Eighteen years ago on this day June 1, a real stunt filled the airwaves.
Shadow minister throws himself out of a plane
https://www.greghunt.com.au/PDF/flinderscommunity2008/GHSpring2008Community.pdf
And
By Glen Atwell
FLINDERS MP Greg Hunt joined Australia’s oldest parachutist, Jim Brierley, in a parachute jump over Tooradin at the weekend to highlight the freefall of Australia’s solar industry.
83-year-old Mr Brierley lives at Phillip Island in the Flinders electorate and wrote to Mr Hunt earlier this year, inviting him to skydive with the Tooradin-based Commando Skydivers.
Mr Hunt accepted the invitation immediately.
“I leapt at the chance. I had done a static-line parachute jump – where the parachute opens automatically – when I was about 17 but had always wanted to experience a skydive,” he said.
Mr Hunt, who made the jump with tandem master Dave Boulter, described the experience as “sheer exhilaration”.
“We were lucky in that the day was pretty overcast but we managed to find a break in the clouds that lasted just long enough for me to make the jump.
“We jumped from 7000 feet, which was above the cloud level, and dived through the clouds for about 20 seconds before we activated the parachute. Twenty seconds doesn’t sound like a long time but it’s an eternity when you are hurtling towards the ground at something like 120 miles an hour. It is sheer exhilaration. I loved every second of it.
“Jim jumped out of the plane just before me and made an effortless landing, He is an amazing gentleman and an inspiration to us all.”
Mr Hunt used the jump to highlight the plight of the solar panel industry which he said has been sent into freefall since the Rudd Government imposed a means test on the popular solar panel rebate scheme.
BERNARD KEANE ON “PERPETUAL PRESENT” AND PETER GARRETT
Oddly, this is the Greg Hunt who throughout 2008 opportunistically joined the Greens in bagging Garrett for not rolling the solar panels program out quickly enough, after Garrett introduced a means test on the solar panel rebate to slow the remarkable demand for the program. In June 2008, Hunt went skydiving — anyone remember that? — to demonstrate that the solar industry was in “freefall — but unlike me it doesn’t have a soft landing ahead of it”.
Also Hunt on the Great Barrier Reef…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 385ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was that Australian political elites had been aware of the carbon dioxide problem since the 1970s but had not really done anything until forced to by a combination of scientific lobbying and especially public pressure, which exploded in 1988. And in 1990 a student, I think, at University of Melbourne, did his honours thesis on carbon pricing, and 18 years later, that student was the shadow Environment Minister Greg Hunt,
The specific context was that there had been fierce battles over Emissions Trading/ putting a price on carbon dioxide. And from the end of 2006 onwards, there had been running open battles. By mid 2008 the conservative Party, the Liberal party’s fragile consensus on the need to respond to carbon dioxide build up was beginning to fracture. They were still under the leadership, such as it was of Brendan Nelson, but Malcolm Turnbull was waiting in the wings as leader of the opposition.
What I think we can learn is this: these stupid stunts, they are not cupid stunts, but something else we learned that politicians will do pretty much anything for a headline.
What happened next:
A month later, the retreat began…
Malcolm Turnbull became leader of the opposition and tried to forge some sort of deal with Kevin Rudd, the Labor Prime Minister. But Rudd was too much enjoying watching Turnbull twist in the wind, and so carbon pricing did not get passed, and Tony Abbott became leader of the opposition, and then, God help us, Prime Minister. And was a complete failure, but he can point to having abolished the carbon price as his signal achievement. Hunt was Minister for the Environment in this and brought about a shadow Emissions Trading Scheme. (See Leonore Taylor in the Guardian for more on this).
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
April 18, 2013, Liberal Party bullshit about “soil carbon” revealed to be bullshit
August 27, 2013 – absurd claim of Nobel-prize winners’ support for Liberal non-policy is debunked.
References
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
June 1, 1965 – Tom Lehrer warns “don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air”
June 1, 1969 – “The Future is a Cruel Hoax” Commencement address – All Our Yesterdays
June 1, 1970 – Public Relations versus Democracy and Ecology – All Our Yesterdays
June 1, 1989 – Tony Blair versus carbon pricing – All Our Yesterdays
June 1, 1992 – “environmental extremists” want to shut down the United States, says President Bush
June 1, 2011 – Japanese office workers into short sleeves to save the planet