Mathias Cormann refuses to express confidence in Alan Finkel after climate criticism

Mathias Cormann has refused to say if the Turnbull government still has confidence in Dr Alan Finkel after the chief scientist warned Australia would not meet its emissions reduction target under the Paris agreement with current federal policy settings.

“Look at our track record,” Cormann told Sky News on Sunday. “People thought that we couldn’t meet the 2020 emissions reduction target based on our policy settings and indeed we are exceeding those targets.

“We are very confident that with our policy settings we are able to meet the 2030 emissions reduction targets.”

Asked if he had lost faith in Finkel, given Finkel warned clearly last week that the government’s policy settings had to change if it wanted to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target under the Paris agreement, Cormann said: “My answer is pretty self-evident.”

The Turnbull government is still reeling from a major policy backdown from the environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, last week, when Frydenberg signalled a review of the government’s Direct Action policy would consider whether an intensity scheme for electricity was an option only for him to fold within 36 hours after an angry backlash from backbench conservatives.

To calm his colleagues, Frydenberg said the Coalition would not contemplate either a carbon tax or carbon trading – comments that pre-empted the findings of his own Direct Action review and the independent Finkel review released later in the week.

Finkel’s report, handed to the prime minister before Friday’s Coag meeting, said investment in Australia’s electricity sector had stalled because of “policy instability and uncertainty”. It also gave implicit endorsement to an emissions intensity trading scheme for the electricity industry to help manage the transition to lower-emissions energy sources.

Following the Coag meeting on Friday, the South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, who supports an emissions intensity scheme, publicly rebuked the prime minister for pre-emptively killing off the debate.

Cormann said on Sunday the government’s review of its Direct Action policies should only be considered a “housekeeping review” because the Coalition’s climate change policies were settled before the 2013 election.

“Our policy settings in relation to action on climate change have been settled for some time,” he said. “There is a review taking place consistent with the terms of reference that have been released by the minister. This is really, you should be looking at this review as a housekeeping review. This is very much routine.

“This was never designed to be a review to question again, or fundamentally to reopen and revisit, questions that have previously been resettled after very lengthy and intensive debate [inside the Coalition].”