Tony Abbott has said Australia should withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement that he agreed to as prime minister three years ago. Key points: Tony Abbott agreed to the climate accord in 2015 when he was still PM, and Australia signed in 2016 Tony Abbott agreed to the climate accord in 2015 when he was still PM, and Australia signed in 2016 He told Sky News last night the best thing Australia could do is pull out He told Sky News last night the best thing Australia could do is pull out The comments are a strong signal he would cross the floor in Parliament to vote against the National Energy Guarantee In 2015, Mr Abbott announced the target Australia would take to the Paris talks and called that pledge "responsible and achievable", saying it struck "the right balance between our economic and environmental responsibilities". But last night, the former prime minister said pulling out of the agreement would be "the best thing we can do right now". "If we had known then what we know now about America's withdrawal, about the economic damage that renewable energy in particular would do to our power system and to our industries, we would never have signed up," he told Sky News. "And now that we do know, we should get out, simple as that." The comments prompted a rebuke from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who said Australia would be sticking to the deal because it "plays by the rules". "If we sign an agreement we stick to the agreement," Ms Bishop told Sky. "Australia wants to be seen as a reliable and trusted global partner — we signed the Paris agreement, we can achieve the targets that we set, and they were deliberately set in a way that we could achieve them." Ms Bishop said Australia had made firm commitments in the Paris agreement which could not simply be discarded. But Tony Abbott rejected that outright. "False claims have been made by some of my former ministerial colleagues," Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB. "It wasn't a binding commitment, it was an aspirational target, and I'd invite people to go back to the documents released at the time where the word 'target' is used a dozen times." Greens MP Adam Bandt slammed Mr Abbott saying he would "only be satisfied when a verse about coal-fired power stations is inserted into our national anthem". There is also a split developing within the Coalition over the Government's National Energy Guarantee (NEG) legislation. Mr Abbott's comments are a strong signal he could cross the floor in Parliament to vote against it. "As things stand, I couldn't support it — no," he said. But Malcolm Turnbull today argued the NEG had "almost universal support" and he "couldn't think of an energy policy that has had broader support". Sorry, this video has expired PM says energy policy has 'almost universal support' across the country He said it had backing from the minerals industry, manufacturers, unions and the national farmers federation. Mr Turnbull said his Government's energy policies were "already starting to reduce prices, we're turning the corner on energy prices". "So our polices are working," the Prime Minister said. Mr Abbott denied his position on the NEG was an attempt to damage Malcolm Turnbull's government. "People who have concerns about this policy are not trying to wreck the Government, we are trying to save it," Mr Abbott said. Nationals MPs also still weighing up NEG The number of MPs speaking out against the NEG is growing. Nationals backbencher George Christensen has been a vocal critic of the NEG, and today said he was considering crossing the floor. "When it comes to the NEG, I can't support anything that doesn't have an incentive built into it for baseload power," he said. "Whether that's grants, whether it's direct investment or government equity in projects." Fellow Queensland Nationals MPs Michelle Landry and Ken O'Dowd have also been pushing for funding for new coal-fired power stations. Mr O'Dowd told the ABC he supported Mr Abbott's position to ditch the Paris agreement, and Ms Landry said at times she questioned "why are we [were] involved in that [the agreement] when Australia is a very clean country". "And I, at times, feel that we should be running our own race with this," she said. But Nationals cabinet minister David Littleproud argued Australia had international obligations to meet. "Tony Abbott was prime minister when it was brought in, I respect his views, as a backbencher you're entitled to that," the Agriculture Minister said. "The Government has made fit that you are part of a global economy and the reality is we have global commitments." 'When circumstances change, you change your position' Much of Mr Abbott's speech to the Australian Environment Foundation on Tuesday night was at odds with the position he took three years ago. "We are a country that sets credible, achievable targets and we meet them," Mr Abbott said at the time the agreement was struck. "This is certainly not without costs but the costs are manageable." As prime minister, Mr Abbott said Australia would keep its commitments. "The difference between Australia and a lot of other countries, quite frankly is, when we make commitments to reduce emissions we keep them," he told a media conference in July 2015. "Other countries make all these airy fairy promises, that in the end never come to anything." But the former PM defended his turnaround on Sky News, saying "now that we know more, we can do differently". "When circumstances change, you change your position," he said. Mr Abbott has repeatedly cited Chief Scientist Alan Finkel to explain his call for Australia to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. He quoted Dr Finkel as saying "nothing that Australia does to reduce emissions will make the slightest difference to climate". But Dr Finkel recently said he was taken "totally out of context". He confirmed on the ABC's Weekend Wrap program he said getting rid of Australia's 1.3 per cent of global emissions makes very little difference numerically. But Dr Finkel said "if all countries had that attitude and didn't participate in the global drive, the global strategy, then we would get nowhere. "It is a bit like a democracy. If everybody said 'well my vote doesn't count I won't vote' and we all did that we would no longer have a democracy — that was the context that I made that comment," he said.