EDITORIAL : THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

Less GetUp! More mainstream

FOR Julia Gillard, addressing the annual ALP conference in her home state for the first time as Prime Minister should have been a crowning occasion.

But with Labor out of government in Victoria and on the ropes federally, Ms Gillard's weekend speech at Monash University was far from triumphant. It amounted to a plea for members to keep the faith. Reporting of the speech centred on a lame joke but the address did provide a window into Labor's current malaise. Struggling to connect with the vital mainstream of Australian political discourse, Ms Gillard focused on a program helping teenage mothers train for the workforce as an example of Labor values. "This is where Labor thinking has to be today," she said. The program seems worthwhile but this was a highly unusual pitch; to suggest Labor's main product differentiation is that it seeks to shift people from welfare to work, something the Coalition also trumpets. Ms Gillard spent a lot of time spruiking climate change policy and the carbon tax, a favourite crusade of Labor's trendy Left. And the joke she told about Tony Abbott being the love child of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump was part of another appeal to the Left, suggesting the opposition was trying to "Americanise" our national politics. So the speech talked about help for those on welfare, attempted to justify the broken carbon tax promise and played to the shibboleths of the trendy, inner-city Left. It offered little to the vast majority of mainstream Australians who populate the nation's suburbs, generate its wealth and make or break governments. A prime minister struggling to connect with the mainstream might have tried to allay concerns about cost of living pressures, economic uncertainty or border protection. Ms Gillard bristles when commentators refer to her leftist past, yet this speech was more like a rallying cry for Get Up! than an attempt to win over working families.

On Sunday former Labor leader Mark Latham explained on the SkyNews Australian Agenda program that dwindling union membership meant it was unsustainable for unions to continue dominating the ALP, which needed to become a "broad-based political movement". Mr Latham argued policy too often had followed ideological agendas when "probably the best thing to do is back what works". A flawed leader, Mr Latham sometimes offers great insight. On this occasion, the Prime Minister would do well to listen to his advice. 

Going it alone is pointless

CONTRARY to the preoccupations of the Gillard government's Climate Commission, the most significant issue facing Australians on greenhouse reduction is not how high the carbon tax should be set or whether the scientific link between human activity and greenhouse emissions has been proven definitively: the crucial question is whether Australia is moving ahead of many major economies and our main trading partners.

The Australian, which is committed to a market-based mechanism for cutting Australia's carbon pollution, agrees with the commission's report that investment in low-emission energy is critically important and believes

that as technology stands, it is vital to pursue both clean coal and nuclear energy.

Australia has often outperformed larger rivals in science and technology and has a major opportunity to do so with the challenge of climate science.

But as China heads towards 33 per cent of world emissions by 2030, the US 11 per cent and India 8 per cent, Australia must guard against moving too far ahead in carbon abatement and risking economic hardship for no environmental gain. The warnings of the government's climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, in his early reports about the potential problems of carbon leakage were pertinent. Enforcing a high carbon price ahead of Australia's trading competitors is to risk trade-exposed heavy industries moving to developing economies where pollution controls are weaker.

Nor would it be rational for Australia to take a lead from Britain, where Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to cut the nation's carbon emissions in half by 2025 from 1990 levels, provided other European countries follow suit. Britain currently derives about a fifth of its electricity from nuclear power, which it has produced for more than 30 years as coal production has been scaled back heavily.

The picture painted in The Critical Decade by Will Steffen is sobering, at least on paper -- with red graph lines predicting soaring temperatures if carbon pollution is not abated by 2020.

Even more sobering is the hard reality that Australians, who produce 1.47 per cent of global emissions, could abandon the continent and the impact on global emissions, including the future of the Great Barrier Reef, would be negligible. 

Be bold, Barry - power in NSW is ripe for reform

IF anyone still needs convincing of the benefits of shifting energy assets into private hands, they need look no further than the report, revealed exclusively in The Australian yesterday, of the high costs of electricity delivery when governments run the show.

The report released by the Energy Users Association of Australia undermines claims by NSW Labor leader John Robertson that selling energy assets would lead to price hikes and a fall in living standards for struggling families. In an earlier life as boss of Unions NSW, Mr Robertson destroyed Morris Iemma's privatisation plans with claims the then government was guilty of "political arrogance at its highest". In September 2007, he said: "I don't think the private sector is in a position to deliver electricity in NSW without having an impact on workers and on prices for consumers." A few months later at state conference, he argued: "We expect Labor governments to look after the workers that get them elected."

The EUAA report suggests it is Mr Robertson who failed the workers by thwarting a selloff. It shows government-owned electricity networks in NSW and Queensland charge almost twice as much as privately owned operators in Victoria. Thanks to Mr Robertson's union movement, NSW voters have also seen billions of dollars wiped off the value of the state's power assets. The debacle over energy policy helped drive Labor from office in March -- a rout that left none other than Mr Robertson leader of the party, his opposition to privatisation undimmed. That's too bad, given the evidence of greater efficiency in Victoria where the Kennett government privatised in the 1990s -- even if the energy networks there have a denser population to serve.

Happily, Mr Robertson and his union cronies no longer pull the strings in NSW. New Premier Barry O'Farrell has been opposed to selling off the poles and wires but the appointment of former premier Nick Greiner as his infrastructure tsar offers the chance of a circuit-breaker and a bolder approach to privatisation. As the inquiry into Labor's botched privatisation efforts began yesterday, the Premier appeared to open the door to reform.

The EUAA report adds to the pressure for change. The wasteful spending and lack of cost-control suggested in the report are particularly galling for voters at a time when Canberra's plans for a carbon price are adding to the threat of price hikes. Already, ill-conceived climate-change policies from federal and state governments have increased the cost of electricity: state government subsidies for solar electricity have led to carbon emission reductions at a cost as high as $640 a tonne, or 25 times the price under the carbon pollution reduction scheme (or likely carbon tax rate). Mr O'Farrell has made an effort to address this charade with his decision to cut by one-third the price paid for electricity generated under the solar bonus scheme in NSW. It's not popular but the Premier should stick to his efforts to rein in power costs.

The EUAA comparison of the delivery costs of government and privately owned networks underlines NSW Labor's policy failures over several years. The workers, who end up paying the price for such political ineptitude, do indeed deserve better from their governments.