As bushfires ravaged Australia over the past weeks, journalists from around the world have started to tune in. A couple of weeks ago Guardian columnist George Monbiot took his turn, discussing not only our heatwaves, but our Opposition Leader’s response to climate change. Here is what he had to say:
“I wonder what Tony Abbott will say about the record heatwave now ravaging his county. The Australian opposition leader has repeatedly questioned the science and impacts of climate change.”
“So far Abbott has commented, as far as I can tell, only on the fires: “Our thoughts are with the people and the communities across the country who are impacted by the bushfires,” he says. Quite right too, but it’s time his thoughts also extended to the question of why this is happening and how Australian politicians should respond. He says he’s currently on standby with his local fire brigade, but his opposition to effective action on climate change is likely to contribute to even more extreme events in the future, this looks like the most cynical kind of stunt politics.”
This piece really made me take a step back. It’s not just that it’s an interesting critique on Abbott’s ongoing climate denial and the Coalition’s climate policies, but it’s also one that is clearly needed. It has filled a void that Australian journalism, which has refused to challenge Abbott or the Coalition on their climate denial, has left wide open.
Let’s take a look for example at the exact quotes that Monbiot points out. One of Tony Abbott’s most famous climate quotes is when he said on Lateline:
“the science is highly contentious, to say the least…If man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn’t there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph?”
It’s a pretty striking interview, and it’s not the only Abbott has questioned mainstream climate science (see the climate change is crap statement, and this quote from an event in Western Australia last year).
Despite this however, when looking back over his time as Opposition Leader, his climate denial has only really hit mainstream media consciousness a couple of times. There was the direct response to the climate change is crap statement, the time when a video surfaced of Abbott both denying climate change on breath and then advocating a carbon tax in the next (although the discussion here was more around the carbon tax quote than the climate denial quote), and when Julia Gillard took aim in Question Time in 2011 (although this ended up in a discussion over the word ‘denial’). Compare this to the amount of analysis over Julia Gillard’s ‘there will be no carbon tax under a Government I lead’ statement and you will see that time and time again Abbott gets a free ride.
At it’s not just Abbott, it’s the entire Coalition. For example, with Abbott on leave recently, Acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss filled the void, declaring that it was “too simplistic” to link climate change with the recent heatwaves. Despite the science which is now starting to show evidence that would challenge Truss directly on this view, very few in the media actively questioned his statements. It took an academic from the Australian National University, Phil Gibbons, to do some research on Truss’ other statement that the bushfires would result in more CO2 emissions than our coal power planets, finding that he was clearly wrong.
The same lack of scrutiny can also be said of the Coalition’s climate policies. For example, a study in June last year showed that if enacted, the Coalition’s climate policy would cost taxpayers $24 billion. Despite this however, no one could ever claim that the Coalition’s climate policies have received anywhere near the level of scrutiny it deserves.
I’m not saying that it is the job of journalists to go and find scientific papers and debunk every pseudo-scientific statement from every politician. In fact, given that it is not current policy, I even understand that the Coalition’s climate position may not get as much scrutiny as the Governments.
But, just once, we need journalists who can ask the questions – people who can ask where Tony Abbott gets his facts from, people who ask academics what the reality is, people who can probe to see whether the Coalition’s policy is going to work.
Climate change is the defining issue of this century. Given the impact it is and will have, we need journalism that will actually question what one of our major parties is saying and doing on the issue. Australian journalism has failed so badly though that we now have to rely on a British columnist to do the work for us.