For Woodstock beef producer Jon Wright, the National Energy Guarantee, the Turnbull government’s new energy and climate policy, is the closest that the Farmers for Climate Action group has seen to being an effective solution.
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Mr Wright, who helped establish the FCA, said that many farmers were now listening more to what the science has had to say, and that there was now more of a discussion around climate change, rather than an argument.
“There seems to be a feeling that we need to get it right,” he said.
“We’ve got it wrong, for political reasons, in the past where politics have ruined what is the right and the correct thing to do,” he said.
Mr Wright said that the FCA’s position on getting all sides of politics to come to the table is the correct one.
“We need a policy that gives farmers energy security and delivers action on climate change because you can have both of these things together in the one package, they’re not mutually exclusive of each other,” he said.
There seems to be a feeling that we need to get it right.
- Jon Wright
Mr Wright is heartened though by the broad consensus that is now existing between state and federal governments, and that the extremes of the left and right are no longer having as much of an impact.
“All the players seem to be working on something that’s positive,” he said. “We’re seeing progression on all three aspects, reducing the price of electricity, guaranteeing supply and reducing the affects of climate change.”
Mr Wright believes that the argument that you can’t have action on climate change without impacting on the price of electricity was somewhat spurious, and was not a fan of Tony Abbott’s views on the topic.
“The ultra-right are holding on to something, and I don’t know if it’s just an alternative opinion on something that they really care about, or something else,” he said.