Forty five years ago, on this day, November 26th, 1979, a paper was submitted to the academic journal Energy….
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 337ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Cesare Marchetti had proposed carbon capture and storage in 1975 – his article had been published in 1977. And here were some Americans at the Department of Energy talking about what that would entail.
What we learn is that CCS has a very long history, longer than its proponents might want you to believe.
What happened next Albanese kept studying it, studying what other people did. CCS really sort of became something that people were vaguely interested in, in about 1988/89 After the explosion of the greenhouse issue. And then CCS lived in the undergrowth, for about 10 years. And then really sort of 2002/3 is the pivot where it starts to get more attention. Still hasn’t been any meaningful amount of CO2 taken out of circulation, especially if you discount the fact that a lot of what has been captured was for enhanced oil recovery.
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.
The question is this. Who is the bigger climate criminal – John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007, or Anthony Albanese, same gig from 2022 to ??. It’s not as straightforward as you think.
My answer is below. It’s not clear cut, and I am keen to hear your arguments. In the tweets/replies/comments, etc. Suggested hashtag #HowardOrAlbo
For those to young to remember, and those who have done their best to repress the horror: John Howard did enormous damage to Australia, across a wide range of issues. For these purposes, I’ll stick to climate.
A one paragraph history lesson.
After the shock of the Liberals going to the 1990 Federal election with a stronger emissions reduction target than the ALP, the opponents of meaningful Australian climate action had successfully mobilised in the early 1990s. They prevented any ambitious contribution by Australia to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. They gutted the Ecologically Sustainable Development process initiated by Bob Hawke, Labor Prime Minister from 1983-1991. They stopped any effective action going into the National Greenhouse Response Strategy (December 1992). In all this they were helped by Labor’s Paul Keating, who rolled Hawke in late 1991. In 1994-5 the opponents of climate action, co-ordinated by the Business Council of Australia and what we now know as the Minerals Council of Australia. They laid the groundwork for Australia to plead for “special treatment” internationally, using farcical economic modelling.
Then John Howard came and dialled it all up not to eleven, but to twelve. He doubled down on the economic modelling, which was all horseshit, literally funded by the oil coal and gas companies. He made promises about renewables in order to buy off the worried Liberals, promises he then did everything to avoid keeping. He arm-twisted and bullshitted his way to an incredibly generous deal at Kyoto (and then pulled out, once his mate George W. Bush had led the way). He did everything he could to slow renewables, including organising a meeting of fossil fuel company CEOs to demand their help (I am not making this up). He twice killed off an Emissions Trading Scheme, the second time – in 2003 – against his united cabinet. On and on and on I could go.
Anthony Albanese is worse.
If we can only send one Prime Minister to the International Court of Justice at the Hague it should be loveable raised-in-social-housing Albo.
Here’s my reasoning.
John Howard has two (weak-ish to laughable) arguments in, ah, “mitigation.”
First – he was born in 1939. He was raised to believe that there were no limits to the Earth’s bounty, and that if there WERE limits, well, technology would fix them (1) . He was 30 when the whole eco-doom thing started, and could say “this is a yoof fad”, even while his party, the Liberal Party, created a Minister for the Environment for the first time. I wrote about this in an academic article called “Wind beneath their contempt: Why Australian policymakers oppose solar and wind energy”(Hudson, 2017). There’s a Conversation article about it here.
Second – in the 1990s, even after the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1995-6 it was possible – if you really really engaged in a lot of motivated reasoning – to believe that climate change was mostly a greenie scare designed to create a dreaded Superstate of regulation. The commies had lost the Cold War and were starting a war about Heat to have another go.
It was nonsense, of course it was, but we all believe nonsensical things, occasionally. And so what if some temperature records were falling? Australia is a land of extremes… Dorothea McKellar yadda yadda yadda. Yes, there’s a Millennium Drought (pray for rain, said Howard, in April 2007), but Australia has always had droughts. Howard could grasp some flimsy bullshit climate “doubt.” It had no substance, but it was there.
Finally, in his defence, too at least Howard never pretended to give a rat’s arse. At least he had enough respect to be open in his contempt for the black armbands, the green armbands etc.
