Tony Abbott and the politics of denialism
December 9th, 2009 by Mark Bahnisch | Published in Climate change, Howardia, Politics | 60 Comments
Tony Abbott appears to have taken that gospel saying about being “cunning as a serpent” to heart, if not the bit about being “gentle as a dove”. The problem with the media cycle these days for the political obfuscator is that it’s harder to say one thing to one audience and one to another – always one of the great political standbys. You can, however, get away with it, given that few people are paying attention to anything but the soundbites targeted at them – you know, the spin Abbott and co are always accusing Kevin Rudd of.
In comments on another thread, Sir Henry Casingbroke has a great summation of the new Liberal leader’s appearance on Lateline tonight, and his political tactics. The ‘base’ he appears to be aiming at is the ‘battlers’ – it’s a defensive strategy to stop further Labor gains in outer suburban and regional seats. How that will be squared with the resurrection rebadging of WorkChoices remains to be seen.
But there’s another aspect to Abbott’s strategy – one I alluded to in my Overland post (also discussed here). Ironically, opposing market solutions (albeit with something completely illusory) might, in Abbott’s mind, work wonders for the parties of the right. The denialist dog whistling and the claims that ‘warming has stopped’ are just the ideological icing on the cake:
So business as usual is popular, with the odd twist that it’s now the political right who oppose market solutions. But Tony Abbott may be onto something; he’s playing to the politics of a vague desire that ‘something be done’. Install a solar panel, and forget about it – the state will sort it out. It won’t happen, but it has an appeal above and beyond market solutions which by necessity create winners and losers, and precisely the uncertainty and fear that most would rather wish away.
The federal Liberals are sounding and thinking a lot more like the Nats than a week ago…
People will assume that any intention on IR policy by the Liberal Party will always be about Workchoices, so intimately they were identified with it before the election. They won’t get the benefit of the doubt.
Likewise with CC if the Govt reinforces the reality that most of Abbott’s supporters deny there is CC and that Abbott himself has called it crap, and then asks what would be the ultimate purpose of any plan they devised to ‘deal’ with it.
And of course the more than try to undermine the reality of GW and action the more the international story and action steps up.
Last decade warmest on record
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/09/2765726.htm?section=justin
It is not a good look by Abbott, taking a position that is opposite to world momentum just makes him look like a ignorant fool.
Now if Rudd wanted to get into the spirit of dog-whistling he has many more varieties than the geriatric liberals in their bunker.
He could make reference that NO action or Delayed action means food shortages in our supermarkets, big line ups to buy a loaf of bread, food rationing, food riots, mass starvations in different parts of the world; the invasion of Australian shores by starving or war torn refugees and so on.
Destruction of Australian export markets, meaning many thousands put out of work, increased poverty in Australia and so on…measure your own piece of string.
The cost of doing nothing or delaying too long could be irreversible destruction of the Australian way of life and prosperity, whilst the effects of action can be controlled, measured and mitigated.
Oh the irony!
Can’t see Labor actually using this, though.
Looks like an increasing number of neo-cons in Australia are going down the “Glenn Beck” road (aka the “Sarah Palin” strategy). This was particularly on display over Abbott’s climate change comments (complete with WW2 references).
Mark, I guess it’s possible Abbott recognises many of the deniers/sceptics are within what was National heartland. With Joyce on board they maybe making a final push to merge (politically if not legally) the two parties at some point in the future? Unlikely at this point but is does seem as though they could end up in a vote-poaching exercise at the next election.
As long as it means they don’t get power then I don’t really care. God help my colleagues/customers if they do…science in Australia would probably become an early target.
And this morning Minchin “climate change has always been with us” and “I do believe in AGW but only a bit”. So as predicted the deniers become believers with a “healthy” scepticism. Yeah right. I can see how this will please the boltbats.
My bet is – he won’t make it to the end of the week.
Said it before and totally agree with Mark. The coalition policy under both Howard and now Abbott is about implicitly not taking climate science seriously, because if they did, a conservative party would surely support a market-based solution. Instead, they are going for government-controlled solutions like little grants, and little solar school programs, and little bans on things like incandescent light globes (instead of coal-fired power stations). Its ultra-dilute socialism, which allows them to say they are doing something without doing anything much at all.
If only we could treat global warming with the placebo effect, everything would be great under this policy.
To listen to Opposition climate spokesman, Greg Hunt on ABC Radio National this morning was an excrutiating experience. This 20 year expert on the problem and previous (last week) believer in an ETS must find it hard to lie straight in bed at night. I can see him going the way of another environment casualty in the Howard Government and moderate Senator Campbell.
