Nobody, least of all the Greens and the Coalition, should be in any doubt that Australia voters endorsed much stronger action on emissions reductions and climate change when they went to the polls in May last year.
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The Liberals paid a high price for a decade of emissions and energy policy confusion when they lost six key lower house seats and a Senate spot to climate friendly teal candidates.
The Greens rode the rising tide of climate change concern to improve their numbers in both the upper and lower houses by three members each.
Their Senate vote jumped from 10.2 per cent in 2019 to 12.7 per cent in 2022. The lower house vote rose from 10.4 per cent to 12.3 per cent.
These developments came as no surprise given many polls, including a survey by ACM across all of its mastheads nationwide, had shown climate change was very much front of mind with voters following a succession of disastrous droughts, bushfires and floods.
The electorate wanted its leaders to be in no doubt that more must be done to protect the climate.
Labor, which went into the election with broad-based support from the business community, the union movement, and environmental groups for its 43 per cent 2030 emissions target, has been doing its best to deliver on that ever since last May.
Early on there was good reason to believe they might be able to enlist the meaningful support of the Greens when Adam Bandt and his colleagues voted to support the 43 per cent target despite saying it was too low.
Unfortunately those hopeful shoots now appear to be in danger of being hit with the Roundup of Greens intransigence. Mr Bandt and his colleagues, along with recent party defector Lydia Thorpe, threaten to block Labor's emissions reduction safeguard mechanism.
They are saying they won't vote for the mechanism unless Labor rules out any further coal and gas projects.
Are we about to see history repeat itself? Will the Greens again block key climate-change legislation, as was the case with Kevin Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme over a decade ago, by, as critics have said, making the perfect the enemy of the good?
One hopes not. That decision has been widely blamed for kicking off a decade of climate wars that saw Australia effectively treading water on the emissions reduction issue while the world burned.
The government is between the devil and the deep blue sea on energy policy right now. The world is in the middle of an energy crisis and shortfalls in the supply of coal and gas have sent prices soaring skywards. This has had a flow on effect on the price of electricity.
If the government is forced to accede to the Green's arbitrary demand - which effectively renders their lukewarm support for the 43 per cent target last year meaningless - more than 100 gas and coal projects would be blocked.
While that might warm the hearts of those who want fossil fuels banned yesterday - if not sooner - it would ultimately lead to even higher prices, blackouts and energy shortages.
Mr Albanese knows he must keep the lights on and the cost of energy as affordable as possible. If he fails to do so this government could be a one-term wonder.
While it comes as no surprise that the Liberals under Peter Dutton, who is closely following the Abbott model of Opposition leadership, is playing the spoiler it will be disappointing if the Greens do the same.
They were not elected to oppose and reject sound energy and climate policy but, rather, to facilitate its passage. The government has a clear mandate for its policies.
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