care about power bills there too, but they are pretty clued into what’s happening in the broader environment, why climate change does matter. It’s not really debatable. We know the science is pretty conclusive on it, and so there, I think this is really high risk for them, and they might keep saying they want to stay in Paris, but will people believe them if they can’t provide any detail about the interimmeasures?

Sam Hawley: All right, well, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, he says Peter Dutton has basically abandoned any pretense of having a climate policy.

Speaker 6: Peter Dutton is proposing abandoning the targets, abandoning investment certainty, which will lead to less investment. This is not a sensible policy. This is an abandonment.

Sam Hawley: But, you know, Labor hasn’t gone far enough with its targets, really, for a lot of people either, so, you know.

Patricia Karvelas: Labor’s getting smashed on the progressive side, particularly from the Greens and the Teal independents who think they’re not going far enough. Labor gets pushed on the power prices and the regional community argument, and so they’re stuck in the middle again.That’s what they tell us they are, the centrists. It doesn’t look easy to be a centrist, can I say?

Sam Hawley: All right, well, PK, Australia, of course, was really condemned internationally for a long time for lagging behind with its targets. What does it actually mean, or what do experts say it means, if we dump our 2030 target or heavily water it down? What are the consequences, if any, of that?

Patricia Karvelas: I think it’s highly unlikely Australia would ever actually walk away from the Paris commitments entirely, but even watering down commitments could have serious economic and diplomatic consequences, though. I mean, I think it would be very embarrassing for Australia. You’re not meant to go down from your commitments. That’s not really in the spirit of the thing, is it? And I mentioned Trump. Things could look pretty different, so Peter Dutton’s really calculating all of those differences and thinking it’s worth the punt that he’s taking. We will have to wait to see. I think it’s a high-risk thing to do.

Sam Hawley: Patricia Karvelas is the host of Radio National Breakfast, The Party Room podcast and Q&A on ABC TV. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald, Jess O’Callaghan and Anna John. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.