Relax. Abbott is a climate scientist now. Its not exactly brain surgery or anything, so just about anyone can have a crack at it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I
The Libs are reverting to type, a rabble of dinasaurs led by T(ony)Rex…will they too become extinct?
Commmand and Control solutions? Politics-driven science?
Ladies and Gentlemen, for one term only, give it up for the Lysenko Liberals!
I think the fundamental problem that Abbott has with climate change is that its based on science and not some fanciful religious fable.
It’s just not in his entrenched Catholic outlook to consider things that are based on evidence rather than ‘faith’.
If only somebody could find a quote in the bible where Jesus said something about global warming, then Abbott might be a bit more ‘onside’.
Given that that’s unlikely to happen (but then you never know) we’ll be stuck with Abbott delivering his sermon from the Mount about Kevin Rudd is not “pure of heart” and all that shite.
Thomas Paine @ 1: None of Howard’s battlers ever cared about what the world thought. In fact it was all part of Howard’s populist and popular schtick to ridicule international institutions like the UN. Tony Abbott is just resurrecting an old, but still good war-cry.
The Lateline transcript is now up:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2765721.htm
Isn’t the Vatican good enough for Tony?
Mark, that’s a very genteel gospel version of the art of cunning – I’m more familiar with the lay version which is “as cunning as a shit-house rat”!
It’s worth looking at the recent publication by Tony Taylor “Denial – History Betrayed” (2008). While dealing in the main with other well-known instances of denialism, the introductory chapter sets out the mechanisms which denialists utilise in their endeavours to capture followers. It’s worth reading and seeing the current Liberal position writ large.
Thomas’ point in #1 is the absolute smoking gun.
World Met Office, and others, have pointed out an inconvenient fact “Nine of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the past decade, according to the Met Office.”
Global warming is still happening.
A responsible media in Australia would now be calling for Abbott, “climate change is crap” to vacate the position of Leader of the Opposition because his fundamental viewpoint is quite simply wrong and unreal.
We can’t have a major party led by a person[s] who has no understanding of one of the major challenges facing Oz in the immediate future.
Time to go Tony, and take Barnaby and a few others with you.
Thanks, mediatracker. I think I have a review copy of the book lying around somewhere actually!
Thomas Paine @ 1 I am as loth to criticise your prose as I would have been the man whose name you so respectfully assume in this forum. Surely though you did not mean to say that Abbott’s take on climate change makes him “look like an ignorant fool”? Weren’t you intending to say that it “makes him look like the ignorant fool he is”?
No matter, as the great man himself said, “such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.”
Abbott’s ambition has overtaken his sense of timing. I agree with you there. This is not the hour or world upon which a climate change denier should take centre stage.
Mark @ 15,
Won’t open when I click on Trancript on ABC site.
Must be a bug at the ABC site, Paul.
No worries. I’m not that into watching Howardistas on TV or anywhere else, anyway.
Tony Abbott has a transcript on his site for your convenience Paul:
http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/Pages/Article.aspx?ID=3846
In response to the general reaction to Abbott: c’mon, let us not be childish.
Tony Abbott is a seasoned operator and the Liberal Party in its latest iteration on behalf of its patrons are not irrational nor have they gone off the deep end.
This is not Abbott’s own idea. He is simply a warrior acting under a specific battle plan. This is, as Mark points out – and Hartcher too, channelling us in an opinion piece for Fairfax broads this morning – the strategy (worked out by Minchin, Abbott, Graham Morris and probably Tony Nutt as their Victoria marginals specialist) to go after so-called Howard’s battlers in the metro mortgage belt and marginal rural towns where anxious underemployed and indebted punters could be persuaded that global warming abatement strategies for them will mean unemployment plus extra taxes.
They could live with rising water in Vanuatu and the extinction of harlequin frogs but prospects of no pay-cheque is a more of a clear and present danger.
Picking up some coal seats that are currently overhwelmingly in Labor hands would be useful too, if the logic of carbon abatement hits home.
Hence the seemingly contradictory and hypocritical strategy. But it is worth the risk of being dissected by LP latte sippers because anxious mortgage-belters are unlikely to have the time nor the inclination for in-depth analysis and a moronically simple “solution” suddenly becomes attractive.
Tony Nutt, when he was Howard’s senior adviser compared selling Work Choices to “trying to sell cancer”. This is why, in my view, ALP’s immediate response was to launch itself into Work Choices attack mode – as Mark says above, a flanking action to run interference with the Lib plan to disaffect the outer suburban and rural working people using denialist red-ragging.
