SYDNEY, Aug 20, 2018 – Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has again bowed to the extremists in the Coalition and removed the emissions reduction component of the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), retreating from the fight against climate change in a desperate bid to save his leadership.This morning, the PM held a news conference at which he conceded he had lost control of the Coalition and the Parliament. But rather than making the case for an energy policy that protects the environment and helps families struggling with high electricity prices, Turnbull spat the dummy and threw in the towel.
“Today’s backflip marks a low point in recent Australian political history. This morning Malcolm Turnbull confirmed that there is nothing in the world more important to him than his leadership of the Liberal Party,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific Campaigner Alix Foster Vander Elst said.
“Turnbull is abandoning the fight even as the impact of climate change becomes clearer and clearer, with large swathes of the nation suffering through the worst drought in fifty years, and as bushfire season kicks off in the middle of winter.
“This is made even worse by the fact that what Turnbull had initially proposed was already well below what the planet requires. The NEG was already putting a handbrake on renewables, locking in coal and pushing up power prices. If it is possible, this has made things even worse – there is absolutely no incentive to invest in clean energy generation.”
After losing a lot of skin in the battle to scrape the NEG through the Coalition party room last Tuesday, Turnbull made another concession to the coal huggers on Friday by announcing that the inadequate 26 percent emissions target would be enshrined in regulation rather than legislation, without a ‘no backsliding’ provision, allowing the minister to reduce the target without parliamentary approval. When that failed to silence those agitating for a leadership change, the PM panicked again and gave up on climate change entirely.
“Turnbull’s bungled handling of the NEG has exposed the lies he used to justify the policy in the first place,” Ms Foster Vander Elst said.
“Try not to laugh but the NEG was originally sold as a way to provide certainty to businesses, and the electricity sector in particular, but the Coalition injected uncertainty from the very start by going so low on the target. And now even that low target – which would have provided at least some kind of investment signal – is gone too, and with it any facade of certainty.
“The only sure thing is Turnbull will do whatever it takes to cling to the top job for just a little while longer. In Turnbull’s mind, inaction on climate change, jobs losses in the renewables industry and higher power prices are all acceptable costs for the nation to bear for him to stay in the Lodge just a little longer.”
For interviews:
Martin Zavan, Greenpeace Australia Pacific Communications Campaigner
0424 295 422