ETS crash and burn in Oz?
“THE Rudd government stares down the gun barrel of one of the greatest policy and political retreats of the past generation that confounds its election strategy and its policy credibility. …
The latest decisive shift in Australian business opinion comes from the Australian Industry Group and its chief executive, Heather Ridout. “I think the political consensus on climate change both domestically and internationally is now fractured,” Ridout tells The Australian. “The emissions trading scheme is on life support. …” …
The Rudd government is stranded without any apparent game plan on its most important first-term policy (outside its response to the global financial crisis). It is rare for a national government to face this predicament in its first term. Labor seems unable to abandon its ETS yet unable to champion its ETS; it cannot tolerate the ignominy of policy retreat yet cannot declare it will take its beliefs to a double-dissolution election; it remains pledged to its ETS yet cannot fathom how to make its ETS the law of the land. Such uncertainties are understandable, yet they are dangerously debilitating for any government. …
In the interim, Labor’s response is to launch a furious series of spins, diversions and alternatives. …
Beneath such drum beating is a government whose world view on climate change is in eclipse and whose domestic political assumptions about climate change have been broken.
As a consequence Labor has lowered, dramatically, its ETS policy profile. Its tactic is to deny Abbott’s scare by playing down its ETS. Great tactics, but what’s the strategy? Where does this lead? Abbott’s bite may be diminished, but what happens to Rudd’s credibility? For how long does Labor stop talking about the moral challenge of the age? Is the ETS the policy that dare not bear its name?
Ross Garnaut brands the present phase “the waiting game”. But “the agony game” better captures Labor’s plight. Garnaut calls this “awaiting the international agreement” that “provides a sound basis for international trade in entitlements”. But awaiting the global conditions to make an Australian ETS viable looks like a long wait.” “Labor in denial as ETS fairyland fractures“