These two videos go a long way toward explaining why the Australian Labor Party won the 2007 election and lost in 2013. They show how Labor changed the way it framed climate change. In 2007 they correctly identified it as the most important issue of our time: By 2012 (when Labor were already in an …
Tag: Kevin Rudd
Aug 24 2013
Tony Abbott’s manipulation of public perception
Australia’s Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says in today’s newspaper: The problem with the Parliament at the moment is that almost nothing is ever said which isn’t basically crude political head-banging. Both sides are guilty but I think that as prime minister Gillard was particularly bad at it. Abbott’s hypocrisy is staggering. In reality, it is …
Aug 15 2013
Has Rudd joined the Liberal Party?
Eleven days into the Australian federal election campaign and I’m thoroughly sick of the non-debate so far. It seems the two major parties, Labor and the Liberal/National Coalition, agree on almost everything important. It’s no wonder the Greens have chosen the election slogan “standing up for what matters”. The list of Liberal-like policies adopted by …
Jul 16 2013
The greatest greenwash of our generation
Newly reinstated Australian Labor Party leader and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has today demonstrated yet again that he is the worst type of climate change denier: a skilled greenwasher. In 2007, Rudd rightly told the National Climate Change Summit: Climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation. Climate change is not just an …
Jul 14 2013
Rudd ignites carbon trading time bombs
I must be psychic. In March when the Australian Industry Group demanded the Australian government immediately move from its fixed carbon price to its planned future emissions trading scheme (ETS), I wrote that “I was very pleased to see the AIG proposal met with tripartisan categorical rejection” but “I remain[ed] vigilant, even pessimistic” because of …
Jun 27 2013
Rudd’s return: bad news for climate action?
I probably don’t need to tell Australian readers that Kevin Rudd has been reinstated as Prime Minister of Australia and leader of the Australian Labor Party, replacing Julia Gillard who succeeded him three years ago. I see Rudd’s return as a victory of appearance over substance, intuition over logic, personality over policy, treachery over teamwork, …
Mar 19 2013
The many faces of climate change denial
There is much debate in Australia, particularly in the political sphere, about who is a climate change denier. To answer that question, we first have to clarify what we mean by climate change denial. The book Climate Change Denial by Haydn Washington and John Cook helpfully distinguishes between several different stages of denial: literal, interpretative, …
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