Chris Bowen’s climate bill is too weak, but it starts to repair after a decade of disaster

While the government is wedded to its better but still insufficient 2030 emissions reduction target, its climate bill is stepping in the right direction. It will reestablish a Climate Change Authority (CCA) to “provide advice on any new or updated emissions reduction targets”, in the words of Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, at least every five years. But decision-making about pursuing those targets will remain with politicians.

It’s a simplified version of the climate bill Zali Steggall brought to Parliament during the last term, including an annual statement to Parliament on progress towards meeting targets.

Bowen says “decision-making on national targets should and will remain with the government of the day”. If Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said that decision-making on interest rates should and will be with the government of the day, he’d be howled down — it’s now orthodoxy that monetary policy is too important to be left to politicians. The Reserve Bank doesn’t “advise” on the appropriate interest rate level, it sets them — because we don’t trust politicians to do it.

There’s no conceivable reason why the same logic doesn’t apply to emissions reduction targets. If anything, the need is even greater to eliminate politicians from the process of determining how quickly we need to decarbonise.

Nonetheless, Bowen’s bill reestablishes an independent source of advice on emissions targets — one the Coalition naturally moved to silence the moment it was elected in 2013. The five-year minimum is far too little: the CCA should be reporting at least every three years. Watching the northern hemisphere burn and much of the east coast here flood suggests a two-year minimum might be more appropriate — something the Greens and teal independents can push for as it goes through Parliament.

The benefit for Labor of a restored CCA is that it can furnish a reason to lift its 2030 target ahead of the next election, on the basis that an independent, evidence-based assessment suggests more urgent action is needed — which it is. The only risk is that the CCA might be neutered by poor appointments by either the current or a future government — remember the Coalition, farcically, put fossil fuel executive Grant King on its gutted Climate Change Authority. Like all appointments, that process should itself be made independent via reforms to the government appointment process, involving the advertising of positions against public criteria and independent assessment panels vetting candidates.

The outstanding issue remains the government’s willingness to approve new fossil fuel projects. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese briefly clung to the Coalition’s line that good old Aussie coal is somehow magically cleaner than filthy foreigners’ coal — a claim entirely discredited. But last night on 7.30, he unveiled a new talking point: that the United Nations bases climate policy on where emissions are produced — Japan isn’t held to account for the emissions of Japanese vehicles in Australia. It’s a nice line, but it’s disingenuous and ignores the laws of physics; the atmosphere doesn’t care where CO2 emissions are generated, and you can’t bookkeep global warming away.

Albanese also said that fossil fuel exports produce tax revenue that helps pay for schools and hospitals. That’s true for the exporters that pay tax, but not true for the big gas exporters — Chevron, Shell, Woodside, Santos, Origin — who pay little tax and no petroleum rent resource tax on the tens of billions they earn from our fossil fuels. His argument would hold more water if he repaired the badly broken tax regime that allows these climate criminals to profit from our resources without paying us.

Even so, domestically, the climate bill is a big step forward. It can be improved significantly, but it’s a good start to fixing a decade of disaster.