Labour

• Leading Australian economists Ross Garnaut and Rod Sims this week sought to shake up the carbon policy debate in Australia, by proposing a tax on the nation’s fossil fuel production.
• They claim it could raise A$100 billion in its first year and position Australia at the forefront of the low-carbon revolution.
• The proposal has been rejected by the federal government and the Nationals, as well as business groups and the fossil fuel industry.

How would the tax work?

• It involves a “carbon solutions levy” applied to all fossil fuel extraction sites in Australia (around 105 sites), and on all fossil fuel imports to Australia.
• The tax would presumably be calculated according to the emissions generated when the fuels are burned.
• Garnaut and Sims say proceeds in the first year of the levy would be well over A$100 billion.
• And as Garnaut also outlined in his speech, climate change threatens Australia’s economy, which remains heavily dependent on exporting fossil fuels.

Is the levy a good idea?

• The purpose of a carbon tax, or levy, is to ensure polluting companies pay for the damage they cause.
• In theory, the taxes make polluting production processes more expensive than the alternatives, reducing demand for those products.
• The world, including Australia, has committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
• After more than a decade of the so-called “climate wars” in Australia, the term “carbon tax” remains politically unpalatable.

The rest of the world got the memo

• Notably, from 2026 a European Union tariff on carbon-intensive imports will come into effect.
• The policy is designed to level the playing field for EU manufacturers that must pay a penalty for their own pollution.
• In coming years, we can expect other jurisdictions to implement similar policies to guard their domestic industries.
• And finally, imposing a carbon levy in Australia would ensure we get to keep the revenue for ourselves.

Will such a levy ever happen?

• But as the world comes to terms with the economic reality of climate change, Australia risks being left behind.
• As Garnaut told the ABC, everyone is a winner under the plan, except fossil fuel companies which, he conceded, “will hate it”.
• But climate change is wreaking havoc on human communities, on natural systems, and on the global economy.
• A carbon levy of the type proposed is an eminently sensible approach to get to net zero.

Ian A. MacKenzie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• For the Liberals, Morrison’s departure is a significant symbolic “moving on” moment.
• The Coalition Morrison is exiting is a mixed bunch, in terms of performance, illustrated by the first weeks of this year.
• The opposition could not have avoided being outfoxed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s bold reworking of the tax cuts.
• The Liberals used material from this week’s Senate estimates hearing to pound Immigration Minister Andrew Giles in the House of Representatives.
• Among the Nationals, their Senate leader, Bridget McKenzie, has proved very effective this term, notably on Qantas and Qatar Airways.
• Once hailed as a great “retail” politician, Joyce at the 2022 election was considered a retail negative in many Liberal seats.
• While he is in parliament, the Nationals will remain a tinderbox (even though they manage to hold their seats).

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings.
• The latest instalment, Nemesis, dealing with the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years, is the fourth of these series since the pioneering Labor in Power screened in 1993 chronicling the Hawke-Keating era.
• The Howard Years (2008) and The Killing Season (2015) followed examining respectively the Howard and Rudd-Gillard governments.
• By contrast, The Killing Season and Nemesis focus predominantly on the leadership wars that blighted Australian politics between 2007 and 2022.
• The most striking takeaway from Nemesis is that the Coalition’s decade in office from 2013 to 2022 was a time of abject irresponsibility.

The Abbott years

• It was a catalogue of swingeing cuts and broken promises (Abbott had pledged no cuts to health or education during the 2013 election campaign).
• The Abbott government never really recovered.
• Chastened by that result, Abbott then caused incredulity among colleagues by proclaiming that “good government begins today”.
• According to Turnbull, Abbott did not welcome the approach, telling him “to fuck off”.

The Turnbull years

• The public were relieved to see the back of Abbott and welcomed enthusiastically the ostensibly progressive Turnbull.
• Attorney-general in the government, George Brandis, refers to the Faustian bargain Turnbull had made to win the prime ministership.
• Dutton, the right-wing hard man who Turnbull scathingly describes as “a thug”, challenged for the leadership, losing relatively narrowly.
• A revelation about events during that febrile week is that Turnbull considered heading off his opponents by calling an election.
• The episode ends with Turnbull offering another pungent character assessment, this time of his successor: “duplicitous”.

The Morrison years

• It errs towards generosity to Morrison, not fully capturing why his leadership became a byword for inauthenticity, a prime minister whose obsession with the theatre of politics consistently trumped substance.
• The episode recalls many of the notorious statements made by Morrison, which by suggesting he was evading responsibility, was a bully or lacked empathy corroded his public image, especially among women voters.
• Asked about the comments, Morrison admits to poor choices of words.
• Nemesis shows that the COVID pandemic was both a blessing and curse for the Morrison government.
• Morrison then expended dwindling political capital by fruitlessly pursuing religious rights protections, causing ructions with Liberal moderates.
• We are left with the suspicion that once again Morrison is bending the truth.

A decade of banality and pettiness

• Participants in the documentary draw on classical allusions in making sense of the chaos.
• We are told, for instance, that the leadership feud between Abbott and Turnbull was Shakespearean.
• Yet what Nemesis exposes is the banality of these events and the pettiness of the actors.
• The post-Menzies Liberal triumvirate of Harold Holt, John Gorton and William McMahon were respectively overwhelmed by the office, reckless and pygmy like.

Paul Strangio received funding from the Australian Research Council in the past.

• The UK Labour party has announced its intention to reduce its £28 billion green investment pledge to less than £15 billion if elected this year.
• A crucial question so far overlooked is what impact the cut would have on public health.

Existing government failure

• Labour promises to deliver 1.5 million homes by “blitzing” the planning system, but it has so far ignored the potential consequences for public health.
• Of course, the failure to factor in health is by no means unique to Labour policy.
• A recent academic review of government housing and transport policy found that health is notably absent, despite well-established evidence that urban spaces are making us ill.
• For many years, government housing policy has been shaped by the numeric gap between supply and demand, rather than the type or quality of the housing stock.

Promising developments

• In addition to positive developments in government, such as the Build Back Beautiful Commission, the opposition also has some promising ambitions.
• The fact that the party is making explicit this link between housing and health signal is a potentially very positive step forward.
• However, in all the furore about Labour scrapping its £28 billion pledge, this crucial link to public health has been entirely forgotten.
• This is perhaps indicative of the extent to which policymakers just don’t think about health when they think about housing.

• This research comes from the TRUUD project, a research programme based at the University of Bristol, that aims to reduce non-communicable disease (such as cancers, diabetes, obesity, mental ill-health and respiratory illness) and health inequalities linked to the quality of urban planning and development for use in discussions with government and the developer industry.
• The TRUUD research project (https://truud.ac.uk/) is funded by the the UK Prevention Research Partnership (https://ukprp.org/).
• Geoff Bates receives funding as part of the TRUUD research project (https://truud.ac.uk/), which is funded by the the UK Prevention Research Partnership (https://ukprp.org/).