Tag: Australian Labor Party

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Australia

July 14, 2000 – Miners versus the ALP/ and climate action

Twenty three years ago, on this day, July 14, 2000, the tensions any social democratic party faces were out in open…

A split is emerging between the main coal mining union and the ALP over Labor’s pledge to take early action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The ALP’s draft environment policy, released last week, calls for the introduction of a national carbon credit trading scheme ahead of any international trade system introduced under the Kyoto Protocol, the UN treaty limiting developed countries’ emissions of greenhouse gases.

But the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union is worried about the impact of the early introduction of such a scheme on the economy and employment particularly in energy-intensive sectors.

Hordern, N. 2000. Miners unhappy with Labor’s greenhouse pledge. The Australian Financial Review, 14 July, p.12.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 370ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that some folks within the ALP were trying to turn climate change into an issue, a bit at least, as a stick to beat Howard with. But it wasn’t easy…

What I think we can learn from this is that climate change is an extremely difficult issue to build red-green coalitions on, for multiple reasons.

What happened next

Howard won the 2001 Federal Election, thanks to vicious lies about Afghan refugees. And got another six years to delay and prevent climate action.

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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Australia

June 3, 1989 – Liberal Party to outflank Labor on #climate?!

On this day, June 3 1989 the Australian Liberal Party’s environment spokesman told reporters about their ambitious environmental policies for the upcoming Federal election.

THE Federal Opposition is preparing a separate “climate policy” bringing together all issues relating to world climate change.

The document, compiled by a climate policy task force, is expected to be released within a fortnight after endorsement by shadow cabinet.

The Opposition Environment spokesman, Senator Chris Puplick, said yesterday: “The policy will take in the greenhouse effect, the ozone layer, industrial pollution, recycling, tree-planting and climate research.

“At the moment these issues are scattered over a number of policies and it’s an attempt to integrate them and find out where there might be any gaps. Obviously, it will also update things in the light of new standards being set and new technology being introduced.”

Senator Puplick criticised the proposal by the Federal Environment Minister, Senator Graham Richardson, for a referendum to increase the Commonwealth’s powers to override the States on environmental issues.

“I think it is just a bit of very silly kite-flying in the sense that firstly you would have enormous problems in actually drawing up a piece of legislation to amend the Constitution,” he said.

Jones, B. 1989. Libs endorse ‘Climate Policy’. Sun Herald, 4 June, p.5.

The context was that ozone hole/the greenhouse effect had exploded onto the scene the year before. The European elections – and the Tasmanian state elections – of May 1989 had made politicians think that votes were to be had in the green… It did not last very long, of course.

Why this matters. 

We need to remember that there was a brief moment of “competitive consensus” way back at the beginning of the climate issue, but it did not last. The pressures pulling apart “right-wing” parties are still there – the need for votes, and the need also to protect continued capital accumulation in the same vein…

What happened next?

The incumbent Australian Labor Party squeaked home at the March 1990 Federal Election, thanks to small-g green voters (the Green Party did not exist yet) preferencing them over the Liberals, despite the Liberal Party’s more ambitious targets.
Puplick’s career was toast, and the Liberals decided they had been stitched up by the Australian Conservation Foundation (the largest green group), leading to decades of suspicion and animosity.

(For an account, see Paul Kelly’s “The End of Certainty”)

See also (and thanks to the person who tweeted it! this I wrote for The Conversation.

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Australia Climate Justice

January 5, 2006 – strategic hand-wringing about “Our Drowning Neighbours”

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.

For an overview on the issue, you could do worse than this 2009 paper from The Australia Institute “A fair-weather friend? Australia’s relationship with a climate-changed Pacific.”See also this coruscating piece from 2010 by Kellie Tranter. And an event report from October 2016 on Voices from the Climate Front Line.   See also 350 Pacific and SEED.