Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government appears headed for a tough battle in getting its controversial Direct Action climate change plan through parliament.
With the opposition Labor Party and the Australian Greens Party already opposing the plan, they have now been joined by a somewhat unlikely ally in mining magnate and independent federal MP Clive Palmer.
Mr Palmer, who leads the Palmer United Party (PUP) that is likely to hold the balance of power in the upper house Senate after July, has said he is willing to vote against budget bills to block the government’s Direct Action climate change policy.
The government has reacted sharply to Mr Palmer’s statements, warning senators opposed to Direct Action that blocking the initiative to address climate change in parliament could trigger a constitutional crisis.
The PUP leader said Direct Action, which includes a $3 billion fund to pay polluters to voluntarily reduce their emissions, was a “token gesture”, and the funds would be better spent on the age pension.
The Liberal-National government has now said it will tie Direct Action’s emissions reduction fund to next month’s federal budget bills.
However, yesterday Mr Palmer said he would be prepared to vote against the legislation.
“We’ll be voting against Direct Action, whatever form it’s in,” he said.
“If that’s what the government wants, they can call a double dissolution election.”
The mining billionaire, whose PUP is likely to have four Senators in the upper house from July, said he would not back the government’s Direct Action plan on climate change.
“We can’t see any reason to vote for direct action. We think it’s hopeless,” Mr Palmer told Fairfax Media.
“It’s goodbye Direct Action. It’s gone,” he added.
The statement could mean Australia, one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters per capita, could be left without a policy to cut greenhouse gases despite a bipartisan target to cut emissions to five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.
Mr Palmer said the rights of pensioners were more important and had greater priority than “a token gesture to addressing carbon issues”, AAP Newsagency reports.
“On one hand the government makes broken promises, yet on the other hand they commit to campaigns that waste money like Direct Action,” Mr Palmer said in a statement.
“It would take some convincing for us to support a bill such as this.”
The Liberal-National coalition needs the votes of at least six crossbench senators to get its legislation passed.
“The government should reconsider its options,” John Connor, CEO of think-tank The Climate Institute told Reuters Newsagency.
The Direct Action plan is the government’s alternative to the clean energy legislation put in place by the former Labor government.
The current government has been trying to repeal the fixed price Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) laws, which will move to a market based ETS, linked to the European Union ETS, from July 2015.
Mr Palmer’s PUP has pledged to repeal the carbon pricing scheme, and his opposition to Direct Action would leave Australia without a climate policy unless some compromise is reached before July.
“If we can’t make polluters pay, or pay polluters, the government might be forced to introduce heavy regulations” if it wants to meet the 2020 target,” Mr Connor said.
The Direct Action plan has been controversial, as a number of reports have concluded that it will not meet Australia’s 2020 target unless the government is ready to increase funding by several billion dollars.
AAP Newsagency reports Liberal-National Environment Minister Greg Hunt said he was confident the direct action plan would succeed, despite the Labor, Australian Greens and PUP senators opposing it, because its funding was tied to the budget.
“The funds will be part of the budget papers, and I doubt that the budget will be blocked unless we’re going to be forced into a constitutional issue,” Mr Hunt told ABC Radio.
The last time the upper house blocked the supply of government finances was in 1975, an act that triggered the dismissal of the then Labor government led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
Mr Hunt said the plan had always been to link $1.55 billion for the emissions reduction fund, the centre-piece of Direct Action, to appropriation bills allowing the government to spend money.
AAP reports unless the upper house wants to spark a crisis, this effectively means the government can sidestep its opposition to the scheme, including from the crossbench senators controlled by Mr Palmer’s PUP.
Mr Hunt said the government respected the wishes of the Senate and would continue to work with its members to pass the bills.
Direct action would achieve greater emissions reductions than Labor’s carbon tax, and at less cost, Mr Hunt claimed.
Acting Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt said the PUP senators who take their places in the Senate in July should abstain from voting on the government’s carbon price repeal legislation, as Mr Palmer did in the lower house.
He said if they could not support the alternative scheme, they should not tear down the existing policy and leave Australia without a strategy for climate change.
Mr Palmer, an outspoken critic of Labor’s carbon price, abstained from the repeal vote in the lower house because of a possible conflict of interest over his mining businesses, which are impacted by the impost.
