Tag: John Howard

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Australia International processes UNFCCC

April 25, 1996 – Greenpeace slams Australian government on #climate obstructionism

On this day, 25th of April 1996 Greenpeace International condemned Australia’s negotiating stance at the climate talks in Geneva.

“Gilchrist, G. 1996. Greenpeace Attacks Global Warming ‘spoiling Tactics’. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April, p.2. Australia’s spoiling tactics in negotiations on tackling global warming undermined the nation’s “clean and green” international image, Greenpeace International’s top climate campaigner, Mr Bill Hare, said yesterday. He warned that Australia’s diplomatic position on climate change threatened its long-term trade interests.”

The context is that the second Conference of the Parties, following on from Berlin the previous year, was going to be an important to way station on the way to completing the so-called Berlin mandate, which called on rich nations to agree emissions cuts.

It was feared that the Australian Government’s obstruction tactics would move from softly-softly on display at the previous COP to full-on, shameless and unashamed heel dragging (In March of 1996 the Labor government had been replaced by John Howard’s “Liberal National” coalition.) 

And – getting ahead of ourselves (COP2 did not happen till July 1996) – so it came to pass…

“The discussions at the second COP to the UNFCCC in Geneva in 1996 saw Australia establish itself as a climate change laggard. Immediately before the conference the government questioned the science of climate change and opposed the idea of the IPCC’s new conclusions on climate change impacts providing the basis for negotiations.55 Significantly, they were joined in this concern only by OPEC states and the Russian Federation.56 Most importantly, however, the government’s position at the Geneva negotiations was to oppose the idea of legally binding targets on greenhouse emissions.57”

Macdonald, Matt. 2005a. Fair Weather Friend? Ethics and Australia’s Approach to Climate Change. Australian Journal of Politics and History 51 (2): 216–234.

Why this matters. 

We need to prepare criminal briefs for crimes against humanity and other species at The Hague

What happened next?

The Australian Government played a spoiler role as it still largely has, in the climate negotiations, they got a very sweet deal at Kyoto still refused to ratify. And as I may have mentioned, the carbon dioxide keeps accumulating. 

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Australia

April 6, 2006 – the anti-climate dam of John Howard begins to crack…

On this day, sixth of April 2006, the “Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change” released its first and I think only report, “The business case for early action,” a 25 page extravaganza of nice pictures and nice rhetoric..

The ABRCC was made up of insurance, banking and service sector outfits. (The manufacturing and extractive industries were conspicuously absent).

They were trying to combat the impression that John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia since March 1996, had been able to give of business was against climate action because it would destroy the economy.

It was not the first attempt to create a business pressure around climate action; WWF had been trying in 2003 or so. And of course, there were open letters and surveys and all sorts of other efforts before 2006.

Why it matters

Well, it doesn’t, but it reminds us that service sector (esp banking and insurance types, and sometimes “gas rather than coal” outfits are keen to seek out business opportunities, and to undermine the pro-coal/anti-carbon trading outfits. And that one of the ways they do that is via these sorts of gaudy one-offs…

What happened next

In retrospect, this report can be seen as one of the opening salvo softening up for what would happen later that year, which is one of these periodic explosions of concern about climate change that swept Kevin Rudd bless his cotton socks to power.

The ABCC to my knowledge to do much more. It had served its purpose. And once these loose coalitions have said their piece, it’s hard and “not worth it” to most of the members to start saying what they DON’T agree with – too much cost in co-ordinating, negotiating, reputation-managing for very little return. There are other ways to make their point, so these outfits tend to fold… 

Fun fact, the guy in charge of Westpac (big bank, and one of the signatories) at the time, David Morgan, is married to Ros Kelly, who was the third Australian was the the Australian Minister for the Environment back in 1990 when Australia made its first empty promise on emissions reductions. The Australian business elite have known about this issue for a very very long time.

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Australia

March 30, 2007 – Climate as “the great moral challenge of our generation” #auspol

On this day 15 years ago then-Opposition Leader Kevin “I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help” Rudd made a speech about “great moral challenge of our generation”  at the ALP climate summit at Parliament House, Canberra.

You can read more about this here, in a post by an incredibly intelligent, good-looking and kind individual who has given permission for linking. The conversation below the line is really really good…

Rudd was using the climate issue to make John Howard, Prime Minister and climate criminal since 1996, look outa touch. It was working, and kept working, all the way to the election. Australia cared about climate change.


Rudd then did fuck all as Prime Minister, using the climate issue to wedge the Liberals and Nationals, and then running scared after the failure of the Copenhagen conference and Tony Abbott’s arrival.

Labor folks still blame the Greens (for sake of clarity, I am not and never have been a member of ANY political party – Trot, Green Labour, Labor whatever). To admit that they chose and supported a wrong ‘un who has totally fucked Australian climate politics is just too much for them.

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Australia

March 14, 2007 – Top Australian bureaucrat admits “frankly bad” #climate and water policies

On this day in  2007, Senior Australian bureaucrat Ken Henry gave a private speech to his staff, pointing out that Australia’s climate policy was a complete mess. Laura Tingle for the Australian Financial Review. got hold of this and published it as a front page story on 4th April

2007 Tingle, L. 2007. Revealed: Treasury chief’s blast at government policy. The Australian Financial Review, 4 April, p.1.

