Malcolm Turnbull risks Australia's economy with inaction on climate change

He may not want to confront climate-change deniers in his party, but it's time for the prime minister to seize the low-carbon agenda for the opportunity it is

Even for a sympathetic observer from the UK, the politics of climate change in Australia is, to say the least, vexatious. But it's now entering a more critical phase than ever before. The mismatch between the conclusions of the Paris agreement in December last year and the failure of Australia's political establishment to understand what's going on "out there in the rest of the world" is putting Australia's entire economy at risk.

When the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, wrested the prime ministership from Tony Abbott in September last year, the international climate community breathed a deep sigh of relief. With the former Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, Abbott was seen as the most egregiously pig-headed climate-change denier in western world had ever thrown up. By contrast, Turnbull had done OK on climate change as a previous leader of the Liberal party, so it was assumed he would do a lot better second time round.