TRANSCRIPT
New battle lines have been drawn in the climate wars, that have plagued Australian politics for more than a decade.
"Peter Dutton is worse than Scott Morrison on climate change. He is all negativity and no plan."
The Prime Minister seizing on the Opposition's plan to ditch Australia's 2030 emissions reduction target.
"You can't shape the future if you're afraid of it, and Peter Dutton is afraid of the future and he's incapable of leading Australia towards the future that we need."
Peter Dutton told The Australian he would dump Australia's 2030 target to cut emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels, should the coalition win the next federal election.
Abandoning the 2030 target seems to go against the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change that which requires countries to increase emissions reduction targets every five years without taking a backward step.
Liberal MP Ted O'Brien insists the opposition is committed to the Paris agreement, just not the 2030 target.
"We are absolutely committed to achieving net zero by 2050, and we will have a plan to do so. What we have done is we have called Labor out. Labor legislated for a 43 per cent emissions reduction cut by 2030. They have Buckley's chance ((no chance)) of achieving that."
The target was one of the first acts of the Albanese government after its 2022 election win.
Current projections show Australia is on track to reach a 42 per cent cut by the end of the decade, just shy of the 43 per cent target.
Former Liberal opposition leader and Professor at the Australian National University John Hewson says the coalition's policy position isn't constructive.
"I was absolutely appalled at the idea that they'd say that. Technically, it sort of, threatens to pull us out of the Paris accord. Now they're playing games, just being deliberately disruptive of the government's strategy to move to a renewables based energy system."
And he says their position lacks substance.
"This short term political point scoring has got to stop. They say that the 2030 targets aren't achievable, and don't demonstrate that. Then they say under force, under duress, cleaning up after they made that initial statement, they said, oh no, we're of course, still committed to net zero. They think that nuclear will carry them through to that, and that's still an open debate, it take so long and so expensive to do nuclear. I think the general community is starting to question the integrity of their position."
Anthony Albanese is confident the target will be met.
"So 42 per cent by 2030. The target is 43 per cent. And that was before we had the announcements that we had in the recent budget, for example. I'm very confident, like with other infrastructure projects, they don't go in a straight line, they ramp up. What we're doing is providing that business certainty so that you will see that ramping-up."