To this end, no lie is too great, no exaggeration too gross, no agit-prop too Goebbelsian. Anything goes. This explains the two Tonies with a separate narrative for each disparate consitutency.
This too would explain the prepostrous mendacity from Minchin, as spouted by him on 4 Corners last month. While it is doubtful he subscribes to it himself, Minchin understands the efficacy of the “big lie”. If it will sow doubt where it counts, its job is done.
The ETS supporting policy and squishy wetness of Turnbull was working so well – why would they want to change it? Not like they were being slayed inthe polls and had a clear look in at the next election. (And it’s not like the ALP won after continually changing leader or anything.)
After the last election that Howard won I saw polls that indicated that the voting pattern of white collar and blue collar workers was about the same. Howard’s big success had been to attract such a large proportion of the blue collar workers. Which made it so crazy for Howard to introduce a version of workchoices that left the workers so open to be screwed by sleazebag employers.
You would have thought Abbot was smart enough to do his best to convince people that he strongly opposed to a return to this unfair system.
Equally, Abbot was sounding good when the message seemed to be that the coalition supported serious climate action and was going to come up with a simpler approach to meeting emission targets.
However, Abbot should have been smart enough to stay well clear of climate denial if for no other reason than the argument is too complex for most of us to understand. All he and his new crew are doing at the moment is providing Labor with free ammunition. Offsetting fear of losing your job due to climate action against the more immediate threat of a return to workchoices is not very smart for a political party that is so dependent on the blue collar vote.
Here’s Malcom Colless in yeaterday’s “Oz”
Sharp Right Turn Reunites Coalition on the Road to Salvation
“Kevin Rudd has seized on statements by Abbott…. claiming this would mean a return to Work Choices under an [sic] Coalition government. Of course there is not the remotest chance of this happening. Work Choices, the brand, is dead. But the principles of the Liberals’ industrial relations policy, which guaranteed democracy in the workplace through mechanisms such as individual contracts, need to be preserved in a redrafted strategy and sold to the electorate.”
This is PR double-speak at its worst. The brand is dead, long live the product!!
Yes Malcolm, the brand is dead. But the voters who rejected it weren’t focussed on the “brand” afaik. They focussed on the actual policies, the actual mechanisms; plausible scenarios that might play out in their own workplaces or those of their kids {brilliantly depicted in Your Rights At Work TV ads, etc.}
It was the content the voters rejected, not the spin or the transparent title “Work Choices”.
The voters had plenty of time to consider this. The unions had plenty of time to campaign. And take a bow, Greg Combet, Sharan Burrow, and thousands of organisers and volunteers. Simply amazing.
Branding might work with sheep Mr Colless, but ……
At the heart of all this lies a profound contempt for the electorate, or at least a large part of it. The assumption is that they’ll buy any old piece of crap that you throw at them, you don’t even have to worry about consitency or logic, they’ll swallow a barely disguised shit sandwich and say ‘thank you very much natural born rulers, how did we make such a stupid mistake with Mr Rudd’.
Thus the natural order shall be restored with as little actual work or effort as possible.
Yes, but they will take us with them. We are all in the same lifeship called planet earth.
Abbott and the Living Dead are in denial.
But so is Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong with their C(rap)PRS that won’t reduce emissions.
Yes Henry; your analysis on the climate change rhetoric might be right, but it ignores the work choices grumblings – no way in hell would they appeal to the electorates in question.
Furthermore what works for an incumbent does not necessarily work for an opposition. Howard was able to gild his broken promises and unpopular legislations with shameless pork barrelling and rosy national economics prior to the election. In opposition, the libs are deprived of both these weapons, and left with a list of broken promises the length of the Nile.
Worries about future economics are unfounded – the public votes on what has happened, not what will. Rudd can claim quelling the GFC, and the charts you can make from that are truly spectacular. What has the opposition got? Workchoices, and a promise that interest rates will always be higher. Monsignor, that dog won’t hunt.
Thanks Sir Henry C.@ 24 for that so apt quote from Mein Kampf. And to think that, still at my age, I have so naively been protesting about the “lies” these people tell! How could they? Why can’t we nail them, show them up! Well now, Herr Hitler explains it all. And so clearly. What a clever little man.
I was interested to hear Greg Hunt with Fran Kelly this morning squirming around the big lie. If until now he has been an honest man then he can be that no more.
Ben Chifley, Bill McKell: Labor heroes who shot striking coalminers dead.
Eric Abetz, Nick Minchin: Liberals who keen for the loss of coal mining jobs as a result of Rudd’s policies on carbon (such as they are).
