He also set out evidence-based options. The failure of successive governments ever since, and despite their rhetoric, to generate bipartisan policy to reduce greenhouse emissions is a lowlight of a protracted period more notable for internecine political heat than public policy light.

Dr Ross Garnaut’s review of climate change policy was commissioned by state and territory governments after one of the world’s most eminent economists and policy advisers, Briton Sir Nicholas Stern, in a 2006 report to the Blair government, stimulated thinking across the globe about how to best manage the crucial, inevitable transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

The issue has always been not whether Australia should formulate such insurance, but what its content and premium should be. Both then Coalition prime minister John Howard and ALP opposition leader Kevin Rudd took to the 2007 election a policy of a market-based mechanism to price carbon emissions.

Yet Australia, at the government level, has gone backwards – although the then prime minister Tony Abbott did at least sign the Paris agreement, under which Australia is committed to reducing carbon emissions. A big chunk of the task is required to be carried by the electricity sector. But despite long-standing business support (and then clamour) for policy certainty, cross-party agreement on the need for bipartisan action and unstinting community desire for change, attempt after attempt to get a policy through has been stymied by internal intrigue or inter-party opportunism.

With an election looming in the aftermath of yet another leadership bloodbath in the national capital, politicians are understandably nervous.

Their professional and personal angst is inflamed by the historic public disregard and distrust they’ve created by being seen to brazenly and often put personal and party interest above public interest. The lack of policy stability has crimped investment in renewable energy and the cleaner fossil-fuel technologies – particularly in the use of our abundant natural gas – that can help the transition to a low-emissions economy.

Nevertheless, the good news is that while governments have been tipping over, the market has been building to a tipping point. Technology and community demand have pushed the price of renewable energy so low it is being embraced by businesses and households as the most rational option.