Tag: Chris Puplick

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Australia

 January 15, 1990 – A political lunch with enormous #climate consequences for Australia #PathDependency #Denial  

On this day, January 15, 1990, with a Federal Election looming, the Opposition leader and would-be Prime Minister Andrew Peacock and his shadow Environment Minister Chris Puplick, met with the boss of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)…  The political journalist Paul Kelly (not the same guy who sings the songs!) tells it thus.

Peacock and Puplick met the ACF’s Philip Toyne for lunch at an Italian restaurant in Melbourne. This discussion has passed into Liberal folklore as a great deception. Peacock and Puplick say that Toyne told them that the ACF would not be actively advocating a vote for either of the major parties in the House. It would be supporting the Democrats and minor parties in the Senate. Peacock and Publick left with a misplaced optimism. The political truth is that there was no way that Labor’s investment in the greens would be denied. The entire ALP was confident that it would have the green’s backing. It is idle to think that Toyne was unaware of these realities.

Kelly, P. (1992) The End of Certainty. p.543

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419. 

The context was that the Liberals were hoping to form the next government, and had some relatively bold proposals (or rather, targets!).  They wanted the environment movement ‘bosses’ to “play dead” during the impending Federal Election campaign.

What I think we can learn from this

  1. Personalities matter. Narratives of betrayal stick, and become ‘folklore’. (But also, this can be overplayed. The Libs and Nats were never going to become Chipko women. The idea that there is a path dependency from January 15 1990 is… heroic).
  2. Ultimately, if you want to have a better future, then you need a broad-based and “uncontrollable” set of social movements that force politicians and businesses to face environmental and social realities.  And I do not know how those movements would grow and sustain themselves and each other, in the context of super-wicked problems and the seductions of stale repertoires and the abyss… But maybe that’s just me.

What happened next

The Libs went anti-green, and have basically stayed there ever since. It is finally, in 2023, costing them electorally.  

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Kelly, P. (1992) The End of Certainty

See also the ACF guide

And

Downloadable via 

https://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/objects/pdf/d0380.pdf

Categories
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.