Peter Dutton’s revelation his party would not set an emissions reduction target for 2030 before the next election has been decried an “extraordinary abandonment” of climate policy as Greens leader Adam Bandt pilloried the PM’s “crocodile tears” on Paris targets.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on Tuesday insisted the Coalition was intent on keeping its net zero by 2050 goal but dismissed the 2030 target as “unachievable”.
Mr Albanese fronted the media later in the afternoon to take aim at Mr Dutton’s stance labelling his counterpart’s comments as an “extraordinary abandonment of any pretence of having a climate policy”.
“His nuclear fantasy will result in higher power prices and more unstable energy grid and rising emissions,” he said.
“No 2030 target means walking out of the Paris Agreement. That is very clear and if you walk out of the Paris Agreement, you are left standing with Libya, Yemen, and Iran. That is not the company that Australia should want to keep.”
Mr Albanese then referenced Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg who appeared on Sky News about 20 minutes after Mr Dutton’s revelation and claimed: “What we do for 2040 and the other years in between 2050, will be announced, I’m sure, before the election”.
Mr Albanese responded and said: “Peter Dutton is divisive, the Coalition are divided and there is no detail about what they would pursue”.
“The three ‘Ds’ of the collision, divisive, divided, detail, which gives them a big ‘F’ for fail when it comes to climate policy.”
But Mr Albanese’s attack on the Coalition leader followed him being on the defensive against Greens leader Adam Bandt who slammed the PM’s “crocodile tears”.
Speaking on comments made by the Liberal and Labor leaders, Mr Bandt argued neither parties were taking strong enough action to uphold Australia’s commitment to the international agreement, which aims to keep temperatures less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
“Neither Labor nor Liberal have targets strong enough to meet the Paris goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees,” the Greens leader said.
“It is clear now that both Labor and Liberal have given up on meeting the Paris Agreement goal.
“The Liberals don’t even pretend to care about it anymore and meanwhile Labor’s targets have us overshooting the Paris agreement goal of limiting global heating to two degrees.”
Mr Bandt said limiting global warming to less than two degrees was critical as failure to reduce warming meant climate change could become “runaway”.
“Nothing that our kids or grandkids do will be able to stop it,” Mr Bandt said before aiming his sights back at Labor and the Liberals.
“And meanwhile, with the Liberals completely ignoring the Paris agreement, Anthony Albanese is out crying Paris crocodile tears when his targets won’t meet the Paris Agreement goals either.
“Both Labor and Liberal are now committed to more coal and gas, opening more coal and gas mines in the middle of the climate crisis and that’s why both Labor and Liberal are on track to blow the Paris Agreement.
“This confected debate between Labor and Liberal about 2030 and 2035 targets hides the fact that both of them want to keep opening more coal and gas and neither of them will do enough to stop runaway global warming.”
Mr Bandt’s comments come after Mr Dutton revealed on Tuesday the Coalition would not announce a 2030 emissions reduction target before the next election.
Following repeated questioning on whether the Coalition will announce lower targets than Labor for 2030, Mr Dutton replied: “We’ll make those decisions when we’re in government”.
The Liberal leader also took aim at Labor’s emissions targets which he dismissed.
“Labor has no chance of meeting their target by 2030,” he said.
“We now know that the Labor Party is talking about a 60-65 per cent reduction in February of next year.
“Now I suspect the Prime Minister will want to go to an election before that because he won’t want people to do the math and what the math means is that electricity prices under Labor will go through the roof and that’s what Mr Albanese is promising at the next election.”