Albo has none of that.
Albo was born in 1963. He was 9 when The Limits to Growth came out. Questions of environmental damage and danger were just there for him growing up. He was 20 when the Franklin Dam was saved by his beloved Labor Party. He was 25 when Bob Hawke came over all “green,” when Australia was freaking out about the hole in the Ozone and the Greenhouse Effect.
Albo? How many impossible bushfires? How many killer heatwaves and temperature records smashed? How many incinerated animals? A billion? Two? Are you waiting till the number gets to 5 billion, Albo?
What are you planning as your excuse, in ten years, Albo? I’d really like to know. Oh and, btw, that sound you hear? It’s your old boss, Tom Uren, spinning in his grave.
Whatever your excuse is, it won’t fool anyone. Except maybe you? And maybe in the Alboverse that’s all that matters. Top “leadership”, mate.
Meanwhile, Albo has told us how much he cares. Albo has been making a song and dance about how much he cares for two decades.
The Senate Inquiry into the Energy White Paper has concluded the Energy White Paper will delay critical action on climate change for another twenty years [All Our Yesterdays post here]
And the ALP is forever telling the Greens they are irresponsible (2). Because Labor has suuuuch a good record of following through.
On that subject, a quick digression about one of Albo’s enablers.
Health Minister Mark “The Climate Wars” Butler, sat there like a Trappist monk, watching Albo shit over the portfolio that was his “passion”. Mate your silence is heard. People remember your book, all the lovely words. People hear it and draw conclusions about the quantity and the quality of your sincerity and your courage. You think anyone will be impressed when you mumble something about Caucus rules and Party loyalty? How about some loyalty to the community you claim to represent? The city you are supposed to speak for? How about, I don’t know, even some species loyalty? Mene mene tekel upharsin, eh?
So Howard IS a climate criminal. He should be sitting in the dock by the North Sea. But Albo belongs alongside him, and I think in front of him. Albo has no excuses. Not the excuse of outlook, not knowledge. Albo is the guy in the Kudelka cartoon from last weekend.
Basically, this. As per Richard Denniss’s quotetweet
Australia has relied on rorting rules rather than cutting carbon emissions for decades…
Carbon offsets, carbon capture & storage, clean coal…& now nuclear…any magical future solution can be used to justify subsidising fossil fuel expansion in the present
Yep. This is bipartisan. But the chickens are coming home to roost (or are they among the incinerated billions of animals?) And Australia’s “ambition” is utterly inadequate, as per Bill Hare’s May 2024 Conversation article and Carbon ActionTracker work.
[Btw, the disclaimer at the bottom, in reference to Royce Kurmelovs, applies equally to Dennis and Hare.]
But before you go out and save the world, inquiring minds would like to know – in your opinion – Albo or John Howard? Who is the bigger climate criminal?
Further reading
I have focussed on two “personalities.” There is always the danger of a morality tale, ignoring the awesome power of the networks of determined, clever and remorseless individuals and groups that have played and won the game called “capture the state.” The reading below (especially the Royce Kurmelovs’ book, to be spoken of in the same breath as Guy Pearse’s work) should help with that.
Even Tony Abbott , born 1957, kinda sorta has that excuse (though he and his best mate Malcolm Turnbull are the same age)
I am not now, and never have been a member of the Green Party of anywhere. Or any political party. And as for the Greens, I am not always a fan of how they do bread and butter politics. Here and here. And here, I guess.
DISCLAIMER
I helped Royce with bits of research and we continue to collaborate. For clarity, he had no foreknowledge of this article, nothing to do with it. Same goes for two other ppl whose work I drew on – Richard Dennis’s and Bill Hare. Didn’t consult them in this, no idea if they will applaud or be horrified. My views alone.
Eighteen years ago, on Monday October 9, 2006, the climate spokesman of the Australian Labor Party (then in opposition, and positioning itself to attack Prime Minister John Howard ahead of an election due soon-ish) released a statement with the snappy title
“Labor calls for International Coalition to Accept Climate Change Refugees”
It begins
“It’s in Australia’s national interest that we lead on climate change, not wait decades to act.
