“And either of those would have been better than where we are now.”
Labor reached a compromise with the Coalition on the scheme during several rounds of negotiation in 2009 but the Liberal Party replaced Malcolm Turnbull as leader with Tony Abbott on December 1 that year.
The scheme was defeated in the Senate by 41 votes to 32 on December 2,when it was rejected by most Coalition Senators,independent Nick Xenophon,Family First Senator Steve Fielding and all five Greens – Bob Brown,Christine Milne,Sarah Hanson-Young,Scott Ludlam and Rachel Siewert.
Two Liberals,Sue Boyce and Judith Troeth,crossed the floor to support Labor,giving the scheme sufficient numbers to pass if the Greens had voted in favour.
Senator Wong was scathing of the Greens’ decision.
“Creating change is about bringing people with you,it’s not about shouting at them or making yourself the star of the show. And the Greens still haven’t learnt that lesson,” she toldThe Age andThe Sydney Morning Herald.
“We see that in the way they’ve approached this recent discussion on bushfires. We see that in the way they behave when it comes to climate action – they don’t believe they have a responsibility to bring people with them to create change.”
Ms Milne did not respond to questions sent by email but she has previously said she “could not be happier” with the decision to reject the scheme and push instead for the carbon price legislated in 2011.
“If we had had the CPRS in place now,the carbon price would be less than $1,there would be no mechanism for increasing the target and we would be stuck with a completely ineffectual scheme,” she said six years ago.
But the carbon price was repealed after the Abbott government won power in 2013.
Mr Rudd rejected claims made over the past decade that he made it too hard for Mr Turnbull and the Liberals to back the scheme.
“We moved a very long way in order to accommodate Turnbull and we were equally predisposed to moving a long way to accommodate the Greens,but we just could not get there. And we ended up getting there with Turnbull,” he said.
“And that was when Liberal Party politics consumed him,and therefore us,and therefore the country.”
Senator Wong said the Greens at one point sought a “unilateral” 25 per cent reduction in Australian emissions without any action by the rest of the world.
“The Greens dealt themselves out with their absolutist position,” she said. “The Greens subsequently agreed to a carbon scheme which was browner than the CPRS. Their hypocrisy was demonstrated when they signed up for a deal with more industry assistance.”
Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull declined to comment.
Dr Parkinson called on political parties to separate the design of climate schemes from the price to be imposed on carbon emissions.
“You’ve got to have a mechanism that is going to be able to work across the economy as a whole,” he said.
“What we’ve seen is a constant rejection of different architectures because certain groups like the Greens believe that the targets are inadequate. Until we separate those two things we won’t get a solution.
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“So if you settle on the mechanism,down the track you can have a political debate that is focused solely on the targets rather than confusing the two things.”
Dr Parkinson was the head of the Department of Climate Change at the time the scheme was defeated and later served as Treasury Secretary before becoming secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. He stepped down in September.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's retail price inquiry last year found that network costs,wholesale costs and retail margins were big factors in price hikes over ten years,while environmental factors only accounted for one fifth of the increase.
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood pointed to this finding to caution against claiming prices would be lower than otherwise under the CPRS.
“The chart from the ACCC report shows increases for networks and retail margins that would not have been avoided with the CPRS and it’s hard to argue that the increase attributed to green schemes would not have been there with the CPRS,” he said.
“The CPRS would not have avoided the increases in the cost of coal and gas and it’s hard to argue that it would have avoided the closure of Hazelwood. It is possible that a more stable policy could have helped with its replacement.”
The Hazelwood power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley closed in March 2017,sending prices higher.