Fourteen years ago, on this day, April 27th, 2010, soon-to-be-ex Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sorta seals his fate.
Rudd’s problem, however, was not just the decision but the manner of its release. The story was broken by Lenore Taylor in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27 April when she reported that the ETS had been shelved ‘for at least three years’. The leak to Taylor was devastating. Rudd was taken by surprise and left without an explanation. ‘It was a very damaging leak and hard to retrieve, ‘ Wong said. ‘It derailed our government’, Martin Ferguson said.
(Kelly, 2014:292)
And
It was the decision that seemed to snap voters’ faith in Kevin Rudd. Perhaps a final straw. Straight after the government announced it was deferring an emissions trading scheme until 2013, graphs of the Prime Minister’s satisfaction rating looked like a rock falling off a cliff. Labor’s primary vote tumbled after it. The kitchen cabinet was scheduled to meet on April 27 to decide exactly how to explain the delay, and the conditions under which the government would pledge that the ETS policy would be revived.
News of the decision had also filtered through to a few members of the broader cabinet, who had determined to try to wind it back when cabinet met to “ratify” the budget on April 29. But on the morning of April 27, the Herald disclosed the decision to remove the scheme from the budget in a front page article entitled “ETS off the agenda until late next term”. It was the first many ministers and senior public servants had heard of it.
Knowing the back story helps explain why the government’s response on that day was so confused.
Taylor, L. 2010. Decision that shattered faith in PM. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 June, p.2
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 390ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Rudd had used climate as a stick to beat John Howard with, then enjoyed Turnbull twisting in the wind as the Nationals and many Liberals were not as keen on climate action as Turnbull was.
What I think we can learn from this
Spineless people don’t grow spines (see also Starmer, Keir).
What happened next
Chaos and horror. Not the fault of Gillard or the Greens. It’s all on Rudd and Abbott and their enablers.
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:
April 27, 1979 – Ecology Party first TV broadcast ahead