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NSW environment minister urges end to 'pointless, backward-looking arguments' about climate action

<span>Photograph: Peter Rae/AAP</span>
Photograph: Peter Rae/AAP

The New South Wales environment minister, the Liberal Matt Kean, has launched a clarion call for his party to represent “the forgotten people” who “don’t march down George Street” and “don’t have a platform on Sky News” but support meaningful action on climate change.

Borrowing “the forgotten people” from the Liberal party founder, Robert Menzies, Kean told a forum organised by the Australia Institute on Wednesday that the free market was driving an inexorable transition to low-emission energy sources but “politics and ideology” had been getting in the way of market forces.

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Kean said he championed the cause of climate action because he was “an economically rational Liberal” and “I can’t think of anything that is more in line with what the Liberal party should be about than supporting the free market to deliver the outcomes that are best for consumers”.

“Climate change didn’t start out as a political issue – we made it one – and this needs to end,” he said.

The NSW Liberal said climate action “should not be a partisan issue. It is not in the UK, it is not across Europe, it is not in places like Japan, in fact, largely, those jurisdictions are run by conservative governments and they are leading the way on this issue.”

“What could be more conservative than protecting and handing our environment to the next generations better than we found it? What could be more important to centre-right governments than growing the economy and creating jobs, increasing our prosperity – I mean, this has traditionally been an article of faith for the right of the body politic.

“So rather than being at odds with the values of the centre-right, I’m absolutely in line, and it’s about time someone stood up for the centre of Australian politics in this debate … for what I termed as the forgotten people, and I chose that term deliberately.”

He said these Australians were not represented by “big business or big unions” and “they are not people who have access to Sky after dark or newspaper ownership – they are mums and dads in the suburbs who get on with their lives”.

The energy and environment minister warned that without driving the necessary transition, a transition that would create jobs and economic opportunity, Australia could “find ourselves on the wrong side of mega-trends like rising carbon-based protectionism while other economies steal our march in new clean technologies and industries”.

The NSW minister’s comments were delivered at the launch of a new survey which shows concern about global heating remains acute despite the challenges of the pandemic and the recession. Kean told the forum the survey findings “should put an end to the pointless, backward-looking arguments about taking action on climate change – 80% of Australians think we are already experiencing the impact of climate change, and they are right”.

His strongly worded intervention came as the federal Labor leader, Anthony Albanese – who has been battling internal divisions about setting an emissions reduction target for 2030 – told reporters the opposition would wait until after the next international climate change talks to set a target.

Albanese has previously committed Labor to setting a new medium-term emissions reduction target consistent with scientific advice before the next federal election, but the next international climate talks in Glasgow are not due until November next year.

Scott Morrison has said several times he will run a full term before calling an election but Australia could go to the polls any time after the middle of next year.

Waiting until Glasgow risks Labor failing to be clear about the 2030 target before the next election. The energy minister, Angus Taylor, noted on Wednesday that failing to set a 2030 target would be a breach of the Paris agreement.

The shadow resources minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, who supports Labor adopting the same 2030 target at the Coalition, has told Guardian Australia he could quit the shadow cabinet if the 2030 target were too ambitious.

Fitzgibbon said if Labor’s landing point on an emissions reduction target for the 2030s was “so offensive to me, if it didn’t keep faith with our traditional base, if it was fundamentally wrong and harmful, I would not criticise it from the shadow cabinet, I would have no choice but to go and do so from another position”.

With senior colleagues openly at odds, Albanese said: “We certainly will wait until what happens in Glasgow – it’s critical – and you’ve got to know what your starting point is moving forward.

Related: Overwhelming majority believe Australia is already experiencing climate change

“The starting point before the next election will include outcomes at the Glasgow conference. Of course, other international events – there’s one being held next week – that will have an impact on those issues.”

Kean’s intervention, and Albanese’s hedging on the 2030 target, came as Scott Morrison – who rebuked his NSW Liberal colleague for sceptical comments about the economics of gas – doubled down on Australia’s right to set its own mid-century emission reduction targets after a conversation on Tuesday night with the British prime minister, Boris Johnson.

After a British read-out of the conversation showed that Johnson had raised the importance of reaching net zero emissions, Morrison said Australia’s targets would not be set in London or in Europe, and Johnson understood the importance of sovereignty given that he had led Britain out of the EU.