Anthony Albanese has signalled he will do more to accelerate the transition to low emissions after the Indigenous voice referendum has concluded, declaring the “right decisions” are needed to ensure Australia emerges a winner in the global race to renewable energy.
Albanese’s signpost during an interview with Guardian Australia’s politics podcast comes as the government is working up a policy response to challenges and opportunities created by the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) before the prime minister’s visit to Washington in late October.
Albanese said: “There is an enormous opportunity for Australia to become a renewable energy super power.” Asked if he intended to pursue new policy commitments, Albanese replied: “Yes … you’ll see more next week, you’ll see more next month.”
There has been speculation for some months that Labor is working up a domestic version of the Biden administration’s IRA. The May budget allocated $5.6m for an analysis of “the implications for Australia of intensifying global competition for clean energy” and flagged new “actions” by the end of 2023 to “further catalyse clean energy industries, ensure Australian manufacturing competitiveness and attract capital investment”.
While Australia cannot match the Biden administration’s $520bn policy intervention, Guardian Australia understands the government is working up potential incentives to ensure capital for the clean energy transition remains in the country rather than chasing attractive investment opportunities in the United States.
As well as turbocharging a global battle for capital, the IRA also creates opportunities for collaboration with Washington. Albanese said his forthcoming trip to the United States was an opportunity to progress the opportunity side of the ledger by developing “agreements that were put in place which are aimed at how can Australia take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act … for our industries”.
Albanese said Biden had developed the IRA in part as a response to the pandemic. “It’s a response to say that nation states need to be more resilient – they need to be able to make more things and need to be able to stand on their own feet,” he said.
“We are vulnerable if we just rely on trade that can be disrupted whether through a pandemic or through international conflict or a cybersecurity event. I am very conscious about how all this fits together.”
The prime minister said the government was exercising a range of domestic and foreign policy levers to set the Australian economy up for the transition to net zero.
Labor legislated new emissions reduction targets for 2030 and 2050 in July 2022. Having set the national policy framework driving the transition to clean energy during its first year in office, Albanese said the focus between now and the next election was squarely on “implementation”.
Albanese said the government would the deploy the safeguard mechanism and use the national reconstruction fund “to support existing industries to transition [and] support new industries to take advantage of clean energy and cheaper power”.
He said the former climate change minister Greg Combet had also returned to the public sector to chair the Net Zero Economy Agency, which will oversee the transition in regional areas.
“A place like Whyalla, for example, green steel is its future,” the prime minister said. “In a few places, the Pilbara, Gladstone, the Whyalla and Spencer Gulf area of South Australia – there is an enormous opportunity for Australia to become a renewable energy superpower.”
Albanese said the Sun Cable project – a development promising to transmit solar-generated electricity from the Northern Territory outback to Singapore and Indonesia – was “back on track now”.
“All of these things come together with our employment white paper … and fee-free Tafe – what we are doing to train Australians,” the prime minister said.
“So my vision is a clean energy economy using the advantages that we have, the best solar resources in the world, one of the best wind resources in the world, using the resources we have under the ground – copper, lithium, vanadium, nickel – all of these critical minerals and rare earths that will be to this century what fossil fuels were in the past.
“I think the decisions we make this decade can set Australia up for many decades ahead, and unless we make the right decisions, we will fall further behind.”
Asked whether a parliament dominated by progressive political forces provided structural opportunity in the event the government pursued additional legislative measures, Albanese argued the Greens had recently “disrupted” the government’s housing package “with no justification”.
“Sometimes it’s just a fact that the minor parties are looking for some form of product differentiation,” Albanese said.
“The Greens see themselves as competitors with us, the Labor party. They of course shouldn’t be seen as an homogenous group. Some see outcomes as being more important than others.”
The government passed its emissions reduction targets with backing from the Greens, and Albanese said he remained open to collaboration. “If people have a good idea, no matter who is putting it forward, I’m up for it, and I meet regularly with the crossbench in this parliament and, overwhelmingly, they are very constructive.”
