Sticking with the Coalition’s Dan Tehan unveiling the Coalition’s new energy priorities, he was also asked if this amounts to his party “abandoning green”.
“No, what we’re saying is we will handle emissions reduction separately, and will have a separate policy,” Tehan said. He said he couldn’t say when that emissions policy would be unveiled.
“What’s happened is we’ve tried to drive emission reduction and our climate goals though our energy system, and we’re destroying our energy system in the process.”
The Coalition’s plan announced today involves removing the “Safeguard Mechanism”, the nation’s principal policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s largest industrial facilities. The Coalition claims this has driven jobs offshore.
Asked what the opposition would do to make sure emissions would not spike in response to their policy, Tehan said the government would leave that to the polluters.
“We’ve got a lot of good corporate citizens in Australia wanting to reduce emissions. Let them set their targets, let them set their goals, and let them go about achieving it. We will provide them with a voluntary market in which they will be able to do that.”
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