Antinuclear

First – trying to meet deeper emissions long-term reductions by buying them with the ERF is going to become too expensive.

The scheme might meet the 2020 target (a 5% cut of 2000 levels by 2020) but if it does it will be in large part because we vastly overestimated what our emissions would be – the job is now less than a third of what we expected.

But to get to our next target (a cut of between 26% and 28% by 2030) it will cost a bomb. As you told Lateline in 2011 “if you want to … cut carbon emissions … in a very substantial way to the levels that the scientists are telling us we need to do by mid-century to avoid dangerous climate change, then a direct action policy where … industry was able to freely pollute, if you like, and the government was just spending more and more taxpayers’ money to offset it, that would become a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead.” Pretty much every expert agrees with what you thought back then.

Second, it’s very hard to know whether the ERF is actually buying emission reductions or just paying people to do things they would have done anyway.

Direct Action’s first “reverse auction” spent $660m to reduce Australia’s expected greenhouse emissions by 47m tonnes, which you and Greg Hunt now claim was a stunning success.

On close examination that’s questionable………….

expert analysis, for example by Reputex, suggests it will fail even in that astonishingly modest aim, and instead allow the country’s biggest emitters to increase their greenhouse pollution.

You actually have a chance to change this – consultation on the draft rules closed last Monday, and independent senator Nick Xenophon is saying if they aren’t given at least some “teeth” he’ll disallow them in the Senate – a threat that may not have concerned your predecessor but he’s thinking might just give you pause.

Tougher baselines would start to create a baseline and credit emissions trading scheme. Will you do it? Is that what Hunt has planned after the review you’ll be holding in 2017? If it is you’ll have to give up on the line that you’ve found a way to reduce emissions without any impact on consumer prices.

Fourth, if we are going to reduce emissions we have to change the way we generate electricity. Yes, we have a renewable energy target, but the general policy uncertainty means even the political truce on that issue has not restarted investment. The biggest increase since the abolition of the carbon price has been the dirtiest brown coal fired power.

And we know you know this too.

“The transition from a high emission economy to a low emission one cannot be achieved without major changes to the way we generate and use energy,” you said. “Given that the cheapest fuels are generally the dirtiest, in the absence of a clear carbon price signal, new capacity is likely to be coal rather than gas, rather than renewables.”

Yes, your predecessor was forced into a deal on the renewable energy target, but the ongoing uncertainty means retailers still aren’t building the large-scale renewable developments that are required. You are going to have to give them a sign.

We understand you had to make some concessions to become prime minister. You have promised to work within the current scheme, which Hunt always hoped would morph into a baseline and credit trading scheme over time. And yes, you need time to consult and make decisions, to add or amend or change. To take your own side with you. But your own truths won’t go away and as it stands this stop-gap policy will come badly unstuck. http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/25/the-inconvenient-truth-about-direct-action-comes-from-turnbull-himself