Australia’s refugee problem has attracted global attention. This from the New York Times.
Is Rudd truly serious on climate change?
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Is the Prime Minister’s Office serious about addressing climate change? Is it even serious about getting an emissions trading scheme through the Senate? Its handling of the release of the Green Paper suggests its focus is on politics, first and last. This morning from 9.30 there’ll be two separate lock-up style briefings on the Green Paper, held at the swish new Hotel Realm near Parliament House, and just across the road from the Press Club. One is for select media (mainstream only — Crikey and other non-mainstream media weren’t informed about it), the other for industry stakeholders and environment groups. The Coalition, the Greens and the independent senators were not invited to either. It’s usual in Budget lock-ups for other parties to get access. Apart from anything else, it’s a simple courtesy to one’s political opponents to allow them to respond in real time to a massive document. Not with the Green Paper. The Greens didn’t even know there was a lock-up until told by journalists. They, and the Opposition, immediately demanded a briefing on the Paper. Nelson’s office sent two letters to the PMO, and essentially was told to get stuffed. After considerable toing and froing, the Government eventually agreed to a half-hour briefing at 11.30am today.
I said back in February when Ross Garnaut released his interim report that if Kevin Rudd was serious about a bipartisan approach to climate change and maximising his chances of achieving a workable emissions trading scheme, he should engage Brendan Nelson as much as possible. This probably wouldn’t have stopped the Coalition running a scare campaign on an ETS, but at least Rudd would’ve made the effort, and adopted the high moral ground. Judging by the management of the Green Paper’s release, bipartisanship is the last thing on the Government’s mind. It has carefully released key details of the scheme overnight, guaranteeing it headlines about offsetting petrol price increases. Other parties have had to scramble to respond. Given Wong’s release at lunchtime, without a briefing for the Opposition and Greens, the Government would’ve had clear media space for most of the day. And the stakeholder lock-up briefing runs until 12.15pm, ensuring environment and industry groups can’t get out and offer comment before Wong starts her Press Club address. It’s cynical stuff, and suggests the PMO regards climate change as just another issue to play politics with. According to Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt, there’s been no attempt by the Government behind the scenes to engage the Opposition on the ETS issue. But as the Greens note, even if the Prime Minister’s staff don’t especially care about climate change as a serious, rather than political, issue, you’d think they’d care about getting it through the Senate. The Government needs either the Coalition or the Greens and the independents to pass the ETS. Simple political nous might suggest the Government would be making an effort to engage the Greens and the independent senators even if they want to play hardball with the Coalition. Instead it’s media spin and politicking. This issue deserves far better. |
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16 Comments
How can anyone engage Brendan and his cohorts when at the first opportunity they shafted Rudd with their silly petrol scare. The liberals NEVER talk about the effects of the do nothing option. The reason for this is the Liberal power brokers are all denialists. People who understand the science and the potential effects of global warming are much more frightened of this than higher petrol costs. The denialists and skeptics say they “won’t be around if/when it happens”, but their kids will. I wonder whether they will thank them for their poor judgement?
“On one side, there were gays that started producing homosexual movies that villified the outback heterosexuals, while championing Keating as their icon of alternative masculinities. On the other side, the outback responded to the villification by supporting the One Nation party.
Keating’s decision to get divorced after losing office, and his lifestyle since divorce, offers food for thought on why he was driven away from the traditional forms of Australian masculinity, and why he set the wheels in motion for alternative lifestyles”
From: http://www.convictcreations.com/history/primemine.htm
I don’t think he lives with his son Dave and it’s not much of a secret.
For what it’s worth I thought he was a brilliant leader. I am still a ‘fan’
…and I thought I was cynical! On the apparent reluctance of the government to engage the opposition, Greens and independents in bipartisanship over the Rudd/Wong Green Paper and a future ETS: perhaps the issue will provide a useful trigger for a double dissolution if passage of the resulting bill fails in the senate. The ALP can then claim that the Greens and opposition are obstructionist and cannot be trusted with bargaining power over crucial policy, and that Labor is the only party that can handle the big environmental issues. Furthermore, the government could campaign for another election on the issue of climate change but without having introduced any tough laws or an ETS, which right now appears to be a pretty big liability leading up to a poll, particularly when there is no bipartisan agreement or compact.
Now sure, it’s a given that the Liberals are compelled by populism but the Greens? It’s hard to see why Labor would be intent on freezing out prospective senate partners and antagonising them by entertaining ‘select media’ and industry stakeholders while keeping non-Labor MPs in the dark.
Guys - if you want to say something persuasive about climate effects, why bog yourselves down in this hissy-fit cat fight? And Marilyn, this 1980s feminist spleen is, well, passe. Above all, measures to deal with climate change require a national approach; our PM needs to insist on leading a national movement - an approach that lies well above the daily spin cycle of the PM’s office machine.
Hugh Mackay, more reliably informed about Australians’ attitudes and beliefs on big issues than any politician I’ve observed, gave the PM the green light some days ago to take a statesman-like lead on strategic and painful climate measures - saying Australians are ready to takes the hits to deal with climate.
The issue is wheteher the PM has the personal imagination and bottle to grab this chance. Or are we faced with a pale shadow of the rather more imaginative Whitlam government, brought down in this case by lack of vison reaching even to the head?
Kevin Rudd & Co is going to meet with most of the top 1000 polluters in this country to work out a deal.
Well lets make sure that there are transparent declaration of donations to the Labour party from each of the top 10000 polluters.
What a joke is this policy but it guarantees unlimited funds to the labour party
Swaggie
Tom,I agree that political funding is the crux of of any well founded criticism of modern democracies.
