Don’t be distracted by the phoney war atmosphere of the return of Parliament, the bonhomie, the talk of a new kind of politics, of less aggression, one in which the main debate is whether 43% emissions reduction by 2030 is a minimum commitment leading to something greater, and whether Labor can out-manoeuvre the rather leaden-footed Greens on the issue.
It’s not real. Politics has changed. For the better. But not by much, and it will rapidly slide back into the morass from which we climbed on May 21 if we’re not careful.
Similar optimism, a sense of possibility, pervaded Canberra after the 2007 election, and after Kevin Rudd’s apology. Within three years, that optimism looked like naivety. Much of that was down to Rudd and his mistakes. But much of it had to do with the deep wellspring of cynicism and denialism within the Coalition, funded by its fossil fuel allies and amplified by News Corp.
Those last two factors remain in place. The climate wars aren’t over, and it’s not for either Anthony Albanese or Adam Bandt to declare them to be. There must be unconditional surrender on climate from the Coalition and News Corp, and neither is coming.
The Coalition hasn’t adjusted its position on climate one iota since its massive election defeat. All that has happened is that a number of professed metropolitan supporters of climate action have been forced out of Parliament. Rather than joining Barnaby Joyce, Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor in stymying climate action while claiming to want it, they can do something productive with their lives instead.
Joyce, Morrison (in name, if not in reality) and Taylor all remain in Parliament, along with an array of other climate criminals, and they’ll be voting against Labor’s 43% target. The Coalition may look feeble now but more than a decade ago it went within two and a half years from the circus of Brendan Nelson to Tony Abbott coming within an ace of winning office — via a right-wing putsch against Malcolm Turnbull along the way.
The Coalition propaganda arm at News Corp also remains in place, and remains committed to climate denialism.
The News Corp campaign of regime change began on the night of May 21, even if it hasn’t surfaced in full yet. Give it time. Eventually it will be a repeat of the Rudd and Gillard years: literally everything that Labor does, and quite a bit that it won’t do but which can be tangentially connected to the government, will be demonised and blamed for high inflation, lost jobs, rising interest rates, high power bills, weakened national security. It will be incessant.
It’s true that the media landscape has changed dramatically since the Rudd years. But News Corp hasn’t changed. It is still committed to undermining climate action and helping the Coalition return to government.
The unpleasant lesson from Labor’s last period in government is that ruthlessness is crucial to holding power. Rudd could have called an election at the end of 2009 and handily defeated Abbott, using climate action as his pretext. Instead he wavered and the opportunity passed.
Turnbull, too, could have called an election in 2015 and secured a healthy majority, but he wanted a different, better kind of politics as well, one in which ideas were properly debated and innovation and change were seen as an opportunity, not a threat. It ended badly — with the help of News Corp, of course.
There can’t be a better kind of politics while climate denialists remain lodged in key positions in the Coalition and News Corp.
May 21 was just one step in changing that, one easily reversed if the Coalition wins office again in 2025. It must be followed by more steps — instituting proper accountability, integrity and transparency measures, exposing the influence of vested interests over the major parties, curbing the malignant influence of News Corp, and getting more independents into Parliament.
And for Labor, all the talk of a better kind of politics won’t amount to much unless it’s prepared to be ruthless in dealing with a Coalition that has learnt nothing.
One line within this article sums up the whole article:
“the deep wellspring of cynicism and denialism within the Coalition, funded by its fossil fuel allies and amplified by News Corp.”
Newscorp is a blight on our society, and is continuing to have a negative impact on how we live our lives.
Someone needs to find a way to neuter this non representative influence that Newscorp has.
And it’s “foreign owned” and run (as Murdoch himself outed himself in ’95 with “The truth is – and we Americans don’t like to admit it – that authoritarian societies can work.”) – something condemned, as intolerable, when that condition is at the root of other foreign media meddling in our domestic politics.
Media reform? Murdoch owns a very high proportion of Australian msm.
murdoch/stokes/costello own or operate over 70% of our media
When the Liberals and their sheeple supporters complain that a majority of the media is anti Liberal/right wing – they are not telling the truth
When they claim media is left wing, the reality is they are so indoctrinated in the far right wing by the 70+% that mainstream centralist commentary looks left wing
simples, get rid of murdoch and his evil american-based empire. force a sales of News Ltd assets in Australia to an australian owned company and ship all murdoch and sky personnel to Manus Island for an indefinite period.
How about charging them with sedition and chucking them in the slammer first?
Bring on media ownership reform. Ban foreign ownership, with no grandparenting.
