CLIMATE CHANGE State of Play Australia 2021: Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his federal government continue to disappoint

 

Proposed billboard display
Glasgow, Scotland UK
UN COP26 2021
A Rational Fear

The Guardian, 26 October 2021:

There’s not a lot of good news, so for the sake of all our sanity, let’s start with the good news. The Morrison government has adopted a mid-century target of net zero emissions by 2050.

Now before anyone starts yelling – it is true that Australia already adopted that objective, more or less, when we signed the Paris agreement five years ago.

It is also true that the international climate conference Scott Morrison is about to attend in Glasgow is focused on 2030, not 2050, because the threat of global heating is urgent.

Net zero is, in fact, the bare minimum required for Australia to have any international credibility. But Morrison has landed a target that points Australia’s carbon-intensive economy tentatively in the direction of a necessary transition – and that really is a start. It would be churlish to say otherwise.

But sadly, that’s where our good news begins and ends. Morrison’s so-called mid-century plan has very little substantive content.

It really is extraordinary that we could spend the best part of a year tracking towards Tuesday’s pre-Glasgow crescendo – and land with a “plan” that is actually the status quo with some new speculative graphs.

But that’s exactly where we are. After the Coalition’s disgraceful, destructive decade – measured substantively, looking at proposed actions, not slogans – the government is still running to stay still, without any obvious remorse, introspection, or regret.

Let’s consider Tuesday’s omissions.

We weren’t told how much Morrison’s grand bargain with the Nationals will cost the country, either in dollars or in delayed ambition.…..

Could we please see the modelling underpinning the whole exercise? “Eventually,” the prime minister said, which schedules a release sometime between now and never…….

The concept the prime minister unfurled in the Blue Room at Parliament House on Tuesday was a whole-of-economy transition achieved by technology magic (with a safety valve of carbon offsets in the event that tech is not quite as magical as hoped).

Australia’s net zero strategy will be delivered by … wait for it … existing policy.

…...But Australia remains mired in the world of voluntary action, of carrots not sticks, not because that is the right thing to do, but because the Coalition remains a prisoner of its own weaponised nonsense, and it won’t give up the nonsense entirely until it is certain that telling the truth won’t cost it an election.

To give him due credit, Morrison is starting to decouple his political movement from the lies – the $100 lamb roasts and the Whyalla wipeout. The crushing narrative of cost and delay is slowly morphing in the direction of inexorability and opportunity.

But if the Coalition were to change course radically, it would be tantamount to an admission that a party of government in this country has traded the national interest for a handful of regional Queensland seats for the best part of a decade.

So we are asked to amble in the direction of this transition, whistling quietly to ourselves.......

Read the full article by The Guardian's political editor Katharine Murphy here.

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26 October 2021

Net zero by 2050 welcome but taxpayer not business remains key driver

The Carbon Market Institute (CMI) welcomes the federal government’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 and looks forward to further detail on the plan in addition to the slides presented at today's press conference, but is disappointed that the taxpayer rather than business will remain the main driver with $20 billion earmarked to underwrite the transition.

CMI noted that credits for climate action and offsets can provide important assistance in a transition to net-zero emissions and that Australia has credible systems of integrity and plans to expand them, but we need to have integrity in climate, energy and economic transition policy as well as integrity in the credits.

“While the 2050 net-zero emissions target is welcome, it appears the plan is a missed opportunity to use existing policies as a springboard to a technology and market investment approach that would have business not the taxpayer as the main driver of the plan”, said CMI CEO John Connor.

“Net zero by 2050 is the minimum entry ticket to the climate policy credibility and alone won’t fend off potential carbon tariffs and higher capital costs increasingly facing carbon intensive companies and countries. That will require stronger 2030 commitments, not just projections, and policies that enable business to take greater responsibility and guide future decarbonisation investments.”

“A policy that limits ambition to net zero by 2050 and positions the taxpayer as the main driver of decarbonisation is also a missed opportunity to fully leverage the investments and opportunities arising from state government and business actions, and position Australia as a leader in realising the opportunities of the transition to net-zero emissions.”