Conclusion: Turnbull was wasting his time with all those middle-of-the-roaders in marginal seats when he could have been targetting all those swinging votes in coal country!
The Liberal vote will go up in the safe seats and in certain safe ALP seats (a Labor MP with a 20% margin in ’07 might end up with 12% next year), but will plunge in the marginals.
‘The ETS supporting policy and squishy wetness of Turnbull was working so well – why would they want to change it? Not like they were being slayed in the polls and had a clear look in at the next election.’
The Liberals may get a surprise if they have assumed the polls couldn’t get worse by trying the extreme option. They are in opposition and lack the credibility of being government and having power, their Howard type tricks won’t play out the same. They think it can’t hurt, but they do risk putting themselves over the credibility cliff.
Abbott is clearly squibbing on CC at the same time the entire planet is focussed on it and saying something must be done. He will lose just as many as he gains on this, and the risk is losing more than he gains.
Abbott’s mention of IR is the perfect opening for Labor to consistently run the Workchoices line, which is a good lead into the CC issue. If you can’t trust them on leaving Workchoices alone then trusting them on CC is a bit of risk as well.
But I think strategically Rudd shouldn’t engage Abbott but should leave it up to Gillard and co to deal with him. Engagement confers credibility, ignoring or brushing Abbott off makes Abbott aggressive and more careless with his language and look. A bad look.
A kind of bizarre story (ABC) on how ugly the CC debate is getting, well how it’s bubbling to the surface all over the place.
Starts out with hacks (UK), break ins (Canada) and threats (Australia) against climate scientists. Then ends with Bolt also wingeing about threats he’s recieved to ‘punch him’, crapping on about crusades, who then proceeds to completely slander all scientists as scammers!
Interestingly, the article says every single MP was (recently) sent an email to make them aware of a formal complaint against Proffessor David Karoly, of academic misconduct because of “stating there is no serious peer reviewed science overturning the theory of global warming”
Campaigning from someones?
—–
The ugly side of climate politics
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/09/2766874.htm
By Margot O’Neill – analysis
Posted 3 hours 34 minutes ago
Updated 2 hours 35 minutes ago
Do not shoot the messenger – well, that used to be the standard. Not any more, according to some climate scientists whose once quiet research careers seem to be giving way to an ugly maelstrom of break-ins, threats and hate mail.
The FBI is investigating death threats to two scientists named in thousands of hacked private emails stolen from East Anglia University’s internationally respected Climate Research Unit.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is examining whether the emails show any data was suppressed or manipulated by climate scientists.
But the leading UN climate science body has also expressed concern about the organised nature of the theft, allegedly involving paid Russian hackers.
Adding to fears of an orchestrated campaign, there are also reports of break-ins at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
The increasingly polarised and militant nature of the global warming debate in parts of the community is alarming some climate scientists.
At NSW University’s Climate Change Research Centre, professor Andy Pitman has received threatening emails, including references to where he lives and warnings that he should “be careful” about how some people might react to his scientific findings.
continues…
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Actually, it does mean what he thinks it means. Abbott has come out and said that he agrees that GHG emissions should be reduced by at least 5%. Given that, there are choices about how to achieve that reduction. You can use various types of emissions trading, carbon taxes or direct regulatory measures. They are all forms of intervention in that they are designed to change the outcome that a free market would deliver. However, within the class of policies to reduce emissions only the different types of ETS and carbon taxes qualify as market mechanisms because they allow households and firms operating in the market place to respond to the new, more socially optimal relative price signals so as to deliver a given reduction in emissions more efficiently than direct regulatory measures. Abbott’s walking away from this is a vote of no confidence in markets and genuine liberals should be appalled by it.
The only commentators that think this is a good idea are those that either have a deep distrust of markets (some elements on the left) or those that think it is a clever political strategy because they think it is possible to convince the electorate that you are serious about reducing emissions without having a genuine strategy to reduce them. In that sense it is a perfect strategy for a party of sceptics.
just look around you is there plenty of fresh clean drinking water look how many cars are on the roads .how much coast is unspoilt how much pristine forest left , then tell me alls well
Leaked draft of Abbott’s proposed transport energy efficiency measures.
Has anyone asked Abbott why he thinks it’s necessary to reduce CO2 emissions? If so has he answered that question?
If it is Alan Jones, he wouldn’t ask that question. If it is the pinko meeja he would say: “ah, look, ah, climate change is real”. Katz, across the normal collective brain of a body politic is a corpus callosum that facilitates dialogue between the left and the right hemispheres. But did you know that of all the animals, monotremes and marsupials do not have a corpus callosum? The corollary is that in Australia, Abbott can get away with two completely different messages directed at two different hemispheres without any danger of being called inconsitent or illogical because even the meeja are separate: one for the struggle-street Morlocks, one for the latte-sipping, basket-weaving Eloi.
