Former senior public servants have called for a carbon price to be brought back.

Ken Henry, Treasury secretary between 2001 and 2011, says the government must find a way to limit national emissions at least cost to the country.

“The answer to that question – and everybody will tell this – is an emissions trading scheme,” he said.

He said the past decade of climate politics has taught him only that “we have failed”.

“I look back on it now and I still feel gutted,” he said.

“I feel angry. I know that’s not a good thing, and I probably should get therapy, but I’ve asked myself this question many, many times: why do I still feel angry about it? And the reason I feel angry about it is that I feel angry about what Australia has lost.”

Former secretary of Treasury and the now defunct climate change department, Martin Parkinson, says carbon pricing should not be characterised as being “about taxing people”.

“The carbon price is actually about creating the right sort of incentives to develop the technology and then use it,” he said.

Peter Shergold, the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in the Howard government, has some words for Scott Morrison.

“My sense, prime minister, is that there is a mood to follow such leadership if it exists. Tell it honestly, and tell it truthfully, and don’t try and pretend there are not going to be costs imposed on industry and costs imposed on individuals, but it is worth that for the sake of your children and your grandchildren,” he recently told the ABC.