Sixteen years ago, on this day, September 25th, 2010,
BIG business has warned Labor it will escalate a public campaign against the federal government to protect the economy from being damaged by vested interests and ill-considered policy formulation in the new parliament.
A range of chief executives, chairmen and directors canvassed by The Weekend Australian said business leaders had a basic responsibility to step up to fill the policy vacuum left by the unstable political situation.
Kitney, D. and Hepworth, A. 2010. Corporate leaders stepping up. The Australian, 25 September, p1.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 390ppm. 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 was that at the big end of town, the miners usually get what they want, especially under Liberal governments, but they sometimes have to work a little bit harder under nominally left wing but actually centrist governments, i.e. Labor.
The specific context was that there had been a federal election, which resulted, unusually, in a hung parliament, i.e. neither of the major parties had the numbers to form a government, and so the situation was politically very fluid and unpredictable, and business could see that it might not get as much of what it wanted as it otherwise might, so here we are. This is democracy, apparently.
What I think we can learn from this is that money rules and expects to rule, and occasionally reminds everyone of this in public.
What happened next Gillard formed a minority government, the price of which was carbon pricing. She introduced the legislation, could have done better presentationally, but it wouldn’t have mattered in the long term, because the Murdoch media was gunning for her. It was an extraordinary time amidst all of this. There was the fact that she was the first and so far only female Prime Minister in Australia, which is pretty damn misogynistic at the best of times.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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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:
September 25, 1980 -Reagan turns out to be an ignorant fool. Who knew?
September 25, 1991- European Commission proposes a carbon tax…
September 25, 1995 – Clean Coal. No, seriously.
September 25, 2003 – Bob Carr “strikes greenhouse deal” with European investors