“Australia should be supporting 2030 emission reductions of at least 50% and make them part of the currency of international climate and trade negotiations, our nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. The failure to convert strengthened emission reduction projections of up to 35% from 2005 levels resulting from stronger business and government actions into an even more ambitious NDC is a major missed opportunity.”

“Australia has existing climate policies that could be used as a springboard to increasing our ambition, including the federal government’s Safeguard Mechanism should be strengthened to catalyse the market’s transition to net zero emissions,” said Mr Connor.

The Safeguard Mechanism sets carbon pollution limits for businesses emitting more than 100,000 tonnes annually, but is currently delivering extremely limited results. The CMI, alongside the Business Council of Australia (BCA), is calling for Safeguard baselines to be reduced over time, with enforceable incentives to invest in pollution reduction. CMI’s recent survey revealed 79% of business respondents support reducing pollution limits set via the Safeguard Mechanism.

“CMI has supported key elements of the Technology Roadmap and, in the absence of policies to make business the main driver of emission reduction initiatives, the taxpayer will need to step up. However public investments, and the use of any offsets, should be aligned to supporting the infrastructure and community transition assistance needed to decarbonise by at least 50% by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

“CMI welcomes continuing government support for delivering natural and geological carbon sequestration in Australia and the Indo-Pacific region, we do have a world leading system of integrity in developing credits for carbon reduction and offsets. However, we must also have integrity in the transition and that requires a clearer pathway with greater interim targets.

“Carbon farming is already providing substantial additional revenue streams for landholders and investment in regional Australia and there is significant potential to expand its contributions but it should come with a credible decarbonisation pathways and policies.

“The federal government’s announcement today included little detail on policy or modelling undertaken and many aspects of what was announced are already known. We look forward to further clarity on its pending update of the Technology Investment Roadmap and other dimensions of its plans to address climate change and catalyse the inevitable global transition to a net-zero emissions economy”, said John Connor.

Distributed by Medianet

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Australian Prime Minister Scott John Morrison, 26 October 2021:

“Australia's plan to reach our net zero target by 2050. The Morrison Government will act in a practical, responsible way to deliver net zero emissions by 2050 while preserving Australian jobs and generating new opportunities for industries and regional Australia….

The Australian way. Australians want action on climate change. And so do I. But they also don’t want their electricity bills to skyrocket, the lights to go off, for their jobs to be put at risk or for the way of life in rural and regional communities to be sacrificed…..”

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“Australia’s Long-Term Emissions Reduction Plan: A whole-of-economy plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050”, released 26 October 2021 can be found at:

https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/October%202021/document/australias-long-term-emissions-reduction-plan.pdf

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🇬🇧 UK 2050 plan? 21 docs. 1868 pages. Heat & building strategy. Heat pump grants. EV incentives. End gas boilers by 2035, ICE sales by 2030! Treasury reviewed. CCC approved. Pathways for every sector to 2037. Legally binding. 5 year targets.

🇦🇺 Aus? No plan. Just more bullshit.

— Mike Cannon-Brookes 👨🏼‍💻🧢🇦🇺 (@mcannonbrookes) October 26, 2021

No matter how Morrison & Co try to spin the Australian Treasury's 2021 Intergenerational Report, it reveals lacklustre economic growth expected over the next 40 years

In June 2021 the Australian Treasurer and Liberal MP for Kooyong, Josh Frydenberg released the Treasury’s 2021 Intergenerational Report: Australia over the next 40 years

Although a traditionally impartial Treasury complied most of the report’s contents, the partisan political nature of this report can be found kicking off at Line 19 of the Executive Summary, which starts with this untruthful statement:

Australia entered the COVID-19 pandemic from a position of economic and fiscal strength. The budget was in balance for the first time in 11 years…..

North Coast Voices readers would be well aware that 2019-20 national budget papers released in April 2019 forecast a then as yet unrealised balanced budget and return to surplus by 30 June 2020, with surpluses continuing over the medium term. This was a risky assertion to make on the basis of optimistic assumptions not hard facts.

