Howard: It's Me or a Recession

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 6/03/2007 08:40:00 PM
When we last saw Australian PM John Howard, he had adopted an environmental stance for his party was in danger of being turfed by Labor as Australia's drought drags on. Now, it seems that Howard is hinting at emissions targets for Australia. The catch is that he will only disclose them after the election, assuming his party stays in power. In the meantime, Howard has resorted to a scare tactic of "If you vote Labor, they're going to pass environmental legislation that will lead to a recession":

Labor will put a rock star in charge of determining Australia's economic future. That was the simple political message from the Prime Minister's speech on climate change at yesterday's Liberal Party federal council. Having been forced to accept that climate change is the biggest economic challenge of the future, John Howard is now posing a blunt question to voters: do you trust me or Labor with that challenge?

Labor's policy is "the recipe for a Garrett recession", Mr Howard said, warning that the Opposition's environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, would pursue his quest to cut greenhouse gases at the expense of the economy. The proof of this, he said, was that Labor had set a target to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050. To achieve this, he implied, Mr Garrett once floated emissions cuts by 2020 that would shut down the country's entire coal-fired electricity network and take every car off the road.

That doomsayer assumption is based on a scenario helpfully contained in the report of the Prime Minister's joint taskforce on emissions trading brought down on Friday. Significantly, neither Mr Howard nor the taskforce report was willing to set a long-term emissions target for Australia. And yesterday the Prime Minister made it clear he will not set his until after the election.

Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald points out though that what Garrett said before is by no means Labor policy. What Garrett said was during his days a backbencher:

John Howard has launched the Government's climate change fright line for the Federal election.

He announced yesterday that the Government would embrace the recommendation of its emissions trading taskforce to launch a carbon emissions trading system by 2012.

At the same time, the Prime Minister delivered the Big Scare.

Labor's environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, Howard said yesterday, "wants a 20 per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2020".

"To meet such a target the emissions trading taskforce concluded that it would require, and I quote, 'replacing Australia's entire existing fossil fuel-fired electricity generation capacity with electricity from nuclear power, while at the same time removing all vehicles from our roads,' end of quote."

He went on: "A 20 per cent cut from 1990 levels by 2020 would be the recipe for a Garrett recession. That is not a recession which Australia has to have."

Surely Labor must be, as Malcolm Turnbull avowed yesterday, a "bunch of fanatics." Except that it is simply not so.

First, it is not policy. Garrett floated the target when he was a backbencher, and Labor has since disavowed it. "It's clearly not Labor policy," Garrett said last night.

Kevin Rudd's only stated target for carbon emissions is to cut them by 60 per cent by 2050.

Howard's party has a history of baiting Midnight Oil's frontman turned Labor shadow environment minister Peter Garrett. See this film clip of Aussie Treasurer Peter Costello using the words to "Beds are Burning" to mixed effect.