Inside the Greens by Paddy Manning

Inside the Greens by Paddy Manning

Author:Paddy Manning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd


During the debate, knowing the legislation would fail, Milne moved an amendment to stiffen up the emissions-reduction targets ahead of Copenhagen, committing the government ‘to entering the climate treaty negotiations at the end of 2009 with an unconditional commitment to reduce emissions by at least 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and a willingness to reduce emissions by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 in the context of a global treaty’.28 Anticipating defeat, Wong flagged that the government would bring the bills back to the Senate, and the package went down by 42 votes to 30, opposed by the Coalition, the Greens, Xenophon and Fielding.29

The Labor government had lost round one, as expected. The pressure on all sides was mounting, backed up by the threat – which Brown acknowledged – that if the legislation was defeated a second time it could serve as a trigger for a double-dissolution climate election, most probably in early 2010. Some, like the former Democrats leader Natasha Stott-Despoja, commenting from the sidelines, thought that was exactly what the Greens wanted.30

As yet, there was no great outcry about the Greens’ position: they were pushing for tougher action, in line with Garnaut, climate science and the environmental movement, and even sections of the business community, exactly as they had said they would do, yet they had been shut out of the negotiations.31 Malcolm Turnbull, leader of the opposition, said the Coalition would propose amendments in the coming months; Wong said the government would consider them and try to come to an agreement. But the ground was shifting beneath Turnbull, who was losing authority inside the Liberal Party, and loose cannons like Wilson Tuckey, Cory Bernardi, Julian McGauran and Dennis Jensen were openly decrying the CPRS and climate science, with full-throated support from the Nationals, particularly Barnaby Joyce.32

Bob Brown told the ABC that the government should be negotiating with the Greens. ‘It’s a lost opportunity for the government at the outset because it’s putting up a recipe for failure … the Greens have got the formula right.’33 As a concession, the government split off its Renewable Energy Target legislation, imposing a target of 20 per cent renewables by 2020; this had the support of all sides but had hitherto been packaged up with the CPRS, and it duly passed through the Senate almost without a murmur. It would prove the single most effective legislative response Australia made to climate change.

Under the constitution, Labor had to wait three months to reintroduce its CPRS bills, if it wanted a double-dissolution trigger. In October, before the legislation passed the lower house, the Greens released 22 proposed amendments publicly, with emissions reduction targets of between 25 per cent and 40 per cent, all carbon permits auctioned, trade-exposed industries compensated only for the value of their lost competitiveness (not for their lost profits) and electricity generators receiving no compensation at all.34 They got nowhere. The next month, Milne released legal advice from Brian Walters SC that the CPRS ‘locked



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