CANDIDATES for the federal seat of Macquarie have weighed in on the Labor Party’s new climate change policy, which was released last week.
Unsurprisingly, Labor’s candidate Susan Templeman has backed the new policy, however, it has been criticised by the Liberal Party’s sitting member Louise Markus, and labelled as too soft by Greens’ candidate Terry Morgan.
Labor’s policy calls for an introduction of a broad-based emissions trading scheme, blocking states like NSW and Queensland from expanding land clearing and further reductions in carbon emissions by 2030 than the Liberal government is committed to.
Ms Templeman said the policy would make Australia a leading renewable energy economy with at least half of our electricity coming from renewable energy by 2030.
“The cost of not taking real action on climate change will be shocking for our economy, and we have already slipped behind other countries,” Ms Templeman said.
“A market-based [emissions trading] scheme is the cheapest and most efficient way to reduce pollution.”
However, Mrs Markus warned Labor’s policy would cause electricity prices to rise and was simply a re-introduction of the controversial Carbon Tax, which was introduced by the Gillard-Labor government and promptly binned by the Abbott-Coalition government.
“What Labor will effectively do is put a price on energy that will directly impact businesses and lower income earners or fixed income pensioners,” Mrs Markus said.
“There are lots of ways of tackling climate change other than a tax, which will be a burden on Australian families.”
Greens candidate Terry Morgan said he welcomed Labor’s policy because it went further than the government’s policy, however, said neither option was nearly enough to combat the threat of climate change.
“It does make a substantial from the government's policies but there is one big glaring hole,” Mr Morgan said.
“A Labor government would still not rule out approving new coal mines.
“Climate change is the single biggest threat to humanity ever and it needs to be taken that seriously, and to address it properly needs a commitment to completely reforming our economy and way of life.”
Mr Morgan said both major parties had been dragging their feet on climate change.
“Sustainable society will come because the alternative is no society at all. The only question is how quickly we move towards that,” he said.
“In order to move towards a sustainable society we need to stop being beholden to the fossil fuels industry.”