<doc-sep>The former Australian prime minister who signed the Paris climate agreement in 2015 is now lobbying for his country to withdraw from the accord. In a speech before climate change deniers on Tuesday, Tony Abbott, who was replaced by Malcolm Turnbull in September 2015, said Australia would not have joined the treaty without the United States. Abbott, now a member of parliament, pledged to reduce Australia's emissions by at least 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 when signing the accord. But Abbott recently repudiated the global agreement, saying advisers misinformed him and that he didn't understand how the decision to reduce emissions would affect the economy. Abbott defined his 2015 pledges Tuesday as "aspirational targets" and said he didn't know they would "become binding commitments." "I didn't anticipate how agreeing to emissions that were 26 percent lower in 2030 than in 2005 would subsequently become a linear progression of roughly equal cuts every year over the next decade," he said. "My government never put emissions reduction ahead of the well-being of families and the prosperity of industries. As I've said all along, you don't improve the environment by damaging the economy." Abbott asserted that it was illogical to replace "cheap and reliable power" derived from coal with "expensive and unreliable" energy sources. While acknowledging the increase in atmospheric carbon, he minimized the immediate impact of climate change and attributed concerns about climate change to fearmongering. "Storms are not more severe, droughts are not more prolonged, floods are not greater, and fires are not more intense than a century ago—despite hyperventilating reportage and over-the-top claims from Green politicians," he said. Studies have shown that Australia could be particularly hard-hit by climate change. A 2015 report projected that the temperature could rise more in Australia than anywhere else in the world by the end of the century and that surrounding sea levels could rise as much as 32 inches by 2090. Two years later, a government report warned that climate change is already transforming the country's ecosystems and human well-being and advised the government to develop a more comprehensive plan to meet the challenges of global warming. Abbott's comments come during Turnbull's attempts to gain support for the National Energy Guarantee, which will prioritize investment in cleaner energy sources. Public opinion is mixed, according to a recent Guardian Essential poll, with 15 percent of voters thinking the NEG will decrease energy bills and 22 percent believing it will increase them. Abbott has repeatedly levied attacks against Turnbull's proposed energy policy, and the two have clashed publicly. Both belong to the Liberal Party. Turnbull has reiterated Australia's support for the Paris agreement since President Donald Trump announced in June 2017 that the United States would withdraw.<doc-sep>
Tony Abbott has called for Australia to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, in a swingeing attack on Malcolm Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee. Abbott said the NEG was not about reducing prices but about cutting emissions. “The only certainty that the National Energy Guarantee as it stands would provide is the certainty of emissions reduction.” Delivering the Bob Carter Commemorative Lecture in Melbourne, Abbott said: “Withdrawing from the Paris agreement that is driving the National Energy Guarantee would be the best way to keep prices down and employment up – and to save our party from a political legacy that could haunt us for the next decade at least”. “As long as we remain in the Paris agreement – which is about reducing emissions, not building prosperity – all policy touching on emissions will be about their reduction, not our well-being. It’s the emissions obsession that’s at the heart of our power crisis and it’s this that has to end for our problems to ease.” Abbott played down the importance of the government’s much-vaunted tax cuts in comparison with the implications of energy policy. “These are strange times in Canberra when there’s a hullaballoo over modest tax cuts that only take effect fully in six or seven years’ time, while mandatory emissions cuts that start sooner, that mean more for the economy, and whose ramifications will be virtually impossible to reverse are expected more or less to be waved through”. In the party room last week Abbott had little support for his attack on the NEG. But his constant agitation is unhelpful for the government as it tries to win backing from the states and territories for the scheme. It also reinforces the impression of division in government ranks, even though the majority of the backbenchers now just want the energy policy settled. Abbott said that his government in 2015 had set a 2030 emissions reduction target “on the basis that this was more or less what could be achieved without new government programs and without new costs on the economy. ‘'There was no advice then to the effect that it would take a Clean Energy Target or a National Energy Guarantee to get there,” he said. “My government never put emissions reduction ahead of the wellbeing of families and the prosperity of industries”. When the world’s leading country exited the Paris agreement “it can hardly be business as usual,” he said. “Absent America, my government would not have signed up to the Paris treaty, certainly not with the current target”. Abbott said he could understand “the government would like to crack the so-called trilemma of keeping the lights on, getting power prices down and reducing emissions in line with our Paris targets - it’s just that there’s no plausible evidence all three can be done at the same time”. “If you read the National Energy Guarantee documentation, there’s a few lines about lower prices, a few pages about maintaining supply, and page after impenetrable page about reducing emissions. ’‘The government is kidding us when it says it’s all about reducing prices when there ’s an emissions reduction target plus a reliability target but no price target”. The government said it wanted to give certainty but the only certainty was that any NEG approved by state ALP governments at COAG would be “massively ramped up to deliver even more emissions reduction under the next Labor government”. Abbott repeated his call for the government to subsidise the boosting of baseload power. He again suggested threatening to compulsorily acquire Liddell coal-fired power station, which AGL is refusing either to keep going or to sell.