Thirty one years ago, on this day, June 28th, 1994 Federal Environment Minister John Faulkner says carbon tax a possibility –
Faulkner tells states: World Heritage, woodchipping high on my agenda.
A new Commonwealth-States row was looming last night after the Minister for the Environment, Senator Faulkner, unveiled a hardline environmental strategy which includes a push to expand Australia’s World Heritage listings…. Later yesterday, Senator Faulkner said he was considering the implementation of a carbon tax and user pays strategies for heritage areas, as well as other economic measures to benefit the environment. He said he was expecting a departmental report on a range of measures by the end of the year so he could look at the possibilities “in the context of any submission I might make to Cabinet in the lead up to the next Budget”.
Lenthall, K., Darby, A. and Kelly, H. 1994. Green Showdown Looms. The Age, June 29, p.1.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 360.9ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the first Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting was scheduled to take place in Berlin in March-April 1995, and Australia could not afford to turn up empty handed. The “National Greenhouse Response Strategy” had been emptied of all meaning by a huge and successful lobbying effort (helped along by the transfer from Prime Minister Hawke to Prime Minister Keating).
What I think we can learn from this is that doing something about climate change, using the simplest and surely least controversial policy tool of carbon pricing – was successfully hammered out of existence by the rich, who just do not give a damn about the future of the planet and its species.
What happened next Faulkner’s effort was met with highly effective opposition, and he ran up the white flag in February 1995. Carbon pricing came back on to the agenda, as an Emissions Trading Scheme, in 2006-7. An ETS was finally passed in 2011, only to be repealed in 2013-4. And here we are.
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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.
Also on this day: