Thirty three years ago, on this day, February 12th, 1992, Liberal Party John Hewson decides to give up on pretending to give a shit about “the environment”.
The federal coalition will reconsider its radical position on curbing emission of greenhouse gasses.
The Opposition Leader, Dr Hewson, said yesterday that he had asked the environment spokesman, Mr Chaney, to review the Opposition’s policy of endorsing a target of a 20 per cent reduction in these emissions by 2000.
Grattan, M. 1992. Coalition To Rethink Greenhouse Policy. The Age, 13 February, p.3.
[Here ends the competitive consensus!!]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the Libs had gone to the 1990 election trying to win over small g green voters because (big G green voters didn’t exist) and were unsuccessful and believed that they were stabbed in the back. The new Liberal leader John Hewon, was looking forward to the 1993 election, which he must have felt fairly confident that he was going to win, given the recession that we had to have, which had Paul Keating’s name all over it. Keating was by now installed as prime minister, and so Hewson was looking to, in the words of a later conservative leader, cut the green crap.
This was noticed, at the time, by the way. See this
“According to the director of science and technology policy at Murdoch University, Fightback would result in a six per cent increase in car use immediately, and 28 per cent in a few years.
The table shows that Australia is the third worst polluter in the OECD region and that our poor performance is very much related to low fossil-fuel prices.
If Australia is to get its carbon emissions down to a level comparable with other OECD countries, some form of carbon tax will have to be introduced.
International pressure to move in this direction is likely to intensify over the next decade.”
Davidson, K. 1993. Hewson Error Of Emission.The Age, 11 February, p.13.
What I think we can learn from this is the Libs had a policy. It didn’t serve them with the electorate. They ditched it, and they never got it back, and this was the moment when Hewson ditched it.
What happened next Hewson lost the unlosable election in part thanks to a birthday cake and how much his flat tax would cost. But now goes around bleating on about the environment and saying Market Forces are gonna fix it. Australia has been so badly let down by its political and economic “elite”. Buncha idiots at absolute best.
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.