15/03/2022

(AU ABC) Floods, War & Climate Change

ABC Media Watch - Paul Barry

News Corp commentors outdo themselves to blame ‘militant greens’ and ‘climate change warriors’ for the deadly Australian floods and war in Europe.

Transcript

ALICE HOGG: Lismore knows floods, but this is more devastating than ever. Young, old and furry, they're all being desperately ferried to safety. But with almost a thousand calls for assistance in 24 hours, people need help quicker than it can arrive.
WOMAN: The water's still rising, my dog is stuck inside my house and it's an emergency.
- Ten News First (Sydney), 28 February, 2022

Hello, I’m Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch. 

And in 2020 it was bushfires like we’d never seen before. In 2022 it is floods, among the worst in living memory — 22 people have lost their lives and many have lost everything they owned. 

Meanwhile, rubbish is piled up on the streets, thousands have no shelter and the damage bill will be counted in billions.  

So, just how bad was the disaster? The media were playing pick a number:

LEAH WHITE: … this flood is now set to be the worst flood in 50 years in Lismore.
- News Breakfast, ABC, 28 February, 2022

LOCAL RESIDENT: This is probably that one-in-100-year flood we’ve been warned about …
- News Breakfast, ABC, 2 March, 2022

SCOTT MORRISON: I’m advised it’s a one-in-500-year flood …
- ABC News Channel, 9 March, 2022

DOMINIC PERROTTET: This is a one-in-a-1000-year event, this event is unprecedented.
- Ten News First (Sydney), 1 March, 2022

BARNABY JOYCE: … this is a one-in-3,500-year event …
- Sunrise, Seven Network, 7 March, 2022

Yes, nearly back to Noah’s Ark. 

And in the last two weeks the news here has been full of dramatic rescues. But also of mounting anger that state and local governments and the army have not done more:

WOMAN: We need emergency housing now. Where are the mobile homes? We need them now. There are people not able to shower, there are people not able to go home, their homes are gone. Where is the New South Wales Planning Minister? This is a planning disaster!
- A Current Affair, Nine Network, 9 March, 2022

So, when the Prime Minister — who was in COVID isolation for a week — made it to Lismore last Wednesday he knew he’d be in for a rough time. 

Which is no doubt one reason why the media was not invited to tag along on his chats to locals.

The PM’s explanation later was: 

SCOTT MORRISON: … in disasters like this not everybody wants a camera shoved in their face while they’re trying to share their heart with you.
- Nine News (Sydney), 9 March, 2022

But with emotions running high, the PM was also, no doubt, trying to avoid a repeat of his unfortunate attempts to press the flesh in the 2020 bushfires:

WOMAN: I’m only shaking your hand if you give more funding to our RFS.
MAN: I don’t really want to shake your hand.
SCOTT MORRISON: Oh well, it’s nice to see you.
MAN: You won’t be getting any votes down here, buddy! You’re an idiot! You’re out, son! You are out!
MAN: Go on, get to Kirribilli! We might burn that down!
MAN: Ya scumbag!
MAN: ScuMo!
- Nine News, 2 January, 2020

So, did the PM’s ploy work? Not really.

The commercial bulletins that night re-ran the bushfire footage anyway and bookended it with the PM’s press conference — which he couldn’t avoid — where he faced a barrage of hostile questions on the community’s behalf: 

JOURNALIST: … they feel like they've been abandoned by government — state government, federal government. Do you understand why they feel that way?
JOURNALIST: … do you believe that the federal government owes the people of Lismore an apology for the response?
JOURNALIST: Where are people going to live? So we’ve got thousands of people, most of whom do not have flood insurance. They’re saying $1,000 barely gets them a bed back.
- ABC News Channel, 9 March, 2022

Inevitably, the PM was also asked whether climate change was making these disasters worse or, as the latest report from the IPCC last month found, more frequent, intense and extreme. 

And, for once, he did not try to dodge the question: 

SCOTT MORRISON: Obviously climate change is having an impact here in Australia, as it is in every country around the world.
- ABC News Channel, 9 March, 2022

And in case it wasn’t clear what he meant, Mr Morrison explained:

SCOTT MORRISON: … we are dealing with a different climate to the one we were dealing with before, I think that's just an obvious fact. And Australia is getting hard to live in because of these disasters.
- ABC News Channel, 9 March, 2022

So, was his blunt acceptance of the risks of climate change welcomed by the apologists at News Corp, who supposedly saw the light last year with this announcement?