While the Minister for Environment accepts Australia “does have a substantial role to play in helping smaller, less-developed countries” that will be devastated by rising sea levels, he fails to show leadership. The Howard Government does not have a strategy to combat climate change and its impact on Pacific countries.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
You should be able to view it on Anthony Albanese’s very own website. It was there as of 0530 Australian Time. If it is no longer there, for some inexplicable reason, well, you can see screenshots and the text are at the foot of this post – Just Scroll On. I’ve even added some hyperlinks and footnotes [in square brackets].
By the way, something else really important happened on the same day – a coalition of human rights and development organisations released a report called “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change”. Here’s a post about that.
And here is a fourth post (no, nobody has ever told me to shut my damn mouth – why do you ask) tying it together and suggesting some answers to the only question that matters “What is to be done in solidarity?” It also has links to various organisations trying to help.
The context was that in the late 1980s the Hawke government (Labor, for the younger readers who may not know) was trying to both Care About “The Greenhouse Effect” and also flog a lot more coal (e.g. January 30, 1989). In August 1988 two academics had flagged the possibility of climate refugees and Australia’s responsibilities, at a conference in Sydney. At the July 1989, at the 20th South Pacific Forum, well look at what the Australian Financial Reviewreported
“Both Australia and New Zealand indicated that they and the rest of the world would undoubtably be prepared to take humanitarian action in moving people driven out by rising waters” reported Steve Burrell in an article titled “ENVIRONMENT DOMINATES FORUM” from Tarawa, Kiribati, The Australian Financial Review, 12 July 1989.
The same year English science communicator James Burke had produced a show – shown in Australia called After the Warming. It is – spoiler – about the future of a warming world, in which he included a scenario about climate refugees getting machine-gunned. Watch it on Youtube here. (1)
Then, in late 1991 Hawke lost a Labor Party room spill (there’d been one earlier in the year). The next Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, killed the “greenie nonsense.” A carbon tax was proposed and defeated by big business (1994-5) and then vacuous “voluntary action” was proposed. The Liberal Government of John Howard had been in power from March 1996 and had dialled Keating’s climate vandalism up to 11. And then to 12. By 2006 the Australians were still alongside the USA as the public face of the Venus Lobby, but Labor were beginning to use climate as one of the sticks to beat Howard with.
What we learn is that
Labor in opposition were shameless attention hounds, willing to piggie-back on other people’s intellectual and political work (then again, ‘the game’s the game’).
Labor in opposition were willing to make all sorts of lovely sounding (vague-ish) promises and enough civil society organisations either roll over and squee with delight, or refuse to get their shit together to say “yeah, honey, you don’t make that happen, there’s gonna be serious trouble.”
More generally
Political parties like to be parasites on civil society. They like to take what they want (in this case a chance to get more news for their guff) and don’t really care about the consequences for the wider ecosystem, if they can even see it (mostly they can’t).
For political parties civil society is at best a place to get authenticity, credibility and competent/ambitious personnel from especially when in opposition or facing a new challenge they can’t trot out the usual bullshit with confidence and without reputational risk.
For political parties civil society is at worst (and therefore usually) a bunch of clever and determined people who are agitated and agitating about how, now that you are in government you are not in fact keeping any of the nice (vague) promises you made when in opposition. Poach the smartest, install your own meatpuppets, defund and deride is the main way of dealing with them, alongside some patronising guff about “politics is the art of the possible, you have to govern from the centre” and all the other excuses. Make sure you keep big business sweet, because when pitchfork season comes (and it does, periodically), they are the guys who might send the helicopter to get you out of the palace.
If only somebody had written a short perfect book that ended with this
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
What happened next
Then Labor leader Kim Beazley got knifed by Kevin “I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help” Rudd about six weeks later [Wikipedia]. The shadow climate portfolio went to Peter “in the end the rain comes down” Garrett, who name-checked the “Australia Responds” report (see next post) in February 2007 and then turned his attention to helping funnel enormous sums of taxpayer money to a real climate response, namely Carbon Capture and Storage.
