Pros And Cons Of The Turnbull Government

To be honest, I can't really be bothered getting breathless about what the Coalition did on climate change this week. Sure, it should be remarkable that members of the Turnbull government variously said they would consider an "emissions intensity scheme", that such a scheme was a "stupid" idea, and then ultimately that it wouldn't be considered at all. In a saner world, this would inflict some kind of whiplash. But in this world, it just seems predictable. Probably the least predictable aspect was that the Turnbull government even suggested it might be open to some version of carbon pricing in the first place.

Because we've known for years now – at least seven of them – that the Coalition can never offer a policy like that. Not even if its

Courtesy ABC News 24.

That's why it feels perfectly comfortable railing against the evils of government spending, then deciding to pursue only the very most expensive climate change policies it can muster. It will quibble over subsidising the renewable energy sector, then countenance loaning Adani $1 billion to help build a coal mine. There's no serious guiding principle here, except perhaps in the case of Cory Bernardi who says we should just withdraw from international efforts to respond to climate change altogether. At least this has the virtue of honesty. Right now, he feels like the only person who believes what he's saying.

So, yes this is a story of a Prime Minister imprisoned by the obsessions of his own party, unable even to consider the most basic recommendations of his own government's policy review. But we're looking at a bigger story than that: the failure of climate change policy in Australia. And it would be nice if that were simply a matter of Turnbull's timid leadership, or the Coalition's internal dysfunction. But this paralysis is a bipartisan

It starts with the (entirely defensible) position that climate change simply must be slowed, assumes there will be costs associated with this, and then offers ways to offset the pain. So Gillard put a price on carbon, thereby adding to the cost of electricity, but offered compensation (like lower taxes) that outstripped what many people would lose in higher prices. The same logic operates on the question of jobs. Yes, jobs will be lost in dirty industries. That's the whole point, as Hillary Clinton clumsily observed during the US election when she declared she would "put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business". But this loss, too, is offset with the promise of new, sustainable, green jobs as alternative industries