Fourteen years ago, on this day, June 19, 2009, the leader of the Liberal Party gets in a snit because business is – gasp – happy enough with the weak policy being proposed by the Australian Labor Party (then in government).
MALCOLM Turnbull has attacked big business for “snuggling up” to Labor, demanding business publicly back the Coalition strategy of amending and then passing the government’s emissions trading laws.
In a blunt exchange with about 30 chief executives at a Business Council of Australia breakfast at Parliament House on Wednesday, [17]Mr Turnbull attacked business for being “intimidated” into supporting the government and for failing to publicly push for amendments to the laws.
Taylor, L. 2009. Opposition tells industry: don’t `snuggle up’ to Labor — Turnbull puts heat on business. The Australian, 19 June, p.1.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 389.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Malcolm Turnbull as the new Liberal Party leader needed to attack Labor, get business on side and not lose his own support. This was always going to be tricky given the competing and frankly irreconcilable demands.
What I think we can learn from this
A political party has explicit ideological needs, whereas business needs to cuddle up to whoever is in government and to keep selling stuff to people even when they’re having one of the periodic fits of “Let’s save the Planet.” Therefore business is going to take a more rational clear-eyed reality-based focus. This can be hard for a political party – especially one which takes business support for granted – to understand.
What happened next
Turnbull tried to take the carbon pricing issue off the table sending his Chief of staff Chris Kenny to talk with Rhodes chief of staff but no dice road was enjoying Turnbull’s agony too much. See Paul Kelly’s book Triumph and Demise for the gory details. Turnbull then lost his position as Liberal party leader to Tony Abbott, who came out swinging against doing anything on climate change.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.