11/12/2016

Australia, Welcome To Your New Climate Change Policy

Fairfax -  Jacqueline Maley

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson visited the Great Barrier Reef a fortnight ago, with two of her fellow senators – Malcolm "I respect the Jews" Roberts, a man whose climate change denial is so intricate you need a PhD to understand it; and poor Brian Burston, who didn't join his colleagues for a snorkel because they couldn't find a wetsuit to fit him.
It appears no invitation was extended to fellow One Nation senator Rod Culleton, who is enjoying his legal adventures far too much for his leader's liking. They left the limelight-hogger back down south.

Pauline Hanson's Great Barrier grief
ABC's 7.30 joins One Nation leader Pauline Hanson during a snorkelling tour of the Great Barrier Reef as the senator and her party attempt to disprove the effects of climate change. Vision courtesy ABC.

Finally the spotlight was back where it should be – on Hanson, who donned a wetsuit, inspected the coral in the waters off Great Keppel Island, and declared the reef ship-shape.
She could see no bleached coral, and the water, alleged by climate activists to be too hot, felt exactly as warm as it should.
One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson assesses some coral near Great Keppel Island. Photo: AAP
"We are being controlled by the UN and these agreements that have been done for people's self interest and where they are driving our nation as a sovereignty and the economics of the whole lot," Hanson told the gathered media.
Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
Australia, welcome to your new climate change policy.
This week has seen Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull take fright, yet again, at the right wing of his party, at the mere mention of a carbon pricing scheme.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had promised to review the Coalition's climate policies. Photo: Andrew Meares
Literally its mention.
And this mere mention wasn't a scare that crept up on anyone – Turnbull went to the election promising to review the Coalition's climate policies, and on Monday Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said a climate pricing scheme might be touched upon as being part of that review.
This is a review that might, as its most terrifying result, lead to a discussion paper.
Run for the hills!
"We are edging towards the land of the radical, where policy-making is as fantastical as a go-nowhere boat trip over a bleached-out coral reef."
Malcolm did, leaving his Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg exposed and alone on the wide open plains of reasonable policy-making processes.
Since rejecting the prospect a carbon pricing scheme even being considered, Turnbull has hidden behind the mantra that his government will do nothing to push up electricity prices.
Most experts say that pushing up electricity prices is precisely what the rejection of a carbon pricing system will ultimately do, but no matter.
This way the Prime Minister can play to the respectable retail politics of anxiety over living costs, but also give discreet cover to the climate change deniers, and hopefully staunch the votes many in the Coalition fear will bleed to One Nation at the next election.
Last week Turnbull riffed in Parliament about so-called post-truth politics, at the expense of the Labor opposition.
This week he averted his gaze from the advice of its own agencies, the business lobby and the science community, to insist that the best way to meet emissions targets is not through a carbon pricing scheme.
The Prime Minister is in danger of turning into Brian Burston – he won't quite climb into a wetsuit and get in the water with the climate change deniers, but he's certainly along for the ride.
Since the shock (to many but not all) result of the US presidential election, there has been much hand-wringing among the so-called elite media about whether Australia will catch the same virus.
People regularly cite Australia's economic strength and our egalitarianism as reasons why emotion-driven, fact-free and angry populism will not flourish here as it is flourishing in other Western democracies.
But research recently published by a University of Melbourne academic, Roberto Stefan Foa, and his former Harvard colleague Yascha Mounk, shows that our democratic consensus is fragile too.
The pair has been researching the attitudes of people in so-called "consolidated" democracies, to the conventions and institutions that comprise those democracies.
They have found a disturbing trend – over time, in all the liberal democracies including Australia, open-ness to the idea of military rule has grown, the number of people who think a democratic system is "bad" has grown, support for the concept of civil rights is less, and fewer people express an interest in politics. This trend is especially pronounced in young people, so-called Millennials.
In these conditions, populist politicians gain traction by appealing to emotion and bypassing fact altogether.
These politicians outrage the "elites", precisely because they don't adhere to the values of liberal democracy, which roll all the way back to the Enlightenment. They are playing "our" game but they won't accept the rules we wrote. They don't value rationalism over emotion. They don't abide by the norms so many of us thought (or hoped) were settled, and in this sense they are radical.
And when you have a Prime Minister who refuses facts as squarely as Turnbull did this week, despite being educated, intelligent and on record as knowing those facts better than most people, we are edging towards the land of the radical, where policy-making is as fantastical as a go-nowhere boat trip over a bleached-out coral reef.

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