Just how risky became apparent soon after February-March 2020 when the word “surplus” was quietly scrubbed from the Liberal-Nationals political lexicon due to the social and economic upheaval caused by both six years of the Abbot-Turnbull-Morrison Government in Canberra and a highly infectious global pandemic.

By June 2020 Australia’s net debt was expected to peak at $392.3 billion and, by June 2021 there was an est. $829 billion in gross public debt and $617.5 billion in net public debt on the books and an underlying cash deficit in the vicinity of $161 billion, with no budgetary surplus on the horizon.

That might almost be considered to qualify as good news given some of the forecasts contained in the 2021 Treasury intergenerational report. Because that report clearly shows that the COVID-19 global pandemic could cease tomorrow and it would make little difference to Australia’s long term economic recovery.

There will be no post-pandemic ‘snapback’ which will see the national economy quickly flourish.

From 2014 to the present day successive federal governments have trashed the goodwill and tolerance of our political allies and trading partners with anti-science, climate change denialist polices, demonstrated a crass clumsiness and sometimes downright ignorance of international relations and, the complete absence of diplomacy in negotiations with our largest trading partner. While increasing impacts from climate change will, more frequently than in the post-climate crisis era, see a fall in the seasonal/annual volume of agricultural products for export.

The domestic industry and business mindset that insists employers are doing workers a favour by employing them on a low wage with no job security, rather than recognising that the worker creates cashflow and profits by producing actual goods to sell, will in all likelihood actively discourage decent wage growth over the next 40 years.

According to the Executive Summary in the 2021 Intergenerational Report:

….real gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to grow at 2.6 per cent per year over the next 40 years, compared with 3.0 per cent over the past 40 years. Real GDP per person is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 1.5 per cent, compared with 1.6 per cent over the past 40 years. Nominal GDP growth is projected to slow to 5.0 per cent per year over the next 40 years, compared with 7.0 per cent over the past 40 years. Real GNI is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 2.3 per cent, compared with 3.3 per cent over the past 40 years. Real GNI per person is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 1.3 per cent, compared with 1.8 per cent over the past 40 years. The larger slowdown in GNI growth than GDP growth reflects an assumption that the terms of trade will decline before stabilising at long-term levels.

Real GDP per person = Gross Domestic Product per person adjusted for inflation
Real GNI per person  = Gross National Income (wages & other earned income)
per person adjusted for inflation
Real GDP = Gross Domestic Product adjusted for inflation
Real GNI = Gross National Income (wages & other earned income)
Nominal GDP =  measures total value of the output produced in Australia, by
adding together Real Gross Domestic Product and prices to produce a close estimate.

Australia's terms of trade is calculated as the ratio of export prices to import prices. If this index increases it implies that Australia is receiving relatively more for its exports; if it decreases then Australia is receiving relatively less. An increase in export prices relative to import prices
implies that Australia is better off; thus an increase in the terms of trade
is sometimes referred to as a favourable movement in the terms of trade. [Australian Parliament House Library, retrieved 07.07.21].


After the 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) Australia's terms of trade under Labor federal governments peaked in 2010-11 & 2011-12 at 2.1 before falling to 1.0. Subsequent Coalition federal governments peaked at 1.1 in 2020-21. Australia's terms of trade are predicted to return to the 0.9 of the Global Financial Crisis period and stay at
that level until after 30 June 2061. 



Australian Treasury tables attached to the 2021 Intergenerational Report predict that Average Labour Productivity Levels will remain at 1.5
until after 30 June 2061. This is the same level of average labour productivity between approx. 1981 and 2020.


In those same tables Average Gross National Income per person adjusted for inflation is expected to fall from the current 1.8 to 1.3 for the next 40 years. This does not indicate strong wages growth across the board over the next four decades.


After credibly surviving the 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis under a
Labor federal government, Australia now faces forty years of struggling
to move past social and economic consequences of the current federal Coalition government’s six years of poor policy decisions and its appalling mismanagement of the global COVID-19 pandemic once it became clear the virus would breach our national borders.

