The latest IPA Review is now out and many of the articles from this issue are part of a feature ‘What next: Liberalism after the Howard Governmet’ and can be downloaded from the IPA’s website.
The feature includes a longish piece by me entitled ‘John Howard, Environmentalist’.
I beginning by suggesting that the story of John Howard the environmentalist is a story of deference to professed expertise and include reference to his various ‘achievements’ in this area including the banning of broad-scale tree clearing in western Queensland, the banning of fishing over large areas of the Great Barrier Reef, the EPBC legislation, and the $10 billion national water plan. This plan included the buy back of many more gigalitres than ever proposed by the then Labor opposition.
I conclude by suggesting that John Howard will, nevertheless, probably be remembered as simply the Prime Minister who refused to ratify Kyoto and ‘save the world from global warming’. I suggest part of his government’s problem was that they never had their own plan or ideas for the environment.
Before commenting you may want to read the piece at http://ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=731
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I think there is a need to insulate government from the agendas of pseudo-environmental groups. John Brignell summed the situation up quite well:
“Economic collapse is the sole end and purpose of Green policy. They are determined to drag the rest of us kicking and screaming into the new Stone Age and, thanks to their media cronies, we are letting them do it.”
As for saving the world by reducing global CO2 emissions – this outcome of any such policy is now largely in the hands of China:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001295chinas_growing_emis.html
According to this paper by two researchers at the University of California carbon dioxide emissions in China are projected to grow between 11.05% and 13.19% per year for the period 2000-2010. What does this mean? I hope you are sitting down because you won’t believe this.
In 2006 China’s carbon dioxide emissions contained about 1.70 gigatons of carbon (GtC) (source). By 2010, at the growth rates projected by these researchers the annual emissions from China will be between 2.6 and 2.8 GtC. The growth in China’s emissions from 2006-2010 is equivalent to adding the 2004 emissions of Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia to China’s 2006 total (source). The emissions growth in China at these rates is like adding another Germany every year, or a UK and Australia together, to global emissions. The graph below illustrates the point.
Think about that.
“”Economic collapse is the sole end and purpose of Green policy. They are determined to drag the rest of us kicking and screaming into the new Stone Age and, thanks to their media cronies, we are letting them do it.”
You mean you didn’t ROFLMAO when you read that?
I don’t think my piece has anything much to do with the last two comments. And I don’t think “economic collapse is the sole end purpose of Green policy”.
There is a lot of hype over JH, over the “culture wars,” time will tell- I like this bit from natasha;
“Richard Denniss is these days the chief of staff for the Greens’ leader Bob Brown. In 2002 he was the chief of staff to the then Democrats’ leader Natasha Stott Despoja. In Mr Costello’s budget speech that year he had announced that pensioners and other concession card holders would have to pay more for their medicines. Their co-payment would climb from $3.60 to $4.60 per prescription.
The Democrats said they would oppose the measure in the Senate. Some weeks later Senator Stott Despoja and Dr Denniss were summoned to the Peter Costello’s office.
Denniss says Costello took them through page after page of laminated graphs, talking at them for the best part of an hour. The Treasurer seemed surprised to discover that they hadn’t been won over.
“At one point Costello said: Natasha, you don’t appear to understand the numbers. To which she replied: I do understand the numbers Peter, you don’t have them in the Senate and you won’t be passing this bill”.
A few days later the two were summoned to the Prime Minister’s office. Denniss says he had expected Mr Howard to be even worse.
Instead they found Howard “effusive in apologising for being late, come in sit down, can I get you a cup of tea – lots of chit chat, lots of actual conversation”.
The Prime Minister said “I know you spoke to the Treasurer last week and I’m sure he showed you all his graphs” and I understand your position: “we are trying to drive up the price of medicine for sick people, of course the Democrats are going to oppose it”.
And then he said: “How about ten cents? That wouldn’t hurt anyone.” “It absolutely floored us.”
Howard said: “Natasha, you’re the leader, I’m the leader, can’t we just settle this right now?”
