Australians will call ‘bullshit’ on green energy without clearer benefits, Rudd warns | Australian politics
Kevin Rudd has described Donald Trump’s decision to cut support for green industries as “unfortunate” and warned Australians will conclude a clean transition is “nonsense” unless it brings tangible benefits to their lives.
But in some of his first comments since the end of his tenure as Australia’s ambassador to the US, the former prime minister said climate policies would remain powerful if they delivered affordable prices, a reliable energy supply and new job opportunities.
“Policy continuity will be supported if we continue to not only deliver good messaging on this issue, but actually deliver the price outcomes, security of supply, electricity supply outcomes, new industries and new jobs that people touch, see, feel, hear and have in their daily experiences.
“Otherwise, they’ll conclude that it’s all nonsense and therefore it doesn’t work,” he said, addressing the Melbourne launch of Power, Prosperity and Planet by Thom Woodroofe, a former diplomat and international member of the Smart Energy Council.
now leading Asian Society based in New York The think tank Rudd said Australia needed to “seize the opportunity presented by what is now unfolding in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, and frankly the shock that working people around the world are experiencing in terms of continued hydrocarbon dependence”.
“If they’re still driving a gas-powered car, they’re experiencing the physical horror of becoming unsafe to get the things they need to get to work,” Rudd said.
“If you have an EV now, or frankly a hybrid, you’re much less dependent on what’s coming out of the geopolitics of the Gulf right now.”
He said Australia had a “tremendous comparative advantage” in green iron, steel and renewable energy due to its “large slices of real estate, huge amounts of sunlight” and proximity to export markets in Southeast Asia.
Speaking at the same event, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said: “We are now in a position to say to people: You can have cheaper electricity, affordable electricity, reliable electricity from renewable sources. That’s why no one is building new coal power plants in Australia.”
The former Liberal leader described the Liberal party’s decision to favor One Nation in the Farrer by-election as a “retrogressive move” and described One Nation as “in the middle of climate change denial”.
Rudd said the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act is an example of trying to “thread the needle” between building the green industries of the future, providing green energy to American working families and creating new green jobs.
For Biden and his team, “this was about getting the message to red states, working families, and creating new green jobs so that when political change inevitably occurs in Washington, it will be harder to pull back.”
“Unfortunately, a lot of that has been withdrawn. But if you go to various states in the United States, including the southern ones, there’s still a lot of commitment. [Inflation Reduction Act].
“There hasn’t been a full rollback under President Trump because the states have responded.”
He said the message to Australian governments was to ensure policies for “good people in communities all over Australia” were in their “heads, hearts and wallets”.
Rudd had been a vocal critic of Trump before his appointment as US ambassador, describing him as “the most destructive president in history” in a 2020 social media post.