The Morrison Government has found yet another way to turn the National Disability Insurance Scheme into a punitive horror story for participants

 

The National Disability Insurance Scheme, to be administered by the National Disability Insurance Agency, was introduced by the Gillard Labor Government on 1 July 2013 and, was originally allocated a funding stream of $19.3 billion over 7 years (inclusive of $7.1 billion in existing disability insurance funding) as well as the 0.5% increase in the Medicare Levy scheduled for 2014-15 onwards.

The federal and state governments share the total cost of the NDIS, with the federal government only being responsible for around half of the total cost once all the states and territories had joined the scheme. The final state joined in June 2018.

On 19 October 2017 the Australian Government Productivity Commission had stated: At full scheme, about 475 000 people with disability will receive individualised supports, at an estimated cost of $22 billion in the first year of full operation.

There has been no additional increase in the Medicare levy to fund NDIS, as shortly before the 2018–19 Budget, the Turnbull Coalition Government announced that it could ‘fully fund’ the NDIS without any increase.

That same year the Budget Papers revealed an est. $4.6 billion underspend on the NDIS – funds which then Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison credited against the national budget deficit.

In 2019-20 Budget Papers revealed another underspend of est. 3 billion and, again this underspend was used to reduce the national budget deficit.

By April 2021 the National Disability Insurance Scheme itself reported that more than 430,000 people across Australia benefiting from the NDIS and it appears that the federal government now expects that number to rise to 500,000 participants by 2023-24 - an increase of 45,000 people more than likely predominately individuals 65 years of age and older who are already falling within the remit of aged care funding. 

In the 2020-21 Budget Papers the Morrison Government allocated an additional $798.8 million over four years from 2020-21 towards what appears to be a restructuring of NDIS.

Presumably so that the following can be fully implemented…...

The Guardian, 15 May 2021.

The agency that runs the national disability insurance scheme is seeking to increase the number of people that “exit” the scheme and reduce overall spending on funding packages through a “targeted review of existing participant plans”, internal documents show.

Leaked documents last month revealed the agency had set up a Sustainability Action Taskforce (SAT) with the aim of slowing spending on participant plans and growth in participant numbers.

The National Disability Insurance Agency has refused to discuss the actions of the taskforce, which Labor and the Greens have dubbed a “razor gang”. But new documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws provide further insight into its aims.

The previously reported internal talking points, labelled “strictly not for external distribution”, stated the taskforce’s three aims were to “slow net growth in participant numbers”, “slow growth in spend per participant”, and “strengthen operational discipline”.

The new documents, however, reveal the attempt to slow the growth in participant numbers will come, in part, from a focus on an “increase [in] participant exits”.

Further, slowing spending on participants’ funding packages will be achieved in part by a “targeted review of existing participant plans”, the documents state.

Other objectives include a focus on “tighter planning principles”, “tighter policies on specific reasonable and necessary supports”, “tighter price controls”, and an “increased enforcement of assurance policies”.

The unit’s aims relate to internal decisions made by the agency’s planners and are separate to a wider overhaul scheme through the controversial introduction of independent assessments, or a rewriting of the NDIS Act that determines in law what can be funded and who can receive support.

It comes as the government faces a backlash from the disability community over its warning the scheme is increasingly unsustainable.

The goal of the so-called Sustainability Action Taskforce is to stop disabled people getting on and kicking off people who are already on Jordon Steele-John

Tuesday’s budget papers showed spending on the scheme would hit $28.1bn next financial year, up from a projected $25.4bn forecast for 2021-22 in last year’s October budget.

Costs are tipped to hit $33.3bn in 2024-25, an increase from predictions in a 2017 Productivity Commission report that estimated the figure would reach $30.6bn by then.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the NDIS minister, Linda Reynolds, have used these forecasts to claim a need for “hard discussions” about the sustainability of the current funding model.

Labor’s NDIS spokesman, Bill Shorten, said the new documents were “proof positive the Morrison government has no plan for Australians with disability except slash, slash, slash”.

“It is utterly unconscionable that vulnerable people are trying in good faith to get on the NDIS completely unaware there is a secret plan not to let them in,” he said…..

