The last thing Labor needs right now, as it fights off a mounting scare campaign against its ambitious climate-change policy, is ambiguity.
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Yet ambiguity was precisely the take-out as attention turned to the potential cost to the economy and/or budget of Bill Shorten's 50 per cent "target" for renewable energy by 2030. Or is it a goal?
And, while we're at it, how would that dramatic increase be delivered? Via a doubling of the current renewable energy target mandate of 23.5 per cent by 2020? Or, as a combination of that plus other policy levers, including an emissions intensity scheme?
All good questions. So why do the details remain a teensy-bit woolly - especially, on cost?
Here's a snippet of the Labor leader on AM on Wednesday and bear in mind, this was the fourth attempt by Sabra Lane to nail down what an effective 50 per cent RET might end up costing consumers.
"Well, our answer is very, very straightforward. We think the cost of not acting is far greater. We don't think we could sustain the cost as the Liberals are saying, of building new coal-fired power generation on the scale which Mr Turnbull is saying and we don't think that from insurance to drought to extreme weather events, that we can simply go business as usual."
Reasonable points perhaps, but not what was asked. Shorten's reluctance on cost only drew more attention to it.
By mid-afternoon, the usually silky treasury spokesman Chris Bowen had a crack, and again, under sustained questioning by David Speers, remained err . . . delphic.
Bowen: "You've got the RET, then you've got the 50 per cent objective, which is separate, and under that 50 per cent separate objective, there's a range of policy initiatives . . . there's no impact on electricity prices out of that policy, which we took to the last election . . . and again, the impacts cancel each other out."
Speers: "And no net impact on the budget?" .
Bowen: "That's right".
Former environment minister Tony Burke polished the line further on Thursday: "The policy that allows us to get to 50 per cent renewables is the emissions intensity scheme . . . it's not a change to the RET and the policy we have, has been costed as actually saving - this is by the government's own people - saving the businesses and the householder, $15 billion across the next decade."
Slowly but unsurely. In essence, the emissions intensity scheme is a cap and trade market restricted to power generation. It is sound and credible policy but difficult to communicate.
As a desperate government parlays blackouts and prices rises in South Australia to frighten consumers about what could be in store nationally, Labor must convince voters, that (a) the scare campaign is nonsense, and (b) it knows what it is doing. These reassurances are made more difficult if, as has been the case this week, it comes off as slightly unsure of itself.
