Climate change: time for a parliamentary rematch

It is not our democratic processes that has failed – it is parliamentary leadership, writes Silvana AnthonyNEW ZEALAND recently did what Australia failed to do (also recently): roll out an economy-wide emission trading system. As a scheme designed by a government of the left, and amended by a conservative one, the framework bore a close resemblance to Australia’s scheme and was subject to many of the same criticisms: the price was set too low to have an effect on emissions in the short to medium term, polluters were being paid too much to transition to the scheme and agriculture was excluded. As one of the highest carbon emitters on a per capita basis and a signatory to the Kyoto Convention, New Zealand bucked the trend across Western democracies: rather than spurning an emissions trading system prior to Copenhagen it implemented one. The NZ government achieved this by taking everyone in the parliament with it – except for NZ Labour (whose position resembled the Australian Greens – rejecting the “good” when the “perfect” was impossible). Across the ditch, Australia now finds itself back at year zero on the issue. Although we have already had an election on the issue – both parties went to the last election pledging support for a price on carbon – and the minor party in the Senate also supports a price on carbon, we will not consider (let alone adopt) a mechanism to price carbon across the economy before 2012.The new prime minister, whose position on climate change is the same as her predecessor, wants to build community “consensus”, saying that a debate amongst politicians is not enough to convince the Australian community about a price on carbon. If Labor wins the election, two more entities – a Citizens Assembly and a Climate Change Commission – will be added to what has become the climate change bureaucracy juggernaut: the relatively new Climate Change Department, the CSIRO, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, the Australian Carbon Trust and the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy, not to mention the other entities associated with the establishment of a CPRS. The new entities have been established as campaign policy, all in the name of advancing community consensus, consultation and “independent information” on the science on climate change (even though this science has been developed and supported by peak science bodies around the world, including the government’s own chief scientist, Penny Sackett, its own climate change report from Professor Garnaut, the UK Royal Academy and the US Academy of Sciences). More fundamental to this point is that Australia already has a process for building consensus, consultation and delivering proposed legislative and social reform. It’s called the Parliament of Australia. This is why we have elected members to the House of Representatives, and more importantly to the “other place”, the Senate, where legislation is, or should, be debated, improved, changed, compromised and amended to address community concerns and achieve a “consensus” result. Remember the GST? Remember the lack of “consensus” and the level of fear and anxiety generated by the opposition? It took the Senate, indeed the Democrats, a minor party in the Senate, to forge “consensus” and address community concerns in what many economists and policy purists described as a “weakening” of the reform. But the reform was achieved, and even in its amended form the changes to the tax system have fundamentally benefited the Australian economy – and particularly the budgets of governments around Australia –and through this the Australian people by way of improved access and certainty in the provision of services.While many would argue it contributed to their own ultimate demise, the Democrats delivered one of the most significant reforms, arguably the only significant one, of the Howard era. It could not have been achieved without the compromises made in the Senate. Australia’s upper house remains one of the least understood and most misunderstood aspects of Australia’s parliamentary democracy. A legend of the Senate, the former clerk Harry Evans, reminds us that it is very un-Westminster in its “tradition” of standing committees, which were actually proposed by an admirer of the US congressional system, Lionel Murphy, despite the opposition of his own party.It is these committees that form the basis of the processes that allow scrutiny and public involvement in the legislative process. It is true that governments have squeezed these processes by using their numbers to restrict time available for committees to work and report and worse still to reduce the number of bills actually subject to this scrutiny. (Less than a third of bills are subject to this process.) But Australians who feel passionately about climate change – or any other issue – have in the Senate the means by which they can provide input to an inquiry into a Bill. The committees that examined both the exposure draft of the CPRS and subsequent Bills received around 200 submissions and travelled to most capital cities to conduct hearings throughout 2009. Furthermore Australians can, and should, be badgering their local senator more often – rather than their local House of Reps MP – when it comes to providing feedback on the specifics on bills before the Parliament. And there is, ultimately, the potential for a double dissolution, which allows the Australian community another opportunity to exercise their rights within the parliamentary sphere. It is not our democratic processes that have failed Australians in their pursuit of action on climate change – it is a failure of leadership within our parliamentary democracy. The Labor Party now proposes that a Citizens Assembly debate the issue for another year. More time will be lost as the results of that Assembly’s deliberation are then considered by the government, and even more before the government’s response is translated into policy, let alone implemented and delivered. The white noise surrounding the long established science of climate change says much more about what’s at stake for the old economy than it does the credibility of the science. These sectors have never had to pay for their negative impact – whether it’s emissions, impact on water quality, health, the decline in the diversity of our fauna and flora, or the risk of error or accident (such as the BP spill in the United States). The evidence indicates that greenhouse gases emitted by human activities have contributed more to warming over the last fifty years than any natural source and that this warming is changing the global climate. Whether or not you “believe” this to be true, it is time for the cost of polluting to be internalised in our economy. In her first speech to the National Press Club as prime minister, Julia Gillard said that as a minister in the Rudd government she “argued for an approach to microeconomic reform which focuses on market design” which requires “sustained and sometimes bold action to unblock the market failures, open up new opportunities, and make sure that the interests of users and taxpayers are put first.” This principal should be applied to polluters. This election could be transformed from a “claytons” campaign to a real debate about how a carbon tax could be used to start reshaping Australian energy markets. This debate could detail how a carbon tax, far from being a “great big tax on everything”, would finally provide certainty for suppliers and generators; encourage market based investment in renewables and remove the capital and fiscal uncertainty of government picking “winners”.This debate could also prosecute the case for a balanced treatment of large polluters and proper protection for low-income households during the transition to a zero carbon economy. And – shock, horror – it could also canvas how farmers employing best practice techniques at managing land would actually be better off under an effective carbon pricing regime. Our major parties would see one downside to such a debate: it requires our politicians to move from a small target approach into leaders that are debating in the national interest – not their own political self interest. •Silvana Anthony is a senior advisor to Macroeconomics on public policy and administration and political affairs. Most recently she was a senior advisor to federal Labor Party both in government and in opposition in the areas of Finance and Health. Photo: Kaptain Kobol