Read the full article here.

Iluka NSW Population 1,746: in March 2021 a small village with a big heart reminded the Morrison Government that women have a right to R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

 

Clarence Valley Independent, 24 March 2021:

Around 60 women and eight men joined together in Iluka on Monday of last week in the Clarence Valley march4justice protest march, organised by Berri Brown (Iluka) and Robin Thomas (Woombah) to say, “Enough is Enough”.

Berri Brown, shared her reason for protesting, saying that, “Domestic violence is about emotional, financial and verbal abuse. I want things to change so that my little girl will be able to go about her day in the knowledge that whatever she decides to do in her future she will never have to be silenced or not be believed if this was to happen to her”.

Guest speaker Prue Leggoe OAM of Maclean said, “Of the 60 women present only one woman put up her hand to say she had never experienced sexual harassment or abuse. One of the men attending said he was there to stand for his two daughters who had experienced sexual abuse. This is a devastating statistic”.

Prue added that is seemed that nothing had changed since she had experienced sexual harassment when a Member of the Victorian Parliament 40 years ago. “It seems to have gotten worse in Parliaments, where power is used to manipulate and frighten an abused person, and workplaces continue to be unsafe for many women and men.” She said…...

ECONOMIC STATE OF PLAY 2020: "Under these latest forecasts Australia’s economy next year would be 0.7% smaller than it was last year. That is the first time since 1983 that our economy would be smaller than it was two years earlier."

The Guardian, June 2020:

Since the virus hit there has been a belief, maybe a hope, that this was just a momentary thing. 

Sure, the fall would be sharp and deep, but the recovery would be fast coming. 

You could hear it in the talk of “snap back” from the prime minister and treasurer. 

There was almost a sense that this recession is not really a recession – because this was driven by health, not the economy. The underlying economy, this argument went, was solid (the foundations were strong!), and thus once those restrictions were dispensed with, we would be back as good as ever. 

The problem was that the foundations were not strong (productivity growth, household incomes and the domestic private sector were all flat-lining). Just because the causes of this recession were unusual does not alter the fact that all recessions bring with them massive job losses and a fall in production. 

And this recession is the worst we have seen since the Great Depression. 

This week the IMF issued a revised set of estimates for GDP growth this year and the next. And there was some good news to be had.....

In April the IMF forecast our GDP this year would fall by 6.7%; now it estimates it will “only” fall by 4.5%. 

Unfortunately though, the treasurer neglected to point out that, other than Malaysia, Australia had the biggest growth forecast downgrade for 2021. 

In April the IMF estimated our economy would “bounce” back in 2021 with 6.1% growth; now it sees just 4%. 

Overall, the IMF’s changed estimates are such that they expect our economy at the end of 2021 to be virtually the same size they were expecting it to be in April. Hardly a ringing endorsement that government policies are doing better than expected. 

What this means is we need to very quickly disabuse ourselves of the notion that the economy will “snap back” in 2021 and all will be well. 

Under these latest forecasts Australia’s economy next year would be 0.7% smaller than it was last year. That is the first time since 1983 that our economy would be smaller than it was two years earlier. 

But even that rather hides the impact. 

In October the IMF estimated that for the next five years our economy would grow by around 2.5% each year. That is pretty miserable growth, but it was largely in line with the average since the GFC. 

But now, even with these new and improved estimates for our economy, by the end of next year we are still tracking to be 5.3% below where we were expected to be. 

That is the equivalent of around $105bn less being produced – or roughly the total amount produced in a year by the entire manufacturing industry. 

That is a chasm of economic waste. 

If the economy was to keep growing at (a very strong) 4%, it would take us until 2025 to get back level with where we were expected to be before the virus. If it grows at the more realistic 3% from 2022 onwards, we will not get back on par until well into the 2030s. [my yellow highlighting]

The debate very much needs to shift from the language being used in January and February. 

Forget “fundamentals being strong” and “sensible budget management”. It was spin then; it is just embarrassingly irrelevant now. 

We are in a deep recession and the political and policy debate needs to recognise this fact.