Expropriation, with appropriate compensation for the value of the mastheads – a 2 bob watch & bottle of Scotch would cover that, overgenerously in my view.
The answer to News is already happening – great online news and opinion sources like Crikey, Pearls and Irritations etc
The lesson is there for Albanese to learn ie: Rudd wobbled on climate change & the super-profits tax. His party didn’t thank him & News Corp celebrated.
I’m wondering how many more weeks the current government has before News Corp begins referring to Labor’s trillion dollar debt….won’t be long now.
Steve ‘PoisonDwarf’ Price was running that line yesterday in his toxic podcast which is rebroadcast on the MMM rural network (NSW) and elsewhere.
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Are the climate denialists scientists? Why has their credibility not been blasted into outer space? Is the debate too nice now that we don’t call out people for their lack of credentials?
There are most definitely “climate denialist scientists”. People like Bjorn Lombourg are consistently quoted by Denialists. And Newscorp and the Coalition treat their views as Gospel, cherry picking what they say, despite them representing less than 10% of the views of the overall scientific community.
Lomberg – undergrad at University of Georgia – MA in Political Science and a PhD in political science
He is NOT a scientist
Lombourg is not a scientist.
Lombord is not a scientist a statistician and he is most certainly not a climate denier. He differers from the doomsayers of the bedwetter brigade in pointing, based on hard figures as one might expect from a statistician, that the world long passed tip-over point, catastrophic climate change is inevitable and we should be putting all our efforts into adaptation and remediation.
The fact that the crazies misrepresent him demonstrates that an idea cannot be responsible for the people that hold it.
“Lomborg is not a scientist but a statistician…”
I recall reading that Lomberg does not disagree that climate change is being effected by human kind but disagrees with the way governments etc are approaching the ‘fix” using 10’s of billions of taxpayer funds
There is no possible fix for CC in a neolib consumerist economy.
Only major disruptions to supply chains – which will occur within the next few decades – will lower current output of GHG emissions from human activity.
However the current atmospheric load will not diminish because thawing of the vast Siberian & Canadian permafrost is releasing methane/CH4 which is far more deleterious than CO2, though dissipates more quickly.
The stages of climate denialism:
The coalition/Murdochistas jump around between 1, 2 & 3. Lomborg is at 4. The outcome is the same.
The outcome – catastrophic change – was assured long before the current political posturing began. More than 80% of the CO2 in the atmosphere has been pumped in this century. The floor/ceiling/bargain basement 43% reduction B/S is based on 2005 emissions – too little, too late. Our children, if any, will condemn us and theirs, if any will be too busy coping to bother excoriating our self indulgence.
Nicely put
This is a much too charitable assessment of Lomborg.
Lomborg has been a charlatan from the very beginning. His assumptions are complete garbage and he undervalues ecosytem services and the cost of climate-related impacts by orders of magnitude.
Long before civilisational collapse or tipping points were even in the discussion he was producing heroic assessments claiming perfect knowledge of costs and benefits down to the last dollar. It was laughable then and it’s completely smooth-brained now.
It’s a nonsense to claim as he does that we can adapt to ever-increasing climate change and just continue BAU.
Don’t be duped by his reassuring faux-rationality. He’s a fraud and about as broken on the topic as it’s possible to be.
BK, I reckon one big diff between 2009 and today is that the physical effects of climate change are manifesting in ways that many people are seeing and feeling first-hand…in the past, it’s been easier for people to live in denial. I reckon the Coalition and Newscorp would have a hard time bringing back into the fold people who are bailing floodwaters out of their houses for the fourth time in a year, or the folks huddled on a beach watching a firestorm destroy their town.
it’s a shame that things have to progress to this stage before the majority of people start supporting change – it would be nice to not be perpetually behind the eight ball – but on the plus side, when they DO change tune…they usually want it done by yesterday – while also wanting to know how things could have been left to get so bad (oh the irony).
The current spate of climate disasters are perfect for Labor to go the “lowest common denominator” (or LNP) approach………………
…………stop trying to argue on the science, just point to every new climate disaster and scream “THIS IS WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE LOOKS LIKE!!) over and over and over again.
Even the donkeys will react to such a simple proposition (and demand action!).
we all know that no matter what Labor does, Newscorp and their minions in parliament will scream bloody murder – so they really have nothing to lose – what I’d like to see is the progressive side of politics (and Labor) to stop pussy-footing around and callout climate-change denialists for what they really are: greedy, genocidal monsters
Fewer people are listening to Murdoch. Millennials in particular do not read his newspapers