18/11/2019

(AU) If You Can’t Talk About Climate When The Country Is Burning, When Can You?

The Guardian - *

Performance is at the heart of politics. That’s why Labor needs to seize this moment of crisis to push for climate action
‘The PM is expected to be there, touring around, being seen listening to briefings by the local emergency services chief, with a bit of looking at maps and so forth, and showing emotion.’ Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
In weeks like this one it becomes quite clear just how much of federal politics is performative. Politicians do things for no discernible reason other than to be seen to be doing something, or to put on a show that will elevate their profile or position.
Once the New South Wales and Queensland fires reached a critical level, politicians were always going to do all they could to be seen to be involved.
The problem is that during such a crisis there is very little for a prime minister to do. He actually has no role – the fire services are state based, and anything that will require federal coordination, whether it be Australian federal police or Australian Defence Force, does not really need the prime minister at all.
In reality, he just gets in the way.
But getting in the way is expected of prime ministers at such times.
When an emergency such as this occurs, the PM is expected to be there, touring around, being seen listening to briefings by the local emergency services chief, with a bit of looking at maps and so forth, and showing emotion.
Scott Morrison this week was not actually doing anything of note – and to be honest, neither was the ALP leader, Anthony Albanese, who also toured parts of NSW and received a briefing on the situation.
About the best the PM could have done this week was made sure the NSW fires services had the phone number of the ADF to contact and then to let them get on with their work.
But had he done that, the criticism of course would have been about where was he, why hadn’t he visited the scene, talked with emergency services and so on.
Back in 2011, Julia Gillard was accused by Tony Abbott and others for being too “wooden” when she visited the Queensland floods. It was all the usual sexist crud that was directed towards Gillard. She was regarded as not emotional enough compared to Anna Bligh, who was premier of Queensland at the time and had an actual role, whereas Gillard – like Morrison this week – really had nothing to do.
Gillard’s failure was not about action, it was about the performance. (And the reality that she could do no right – even when she later cried in parliament. Andrew Bolt wrote a column in which he was at pains to say that while he thought her tears were genuine, “it will seem calculated to some” because she needed to show that she was not wooden.)
Morrison, the man from marketing, sure as heck was not going to make the mistake of appearing too wooden – he is very much a politician in tune with the performative nature of the job. We saw this during the election campaign when he would “do things” that made the travelling press pack happy because it gave them something to report about.
He also knows how to make use of a crisis.
Does anyone remember the crisis of needles in strawberries? In reality the biggest concern was the risk of copycat acts due to the attention Morrison gave the contamination scare, but nevertheless he used the occasion to perform the role of the leader who was tough on crime.
He also used the occasion to rush through laws that were neither asked for nor needed, but which show that while we might dismiss the performative art of politics as a sideshow, politicians on their game will use it to push their agenda and get their way.
Our media system is driven by what Italian media academic Gianpietro Mazzoleni calls “spectacularisation” – the demand for the spectacle in our political news – and good politicians use it to their advantage.
And so Morrison brings in a lump of coal to parliament. Why? The performance – it annoys the left and it is a good spectacle.
The ALP this week has tried their best to not provide any spectacle. There was no fightback of any real note against the idiocy of Barnaby Joyce or Michael McCormack – a lot of “now is not the time”.
And that might seem the mature and sensible response, and yet with the spectacle and the performative aspect of politics comes the opportunity to sell your policy and push your agenda.
Australia is burning, and it is burning because of climate change. Scientists and fire chiefs know this – and they have been ignored by the government. That’s reason enough for the ALP to raise the issue with fervour.
This week the Swedish central bank sold off Australian government bonds because of our high emissions dependency. That won’t be the last time climate change has a major impact in international finance.
We all know it is coming, but the government chooses to ignore it and suggests we put off discussion for another time.
We should be talking about it now – no debate on climate change is going to hamper the ability of firefighters to do their job.
No firefighter is standing off to the side waiting for Albanese and Morrison to finish their debate so they can go off and put out a fire.
It might seem mature to wait for a more appropriate occasion to talk about climate change and bushfires, but politics is about capturing the moment. The conservative side of politics knows this, and uses it again and again on issues of national security and crime.
Conservatives want to wait, because they want to wait until a time when the public will be less invested, less angry and less attentive. Next month it will be Christmas holidays and the attention of voters will be gone.
Progressives too often cower and take the mature road and let opportunities go begging.
The performance and spectacle of politics might be annoying and distracting but it can’t be ignored. The ALP did not need to come out this week going over the top like Joyce and McCormack, but they need to use these occasions to capture the imagination of the public and push for action.
Because if you can’t bring yourself to talk about climate change while the country is burning, then you can’t blame voters for thinking it must not be that big of a deal, or just as bad, that the ALP doesn’t really care.

*Greg Jericho writes on economics for Guardian Australia

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