“We're still seeing an accelerating rate of change in commitment. But targets are not enough. The Australian approach is not seen as consistent with international aspirations, but we are developing and deploying low emissions technology to provide solutions. Ours is a low emissions technology driven pathway, and it is delivering results.
The philosophy is very simple.
The government is identifying high abatement, high economic value technologies as priorities, where government influence will make a difference to drive them down the cost curve. The idea is to get to cost parity with that of high emissions alternate incumbents at which point, you're at a tipping point and everybody's buying the low emissions technologies. This can be achieved and that can be achieved without carbon taxes. But it does require direct government investment into helping the newcomers move down the cost curve.
Economists in the Australian Liberal Party would prefer to do that rather than increase the cost for everybody including the incumbents by implementing a carbon tax regime.
As a country we have played with the tax route before. I think so far about four party leaders and prime ministers have lost their jobs by trying, so it's unlikely to come up again soon.
A range of governments are trying to drive the whole thing forward for this Glasgow meeting (COP26). They want to define pathways rather than just develop statements of ambition."