CLIMATE OF CHANGE
MISSIONZERO
- The Courier-Mail, 11 October, 2021

Sadly not. As south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales drowned in mud, The Australian’s Chris Kenny had told readers: 

CHRIS KENNY:… they are not new; floods, droughts, fires, heatwaves and storms have always been with us and always will be, especially in this land of droughts and flooding rains.
- The Australian, 4 March, 2022

And after the PM’s press conference five days later, Kenny was saying it again on Sky:

CHRIS KENNY: … this isn’t new. We’ve always had them. We will always have them.
- The Kenny Report, Sky News Australia, 9 March, 2022

And regular commentator Liz Storer — who’s on a mission to stamp out “militant climate activism” — was loudly in agreement: 

LIZ STORER: … every time we act like these floods, these fires are new, Chris. They’ve always been synonymous with living in Australia.… this is nothing new for Australia, factually, it’s nothing new.
CHRIS KENNY: Certainly is not. I’ll grant it that at Lismore they say it’s a record flood since European settlement, that’s, that was a record. But you’re always going to get some records generally …
- The Kenny Report, Sky News Australia, 9 March, 2022

Yes, they’re only records after all. Which means they are the worst floods ever in Lismore.

Meanwhile, on the same channel 90 minutes later, Andrew Bolt was also busy dissing the link:

ANDREW BOLT: … let me now go back to this claim that we now read everywhere — this, you know, this incredible rain, these record floods, obviously caused by global warming …
So, what is the truth? Has global warming actually made these floods worse …?
- The Bolt Report, Sky News Australia, 9 March, 2022

Answer no, according to Bolt and his guest William Kininmonth, a long-time climate sceptic.

And other Sky News hosts and guests had also been denying the connection between climate change and extreme weather events, just as they did when the bushfires struck two years ago:

CHRIS SMITH: Well now we’ve got the climate change warriors using these disasters to blame a warming planet and CO2 emissions. Horrible timing. And yet the greenest of scientists maintain you simply cannot link climate change to individual disasters.
- Credlin, Sky News Australia, 4 March, 2022 

PAULINE HANSON: We’ve always had this, these bushfires, we’ve always had flooding and to blame it on climate change, CO2, Nicholas, is a load of bloody BS.
MATT CANAVAN: … every time there’s a natural disaster we then link it back to climate change …We just link one thing with another without any kind of logical framework or proper science …
- Paul Murray Live, Sky News Australia, 7 March, 2022

But some Sky hosts went even further than that. Saying climate change was not to blame for the floods. But climate activists were:

GARY HARDGRAVE: … we’re suffering these floods, all up and down the east coast, not because of climate change — even though the Queensland Premier has said ‘it’s climate change you know’ — it’s actually because of deliberate green inertia. … and it's all because of these militant greens …
- Hardgrave, Sky News Australia, 4 March, 2022

Who, says Gary Hardgrave, have stopped Australia building dams for flood control. 

And in News Corp’s Courier-Mail, another Sky pundit was echoing that claim: 

If ever we needed proof that Labor-Greens lunacy is hurting Australia, take a look at the South East Queensland floods.
- The Courier-Mail, 2 March, 2022

But on Sky’s Outsiders, Rowan Dean was going even further than that, claiming it’s not just the floods you can blame on climate activists, it’s the war in Ukraine as well:

ROWAN DEAN: If you destroy your cheap, affordable energy, you’re not only disarm yourself, you invite aggression from those who have not destroyed their own energy supplies.
- Outsiders, Sky News Australia, 27 February, 2022

And on yesterday’s Outsiders, co-host James Morrow dialled it up to 11:

JAMES MORROW: … the West has deliberately weakened itself with green ideology for the past 20, 30 years since the Cold War and, you know, you have to say that the Greta Thunbergs of the world are just as responsible for this conflict as anybody else.
ROWAN DEAN: Well, I think more responsible …
- Outsiders, Sky News Australia, 13 March, 2022

And in the News Corp papers, others like Andrew Bolt were making similar accusations: 

Here come the vultures again. Green journalists are exploiting these floods to push the global warming scam that makes us so weak – and Russia and China strong.
- Herald Sun, 3 March, 2022

As was Matt Canavan in The Australian:

This deluded agenda, championed by a Swedish teenager, has weakened the industrial strength of the free world, and that has only encouraged bullies like Putin.
- The Australian, 9 March, 2022

And Miranda Devine in the Daily Tele:

No wonder Putin regards the West as so decadent and weak that he could stroll into Ukraine with impunity.
- The Daily Telegraph, 8 March, 2022

It is amazing, isn’t it?

Whether it’s floods, bushfires, invasions or war crimes, this mob can spin anything into a culture war.

There may well be some truth in what they say: Australia is a land of fire and flood, building more dams might help in flood control, and reliance on Russian gas has made it harder for Europe to punish Putin’s aggression.

But to blame floods and war on those who want to reduce global warming is not just ridiculous, it’s a cynical perversion of the truth. 

And not for the first time.

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