Seventeen years ago, on this day, October 1st, 2009,
Their concerns were heightened when he [Turnbull] went on ABC Radio on 1 October [2009] and said he would not lead a party that was not as committed to effective action on climate change as he was.
(Cassidy, 2010:22) – Turnbull, fresh off the plane from visiting David ‘Vote Blue Go Green’ Cameron…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 386.95ppm. 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 the Liberal Party had gone to the 1990 federal election with a more ambitious emissions reduction target than the ALP. They had lost that election very narrowly and blamed the green lobby. Under Prime Minister John Howard, they had been resistant to pretty much everything on climate, especially mitigation. However, in the tail end of Howard’s prime ministership, he had been forced into a U-turn to allow an emissions trading scheme to happen if he were re-elected, though there was lots of fine print. The Labor government under Kevin Rudd, had eventually put forward some terrible legislation, the carbon pollution reduction scheme. This had already been defeated in the Senate once.
The specific context was that the legislation was going to be reintroduced. Here we see Malcolm Turnbull, who had become Liberal leader by toppling Brendan Nelson saying – probably a little bit jet-lagged – that he would not lead a party that was not as committed as him on climate. And apparently various people listening to the radio thought that was unwise. Rudd had been enjoying watching Turnbull swing in the wind. Turnbull had tried to settle the CPRS legislation, cut a deal. Rudd wasn’t interested.
What I think we can learn from this is that a few fateful words can really be fateful.
What happened next Turnbull was toppled in a leadership spill, and to everyone’s surprise, and many people’s horror, the winner of that leadership spill was Tony Abbott. Abbott then was an extremely effective opposition leader in that he destroyed the credibility, or whatever, of Kevin Rudd, and then of Julia Gillard.
A lot of what Abbott was good at was focus and vitriol, and this was amplified, of course, by the Murdoch media. Abbott became Prime Minister in 2013 and managed to get rid of Gillard’s emissions trading scheme, and was then himself toppled by Turnbull. It was a right proper soap opera, but not the good kind.
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.
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Also on this day:
October 2, 1927/64 – Svante Arrhenius and Guy Callendar die.
October 2, 1942 – Spaceflight!!
October 2, 1961- UNESCO conference on “climatic variations” begins