The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has just released a consultation paper for draft “greenwashing” guidelines for businesses — or as the ACCC puts it, “the obligations under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) which businesses must comply with when making environmental and sustainability claims”.
The guidelines are arranged around seven principles:
- Make accurate and truthful claims;
- Have evidence to back up your claims;
- Don’t leave out or hide important information;
- Explain any conditions or qualifications on your claims;
- Avoid broad and unqualified claims;
- Use clear and easy-to-understand language;
- Visual elements should not give the wrong impression.
Now these are meant for businesses — but what if they also applied to politicians and political parties? What if Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton were forced, every time they spoke about the global heating crisis, to make accurate claims backed up by evidence, to not deliberately omit inconvenient information, hide behind caveats or fine print, wildly overstate things or use misleading graphs?
We took the liberty of responding to the ACCC’s consultation questions on behalf of the major parties.
1. What are you most unsure about when making environmental or sustainability claims?
Government: The impact on our regional marginals and in Queensland. Also, whether the AWU and the mining division of the CFMEU will arc up and cut donations to us.
Opposition: Judging just how little we can get away with saying and doing in order to have any chance of winning back teal seats versus pissing off the Nats. We used to be a little worried about upsetting moderates in our ranks, but fortunately the last election fixed that for us. And, frankly, they always just whined and never actually did anything.
2. Do you feel confident that you know how to express an environmental or sustainability claim clearly and accurately?
Government: Absolutely. We communicate clearly about how we’re taking real climate action while waving through new gas and coal projects, always insisting that we’re honouring our election commitments, no matter how embarrassingly inadequate they may have been. Australian businesses need certainty in their investment decisions and Australians are… [read more]
Opposition: Of course. We are committed to a new zero target for 2050, if the Nationals will allow us, but we’re also committed to protecting Australian jobs, and we know that the government’s extreme safeguard mechanism and hostility to the mining industry will cost millions of jobs over the next 20 years and end investment in our resources sector while driving up consumers’ power bills and breaking Labor’s election commitment. Australians are… [read more]
3. How do you decide which claims to make and what evidence you have to support those claims?
Government: We decide which claims to make based on forensically detailed science… from our pollsters and their focus groups. And we draw our evidence from whatever our departments cobble together based on requests from our offices.
Opposition: We decide what claims we make and the circumstances in which we make them. In relation to the second part of the question, we are unsure what “evidence” means and would be grateful for an explanation.
4. What influences your decision on whether you make an environmental or sustainability claim?
Government: We make such decisions based on a complex matrix of factors, the interaction of which produces multiple scenarios that may maximise (or minimise) the chances of reaching a point in time in which we may elect to release (or withhold) a public position that addresses (or does not address) environmental or sustainability or related (or unrelated) issues. Some of these factors include quantitative polling, focus groups, the day’s media cycle, whether it’s Friday afternoon and whether there’s something else that might distract people. Also, polling.
Opposition: We prefer not to make such claims, except in relation to how many jobs they’ll cost. We have an environment spokesman, apparently… Jonathan someone? Durian maybe? Someone said he was locked in a cupboard somewhere in Tasmania… We should probably check on him.
5. Are there environmental or sustainability claims in your industry that are concerning?
Government: Yes. The Greens and the teals keep pretending that we can actually do something about climate and that we shouldn’t be exporting millions of tonnes of CO2-producing coal to profit fossil fuel companies. Also, they say we don’t get very much money from such exports in the first place. These are alarming claims and the ACCC should be devoting significant resources to showing how false they are. Any additional funding that the ACCC might need to undertake such efforts should be sought in the 2024 budget process shortly to commence and will be looked upon favourably.
Opposition: This claim that fossil fuels are heating the planet and causing massive economic damage is highly concerning. There is no scientific consensus that either of these claims are true. As the primary agency for the protection of consumers, the ACCC should be ensuring Australians are not exposed to these hysterical and self-serving claims about global warming.
6. Do you think this draft guidance will improve business confidence when making environmental or sustainability claims?
Government: We are the most business-friendly Labor government since the Hawke years. Businesses can have full confidence that the government is committed to a pro-investment, pro-jobs environment, even if it isn’t necessarily a pro-environment environment. We love business. Some of our best friends are business. More subsidies anyone?
Opposition: No business can have any confidence that the Albanese socialist government, the most left-wing out-of-touch government in Australian history, will not destroy the economy, force us all to live in caves and make us eat our own children for breakfast.
7. Is there anything else you would like to have more guidance on?
Government and opposition: When will people please stop talking about this stuff?
Cruel, but very, very fair. I’m convinced that the world, one way or another, is coming to a rapid end, and that the job of politicians is to pretend all is well in order that an angry population not get in the way of their escape route. (Which will probably be like the contingency plan in Dr Strangelove).
Nice work. Sad that it is so close to true it is barely satire.
As an aside it is worth noting that the principles ASIC posits are pretty much unremarkable principles public service officers are guided by. So what goes wrong. Senior execs and political advisors both guide and filter advice so ministers don’t see things they wouldn’t want to see, evidence is “just one factor” in decision-making, official email and document materials on “sensitive” matters are kept to a minimum and buried away from FOI. FOI is itself hamstrung by a lack of transparency in how Govt works and the rules of FOI (you can’t ask for what you don’t know about), plus a lack of capacity in the media that might ask.
I never understand this narrative that the Nationals are responsible for the modern Liberal Party siding with the fossil fuel industry v humanity.
The Nationals are of course the political representatives for the regional coal and gas industries, but the Morrison government in particular had close ties to the fossil fuel industry and Murdoch, who put Morrison in power, has a financial interests.
https://michaelwest.com.au/compromised-genie-energy-and-the-murdoch-medias-climate-denial/
The Liberals also have far more Pentecostals who fundamentally believe that the world will indeed burn and they will be saved (which is why the fossil fuel industry has funded the evangelical movement).
I think this narrative comes from people in cities (who create most of the emissions) wanting to blame rednecks for causing climate change, and by extension the Nationals. But that narrative reduces the culpability of the Liberal Party.
Love it BK.
The lines between the real and satire are increasingly blurred.
Satire exaggerates reality, the less the more effectively.
Irony merely restates reality “inappropriately” hen it is unwelcome by those hiding under the comfort blanket.