Zali Steggall’s climate policy is in reality a bit of a damp squib because it doesn’t offer much more than something resembling a think tank.
As if we needed another committee to tell us what needs to be done.
Do we really need a new body to study environmental issues when there are already plenty of groups doing this sort of important work? The Climate Council and the Clean Energy Council are busy, the Australian Industry Group has climate advisers in place who can funnel good suggestions to the government when asked (or, even, when they’ve not been asked). In fact, any number of well-funded organisations have such people employed whose only job is to dream up schemes suited to both making money and improving environmental outcomes for the whole community.
But if you’re looking for a statutory body – an institution established by an act of Parliament – there’s the Committee on the Environment and Energy, which has been operating since 1996. The defunct Climate Commission – its name similar to Steggall’s proposal – was established in 2011 by the Gillard government but abolished by old mate Tony Abbott in 2013. If we’re going to set up a new Parliamentary advisory body – if we desperately need to do this (which I kinda doubt) – then let’s just call it the Climate Commission.
With an emphasis on the “mate”. Cli-mate – get it? Haha! It’s important to include all sides of politics in such ventures and to remember that Liberal Party supporters (who are of course conservatives) will be more inclined to go with what’s already there, rather than – as Labor tends to do – invent something brand-spanking new, shiny and (on the surface) expensive.
Nothing new is better bread.
But doing nothing will cost more in the end.
Shiny must’ve been how the Liberals’ Scott Morrison (pictured) felt after winning in 2019. Unlike Bill Shorten’s overly ambitious EV policy that helped to sink Labor federally in that year, Steggall’s offering this time – despite the plethora of faceless notable eminences the Guardian dredged up to interview for its story – contains remarkably little of substance. Perhaps she’s thinking about Shorten’s failure as a salutary lesson in how to develop climate policy. For whatever good idea you offer up – her thinking goes – there’ll be someone in some newspaper or think tank ready or peak body or statutory authority, ready to shoot it down in flames.
And shame on you for trying.
So, she presents a small target, which is a surprising stance to take for someone who owes her rise to power and influence on the environment and upon the aspirations of thinking men and women nationally.
Shorten’s aim – to reduce to 105g/kilometre the per-car CO2 emissions of Australia’s light vehicle fleet – was in the upshot a measure something akin to crashing into a glass door with your face. Because some people won’t buy EVs of any kind – the two best-selling cars in Australia in 2020 were 6-cylinder utilities (a Toyota and a Ford) – under the 2019 plan the rest of the crowd’d have to go with pure-electric vehicles. While farmers might be able to get away with a 4-cylinder hybrid the last time I spoke with a car salesman the news was that 6-cylinder hybrids were not on the cards.
That poll included just one manufacturer, not all of them. GM might, for all I know, have other ideas but Steggall is aiming too low. She’s serving softballs underarm, with certain parts of the media waiting, racquets ready to dink back a softie for her to smash into the net in front of the TV cameras.
It’s a spectacle without spectators – because everyone’s a player now.
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