On this day, August 5 1997 Australian Democrat Senator Kernot called for the Federal Government to
“suspend use of the dubious ABARE greenhouse models until the completion of a full Ombudsman’s investigation.”
(Duncan, 1997:75)
The context is this – the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics had spent the previous seven years producing dubious “reports” based on a ludicrous economic model called MEGABARE which always magically proved that any attempt to tax carbon dioxide/coal would be cataclysmic.
The development of the MEGABARE “model” was paid for by oil, gas and coal companies. Of course it was. [See August 7th post on this site…]
And the Minister would trot these numbers out, it would get reported by journalists and become received wisdom.
AND THIS HAPPENED UNDER KEATING BEFORE IT HAPPENED UNDER HOWARD.
Sorry for shouting, but the catastrophe that has been Australian climate and energy policy has been bipartisan. Labor has a faction that doesn’t want to cook the planet, that’s all.
On this day the PPM was 362.4. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.
Why this matters.
Ah, official reports, with their big sounding numbers. Gramsci. Hegemony. Weaponised Common Sense. Et cetera. Et Cetera.
What happened next?
The Ombudsman’s report (forced to happen by Australian Conservation Foundation action) came out in January 1998. You can read it here.
.ABARE’s numbers kept getting used by the Howard government. Too useful not to.
There’s great stuff about this in Clive Hamilton’s two books – “Running from the Storm” and “Scorcher” and also in Guy Pearse’s “High and Dry.”