On this day in 2007, Senior Australian bureaucrat Ken Henry gave a private speech to his staff, pointing out that Australia’s climate policy was a complete mess. Laura Tingle for the Australian Financial Review. got hold of this and published it as a front page story on 4th April
2007 Tingle, L. 2007. Revealed: Treasury chief’s blast at government policy. The Australian Financial Review, 4 April, p.1.
The country’s most senior economic bureaucrat has delivered a scathing assessment of the federal government’s water and climate-change policies and warned his department to be vigilant against the “greater than usual risk of the development of policy proposals that are, frankly, bad” in the lead-up to the federal election.
In a speech to an internal Treasury forum, obtained by The Australian Financial Review, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry confirmed his department had little influence in the development of the government’s recent $10 billion water package, and expressed his regret that its advice both on water and climate change had not been followed in recent years.
The revelations came as the government was on the defensive yesterday about its failure to address climate change in its latest intergenerational report.
Dr Henry’s speech, in which he reviewed Treasury’s achievements and challenges, was given to an internal biannual departmental forum at Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel on March 14.
He noted that the department had “worked hard to develop frameworks for the consideration of water reform and climate-change policy”.
“All of us would wish that we had been listened to more attentively over the past several years in both of these areas. There is no doubt that policy outcomes would have been far superior had our views been more influential,” he said.
The context is that under Prime Minister Bob Hawke there had been some noises about doing something on climate. Under Keating that had been tossed aside thanks to a wildly successful set of campaigns co-ordinated by the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network Howard had been successful resistance on multiple occasions to any action whatsoever that wasn’t symbolic and shambolic.
But Henry was probably specifically speaking about two efforts to get emissions trading schemes in Australia in 2000 and 2003. These were discussed in federal cabinet, and on both occasions, defeated on the second occasion, by Howard on his own
Why this matters.
We need to know that there are people in the bureaucracy of the state with their eyes open who do not agree with what their political masters are doing. And they try to keep the policy streams alive (even if the policies are neoliberal tosh).
What happened next?
Howard lost the 2007 election. Kevin Rudd came in with all sorts of promises. And then, in 2010, revealed himself to be unwilling to stick his neck out in defence of climate action, i.e. call a double dissolution election.
And that betrayal has made people think of politicians as untrustworthy on climate, and the climate issue has been rendered incredibly toxic (to be clear – the toxification was more than just Rudd’s fault – it was a clear-eyed and cynical attempt to create a culture war).