Labor and Coalition trade barbs over 2030 climate target

In an interview with The Weekend Australian, Mr Dutton said if elected the Coalition would oppose Labor’s pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030, but it would keep its net zero by 2050 goal.

Mr Dutton said the 43 per cent target by 2030 was “unachievable”.

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Mr Clare echoed the remarks made by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen who accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of damaging Australia’s reputation on the international stage.

“At the moment, the countries outside the Paris Accord are Libya, Yemen and Iran. Is Mr Dutton proposing to take Australia into that company?” Mr Bowen said on Saturday.

“Did Mr Dutton take this extraordinary policy to his shadow cabinet or to his party room? Was his party consulted about leaving the Paris Accord and ripping up Australia’s emissions reduction target?”

On Sunday Agenda, Mr Clare told Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell Mr Dutton had made a “big mistake”.

“I think any Australian who thinks climate change is real will think now that Peter Dutton is a real risk. A risk to investment, a risk to jobs, a real risk that Australia will do nothing to tackle climate change,” Mr Clare said.

“Even Tony Abbott” did not withdraw from a global agreement on climate change, and “he thinks its crap”.

“This makes Tony Abbott look like Al Gore,” he said.

Mr Clare said the Labor government opposed introducing nuclear energy into the mix because it “costs a bomb”.

“It costs a bomb, it costs a fortune wherever it’s been rolled out or attempted to be rolled out around the world costs have blown out,” he said.

“It takes too long and, to be frank, it’s about as popular as a mother-in-law on a honeymoon.

“Most Australians who look at this don’t want a bar of it.”

Shadow housing and homelessness minister Michael Sukkar said the reason Mr Dutton promised to dump the Paris Agreement if elected was because there was “no way” Australia would meet the target.

“This is where this sort of flaky motherhood statements that we just heard from the education minister and what we constantly hear from this government just don’t cut it,” he said.

“The truth is that target requires us to have as a precondition 82 per cent renewables for our energy system, and we got less than half of that at the moment.”

Mr Sukkar said two years on from legislating their climate goal, the government had not been able to outline and meet the “most basic assumption” of the target in the required renewable levels.

“For those of us who have a long political memory, Australia has always prided itself on entering into international agreements and meeting targets, that was case with Kyoto, for example,” he said.

“We were very proud that we would always meet a target we committed to and indeed we criticised country’s that just willy-nilly signed onto agreements without any pathway to meet the commitment that they’ve made.”

Mr Sukkar was asked if it would be the case that if the Coalition were elected Australia would not “be very popular internationally” and would become a “pariah” for backflipping on it’s net-zero commitment.

“We’re committed to net-zero by 2050, that’s what we committed to when we were in government,” he said.

“This government has made the further interim commitment, a commitment they cannot show how on earth they’re going to meet, and we’ve seen this throughout what the government does.

“They make lofty commitments with no realistic possibility or aspiration of achieving it.”

Mr Sukkar said the worst outcome for Australia would be becoming a country it had cristicised for signing up to targets “without a realistic pathway” of reaching them.

The shadow housing minister said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was “desperately” trying to distract from his government’s “failures” by not accepting small modular nuclear reactors as an option.

“I’m not surprised at all, of course he’s going to engage in a shocking scare campaign,” he said.

“He thinks that himself and Chris Bowen are the experts and that all the countries that we would seek to compare ourselves around the world are somehow stupid because in nearly every single case, those friends of ours are utilising nuclear.

“Australia is paying the highest energy prices in the world. We used to pride ourselves in having cheap, baseload power in this country.”

Mr Sukkar was pressed on whether nuclear energy would be the Coalition’s “hill to die on”.

“Well, no, there’s a myriad of things that we’ll be talking about between now and the election, I assure you. But a pretty important place to start is that you need cheap and reliable energy in this country,” he said.

“We’ve seen manufacturing insolvencies triple under the watch of this government. So many manufacturers say to us the input costs just mean we cannot compete with foreign competitors.

“Australians see it every quarter when they get their power bills, they see the power bills going through the roof.”