Happy times.
Albo took on other jobs over the years. I don’t quite recall where he is these days, but wherever it is, I am sure he is working day and night to turn the fine words of 2006 into real policy. Oh yes. BUT, in the interests of fairness, alongside all his sterling work to expand coalmines, there was, in fact, in November 2023, an agreement to offer Tuvaluans (280 a year) visas to study and/or work in Australia.
Journalist James Burke reports from the year 2050, where humans and the Earth have survived global warming. Using an innovative device called the “Virtual Reality Generator,” a computer effect that projects different environments on a location, Burke shows various scenarios of global warming and illustrates the potential effects of today’s actions. Burke also addresses the impact of climate change on historical events (and vice versa).
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.
It’s in Australia’s national interest that we lead on climate change, not wait decades to act. [AOY1]
While the Minister for Environment [2] accepts Australia “does have a substantial role to play in helping smaller, less-developed countries” that will be devastated by rising sea levels, he fails to show leadership. The Howard Government does not have a strategy to combat climate change and its impact on Pacific countries.
On today’s AM program [3], Senator Campbell’s limp response was to put off action: “The major impacts, the long-term impacts, of climate change will take many decades to unfold.”
Pacific countries need a plan now, not when they are already under water. [4]
Tuvalu is expected to become uninhabitable within 10 years because of rising sea levels, not in “many decades” as the Minister said. [5]
Pacific countries are increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, including contamination of their fresh water supplies.
Labor supports the Kyoto Protocol [6] and has a comprehensive plan to assist Pacific countries threatened by climate change.
Labor’s policy discussion paper, Our Drowning Neighbours, advocates the establishment of an international coalition, led by Australia, to accept climate change refugees from Pacific countries.
The paper recommends the establishment of a Pacific Climate Change Centre to monitor climate change, protect fresh water sources and plan for emergency evacuation where necessary.
Labor welcomes the release of today’s report, Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change, by a coalition of groups including Oxfam and World Vision.
The report reinforces Labor’s call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse emissions and highlights the need for climate change to also be addressed through the aid budget.
All Our Yesterdays footnotes, from October 2024
[1] Yes, the national interest. Which seems to be always identical to the short-term needs of the fossil fuel industry and its mates, no matter which political party is pretending to hold the reins of power. Not to rain on anyone’s parade (btw, in the end the rain comes down, obliterates the streets of the Blue Sky Town. Just sayin’]
[2] The hapless Senator Campbell. Clive Hamilton is spectacularly rude about him in Scorcher, a book worth reading. Howard replaced Campbell with some guy called Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull urged Honest John to ratify Kyoto (no dice). Turnbull went on to a storied career as a fearless, skilful and highly successful policy entrepreneur on climate, outmanoeuvring the forces of darkness and saving both Australia’s reputation and its physical safety.
[3] Ah, the ABC. Bless. This suggests, btw, that the press release might well have been a brainfart on the day – an ambitious policy wonk suggesting an anodyne statement hooked onto the Australia Responds report would be enough to get some headlines, and punch the bruise that was Howard’s climate dilemma. I could probably find out, maybe. But the game would not be worth the candle.
[4] Thank goodness Albo has worked tirelessly these last 18 years to turn that banal exhortation into shiny reality. (ahahahaha- which stands for All Hail Albanese All Hail Albanese)
[5] Really? And the scientific basis for this headline grabbing claim is? Is? It’s almost as if the ALP doesn’t care about either science or the credibility of environmentalism, if there is a momentary advantage to be had.
