copenhagen
10 Dec 2009
It's Personal: What Copenhagen Means To KRudd
The domestic implications of the outcome of Copenhagen are every bit as interesting as the international ones, writes Ben Eltham
Are you sick of the Copenhagen clichés yet? The conference that might save the world is already generating plenty of controversy and headlines, including a supposedly secret agreement apparently co-drafted by our own PM.
It’s too early to determine the outcome of the conference yet. Negotiations are expected to go down to the wire and already the conference has seen yawning disagreements open up between developed, developing and small island nations.
Back at home, the conference is shaping up to be an equally important milestone in the Australian climate debate. Both major parties have a lot riding on the outcome of Copenhagen — even if both insist that they don’t.
For Kevin Rudd and Labor, a global deal at Copenhagen will provide a huge boost going into an election year. Despite the craven political opportunism with which the Government has approached the issue of climate change, any sort of agreement on the conference will surely include plenty of positive media images of Kevin Rudd strutting the world stage, as well as backing up the Government’s rhetoric about being the party of action on climate change.
Labor’s dream result will be a strong agreement at Copenhagen, allowing it to argue its green credentials moving into a 2010 election. The Opposition, of course, will be secretly hoping for the opposite result.
For the Liberals, the collapse of negotiations will be perceived as a major win. The Opposition’s talking points — when they haven’t been questioning the reality of global warming — have revolved around delaying any Australian response until after the outcome of Copenhagen is known. If the negotiations fail, the Opposition and its supporters will feel vindicated.
On the other hand, a successful Copenhagen will undercut the Liberals’ arguments about "waiting to see what the rest of the world is doing" — even if it won’t silence the sceptics and denialists who have now been placed in such prominent positions on Abbott’s frontbench.
All of which suggests that Labor needs a successful outcome at Copenhagen.
Rudd and Wong must be sweating on the result much more than they have let on. As several commentators (including me) have noted, Labor has done a horrible job of explaining its climate change policy and the detail behind the ETS. Indeed, despite the constant sniping from Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce about the ETS being a "giant new tax on everything", Labor has been strangely silent on the large amount of compensation for householders and motorists written into its scheme. Only since the CPRS legislation was rejected has Kevin Rudd started to publicly explain the compensation for households under the scheme.
The CPRS is not even a very big tax. The Treasury figures (which Tony Abbott appears not to have read properly) are modelled on the 5 per cent reductions target and show that the sale of carbon permits will only generate $5 billion in the first year of the scheme’s operation, rising to $12 billion in 2012–13. The total figure will increase slowly to approximately $16 billion in 2019. That’s chump change in a federal budget of $338 billion. In fact, it’s less than Australia’s existing tax on carbon — the petrol excise — as this Treasury pie-chart shows.
But Labor is not out there explaining this for reasons best known to Kevin Rudd and his strategists. The Government is not even properly defending the science. As a result, the Liberal sceptics have polarised the climate science debate and successfully reframed the issue of climate change around the question of higher taxation, where it demonstrably does not belong.
There’s no shortage of smart ways that Labor could sell the ETS. Combating dangerous climate change is only one of them. Another selling point is as a growth-promoting economic reform. Another is the role of an ETS in driving innovation and creating new green-collar jobs. Explaining that no-one should have a right to pollute the atmosphere is a further important message. Yet another tactic would be to strongly defend the science.
But Labor — on a day-to-day level so disciplined in its public messaging — has struggled over the longer term to adequately explain this admittedly complex policy.
The result is that Labor is comprehensively failing to make the political and cultural case for climate change action. This is a missed opportunity of staggering proportions. Big coal companies, dirty power plants and nutty Liberal culture warriors do not naturally enjoy wide popularity. If Labor ever stoops to actually engage with the issue, it should be able to quickly take command of the debate.
Instead of explaining climate change in everyday phrases that ordinary people can understand, Labor has lost itself in a thicket of white papers, green papers and amendments. Perhaps Penny Wong found negotiations with her Opposition counterpart Ian Macfarlane all too amenable, and really believed that Malcolm Turnbull would carry his party room and allow the Government to pass the CPRS with bipartisan support. The extraordinary events in the Liberal Party over the last fortnight put paid to that dream.
But while the Right wing of the Liberal Party has won the internal war, it remains to be seen whether the party can capitalise on climate change to win over swinging voters. As I argued after Abbott claimed the leadership, climate scepticism is an argument which mainly appeals to the conservative base. It is unlikely that attacking climate science will win over the younger, urban voters that the Liberals so desperately need if they are to reclaim government.
And then there are the obvious risks for the Liberals posed by Tony Abbott himself. Abbott’s tenure as the new Opposition leader has already been entertaining and erratic — just in the last two days he has made a gaffe over Treasury costings and attempted to convince us that the world has been cooling recently. His tendency to shoot from the hip with a minimal grasp of the facts is going to continue to give Labor and the media plenty of ammunition. Another Bernie Banton moment could be just around the corner.
One thing’s for sure: the political fray will continue unabated over the festive season and into January. It’s going to be a fascinating summer.
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The Rudd government’s silence on their own ETS was indeed quite baffling. It really does seem as though this were a deliberate tactic that backfired.
The ALP will have the summer to gear up for the fight and yes, a poor outcome in Copenhagen will not help. However, they will still have the advantage of having a policy on the table, and just like Howard’s GST, being the government in this context is helpful.