Denniss says he found the Prime Minister almost impossible to resist. “His genius was to make us feel powerful.”
http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2007/11/peter-costello-at-close-quarters.html
On the subject of the culture wars, John Roskam fron the IPA, has had a bit to say recently in The Age newspaper:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/culture-wars-are-good-for-society/2007/12/18/1197740268986.html
The piece ends with comment:
“If John Howard really did set out to muzzle the universities, than he did a bad job of it. Invariably his opponents came from one of three sources: the ALP, the ACTU or the universities. Nor was the former prime minister any better at stimulating alternative voices within the tertiary sector. It is noteworthy that very few of the right’s cultural warriors come from universities — compared with the warriors of the left, many of whom are firmly ensconced in publicly funded academic sinecures. Sometimes the claim is made that humanities faculties of Australia’s universities are dominated by left-wing academics because conservative academics simply don’t exist. Unfortunately this is true. Anyone who verges even slightly from the accepted wisdom of university staffrooms — which is that George Bush is an evil idiot, that globalisation is a plot by big business to impoverish the world’s poor, and that terrorism is merely a political construct — is unlikely to gain preferment…
“What’s curious in the debate about the culture wars is why anyone would want the wars to stop. If dissent is one of the hallmarks of an active intellectual life in this country there should be calls for more disagreement, not less. So far this hasn’t happened. In fact, the opposite has occurred. What are people afraid of?”
It seems that unlike John Quiggin (with his recent piece here entitled ‘The Cutural War Time to Mop Up’ http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/17/the-culture-war-time-to-mop-up/ ), John Roskam is not at all adverse to open debate and discussion.
A fascinating and depressing history, Jennifer. Leaving John Howard aside, I have lived through some of these conservation programmes, and wonder what there is to see for the $1,000,000,000 National Heritage Programme from the part sale of Telstra.
The money was divvied out for several years, and various community (landcare/conservation) groups encouraged to apply. As an assessor on a regional panel (SA Farmers Federation appointee) I became concerned, then appalled at the blatent meaness towards small community grants, and the alcrity with which government agencies diverted a huge proportion of the fund to support their own departments, including administration. What made me particularly cross was one SA Agency which had (previous to the NHT trust) large unfunded liabilities to fence heritage agreements on private land. Millions of dollars were diverted to cover that previously existing State Government liability.
So, other than funding a few reports like the salinity one, which was used to trigger further use of taxpayers money, what is there to show for that $1,000,000,000?
The comments above simply confirm the conclusion that government input into any economy is counter-productive.
The EPBC Act was, and remains, a disgrace. The end of Broadescale clearing in Qld was a fraud, justified by the demonisation of the farming minority and characterised by the institutional theft of the carbon credits that should rightly have been the property of all tree owners.
The silence from the Ministers over the exposure of the salinity scam was deafening.
The Howard years produced a procession of ignorant suburbanite boofheads in the role of federal environment minister who, after less than six months each in the position, were completely snowed by departmental bull$hit.
I am in complete agreement with Helen’s view of the NHT. It was nothing more than a vehicle to allow the departmental spivs to soak up the proceeds from the sale of common property.
Not once did I observe any attempt, by any environment minister, to shape the environment debate. They accepted all the loaded value judgements that came with the acceptance of green terminology. They could not possibly shape debate, let alone prevail, by fighting on the enemy’s terms, at times and places of the enemy’s choosing. It was pathetic.
The environment is, by definition, a regional issue and Howards mistake was to appoint a string of suburban gardeners who simply could not master the brief.
” …suburban gardeners” – Ian
Dr Moorcroft, RSPB head of conservation management advice, said “gardens are the richest wildlife habitat on earth”.
He added: “By taking simple wildlife-friendly steps in our gardens, collectively we will make a real difference for many of our birds and other wildlife,” he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7060713.stm
Further to Helens comments about the National Heritage Fund.
The same occured with the Federal funding of fire trails which were administered by the various states.
The states charged an administration fee for distributing these funds to their own state organisations ie NPWS, RFS, Lands etc, thereby reducing the overall amount available to do actual trail work.
Must of taken their lead from the banks!
It’s silly to say that ‘dissent’ is a hallmark of intellectual life. (Roskom)
what economy can run without govt input? (Hissink’s post). Even if it’s a relatively free economy, rules & admin for trade and market governance are still set by … whom… anarchists?
What’s your free mkt eg of a unfettered economy? Milton Friedman was given free reign to run open free mkt pilots in latin american and it proved contrary to democracy. And how would that fix communities’ environmental woes?
Only a Keynesian economic model is possible under democracy. Truly free mkt liberalisation is only possible under a dictatorship and under a regime of fear. If you want to disagree, give me an eg that proves me wrong. The only free mkt experiments have been introduced with military coups and torturous policies eg Chile, Argentina where dissenters (not radicals, simply dissenters who should be able to co-exist under a democracy) are systemically silenced and killed. Howard followed some of the fear tactics of the US, but didn’t get near that level of silence and fear, hence people still spoke out.
