Gillard’s climate con senseless

Prime Minister Gillard’s new climate policy – a ‘watch this space’ approach built around the Citizens’ Assembly – has immediately framed her as a consensus-builder. Within minutes of her announcement she had the Greens’ Christine Milne and the Liberals’ Tony Abbott both trotting out the one-liner that there already is a representative assembly of 150 citizens and it’s called Parliament.

The recent history of citizen-based consensus and its use by Australian politicians does not bode well for this hokey climate initiative. In fact the Citizens’ Assembly can be positively flagged as a time-wasting placeholder.

Liberal environment and climate spokesperson Greg Hunt responded to the announcement, saying, “What we see today is a leader who last year demanded immediate action and no more inquiries.  Instead, we’ve got the mother of all committees, 150 people randomly selected from the phone book.”

The Coalition Government in 1999 ran a Consensus Conference. A wide variety of Australians, some with particular expertise and many with none, were brought together to inform government policy on a complex issue. It was a matter sure to affect trade, the environment, and everyday life. Such was the potential for complex impacts that citizens would have to be involved in crafting regulation – sound familiar?

The issue at the time was GMOs – Genetically Modified Organisms. The success of the conference ensured its doom. The Government was so thrilled by recommendations of strict environmental protection, high insurance fees to be paid by corporations, strong independent supervision of the industry and clear labelling of modified food products that the process was never repeated.

That is, of course, until Labor’s 2020 Summit. A broad discussion of Australia’s entire future direction was thrown open to a handpicked and not entirely representative group of 1002 of Australia’s best and brightest. The result was more light than heat, with the research budget for development of a bionic eyeball emerging as the only clear winner of the sandwich-fuelled talkfest.

Anna Rose helped build the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC). In 2008 she attended 2020 and found herself “in the climate stream with representatives of coal mining companies including Xstrata and Shell, yet not a single person from an environment Non-Government Organisation.” Of the public interest groups who had been key in making climate a 2007 election issue, not one – Friends of the Earth, Australian Conservation Foundation, or Climate Action Network – was present to refute coalminers discussing climate policy.

Ellen Sandell is the current General Manager at AYCC. Responding to Julia Gillard’s public policy thought bubble, Sandell said, “I don’t believe we need a citizens assembly to tell us what the majority of Australians have been telling the Government for years: we need action on climate change, and that starts with putting a price on pollution.”

The most comprehensive dismissal of the Prime Minister’s climate band-aid came from Greens’ climate spokesperson, Christine Milne. Gillard announced that coalfired power plants yet to be approved would require retro-fitting once carbon capture technology exists. However, according to Milne, the UK recently recognized this approach as meaningless and have instead “committed to building no more coal fired power stations unless and until carbon capture is proven and adopted.”

 So too, she identified the $2000 rebate on offer to get old cars of the road as money directed away from funding of solar deployment.

 Even China joined in, announcing on the same day that they would be introducing an emissions trading scheme of their own within 5 years.

Anthony Albanese is the former Labor Party environment spokesperson and current Member for Grayndler – a Sydney seat showing increased Green possibilities ‘moving forward’. His office was contacted for comment on the fact that citizen’s consensus seems to be what the government seeks when it really is seeking to do nothing. His spokesperson held out the prospect of a reply at a future date, saying only, “I think we know our demographics pretty well.”