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Malcolm’s ministers cling to the old regime
Volume 30 #16
September 30, 2015
Paris gives hope In just two months’ time 20,000 people will descend on Le Bourget, Paris, to determine our future. The French government is preparing for 10,000 official delegates, 7,000 observers and 3,000 media representatives. No doubt the Paris police force is preparing a reception for thousands of uninvited attendees as well. Such gatherings have been held before under United Nations auspices – about twenty times before. Their purpose is to limit greenhouse gas emissions so that the world does not heat up to a catastrophic degree. In Kyoto eighteen years ago, the catastrophe level was set at two degrees above pre-industrial global temperatures. In Doha three years ago, the meeting closed with the admission that the two-degree limit seemed unachievable. There was an ever-increasing gap between what countries were doing, or not doing, about global warming and what the science said was needed. Paris is our last-chance scenario. Have the leaders of the world taken on what scientists are saying, or are they still listening to fossil-fuel lobbyists and religious freaks? There are some encouraging signs this time round. President Obama has managed to get some emission curbs through obstructive politicians by representing them as health initiatives rather than global-warming measures. Shell announced this week that it is suspending oil exploration in the Arctic. In June, the Pope published an encyclical calling for swift and unified action against environmental degradation and global warming. Closer to home, the fall of Tony Abbott opens up the possibility of decisions based on science rather than political self-interest. Already Maurice Newman, one of Abbott’s ring of denialists, has been quietly sidelined by Malcolm Turnbull. Newman believes climate change is a UN conspiracy and has accused the Australian weather bureau of falsifying data. There remain many more shills and liars in influential places but they may no longer have the ear of the government. Australia’s ludicrous ‘direct action’ approach to reducing emissions remains in place for the time being owing to the strength of the insane elements in the Liberal Party. It will, rightly, be derided in Paris, but if the talks conclude with a serious plan of action, the prime minister will have the trigger to revisit our targets. He will also have the Australian people behind him. David Lovejoy
The Byron Shire Echo
old guard are quite happy to either return to the water, or at best stay as amphibians. Those who have retained their old portfolios are the most stubborn. Some simply see no need for change: they are doing pretty well in their previous jobs. This applies particularly to the foreign minister Julie Bishop, the finance minister Matthias Corman and the trade minister, Andrew Robb; for them it will be business as usual. In immigration and border protection, Peter Dutton insists that nothing will vary, not a tittle – one tittle being the United Nations Commission on Human
the policies for which he has assumed responsibility. True, there is a new slogan: Jobs and Growth has been replaced by Work, Save, Invest. But what that actually means remains a mystery. Australians already do affair bit of working, saving and investing; presumably the message is that we just have to do more. Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse. And when it comes to the government, not even the wording has changed; it is pre Abbott-ese: Australia has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
It appears that many of Turnbull’s ministers are seriously reluctant to embrace the future. by Mungo MacCallum Rights, which will be welcome to come to Australia to enquire about Dutton’s regime, but if they ask anyone about it the respondents may be put in jail. Unsurprisingly, this gracious invitation has been declined. The attorney-general George Brandis is still wallowing in the swamp, attempting to make sense of the morass he has devised to restrict civil liberties. In environment, Greg Hunt may be prepared to wriggle: it just could be that if circumstances develop, Australia’s target of 26 to 28 per cent of emission reductions by 2030 could be increased – but not now, not yet. And in health, Sussan Ley was already mobile, and may well pick up the pace. But the most important and disturbing signs come from the treasurer, Scott Morrison. Morrison may have switched portfolios, but not
As every rational economic commentator has pointed out, Australia has both, and any attempt to fix one while dismissing the other is bound to fail. And this encapsulates the real worry about Morrison: he wants to reduce complex issues to simplistic terms. This, apparently, is his idea of engaging in a conversation with the Australian people: to reduce everything to concepts so basic that there is no real room for discussion, let alone argument and debate. It worked, more or less, in his previous career. His first job was in property policy, and then he moved to tourism, where he oversaw the ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ campaign, a dubious result. He is a member of the happy-clappy Hillsong Church, in which the main religion is show-biz, uninterested in the finer points of dogma.
As immigration minister, it was all about the slogan: Stop the Boats, at all costs, and never mind considerations of law, humanity or transparency. Even within social security, a more serious portfolio, Morrison was relentlessly focused on clear and easily understood outcomes – indeed, he boasted about his direct approach. But the Treasury is not like that; the economic issues facing the country are complex and nuanced. They cannot, or at least should not, be dumbed down into a couple of words suitable for focus groups, to be repeated endlessly until any vestige of sense has been beaten out of them. Turnbull has staked his claim to be prime minister on the need to explain the economy seriously and sensibly: to have his treasurer parroting the same old discredited lines of the previous administration is not a good start. The new leader himself continues to inspire hope and confidence: his big number on domestic violence has been very well received, and his speech at the inauguration of the memorial for war correspondents was masterful. To invoke the practitioners from Thucydides to Peter Greste was a reminder of how leaden Abbott has been on similar occasions. But those were the easy bits – unthreatening and uncontroversial. If Abbott and Shorten are to be proved wrong, and there is real sausage on the sizzle, some hard decisions cannot be avoided. And above all, it will be the economy, stupid. Turnbull will be desperately hoping that his treasurer can get up to speed, and soon. If Sco-Mo morphs into Slow-Mo, the great leap forward will quickly fall back into the primordial mire.
“I never want to have to cross the street to avoid you.”
Established 1986 General Manager Simon Haslam Editor Hans Lovejoy Photographer Jeff Dawson Advertising Manager Angela Cornell Production Manager Ziggi Browning
A
s the political theatre goes, it can’t get much more absurd than this: Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten have joined up in a unity ticket. Both are convinced that nothing much will change after the ascension of Malcolm Turnbull: the rhetoric may be slicker, but the politics will linger on. And both Abbott and Shorten agree on something else: this will be a good thing for each of them. Abbott sees it in terms of self-justification: obviously just about everything he did in the last two years was spot on, so his successor will inevitably pursue the same formula to the next election and succeed, for which Abbott can take the lion’s share of credit. Shorten takes the contrary view: the Abbott legacy was toxic, but Turnbull either won’t or can’t change it: the conservatives in the party room will hold him to the path which must lead to their electoral doom and the two Liberal leaders will share the obloquy. The majority of the public, of course, hopes that this is a self-fulfilling fantasy from both Abbott and Shorten; after all, the whole point of the exercise was to clear away the old dysfunction and make way for something – anything – more palatable. But it may be harder to achieve than it seemed at first, and it appears that many of Turnbull’s ministers are seriously reluctant to embrace the future. Like creatures emerging from the depths to take their first tentative steps on dry land, they have emerged confused and blinking in the fresh air, unsure what they should do next. Some of the newer, younger, brigade seem ready and even eager to evolve, but many of the
Nicholas Shand 1948–1996 Founding Editor
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8 September 30, 2015 The Byron Shire Echo
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