This paper investigates how the Kyoto Protocol has framed political discourse and policy development of greenhouse gas mitigation in Australia. We argue that ‘Kyoto’ has created a veil over the climate issue in Australia in a number of ways. Firstly, its symbolic power has distracted attention from actual environmental outcomes while its accounting rules obscure the real level of carbon emissions and structural trends at the nation-state level. Secondly, a public policy tendency to commit to far off emission targets as a compromise to implementing legislation in the short term has also emerged on the back of Kyoto-style targets. Thirdly, Kyoto’s international flexibility mechanisms can lead to the diversion of mitigation investment away from the nation-state implementing carbon legislation. A final concern of the Kyoto approach is how it has shifted focus away from Australia as the world’s largest coal exporter towards China, its primary customer. While we recognise the crucial role aspirational targets and timetables play in capturing the imagination and coordinating action across nations, our central theme is that ‘Kyoto’ has overshadowed the implementation of other policies in Australia. Understanding how ‘Kyoto’ has framed debate and policy is thus crucial to promoting environmentally effective mitigation measures as nation-states move forward from COP15 in Copenhagen to forge a post-Kyoto international agreement. Recent elections in 2009 in Japan and America and developments at COP15 suggest positive scope for international action on climate change. However, the lesson from the 2007 election and subsequent events in Australia is a caution against elevating the symbolism of ‘Kyoto-style’ targets and timetables above the need for implementation of mitigation policies at the nation-state level.
In English? It’s all make-believe. It’s all kayfabe.
Twenty years ago, on this day, August 21st, 2004, a newspaper tells the tale… (I know this because the ALP’s Anthony Albanese was using the article to attack Prime Minister John Howard in March 2005.)
Albanese speech in parliament 9 March 2005
“Even Treasurer Peter Costello and the former environment minister, David Kemp, supported a national trading scheme. As reported by the Australian on 21 August 2004:
Federal cabinet rejected such a scheme— an emissions trading scheme in 2003— … even though Environment Minister David Kemp and Treasurer Peter Costello promoted it, after industry lobbied John Howard
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Australian Prime Minister John Howard had polished off the emissions trading scheme for the second time, even though his Cabinet had been united against him. He’d hit a pause button, gone and talked to his business mates, came back and said “nah.”
And here we were a year later. I think in the run up to the 2004. Federal election (which happened in October. Mark Latham. Remember him?). A good old fashioned scoop that the Australian ran, presumably because they knew that if they didn’t, it would get given to someone else. It also made them look like journalists, which is always difficult when you’re The Australian. [Interesting question would be who leaked it and why? I don’t know that they ever necessarily got to the bottom of that. But it would be fun to find out.]
What we learn is that when somebody would leak something, you’d have to ask, what were they trying to achieve? What’s the timing? And have they protected themselves enough? Sarah Tisdall and all that.
What happened next, Howard won the 2004 election. Latham went way off the deep end. And Howard got another three years of being a complete fuck knuckle on climate.
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.
The Howard Government’s Energy White Paper is an energy white elephant.
The Senate Inquiry into the Energy White Paper has concluded the Energy White Paper will delay critical action on climate change for another twenty years.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Anthony Albanese had an interest in the environmental issues and Labor were trying to use Howard’s recalcitrance and opposition to climate action as a stick to beat him with. The energy white paper in 2004 had been a gift to the fossil fuel lobby, there had been a Senate report about the White Paper and this is what Albanese was using.
What I think we can learn from this is that in any parliamentary system, there are games and counter-games between the government of the day and the opposition. And there are various scrutiny and watchdog outfits that can produce reports which are useful both to researchers but also politicians and NGOs who are contesting the government’s actions.
What happened next
Howard brushed it all off. Eventually the climate issue, in the second half of 2006, became an issue that he couldn’t brush off.
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.
“protesters besieged the Marrickville office of Labor MHR and minister, Anthony Albanese. News reports record that ‘angry’ demonstrators jeered and booed: one ‘female protester grabbed Mr Albanese by the tie and called him “gutless” and a “maggot”’ (AAP 2011). This was one of a series of anti-carbon tax protests held during 2011–12.”
(Ward, 2015: 225) See also – Lentini, R. 2011. Democracy-is-dead mob takes its anger to Anthony Albanese’s door. Daily Telegraph 2 September.
On this day the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was 390.33ppm. Now it is 420ish- but see here for the latest.
Why this matters.
We need to remember that this happened, that there are people who will scream blue murder at the smallest effort to do anything about climate change
What happened next?
The legislation got through. Then it was repealed by the Liberal-National Party government. Albanese… dunno what he did next..
