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“Dear IPA members
Just five hours after Labor introduced its climate change bill into parliament on Wednesday the IPA released to the community and policy makers our assessment of the impact the bill could have.
The inoffensively titled Climate Change (2022) Bill will radically change Australia’s economy, society, and way of life.
The bill mandates into law a 43% cut to Australia’s emissions by 2030, and for emissions to be net zero by 2050. It is guaranteed that the bill will get through the lower house where Labor has a majority.
In all likelihood it will pass the Senate sometime in September where Labor, along with the Greens and David Pocock (an Independent Senator from the ACT) together have the numbers.
There are so many things wrong with the bill that it is hard to know where to begin.
To start with, it will require even more wind and solar, and less coal-fired power, on the energy grid. The effect of which will be to further increase electricity prices, reduce reliability, and undermine Australia’s energy sovereignty through greater exposure to imported solar panels and wind turbines.
But in this note I want to draw your attention to two specific issues, the importance of which will grow over the coming weeks and months.
Firstly, it was IPA Director of Legal Rights Program Morgan Begg who was the first in Australia to identify in the legislation a ‘rachet clause’. This clause allows the government to even further increase emissions targets – but without needing the consent of parliament.
Whereas if the Coalition at some future date wanted to scrap or repeal the targets, separate legislation would be required to go through parliament.
This means that the Labor government could simply decide that 43% is not a deep enough cut, and instead require emissions to be cut by 75% by 2030 (as the Greens are demanding). Or that instead of net zero by 2050, it must be net zero by 2040, or 2030.
They could do this without debate. Without a vote. And even without parliament sitting.
As IPA Senior Fellow John Roskam argued in The Australian Financial Review today, ‘whether the parliament has the legal authority to pass a law giving the executive such a vague and all-embracing power is at the very least arguable.’
The ratchet clause (which can be found in Sections 10 (4), (5), and (6) of the bill) reflects the Paris Climate Agreement’s requirement that emissions reduction mandates can only be increased, and not decreased, even if such actions go against the wishes of national parliaments.
The Explanatory Memorandum to the bill says in black and white that the purpose of the rachet clause is to ‘mirror the Paris Agreement principle against ‘backsliding – that is, the weakening rather than strengthening of ambition over time’. And that any change to emissions mandates ‘must also represent a more ambitious target than the nationally determined contribution immediately preceding.’
But this isn’t even the worst of it.
By putting emission reduction mandates into legislation, Labor will be deliberately and knowingly unleashing a torrent of legal activism by fringe green groups, such as Greenpeace.
The current law allows a person to challenge a ministerial approval of a major project (for example a coal mine or a dam) if the minister fails ‘to take a relevant consideration into account in the exercise of a power’.
A ‘relevant consideration’ is, by design, vague, and could mean almost anything.
But in practice Labor’s climate legislation will invite activist groups to argue in court that a minister has failed to consider whether or not a project is consistent with the terms of the Paris Climate Agreement.
This means judges may now have to consider whether a minister has adequately considered the principles embedded in the Paris Climate Agreement, such as vague notions of ‘climate integrity’ when contemplating approvals.
The lawfulness of approvals will be jeopardised if they fail to pay sufficient tribute to ‘Mother Earth’, ‘climate justice’, ‘empowerment of women’, and ‘international equity’, all listed in the preamble to the Paris Climate Agreement.
You’ll remember, in 2015 it was the Coalition government who signed Australia up to the Paris Climate Agreement, at the time committing Australia to cutting its emission by up to 28 per cent by 2030 on 2005 levels (it was also the Coalition government who first signed Australia up to net zero emissions by 2050).
The Paris Climate Agreement is a global agreement between 188 nations under the United Nations, which mandates greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The stated aim of the agreement is to limit ‘global warming’ to below two degrees Celsius by 2100 above pre-industrial levels (don’t bother trying to find any scientific justification in the agreement for these aims – I’ve looked; there isn’t one).
In a Parliamentary Research Brief which was distributed to all members of parliament at the time, the IPA was the first organisation in Australia to identify what, exactly, the Paris Climate Agreement would mean for Australia.
The brief noted that ‘the binding international emissions reduction obligations imposed on Australia by the Paris Climate Agreement will result in significant and irreparable economic and social costs without producing a discernible environmental benefit.’ (Read here)
The brief also communicated to members of parliament IPA research which estimated that agreement would impose an annual economic cost of at least $52 billion (the equivalent cost of building 22 new hospitals); that it was subjecting Australia to the deepest cuts to emissions on a per capita basis in the world; and that it allows the world’s largest emitter, China, to increase its emissions by 150% by 2030.
But more than that, the Paris Climate Agreement, which will soon be embedded deep into Australian law, will hand even more influence over the direction of Australia to unelected and unaccountable internationalist bureaucrats.
This is why, in comments I gave to the media yesterday, I said ‘Australia should withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, so the sovereign decision-making capacity of our national Parliament is preserved.’
We will be publishing further research on the climate legislation in the coming days and weeks.
Thank you for your support.
Kind regards,
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