I’m not sure who said it, but I read a comment from someone recently who said ‘scare campaigns work best from government, not opposition.’
The Libs have everything to do in selling their alternative policy, whatever it will eventually look like.
“It’s too early to determine the outcome of the conference yet.”
No it isn’t. Here is what will happen…
Nothing is agreed to
Everyone goes home
Earth dies.
the end.
this is a spot-on analysis of government and opposition interests in possible copenhagen outcomes.
But Ben, why are you puzzled that the govt isn’t out there selling its present ETS model? The history of the past two years is that the Rudd cabinet is ambivalent about the ETS within its ranks. There are climate change deniers like martin ferguson, and paul howes in the union movement. There are - i hope - people in Cabinet who accept the IPCC and latest updates of the climate science and would have been quietly appalled that the Garnaut recommendations were compromised down in negotiation with the carbon lobbies and their media spokespersons [a history detailed in my book ‘Crunch Time”]. And there are those in the middle - like, i suspect, the Prime Minister - who define a good ETS as whatever can be passed here after Copenhagen. In other words, it is a moving target - the day to day changes will define the outcome.
The present ETS bills are a long way from safe harbour. A lot can happen in the nine months to a possible double dissolution in August. Even the concept of an ETS is quite contestable - James Hansen was pretty convincing on its failings on monday night on Lateline with Tony Jones. A lot of people who are not fools or climate deniers believe a simple carbon tax is the better way to go.
The upshot of all this - plus the huge uncertainties about what might come out of Copenhagen - means that the Rudd govt won’t be going out on the front foot to defend the present ETS bills until it has a much clearer picture of the policy terrain, in Australia and internationally. For them, it is still a case of suck it and see. Environmentalists will deplore this but it is the way experienced govt political minds would be working now.
The PM’s Lowy speech might have been the policy high point for some tome to come for the Rudd govt’s expression of climate crisis rationality. And look at the way that Lowy speech was dumped on by the deniers and the fencesitters, and pretty much ignored by the nation at large. Why would Rudd want to repeat this any time soon?
Thank heavens cap and trade is dead.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/thank-heavens-cap-and-trade… ++++
Great article as always Ben. I suspect part of the reason that Labour haven’t explained the scheme fully, is because it’s so flawed:
http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/
I haven’t found a better explanation yet of how the concept works.
If it were not so damned serious, the whole thing would be utterly hilarious.
Trying to get some sense and intelligence from that lot of vested interests is a sick joke. I very much doubt that the major players give a stuff for the impending dangers confronting Africa, the Islands and other low-lying Nations, such as Bangladesh, Burma etc.
The Multi-National Corporations control the politics of the game here, and their only interest is profits, forever, and most are not interested in new, and sustainable, avenues of making it.
Like trying to accept Krudd and W(r)ong as serious players in the game, when all they are doing is playing out their domestic political divide-and-rule scenarios, and keeping Krudd in the forefront of world affairs, hoping that someone will notice (Obama), and give him a big, fat, International job, so he can hand over to the ‘Big Beak with the Red Head’ and disappear permanently from our shores.
She would immediately declare us as a Jewish Religious Nation, and invite all israelis to come here, thus leaving Palestine for the Palestinians, and next year, Big Julie would get the Peace prize, upstaging Obama!!!!! Huh!!!
If there is one thing I have learned in all my readings it’s that opinion is spread far and wide. This brings me to a short though very pertinent axiom I came across several years ago, an adage if you will, that forms the basis or starting point for my view on the issue.
“Smart people with impressive credentials think global warming threatens our planet. Other smart people, with equally impressive credentials, disagree … No one has all the answers … “
Hence, it sparked an interest and became a catalyst for launching a new site Climate Change Views http://climatecv.blogspot.com/ a blog that, with any luck, presents both sides of the issue. We have linked to this article on site…
No doubt, given the present nature of the debate in OZ, Copenhagen means a great deal to our Prime Minister.
From comments on Media, it appears that our PM Krudd and Minister P.W(r)ong are playing very dirty pool, trying to take for suckers the rest of the world, (other than their fellow greed driven and Corporate owned conspirators), and trying every nasty, corrupt, non-business-threatening tactic that they can think of to make sure that the rest of the developing world pays for Australia’s pollution, while Australia rolls merrily on, producing carbon like crazy.
This business with REDD in Papua New-Guinea, Indonesia, Malasia (and other places), where traditional land owners are being taken for suckers and robbed blind by Australian businessmen, sounds just up Krudd’s creek. His idea, they are acting on it, even before it has been worked out just how they can rip off the Aussie taxpayer to keep the Big Polluters in business-as-usual mode.
What can one feel for ‘our’ PM, other than absolute contempt?
Seems the Police in Copenhagen take after our Queensland cops, if you are in a demonstration, you are fair game to be bashed, tortured, detained, treated like absolute criminals. The Big Boys and Girls DO NOT like people who want to demonstrate Democracy and demand, peacefully and lawfully, the saving of OUR ONE AND ONLY Planet.
Someone should declare Krudd and W(r)ong ‘undesirable aliens’ and ban them from re-entry to Australia.
The USA seems a proper place for these people. Where all the worst polluters and nastiest ‘dodgers’ hang out.