A fascinating piece of neurological information, Sir Hank.
One can derive much meaning from the fact that God placed on a single continent His only creatures unencumbered by that pesky corpus callosum.
Let me be clear for the obtuse. It definitely doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.
“Let me be clear for the obtuse. It definitely doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.”
Care to explain? Sorry but simply restating your opinion, and adding insult for good measure, does not assist this particular ‘obtuse’ person in determining what you thin he means or what you think you mean by the term.
Abbott has been put in his place by Combet. Sez Wide Boy Abbott: “Where’s the modelling for an ETS? Why won’t the govt release the modelling?” Sadly for him, modelling was released 13 months ago. Is this the standard we can expect from the Pugilisitc Monk? Sure, he’ll give the govt the fright of their life.
But the Treasury modeling shows the C(rap)PRS won’t reduce emissions until after 2020. Rudd and Wong need to take the “R” out as it is misleading.
It is now the Carbon Pollution Scheme.
In any case, Abbott should have access to the modelling, since a lot of modelling on an ETS was done in the Howard Years, and presumably they boxed some of it to take back to their hideout when they got booted out.
dave @ 37 – here in WA there are thousands of kilometers of pristine beaches and coastline.
In fact, the “Noah’s Ark” island that is in the best environment condition is Barrow Island, specifically because it has been well managed by the oil industry.
Oh, and there is plenty of fresh drinking water.
Reb re
I’ll have a go, Old Testament actually:
(sparks = smoke = carbon dioxide = trouble?)
Another maxim from the UK and confirmation of the O.T:
Then again, PK, there is the troubling biblical instance of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego:
Conclusion not far off being effective, yet anecdotal evidence needs more work.
Meh, 1920s, 1940s, it’s all the same.
(Where is Liam Hogan when you need him to tear a new one?)
John 18:18. It’s all about some denier, warming himself with coalfire.
Angry Abbott doesn’t even believe in climate change. The insincerity will be glaring between now and the election. Good thing about Aussies: they’ve learned to spot a phony.
And see the Herald and Telegraph at one pining for a modern Sir Philip Game, Federal intervention into the NSW ALP, and the creation of a non-conservative Liberal Party. I’m sure there’s a Marxist aphorism about that, if any Press Gallery journalist knew who Marx was.
Taking a deep breath, if you don’t mind, Nickws.
“they’ve learned to spot a phony.”
Oh yes. We will hear a lot of the “phony tony” before the next election.
It rymes, will get up his nose and it has the ring of truth. Perfect.
Re Biblr etc.
There is that bit about kids cursing there parents and mothers tearing children from their breasts and all that. Think its in Matthew. Don’t have a Bible.
Paul Burns, the Bible in various translations is within reach of anyone online.
Tony Abbott, as a good Catholic, knows that “as God’s revealed word, the scriptures do not stand on their own. They must be interpreted in light of tradition, that is, the ongoing life of the Church community since the time of Christ.” (Catholic Australia) So what the Vatican says should be good enough for him.
Nonetheless, human responsibility for the Earth is laid out in Genesis 1:28 and made difficult in Genesis 3:17-19. Phony Tony (love it!) has no religious grounds for thinking that exploiting coal and oil will prove easy in the long run; rather the opposite. But then, I can think of a number of Proverbs that Mr Workchoices has been cheerfully ignoring for years!
I thought the proverb was: “…cautious as a snake…”: although, I’m sure there are innumerable variations on it!
“Phony Tony”:… too easy! They are gone! lol
if it was only just climate change we have peak oil peak steel peak almost every commodity we have exhausted this planet with our opulent lifestyle when will our leaders look at these problems in a broad lateral way ? we need a huge adjustment to our wants so called needs anything else is a very thin bandaid on a verl large wound!
SCPritch @ 8, the so-called-conservatives are in the midst of alienating themselves (dividing up and conquering their own tryhard-upper-middleclass support, potentially) because you would expect them to support market solutions but as has been made clear on other threads recently commented on…. the so-called-conservatives don’t believe in free-markets as that is not how big business gets big. **** THeY Are FRee-market LiARS!!! ****
Kevvy just smiles as they destroy themselves: we are witnessing the death of metrosexuality as we speak! …the silver spooners can only cry into the crack-flavored weetbix but I, for one, wake up larfing like you wouldn’t believe!