However, a tip for the weary wise: Christine Milne, if she actually wanted to be believed or if she truly wanted this country to follow her advice, would mean that we are fools or that the majority of us are barking mad. If the Greens are to progress as they should as a political force then they need to start talking sense on all major issues not just a few. And Tom…they don’t.
To which, all of this, I do need to add from my beady eyed community media desk - Is the 7.30 Report serious about climate change interviews with PM Rudd?
Ali Moore is no business slouch, and no slouch generally - witness the Kerry Obrien-esque opener to Cardinel Pell earlier this week along the lines of ‘have you stopped beating the victims of se*ual abuse yet?’ Took her a while but the hammer was in there.
But then we get what is oh so apparently ‘nice and tricky’ PM Rudd last night. Hello …$500M carbon capture sequestration fund, corporate welfare, Kohler piece Inside Business last Sunday re effective CCS repudiation by Exxon Mobil Australia chief Mark Nolan, World Today piece earlier the same day with scathing critique of Prof Mark Diesendorf about discrimination to renewables.
Nary a mention to Rudd by Ali of this real bodgy, real fraud on the public interest, the real pandering to Big Coal Big Polluters, indeed Big NSW Privatisation???
PM Rudd is indeed seen with his ‘nice’ glow still, and his smarts are respected. But both of these are very small steps from morphing into his generational doppleganger - John Howard - famous in 2001 for the Shane Stone descriptor as (not ‘nice and smart’ but ) ‘mean and tricky’.
That’s the point of the Van Onselen piece about hard swearing loud mouth Rudd in private. He’s mean, not nice. He’s cunning not smart. That was the subtext of the Rudd I saw on tv last night - a John Howard style smart arse - and Ali Moore dropped the ball for the sake of reflected glory of a high status interview. But good one on Pell all the same.
Keep going Senator Milne - a breath of honest intellect, more than I can say for the PM.
Another curious big media disjunct - John Conner of ALP seed funded Climate Institute (thankyou Bob Carr!) saying how “good”, “good” and “good” the Green Paper was on various cherry picked items as reported on the PM programme last night as per their 16/7/08 transcript, but on the TV news last night, or was it 7.30 a tiny grab about how it’s ‘not good’ on some other aspect.
Why not just put a ALP brand on his forehead and be done with it? Christine Milne and the Green Party or Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society or other financially independent groups are, and have always been, the ones to really listen to on public policy around environmental sustainability and resource use. Every time.
Any group or body that doesn’t declare it’s funding sources like the right wing think tanks is just as suspect, because they are obviously hiding their biases.
Certainly If the coalition was still in power absolutely nothing would have been achieved. But don’t you see Marilyn, it was Kevin Rudd who let the genie out of the bottle, something he should never have done unless he was prepared to attack the problem. With the small amount of information available thus far, it appears to be a paper that attempts to be all things to all men. Naturally, it will end up being nothing for no man. Bernard surprises me in as much as he seemed to hoped for something better. I can’t understand why. Kevin Rudd is Neville Chamberlain re-incarnated. ETS and environmental wisdom in our time? Oh yeah. What’s the difference between Kevin Rudd, The Americans and Babies? None, they all want to be loved.
Knowing that the Senate was not going to pass the Bill; he should at least, have produced a document that was inspirational. A ‘this is how we could do it, if only the Bast*rds in the Senate would allow it.’ He could have gone for broke and made the senators look fuddy duddy and reactionary.
Andrew, worse luck, has it right. (Andrew, this should comfort you: I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Labor (without a ‘U’
voter who is busy retching on her cheese and Chardonnay.) Rudd is re-known for his ambition but what good is that if you haven’t got the ba*ls to enforce it.
I am confident that under his leadership the following will have taken place:-
1. The Murray Darling rivers will be dead.
2. The environment will be totally stu*fed.
3. All forms of contraception will be outlawed.
4. The Republic will be proscribed.
5. Atheism will be knackered.
6. All forms of criticism of the government will be made illegal.
7. Books, movies and all forms of creativity will be torched.
8. Art Galleries, under pain of death, will show only depictions of cardboard boxes. Tree trunks can be positively sensual. No depictions of nudity will be allowed. All forms of good taste will be frowned upon. Gladioli flowers will be on everyones’ mantle-piece. Cold showers will be mandatory, the number of AFL and other clean sports teams will have quadrupled and TV will allow no swearing. “Kimilsungism” will be re-crafted in order to adulate Kevin Rudd. And Australians will welcome Kim’s son, Kim Jong-il every year by multitudes of grateful Ozzies, their hearts swelling with joy, as they chant the ‘Song of the pig’, oi oi oi!
Rudd makes me feel nostalgic for Keating. I prefer my Labor leaders to have balls.
interesting
Well you learn something every day, don’t you. I’m leaving it in the ‘rumour’ category personally, but a quick Google check does confirm it’s a more widely spread rumour than I’d previously been aware.
As for combat zone Marilyn I find cutting down on the jungle juice and caffiene, a light walk in the morning do wonders for the objectivity there comrade. I was just wondering ‘are you, or have you ever been’ a member of the ALP sinecur-ocracy? No worries, god knows there thick on the ground here in NSW, bloated balloons bouncing down every public policy street metaphorically speaking, but you might need a little declaration of interest in your words as bullets too.
JamesK, do you know something we don’t or are you just mischeviously digging up the old rumour about PJK that was entirely based around his being seen having lunch with a handsome young man - who turned out to be his son?
How on god’s earth did feminism get into this debate? I think men and women breathe the same air don’t they? Certainly the men and women journalists were just as dopey as each other.
Yeah Row, who would have thought a bisexual politically left party leader would have been the only real man in australian political leadership in the last 15 years?