Some bright young faces gleam out from the latest Corporate Plan from Treasury, which according to secretary John Fraser — whose not-so-bright face also appears — “sets out the Department’s purposes, priorities and the key directions”.
What are those priorities? Productivity? Check. Participation? Absolutely. Ageing population? Yep. The budget? Of course — there’s a section on “promoting fiscal sustainability”. Infrastructure? Well, there are a few mentions. Globalisation and global integration get a section, suggesting the best and the brightest are aware of the increasingly sensitive issue of the political downsides of globalisation.
But climate change? Not so much. There’s not a single mention of the greatest long-term economic challenge to Australia in the document.
As we’ve noted before, John Fraser — who dates from the old John Stone Treasury era — seems to have had his mind frozen in the early 1990s. At least he’s now mentioning infrastructure, which has been absent from his major speeches, but climate change, a glaring absence in those addresses, remains verboten. There’s virtually no mention of climate change at all on the Treasury site anymore, except in the submissions provided by stakeholder groups to Treasury in various consultation processes. Search for climate change-related documents via Treasury’s own internal search engine and all it produces are two “historical” documents from the Labor years.
In contrast, Martin Parkinson now has a “Climate Change and Environment” branch back in Prime Minister and Cabinet — rather a contrast to the Abbott years when “climate change” had to be purged from that department and Parkinson himself was sent packing from Treasury by Abbott for his sin of being secretary of the Department of Climate Change under Labor. And PM&C’s Corporate Plan talks about “providing advice on major policy areas, including health, education, social security, infrastructure, industry, energy, climate and the environment, and regulatory reform” — rather a contrast to last year’s document, written while Abbott was still prime minister and Michael Thawley headed PM&C, where climate change doesn’t get a mention.
Maybe Fraser’s holding out hope for that Abbott resurrection, which will mean we can go back to the days when we stuck our fingers in our ears and pretended climate change wasn’t real.
If there is one factor that shapes our financial future for the rest of the century, it would have to be climate change. To flatter the illusions of any passing denialist government, Treasury could rephrase its influence in terms of the events it causes, such as storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts and epidemics. But these will be contingencies that increasingly require preparation before the event actually happens. For example, addition of a Disaster Response wing to the Armed Forces will require a long-term financial commitment, a commitment that events will force upon us. Conversion of the country’s energy sources to electricity, and conversion of our electricity to non-carbon fuels, will certainly require central guidance and federal support. As this or that election restores or removes the carbon tax, a strategic change in the flow of revenue changes the pressures on different parts of the economy. Surely Treasury has been writing this stuff up, tucking it away in a drawer marked “in the event of a change of government”?
I reckon Treasury would have thought about climate change in the 90s. Far more forward looking then.
The appointment of the dinosaur era John Fraser to such an important post is one of Abbott’s worst legacies. Firs thing Labor should do when and if they ever regain power is to jettison this ideologue and install someone of quality. Nicholas Gruen is still around I understand, hopefully biding his time and patient enough to wait for sanity to prevail.
Fraser’s major policy statements include references to how tax rates must be lowered as that will fix everything. He is that far behind the curve, presumably a laffer one at that.
Has there ever been a more useless department than Treasury? So full of ideologues & time serving economic recalcitrants that it is a parody of rationality.
The Dismal Science indeed.
As long as this Neo Liberal rubbish dominates our Politics and therefore Treasury nothing will change ….
Climate Change will not wait for the “Forces of the Market” to profit from the devastation it will bring …..
From what I understand Australia could have developed and rolled out an integrated Multi Tech Renewable Energy Network over the last 25 years …. but we kept believing the Neo Liberal Lies about Affordability/Corporatisaton/Privatisation/Budget Deficits/Fiscal Responsibility/Government Debt etc etc …..
And when we finally put into place a Policy Framework in 2102 that started to reduce our Emissions, enough of us let our fears and prejudices undermine reason and Elected a Government dominated by those that made it very clear they did care about addressing Climate Change before that Election ….. and recently we re elected them …
Now we are starting to face the consequences of our ignorance/gullibility ….. Some of us more than others …..