Tag: Australian Labor Party

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Australia

July 15, 1994 – ALP and BCA in good cop bad cop routine

Thirty one years ago, on this day, July 15th, 1994, a former Treasurer admits that there is a “good cop bad cop” routine going on with the peak business body.

The Business Council of Australia was the dominant influence on Labor’s reform agenda in the past decade, at the expense of other employer groups and the party’s traditional union supporters, according to the former Treasurer Mr John Dawkins.

Such was the intimacy of the relationship, Mr Dawkins claimed, that it had been useful on occasions to have the BCA appear to be a critic of the Government’s performance.

Williams, P. and Ellis, S. (1994) DAWKINS KISSES AND TELLS ON BCA. Australian Financial Review, July 15.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 359ppm. As of 2025, 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 ALP had always had a “complicated” relationship with business, and if its leadership got too determined to do anything, well, there could always be a change of leadership, either by elections dominated by propaganda or, as a last resort, the Governor-General… This is a story repeated with social democratic parties everywhere…

The specific context was that Australia’s economy had been “opened up” (tariffs down, dollar floated etc) from the mid-1980s onwards, in the name of “reform”, which somehow magically morphed into the rich getting richer and the poor really getting the picture. The BCA, set up in 1983, played a key part in all this.

What I think we can learn from this is that the means by which policy is made – and the way nominally independent political parties are shaped – is not theorised very well by academics, who are not nearly as bright as they think they are.

What happened next – the wealth inequality in Australia, already accelerating under Keating, became turbo-charged under Howard (1996-2007). And the emissions kept climbing, though hidden behind accounting tricks and dodgy numbers – and the atmospheric concentrations kept climbing.

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: 

July 15, 1968 – first(?) UK government attention to the possibility of climate

July 15, 1977 – “Heavy Use of Coal May Bring Adverse Shift in Climate”

July 15, 2005 – The “Stern Review” into #climate is announced…

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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.