It feels a little early to go back to speaking about anything other than the death and destruction in Japan, but I’ll briefly note some recent political commentary about Australia that seems about right:
* Annabel Crabb wrote on Friday:
Sounds about right to me. As I was arguing elsewhere on the weekend, with climate change policy in particular, it doesn't seem to be a case (unlike in the Coalition) where actual scepticism of the science has any real sway in Labor (if there were any strong private sceptics in the party room, I am betting we would have heard about it from Rudd aligned leakers during the last election campaign), but rather it just seemed to be lack of will to take on a populist campaign.Let's look at the basics here.
Labor's problem is one of trust and consistency.
Political advocacy is about believing something, and setting out to bring a majority around to your point of view. In the best political advocates, principle and determination work together to the extent that even voters who fundamentally disagree with their position on a particular policy stance will grudgingly support them anyway.
Federal Labor is a long way from that right now, thanks to the messages it has sent out to the electorate on a number of issues.
While I think there is some under-appreciated value in the way Gillard has announced the intention to have the carbon price in place before the details are worked out (it gives the “Ju-Liar” factor a longer time to burn out before an election,) what was the sense in announcing Tim Flannery was going to be paid to convince Australians of the need for a carbon price only a week or two before announcing we were getting one in a year's time anyway? And whoever thought that it was a good look to have two podiums at the announcement, making Bob Brown look like a co-Prime Minister, won’t be making that mistake again, I bet.
There has been something a bit screwy going on about how policy is made and announced in Labor ever since Kevin Rudd got elected, and it still seems kind of hard for the media to pin down exactly whose fault it has been.
Still, on climate change policy I remain as appalled as ever that Tony Abbott got the leadership on the back of a substantial number of climate change sceptics in the party room who (I am betting) get their science from reading Andrew Bolt.
Speaking of Andrew Bolt, I was a bit surprised to see that even he acknowledged on Insiders yesterday that Abbott uses weasel words on the science which the climate change deniers in the Party can interpret so as to give “plausible deniality” to the idea that Tony might really take climate scientists seriously. Look at his words on Friday after Minchin said warming wasn’t happening:
Climate change does happen, mankind does make a contribution…
As Bolt said, you can easily interpret this to mean that the contribution is absolutely minimal compared to natural forces.
And look at the answers he gave to a series of on-line questions from climate change denying skeptics on Thursday. One of them brings up the “but a carbon tax by Australia it won’t affect the world’s temperature at all” line, as well as giving a spray about how all of climate science is completely corrupt, and Abbott comments:
Well what exactly is the point of your plan to match Labor CO2 reduction targets by spending billions of taxpayer dollars, young Tony?Good point. People shouldn’t act out of mere environmental vanity
Journalists do know how inconsistent and willing to court climate change denial Abbott has been; I think they just tire of pointing it out all the time because they have bad poll numbers of Labor to talk about instead.
* But going back to Labor’s problems, David Penberthy wrote recently:
I think that's probably right, although nuclear power is going to have a public image problem until we see how the Japanese post earthquake crisis evolves.The best thing Gillard could do right now is to start a policy fight with the Greens – go and visit Olympic Dam perhaps and come out behind BHP’s push to expand its uranium exports – just to remind them and the voters that she’s the Prime Minister and is running the show. It’s not like Bob Brown is going to pack his bags and go and sit with Tony Abbott. On the current polling the alliance between Gillard and Brown is paving the way for an Abbott Government anyway.
3 comments:
Bob Brown should be condemned for his insensative remarks in the middle of this unspeakable tragedy in a perverse attempt to advance his political views in the wake of horrific disaster. Thousands of Japanese are dead, thousands more are missing, tens of thousands have been left homeless, their lives shattered and devastated and all Bob Brown can think of is, 'Hey here's a chance for another Green's media stunt'. Senator Brown has form when it comes to manufacturing media stunts. In recent weeks he attempted to blame the tragic flood disaster that befell Queensland and other parts of Australia on Climate Change. Yet another attempt to score a grubby, cheap political point. Once again Senator Brown's opportunistic remarks were delivered with absolutly no regard for the families of those who had so tragicaly lost their lives and the thousands more who were traumatised by the event.
All this from a man who, despite having just a miniscule percentage of support from the Australian electorate, is holding a gun to Julia Gillard's head. "Support my extremest policies Julia, or I'll withdraw my support for your Government."
Senator Brown, you should hang your head in shame, how dare you!
On the ETS you want so badly, do you not know that research from Colorado State University [ not a centre of scepticism], has shown that Labor’s ETS could not possibly work----
‘the paper argues that Australian carbon policy proposals present emissions reduction targets that will be all but impossible to meet without creative approaches to accounting as they would require a level of effort equivalent to the deployment of dozens of new nuclear power plants or thousands of new solar thermal plants within the next decade.’
You obviously want Australia’s ‘tired’ so-called journalists to get with it and give Tony Abbott even more stick than he already unfairly gets.
You’re either a closet Labor supporter or member---or you’re running a campaign on behalf of Malcolm Turnbull, to undermine Abbott---you appear to fit both bills.
But you’re no ‘conservatively-minded’ individual, and I see your agenda, from another of your comments---- that you’re hell bent on having an ETS----you want Abbott gone---and your overarching motivation for all of this is that you want nuclear power.
You obviously don’t give a damn whether the climate science is correct or not---so long as you get your nuclear power.
The attitude of disregard for whether the climate science is right or not , will certainly cause the proliferation of nuclear power around the world, once you kill off coal and Australia’s export income----because every little country, including the politically and seismically unstable, will feel they have to have nuclear power to survive---and the world will be a much more dangerous place---and Australia will be poorer with your ETS.
You describe people like me as "climate change denying skeptics". I have read a bit of yours but now I'm gone.
Verbal engineering precedes social engineering.
I believe we are headed for a new ice-age. If you don't believe that I'll be happy to hear what you have to say and I will never insult you irrespective of what opinion you have.
Pity you don't share that view.
Bye.
Interestingly, the captcha I had to enter (get rid of it) was "Stalin"!
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