1. Malcolm Turnbull: Obama's climate change policies are more like the coalition's than Labor's.
“[US president] Barack Obama gave a great speech about climate change recently, a lot of initiatives, [and] an emissions trading scheme is not part of them. The measures he announced are more like the coalition's policies in fact.” – Shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, 8 July. (Watch his statement here).
Climate policy is back in the news, both in Australia and in the United States. The Labor leadership change, from Julia Gillard to Kevin Rudd, has sparked speculation that the government will move from the current fixed carbon price to an emissions trading scheme in 2014, a year earlier than currently planned.
(You can read an explainer on the differences between an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax here.)
While Malcolm Turnbull has long made it clear that he personally favours emissions trading, he stressed on Monday's show that he “will support the collective wisdom of the party room”. Rather than making businesses pay for emissions permits, under the coalition's Direct Action plan an Abbott government would buy emission reductions from industry, provide support for rooftop solar panels and start a tree-planting program.
So is Labor or the Liberal Party closer to Obama's current policy position?
President Obama last month announced a suite of climate change initiatives including regulating greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and further investment in clean-energy companies.
Both Obama's and the coalition's approaches are based on direct government intervention. In Obama's proposal, the government reduces emissions by regulating emitters to stop or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In the coalition policy, the government would pay the emitters directly to stop or reduce. Both are different from emissions trading, in which permits to pollute are bought and sold by major emitters – such as power generators and factories – who then move towards stopping or reducing their emissions to lower their costs.
But it's easy to go too far here. The Obama policies are more like the Direct Action scheme than Labor's current carbon price, but much of the detail of the coalition's policy is yet to be made clear. At the moment, we know Direct Action will provide a voluntary mechanism where organisations can bid for funding to reduce emissions. Obama's will be a mandatory system imposed by regulation.
It's not the same, but it's certainly not emissions trading either.
To some extent, Obama has been forced to go down the path of regulation. Since 2009, Obama has essentially faced some of the same difficulties that Labor faced while trying to introduce a carbon price in Australia.
During his election campaign, Obama, along with the Republican candidate, were both expressing a strong view that a move to address climate change was critical. In 2008/09, there was a move to introduce an emissions trading scheme, commonly known as the Waxman-Markey Bill. There was initially a lot of support for it in Congress but ultimately it failed because by the time Obama got into government the Republicans resisted it strongly.
So then it became difficult, if not impossible, for Obama to get his market-based policy through congress. In his second term, he was forced to try and find alternatives. His new regulatory approach is much more likely to succeed as it does not need congressional approval.
Verdict
Turnbull is correct – the current policies of the Obama administration are closer to the coalition's than Labor's. But this shouldn't be read as an assessment of the coalition's policy against the government's.
2. Anthony Albanese: political party reform is happening around the world
“(Political party reform) is happening around the world with parties of both the left and the right.“ – Deputy prime minister Anthony Albanese, 8 July. (Watch his statement here).
Particularly since the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 15th May movement and the Arab Spring, there has been debate about how governments and political parties can do more to involve people in politics. “People want engagement, people don't just want to receive, they want to also be able to participate in a real way,” Albanese said of Labor's proposed reforms, which would ensure the leader is elected jointly by party members and members of parliament. Now, MPs have the sole right to elect the leader.
Political parties in Western representative democracies have often found the need to re-energise themselves. This happened under Gough Whitlam's leadership in the 1960s when there was an expansion of National Conference and the national executive and federal interventions in NSW and Victoria.
The British Labour Party is sometimes cited as an example of recent reform that Labor is following. But that change happened in 1981, some 30 years ago, when the election of the party leader was opened up from the caucus (the current ALP system) to a tripartite college of caucus, unions and membership.The BLP was following the path blazed by the British Liberal Party in 1976.
The British Conservative Party opened to party membership the election of party leader, but only when there are two final candidates, in 1998, some 15 years ago. In Canada, the Parti Quebecois (a leftist provincial party) opened the election of its leader to its members back in 1985. So the recent reform by the Labor party equivalent, the New Democratic Party, is not so new for Canada.
The French Socialist Party introduced primaries for its supporters to elect its leader in advance of the 2012 election. And the Italian Democratic Party (PD) allowed primaries in 2011. In Italy's case, it needs to be seen in the context of almost 20 years of political reform to what was a corrupt political system.
It's possible to see Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's initiative not as part of a democratic idea sweeping the world – if that is what Albo meant – but part of the sporadic happenings of parties that find themselves in substantial political difficulties. Parties have to respond to each generation of voters, and attempts to involve voters through the internet have been arguably more important to increasing voter participation than opening up leadership ballots to party members.
Verdict
It is a stretch to say that Rudd's proposed reforms are part of a recent global trend – they have been happening for more than four decades. Usually, changes to the election of leaders have had more to do with parties responding at various times to local political difficulties than to a general blossoming of political participation across the globe.
The Conversation is fact checking statements made in the lead-up to this year's federal election. Normally, these are reviewed. But each week, we will also check significant factual assertions on the ABC's Q&A program. To allow us to publish these checks as soon as possible, there will be no review process.
Request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.
Tony Wood owns shares in Origin Energy, BHPBilliton and other ASX200 companies.
Mark Rolfe does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
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