Eleven years ago, on this day, March 20th, 2014, Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s first attempt at legislative climate thuggery is foiled.
The government’s carbon tax repeal laws have been voted down by the Senate, leaving the fate of Australia’s carbon pricing scheme up to the new Senate that sits from July.
It appears very likely the carbon price will then be repealed – and the government says its repeal laws will make the end date of the tax retrospective to 1 July, 2014 – even if they have not passed the parliament by then.
Carbon tax repeal voted down by Senate | Australia news | The Guardian
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 398ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the previous five years had seen ferocious battles over a fairly basic and inadequate carbon pricing scheme.
In late 2009 the Liberal Party had tossed Malcolm Turnbull for being too pro-climate action and given Tony Abbott, the leader of the opposition gig. Abbott had then killed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Rudd basically imploded. Rudd’s henchman then gave a journalist a jibe about Julia Gillard that caused Gillard to uncharacteristically lose her cool. Gillard challenged for the leadership and Rudd was turfed by Labor. Gillard became prime minister, and during the snap election campaign that she just called, there would be no carbon tax under her government. The 2010 election resulted in a situation with neither the Coalition or Labor having enough MPs to form a government, and therefore relied on Gillard or Abbott doing enough deals with the independents and the Greens. Gillard succeeded, but the cost of their support was – you guessed it – a carbon pricing scheme. The optics were bad, and they were handled even worse (see February 24 2011 blogpost).
And so 2011 saw this astonishing, vitriolic, insane battle over a “carbon tax”, with most businesses ducking and covering and not wanting to be drawn into the fight. and even the consultancies, or maybe especially the consultancies, given that they are entirely dependent on the good graces of political parties were cutting their cloth accordingly (See Malto Maltenberger anecdote- the intellectual corruption and quiescence is astonishing.)
Anyway, Gillard, thanks to in part, the ferocious attacks of the Murdoch press, became very unpopular in the opinion polls. Kevin Rudd, who’d been lurking on the back benches, launched his challenge, toppled Gillard.
There was an election in 2013 which the wrecking ball, aka Tony Abbott, won handily, and Abbott had set about trying to repeal all the carbon pricing legislation and also to abolish things like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, but Abbott did not have control of the Senate, and this is an example of them pushing back.
What I think we can learn from this is that this period in Australian politics was an especially bewildering soap opera. Actually, not even a soap opera, more like a Jacobean tragedy.
What happened next, CEFC and ARENA survived, sort of. Abbott was turfed by Turnbull, who was then turfed by Morrison. A lot of this has to do with energy and also the culture wars going on. “Which kind of Australia do we want?” And it seems that enough people want an imagined 1950s Australia that never existed.
And these people can be mobilized. And the so-called progressive forces, which are mostly or at least partially blind to the arrived ecological debacle, have neither the language nor the skills to do much about it.
It may or may not be different when the Rupert bloody Murdoch finally dies. But just because the poisoner is dead doesn’t mean the poison stops working.
I suppose this is a contestable way of looking at it. You also have to look at the poison needing to be frequently updated, or else the so-called immune system of the so-called body politic might “cleanse itself” of insanity? Who knows? We’ll find out.
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:
March 20, 1967 – Solar Energy advocate warns of carbon dioxide build-up
March 20, 1987 – The “sustainable development” Brundtland Report was released