On May 16th, 2005, the Australian Senate inquiry into the 2004 Energy White Paper came out.
The 2004 Energy White Paper had – even by the spectacularly low standards of the Howard Government – been a blank cheque for the fossil fuel industry (they’d basically been invited to write it) and a kick in the teeth for the then-nascent renewables lobby.
So, the Senate inquiry
has concluded the Energy White Paper will delay critical action on climate change for another twenty years.
The Senate Inquiry report shines a light on John Howard’s failure to act on climate change. The report says the Energy White Paper:
• Is a blueprint for delay in reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and will be directly responsible for the high cost to future generations of Australians – environmentally and economically.
• Fails to accept climate change has already begun and therefore action to reduce emissions must be taken immediately.
• Lacks an effective plan to cut greenhouse pollution, a long term target to boost renewable energy or a long term plan to control the spiralling pollution from the energy or transport sectors.
Where does all this come from? From the website of an obscure Australian politician called Anthony Albanese, who, by the time some of you read this will either
a) be Prime Minister of Australia
or
b) have lost the unlosable election and be hiding in a caravan park in rural New South Wales.
Why this matters?
States still sometimes have the capacity to tell the truth about what the government is (not) doing. If you keep your eyes open, you can get a pretty adequate picture of what is going on. In the UK, for example, the National Audit Office still tells you more or less how things are failing.
What happened next
Howard’s end came in late 2007. Labour under Kevin Rudd comprehensively bollocksed its climate response. Gillard tidied up the mess as best she could. Then the wrecking ball known as Tony Abbott swept that thin legislation away. Prime Minister Turnbull did feck all, Scott Morrison has continued the rot…
On this day in 2005, Australian politician Anthony Albanese said the following in parliament.
At the beginning of this century, we are at a crossroad. The science is clear and compelling: ecological decline is accelerating and many of the world’s ecosystems are reaching dangerous thresholds. Overexploitation of our natural resources, habitat loss from urbanisation and the clearing of forests for farmland, competition from introduced animals and plants, and climate change induced by a 30 per cent increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are threatening the world’s diversity. The facts are these: since the industrial revolution average global surface temperatures have risen by one degree Celsius, the most dramatic rise for over 1,000 years; the five hottest years on record have occurred in the last seven years, the 10 hottest in the last 14; snow cover has decreased 10 per cent since the 1960s; and glaciers that have not retreated since the last ice age 12,000 years ago are now doing so.
The Howard government’s most significant failure is its decision to pursue an isolationist position on climate change….
You can read the full whack here.
The context is this – Australian civil society was still not up on its hindlegs about climate change, despite the country’s exquisite vulnerability, shameful international record and largely derisory domestic response. By the end of the following year, that would change….
What happened next
Well, “Albo” is now leader of the opposition. And there is an election coming. Watch this space.
On this day in 2006 Anthony Albanese MP (now leader of the Opposition and perhaps Australia’s next Prime Minister) and Federal Labor MP Bob Sercombe launched Our Drowning Neighbours, Labor’s Policy Discussion Paper on Climate Change in the Pacific.
This was part of the ALP’s use of climate as an ‘wedge’ issue to differentiate itself from the (seemingly-endless) government of John Howard (we will be coming back to him more than once in the course of this project). That use of climate as a wedge would accelerate markedly when, at the end of 2006, Kevin Rudd took over as opposition leader.
Why this matters. By the early 1980s, once the science and consequences of what was then called the “carbon dioxide problem” was basically settled, the sea level rise issue has been understood. And islands and low-lying states knew they had an existential (and not in the wanky Sartre sense) problem. And there have been endless declarations about this. And Australia, as the big beast in the South Pacific, and as the very big polluter (both domestically and via its coal – and more lately gas exports) is always going to be in the frame.
What happened next – The Labor Party formed a government in 2007, in the “first climate change election.” Refugee issues were on the agenda for Rudd and then Gillard, but not in the way that Albanese and Seccombe might have thought.. Australia is now fortress Australia, and you wouldn’t bet on a different set of policies any time soon. Meanwhile, the small island states know that they will simply not be there in another fifty years.