The country’s most senior economic bureaucrat has delivered a scathing assessment of the federal government’s water and climate-change policies and warned his department to be vigilant against the “greater than usual risk of the development of policy proposals that are, frankly, bad” in the lead-up to the federal election.

In a speech to an internal Treasury forum, obtained by The Australian Financial Review, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry confirmed his department had little influence in the development of the government’s recent $10 billion water package, and expressed his regret that its advice both on water and climate change had not been followed in recent years.

The revelations came as the government was on the defensive yesterday about its failure to address climate change in its latest intergenerational report.

Dr Henry’s speech, in which he reviewed Treasury’s achievements and challenges, was given to an internal biannual departmental forum at Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel on March 14.

He noted that the department had “worked hard to develop frameworks for the consideration of water reform and climate-change policy”.

“All of us would wish that we had been listened to more attentively over the past several years in both of these areas. There is no doubt that policy outcomes would have been far superior had our views been more influential,” he said.

The context is that under Prime Minister Bob Hawke there had been some noises about doing something on climate. Under Keating that had been tossed aside thanks to a wildly successful set of campaigns co-ordinated by the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network Howard had been successful resistance on multiple occasions to any action whatsoever that wasn’t symbolic and shambolic. 

But Henry was probably specifically speaking about two efforts to get emissions trading schemes in Australia in 2000 and 2003. These were discussed in federal cabinet, and on both occasions, defeated on the second occasion, by Howard on his own

Why this matters. 

We need to know that there are people in the bureaucracy of the state with their eyes open who do not agree with what their political masters are doing. And they try to keep the policy streams alive (even if the policies are neoliberal tosh).

What happened next?

Howard lost the 2007 election. Kevin Rudd came in with all sorts of promises. And then, in 2010, revealed himself to be unwilling to stick his neck out in defence of climate action, i.e. call a double dissolution election.

And that betrayal has made people think of politicians as untrustworthy on climate, and the climate issue has been rendered incredibly toxic (to be clear – the toxification was more than just Rudd’s fault – it was a clear-eyed and cynical attempt to create a culture war).

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Australia Carbon Pricing

Feb 23, 2009 Penny Wong flubs the CSPR… The CPSR..  THE PCRS. Oh, hell. #auspol

On the day 23rd of February 2009, Australia’s climate minister, Senator Penny Wong – full disclosure, I knew her when we were both at Adelaide University – confused the policy that she was advocating the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

“Under pressure from the mounting criticisms about how the CPRS cancels out the benefits from individual emissions reductions, Wong responded on the ABC’s 7.30 Report on February 23 that individual reductions will allow the government to increase carbon targets in subsequent years. This prompted an incredulous response from Andrew Macintosh, associate director of the Australian National University Centre for Climate Law and Policy. “Either Wong doesn’t understand her own scheme or she is deliberately lying”, he wrote on Crikey.com.au on February 24.”

The context is this. The Howard Government, 1996 to 2007 had successfully resisted all calls to meaningful action and climate change and even meaningless stuff like an ETS, even from within its own cabinet. Kevin Rudd used this uselessness on climate change – or rather, this defence of fossil fuel interests, which is not useless to fossil fuel interests – as part of his branding, to become prime minister. And in 2008, a torturous, confused, complex, complicated and ultimately corrupted process to create a carbon pollution reduction scheme had unfolded. 2009 was to be the year when the legislation was pushed through and what Wong was doing was trying to sell it. But the CPRS was insanely complex and hard to explain. And I for one, taken with the idea of a very simple carbon tax which might be less “efficient”, but more effective and hard to game was the way forward. It was not to be… 

Why this matters 

Because when politicians make complicated proposals, they lose the public and the public thinks this is going to be unfair, there are going to be loopholes, the rich will get their way and the public is usually right. “And the policies are planned, which we won’t understand” as TV Smith sings…

What happened next 

The CPRS failed to get through first time in the middle of the year, as was expected, and then didn’t get through again in November, December. And therein lies a story….

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Australia Predatory delay

Feb 20, 2006 – Clive Hamilton names a “Dirty Dozen”

On this day in 2006 Australian academic Clive Hamilton gave a speech in an Australian country town called Adelaide. In it he named his “dirty dozen” of polluters who were preventing climate action. The list included South Australian Senator Nick Minchin, Prime Minister John Howard, journalists and business figures.

Hamilton was, at that time one of scandalously few academics trying to talk about we’re one of the few academics trying to talk about the capture of the Australian state by fossil interests. He had also co-edited a volume called “Silencing Dissent.” 

There was no comeback to his speech. Nobody sued.  

Why this matters

For a long time, from the early 90s through to the mid-2000s, climate change – and especially resistance to climate policy – was a very very niche area.  There really were not that many people trying to keep tabs on who was slowing down what, and how.

What happened next 

The Dirty Dozen continued to be dirty.  The moment of concern was hijacked and wasted. Australia has had an horrific time of it with climate policy, gridlock and mayhem. Carpe the diems.

Here’s an account

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/dirty-dozen-accused-over-fossil-fuels/2006/02/20/1140284009877.html

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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.