Clive Hamilton for Higgins 2009

Useful links: Overview of the election coverage

2009-12-04T15:15:00.002+11:00

Below are links to some of the election coverage from the past two days and other useful bits and pieces. Hope you enjoy them as we get closer to voting time.

As the climate changes, Greens are the new black - Crikey
Bradfield and Higgins By-election Previews - Antony Green (ABC)
Greens underdogs for Higgins: Bob Brown - The Age
Why do climate deniers hold sway in Australia - The Guardian
Abbott the ante-economic rationalist - Clive Hamilton
A day that changed everything - Michelle Grattan (SMH)
A chance to transform environmental politics - Robert Manne (The Australian)
It's getting hot in here: climate change an issue in Higgins and Bradfield - Crikey
Strong interest from voters in Higgins by-election - ABC
Is Higgins still safe for the Liberals - ABC Melbourne
Higgins By-election results: the candidate on climate change - Australian Youth Climate Coalition
Chatter on Twitter
Map of polling places - Google Maps
Higgins electorate profile - ABC
Higgins electorate profile - Tallyroom
Higgins by-election page - AEC
How to vote - Greens website

Happy reading. See you out and about tomorrow in the electorate!

Jeremy
Campaign Volunteer

Abbott the ante-economic rationalist

2009-12-03T10:53:00.000+11:00

The assertion by Tony Abbott that the Opposition now rejects both emissions trading and a carbon tax takes its position back to before the 1980s when a concerted push by free-market economists and economic rationalists in Canberra persuaded all of the policy makers, and both major parties, that ‘economic instruments’ were far superior to regulation as a response to environmental problems.

Emissions trading and carbon taxes are the only available options for achieving substantial changes, and they do so through the price mechanism. The case for the use of economic instruments was based on one powerful fact: both economic theory and economic studies show over and over that they are the cheapest options.

So Abbott’s anti-market approach to climate policy means that whatever policy the Coalition comes up with it will cause more economic pain for a given climate gain, measured by impact on GDP and employment. Having said it will match the Rudd Government’s emission reduction targets, it is indisputable that more workers will lose their jobs under whatever plan the Coalition comes up with.

When John Howard was prime minister, Tony Abbott was regarded as being more right wing than his patron. It is now clear that he is so far to the right that he is willing to sacrifice all the principles of good economic management in pursuit of ideological goals.

Yawn: it's just a by-election

2009-11-23T21:51:00.001+11:00

“Never criticise the media.” It’s one of the cardinal rules of participation in public life. They’ll get you back, it is commonly believed. Yet sometimes the media so fail in their role that the rule has to be broken.

Media coverage of the Higgins by-election has been atrocious—to the extent that a vacuum can have that quality. The Age seems to have decided that the election is meaningless and should be ignored, although journalists were assigned to write about it. Perhaps Kelly O’Dwyer’s strategy of being the invisible candidate is working.

The Age’s opinion page takes the view that it is not the role of the newspaper to carry the opinions of those standing for office, a quaint view not shared by The Australian which seems interested in actually selling newspapers and will carry material that it believes its readers will want to read.

The national daily has devoted more space to Higgins than the Melbourne daily. Even the local paper, The Stonnington Leader, has failed to show any regard for its readers’ interest in who represents them in federal parliament.

All this is a pity because something interesting is happening in Higgins. Over the last three weeks, Greens door-knockers and leafleters have noticed that voters are increasingly engaged and sympathetic. Labor voters are cranky about the party’s decision not to run a candidate. And the venal goings-on in Canberra over the ETS provide the perfect backdrop to highlight the Greens climate message. So the spirits of Greens campaigners rise by the day.

If we do manage to pull off the unexpected, the newspapers will undoubtedly report that the Greens ran a highly effective, under-the-radar campaign. Of course, the radars they will be referring to will be their own.

The Coalition's War on Science

2009-11-20T11:20:00.000+11:00

The origins of the chaos in the Coalition parties over climate change go back at least two decades when conservatives in the United States and Australia identified environmentalism as a profound threat to their worldview.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the ‘green scare’ replaced the ‘red scare’ in the demonology of the right. The repudiation of climate science by Minchin, Joyce and the other deniers is rooted in a visceral hatred of environmentalism that has been largely suppressed in the face of widespread and deep public concern over environmental decline, but which is now spilling out in the most extraordinary way.

Why do they hate environmentalism? They hate the fact that (in Australia and the United States, but not elsewhere) the parties of the left own it. They loathe the fact that in the absence of government regulation the capitalist system destroys the natural world. It sickens them that environmentalism gives people a powerful reason to criticize business and primary producers, their natural constituencies. And above all, they can’t stand the culture of environmentalism, which they associate with smelly, feral, dole-bludging tree-huggers.

But here is the problem for them: environmentalism is driven by science, so they have to choose between accepting three centuries of modernism and modifying their ideology, or sticking to their old prejudices and rejecting science. At the deepest level, it is this choice that separates Malcolm Turnbull from the deniers.

The thing is, once you decide to repudiate the vast accumulation of scientific evidence you start operating in a different universe, the one populated by all of the political fanatics of history. The distinguishing feature of fanatics is the loss of judgment, and because they can no longer assess what is in their own interests (let alone that of Australia) the deniers in the Liberal and National parties are now willing to destroy their own parties. Tony Abbott, always a denialist but one who could see the insanity of trying to persuade the Australian public to reject science, has now forfeited his judgment too by casting his lot with the maddies.

The latest events show what we always knew: the concern of the conservative parties for environmental protection has always been fake, mere pandering to public sentiment. But now the ecophobes’ real beliefs have emerged. If they get their way we will all pay a huge price for their fanaticism.

Where was Kelly O'Dwyer?

2009-11-19T13:58:00.001+11:00

The Climate Change Forum at Glen Iris Uniting Church last night followed mostly predictable lines, including the absence of Kelly O’Dwyer, whose empty chair reminded all present that the Liberal candidate is adopting a small target strategy. She won’t attend events and refuses to talk to the media. One journalist told me that getting a comment from Kelly was like getting blood out of a stone. She’s the candidate who isn’t there.

In my view, it displays a lack of respect for your constituents when you refuse every opportunity to explain what you stand for. Still, who would want to try to explain the Liberal Party’s current stance on global warming? What a rabble they are; I almost feel sorry for Malcolm Turnbull.

After Minchin made his infamous remarks on Four Corners (you know, global warming is a communist plot), an Age journo managed to get Kelly to say she believes in climate change (hallelujah for that). I wonder what Hugh Morgan, the man who features so prominently as an endorser in her election pamphlet, would think about that. Morgan, of course, is the god-father of climate denial in Australia, responsible among other things for establishing the Lavoisier Group.