‘Bordering on incredible’: Coalition under fire for planning to scrap Labor climate policies and offering none of its own

‘Bordering on incredible’: Coalition under fire for planning to scrap Labor climate policies and offering none of its own

The Coalition is refusing to say if it will introduce any policies to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade as it pledges to unwind most climate measures introduced under Labor.

Peter Dutton’s position on the climate crisis came under scrutiny last week after he gave contradictory answers on whether he accepted mainstream climate science. Asked during a leaders’ debate on the ABC whether extreme weather events were worsening, the opposition leader said: “I don’t know because I’m not a scientist”.


Dutton later said he “believes in climate change” and the Coalition was committed to Australia having net zero emissions by 2050.

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But climate experts said its policies would boost local fossil fuel use, send the country backwards on emissions, put the net zero goal beyond reach and damage its reputation internationally.

Bill Hare, a scientist and the Australia-based chief executive of Climate Analytics, said the Coalition’s positions were “almost totally regressive in the sense that they would unwind action in Australia”.

He said if people accepted Dutton’s claim the Coalition wanted to abolish a national legislated 2030 emissions target – a 43% cut below 2005 levels – but still supported getting to net zero emissions without introducing new policies “you are being taken for a mug”.




“It is too late to be listening to empty promises like that,” Hare said.

The Grattan Institute’s energy and climate change program director, Tony Wood, said “every single one” of the Coalition’s policies in the area was “a reduction in ambition or slowing down emissions reductions”.

“None of it is adding to emissions reductions,” he said. “It would be bordering on incredible to think that we could maintain a commitment to net zero by 2050 with no plans to head us in the direction for the next 10 to 15 years.”

Guardian Australia asked the Coalition if it had any policies that would reduce emissions over the next decade. The shadow minister for climate change and energy, Ted O’Brien, replied it had a “track record of reducing emissions” and would continue to “advocate for solutions that deliver affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for all Australians”.

He did not specify a Coalition policy that would cut emissions in the next 10 years.

The Coalition’s policies include:

Dropping a Labor goal of 82% of electricity coming from renewable generation by 2030 and slowing the rollout of solar and windfarms, in part by scrapping a “rewiring the nation” fund to build new transmission connections. Instead, it says the country would rely on more fossil fuels – coal and gas-fired power – until it could lift a ban on nuclear energy and build taxpayer-owned nuclear generators, mostly after 2040.


Abolishing fines for car companies that do not meet targets to cut the average emissions from the new cars they sell.


Not supporting Labor’s 2030 emissions reduction target. Former diplomats say lowering the target would put Australia in breach of commitments made in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.


Opposing a joint Australia-Pacific bid to host a major UN climate summit in Adelaide next year.

The Coalition has also said it would review the safeguard mechanism – a policy introduced under Tony Abbott, and revamped under Labor to require major industrial polluters to either make direct cuts or buy carbon offsets – to possibly make it less onerous on business. Industry groups have largely supported Labor’s changes.

Lesley Hughes, a professor emerita at Macquarie University and member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and the Climate Council, said the last Coalition government “went backwards” on addressing the climate crisis and “there’s nothing to suggest we won’t go backwards under the next Coalition government”.

Hare has assessed the likely difference between Labor and the Coalition based on their current policies. He said government projections indicated Labor was headed for a 42.6% cut by 2030 – nearly on track to meet the 43% target – but the Coalition’s released policies would limit the cut to 36%.



He pointed to modelling by Frontier Economics released in support of the Coalition’s nuclear plan that assumed Australia would get only 54% of its electricity from renewable energy, rather than 82%. “That would slow down emissions reduction dramatically … and would require more gas for the next 15 to 20 years,” Hare said.

The Climate Change Authority has estimated it could increase national emissions by 2bn tonnes, adding the equivalent of more than four years of total Australian climate pollution.

Hare and Wood both said the Coalition’s plan to scrap fines for car companies that did not meet the vehicle efficiency standard would make the policy pointless. “It’s like having a speed limit without a penalty,” Wood said.

All experts who spoke with Guardian Australia bemoaned a lack of focus on climate change policy from the major parties given the challenge of reaching net zero and the rising impact of increased temperatures and extreme weather.

Labor’s sole new climate policy released in the election has been a 30% subsidy for households and small businesses that install batteries. Neither party has announced 2035 emissions targets or released a plan to reach net zero emissions, though Labor began work on a plan in the last term and has promised a 2035 goal by September if re-elected.

Wood said: “It is monumentally disappointing that these issues are not really being discussed by either party.”

Hughes said the Great Barrier Reef had just suffered its sixth mass bleaching event in nine years, but the major parties seemed to be “quite strenuously avoiding talking about climate impacts”.

Hare said the “lack of engagement on climate across the board has been quite depressing”.

An initial assessment by the Climate Change Authority found a 2035 emissions reduction target of between 65% and 75% “would be ambitious and could be achievable if additional action is taken”. Organisations representing engineers, scientists and the social service sector have called for a target of net zero emissions by 2035, in line with a goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C.