We still have a form of a democracy and in that circumstance yuo will NEVER get truly free trade. (Sorry rog, I know how much you want it). And that wouldn’t price the environment anyway. While we have a representational democracy then the minority (country folk) probably will be overlooked. Perhaps lefties dominate unis and righties dominate businesses that donate to lobbyists and govt to influence policy? Is that not a sufficient form of democracy, do you want to silence voices of dissent? Let’s get beyong the aimless wingeing that’s going on here. What’s your solution?
Jen, you’ve obviously picked out some of the environmental positives Howard was able to achieve. I wonder what a report on lost opportunities would look like?
Biggsy, warming stopped in 98, Chinese emissions are nothing to worry about right?
During his time in office, ex-PM Howard (also) described his offense to the idea that the extreme greens have a mortgage on concern and compassion for the forests or for the environment of Australia. He told of his long belief that it is never fair to ask a small section of the Australian people to carry the burden and the cost of implementing something that the overwhelming majority of the wider community wants. He affirmed his unshakable belief that in achieving the goals of a better environment we shouldn’t throw on the scrapheap vulnerable, isolated, regional communities, their families and the people who owe their livelihoods to the activities of those communities.
Unfortunately, nothing was actually done to counteract these acknowledged Australian environmental concerns.
Let us hope that PM Rudd will do better.
Neil On the general question of a fair go for isolated communities I think we have good reason to believe the electorate became more polarised under Howard n Co in the lead up to this election. Proof is the fact that Australian Democrats everywhere failed to get a share of public funding ie less than the required 4%. Moving away from water and forests for a moment, we saw interesting policy divisions created over health and education for regional folk. The Mersey hospital takeover certainly grabbed the national headlines.
I looked deeper and asked both major party machines to focus on skills, expansion and retention in places like Rosebery where their district hospital seemed doomed. The shift of all services to major centres leaves various folks vulnerable, miner, foresters and travellers alike.
Can I remind blog readers that Howard’s journey in environmentalism coincided with Rick Farley’s time with the National Farmers Federation?
http://www.democrats.org.au/speeches/index.htm?speech_id=1858&display=1
Its been my view Farley with the NNF made a big difference in how the electorate saw our rural environment under Howard.
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/sa/stories/s1137694.htm
Farley was immersed in myth. It was he, more than any other, that turned the salinity mole hill into a mountain. And it was this salinity based permutation of the “original sin” that was instrumental in leading the urban public to the belief that farmers had to be protected from themselves for the good of everyone’s environment.
It is also said that people stop learning from the moment they get into a position like PM or President. From then on the pace is so fast that they almost always rely on what they already think they know. If that was the case with Howard then his grasp of ecological reality was rather limited.
Ian: I had a soft spot for Howard. He once stopped on his frosty walk to note a lone vigil keeper in a tiny green tent outside the Indonesian Embassy. Interestingly Maxine noted he had probably stopped listening early in her campaign to take his seat in Benelong
Jennifer: Another observation, some Libs and supporters of the far right in particular could have a tough time ahead. It seems all wisdom does not necessarily reside with the anointed; those who like the Liberal Party believe they are born to govern.
Calls for a party restructure in opposition will be met with great suspicion after their profound go slow on such issues as global warming. Liberalism should not include the right to pollute any more than it should include the right to exploit resources however remote from the centres of common government.
Fishing the great Southern Seas must be regulated in the same way as Ashmore Reef. Clear felling a forest goes way beyond the issues of private ownership, timber and paper also palm oil needs. Likewise, access to water becomes an overwhelming issue for anyone or anything living on a dry continent.
The marketplace can’t be the only arbitrator. Our communications reform is a good example, isolated communities could never afford the digital revolution without substantial subsidies employed over time. And we heard much about the rogues in the business from the regulator with the previous government. A fair go for all is hard to achieve in practice.
I was puzzled and wryly amused by the spectacle of a coal miners’ street march in support of Rudd’s proposals for (valiantly) fighting climate change, by practically eliminating their jobs and returning the Australian economy to 1890.
My point is that Rudd’s pre-election promises, from maintaining strong economic and job growth to keeping petrol and grocery prices down, to dramatically reducing ‘greenhouse emissions’ were so broad, general and contradictory, that no one with half a brain could possibly have taken them all seriously.
The ALP voters (including preferences), encompass groups with a wide diversity of interests, from mining and industrial trade union heavies, to inner city/suburban public sector employees etc. to the outer suburban and regional ‘working families’.
So which promises will he endeavor to keep and which will be relegated to investigative committees, study groups, ‘summits’ etc. into the next term?
My hunch is that “it’s the economy stupid”.
Chrisgo: Do you give the miners, trade unions, public sector employees, regional working families etc absolutely no credit for their preferences this time round?