From Dead Right (Richard Denniss, 2019) pp146-9
Climate change
The Coalition’s approach to climate change has greatly harmed its economic credibility. Its dog-whistle denial of climate science has set it at odds not just with the scientific community, but with formerly conservative voters who see support for science as fundamental to the pursuit of progress. And because climate change is global, the Coalition’s determination to subsidise new coalmines while repudiating attempts to reduce emissions has come to define our foreign policy.
And for what? As Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and Arnold Schwarzenegger have demonstrated, accepting climate change does not mean rejecting free markets. Even Tony Abbott once supported both emissions trading and the introduction of a carbon tax. Well before he declared that climate change was “crap,” he admitted to being “a bit of a weather vane” on the issue.
Neoclassical economic theory has no problem with policies designed to reduce pollution but, because of crony capitalism and craven politicking, the Coalition can’t abide the simple policy options that the economics textbooks provide. Asbestos is so dangerous we banned its mining, use and importation. Leaf blowers are not annoying enough, apparently, to ban, but local councils do restrict the hours in which they can be used. Tobacco is so deadly that a wide range of regulations and taxes have been created to limit its consumption and the exposure of non-smokers to its fumes. And alcohol can so greatly impair our capacity to handle an automobile that we imprison those who drink and drive. We know how to reduce harm.
There is no doubt that lifting restrictions on asbestos mining would create jobs in asbestos mining. Nor that removing limits on alcohol sales and penalties for drink-driving would increase employment in bottle shops and hospital emergency wards. But, unsurprisingly, politicians rarely peddle the idea that harming ourselves is “good for the economy” and “creates jobs.” Except when it comes to climate change.
The economics of tackling climate change are surprisingly simple, but the domestic politics of doing so are tricky. And no political party has been crushed harder than the Coalition between the neoliberal rock of market-based solutions to emission reductions and the political hard place of the fossil-fuel industry’s greed.
If the Coalition were truly neoliberal, it would use the desire to tackle climate change to drive its agenda of tax cuts for big business and high-income earners. Either a simple carbon tax or a complicated emissions trading scheme could raise tens of billions of dollars per year, which could then be used to lower tax rates for companies and individuals. If Malcolm Turnbull could have got such a neoliberal measure through his own party room, he’d likely still be prime minister and renowned as a great reformer.
But the Coalition is not just uninterested in avoiding climate change; in recent years, it seems to have become unashamedly determined to cause it. The party even opposes fuel-efficiency standards for new cars on the basis that policy measures to reduce fuel consumption are a form of “carbon tax on cars.” The diesel fuel rebate scheme, in which business owners pay less for diesel than ordinary citizens, acts as a $7 billion subsidy per year, the majority of which goes to the mining industry.
The Coalition’s willingness to heavily subsidise a product that not only causes pollution but increases the budget deficit is proof that neoliberalism has no real power over the party’s policies.
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