Clearly, answering these questions means looking at the role of multiple forms of power. Media power, economic power and parliamentary power all mattered. (See the forms of power framework).
The analysis below argues that the cultural power of images and narratives needs to be part of the analysis. Cultural power was:
• a crucial dimension in which the case for climate action was lost
• a key source of power which the Coalition and the coal lobby used in order to prevail.
- The monstrous ‘Great Big New Tax on Everything”…
- “A Sunday roast will cost $150″
- “a new tax on ironing, a new tax on watching television, a new tax on vacuuming…”
- …
What vivid images did Labor offer in response?
During the debate, Labor’s Greg Combet accused Tony Abbott of “propagating fear and myths”
That’s exactly what he did – very effectively.
The Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce painted a vivid picture of ‘a new tax on ironing, a new tax on watching television, a new tax on vacuuming’.
What was Labor’s answer?
Abbott and Joyce offered scare campaigns full of indignation, imagery and narrative.
Labor needed its own “myths” – in the sense of powerful, engaging stories.
During Question Time on 1 June 2011, Julia Gillard challenged Tony Abbott on his lack of rational argument:
I think the Australian people will increasingly be asking themselves: why is it that the Leader of the Opposition can never engage in the climate change debate by dealing with the facts? Why is it that he always has to rely on falsehoods and fear? You rely on falsehoods and fear when you do not have a rational argument, and that is the Leader of the Opposition’s problem. He has no rational argument, no rational policy, no rational belief in the science; all he is peddling is fear and falsehood, and every Australian should understand that.
But a rational debate about climate science was not on offer. Instead of rational debate, Labor was faced with the (real) impact of the symbolically-charged ‘falsehoods and fear’ that Abbott mobilised. It had no effective answer.
The following table outlines some key events of the period. The text in bold in the last two columns highlight how images and narratives featured in the debate.
If these images and narratives were somehow “taken out of the picture”, together with the symbolic signals conveyed by dramatic events, the political events of this era would make no sense, and might never have happened.
Much of the political debate revolved around stories and images: these instances of “cultural power” were an axis on which political action turned, and a focus for public perceptions of the issues.
| Date | Events | Statements and events with cultural power | Notes on (1) the signals communicated by political action (2) images and narratives featuring in the debate |
| 2006 | |||
| December 4 | Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard successfully challenge Kim Beazley and Jenny Macklin for Labor leader and deputy leader. | Kevin Rudd describes climate change as the 'moral challenge' of our time. 'I stand for a bold vision on climate change,' he said. 'We cannot in conscience leave for the generation which comes after us an environment which is no longer sustainable.' | Climate change as a leadership issue and a moral issue. Kevin Rudd as the flag-bearer of a bold vision based on conscience |
| 2007 | |||
| November 24 | Kevin Rudd wins the 2007 federal election | Rudd rides the wave of concern about the 'great moral challenge' of climate change. John Howard loses his own seat | A symbol of the end of the Howard era and Rudd's victory over Howard |
| December 12 | In his first official act, Kevin Rudd ratifies the Kyoto Protocol | Australia is breaking with the past and taking climate change seriously | |
| 2008 | |||
| February 22 | Electricity generators warn of threats to Australia's energy supply and of the closure of coal-fired power stations | An image of Labor’s policy as a threat and a danger | |
| Labor fails to engage and educate the community while it is busy negotiating the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), and while business lobbies for compensation and a watered-down scheme. | Labor's public silence contrasts with its earlier rhetoric about a ‘great moral challenge’. | ||
| September | The peak of the Global Financial Crisis | ||
| September 16 | Malcolm Turnbull replaces Brendan Nelson as Opposition Leader | ||
| December 15 | Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) White Paper released | Kevin Rudd says Australia will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020, but could make a cut of up to 15% if other countries also sign up to stronger reductions. The measures are so weak that the government's own advisor, Ross Garnaut, states to a Senate Committee some months later: ‘If there were no changes at all… it would be a line ball call, whether it was better to push ahead or say, ‘We still want the ETS… but we’ll have another crack at it and do a better one when the time is right.’ | The government that previously spoke about the ‘great moral challenge’ has offered a weak and compromised response. The government's own climate change advisor doubts whether the ETS is worth supporting |
| 2009 | |||
| June 4 | CPRS passes the House of Representatives | ||
| July 24 | Barnaby Joyce, Nationals Senate leader, rules out ever supporting the ETS . He warns it would spell 'the end of our beef industry'. 'Do you want to pay $150 for a roast...even though it did nothing for the global climate? If we're going to be voting for a gesture, why don't we have a tax for world peace?' | vivid imagery designed to define the issues in the public mind | |
| August 13 | CPRS defeated for the first time in the Senate | ||
| August 2009 | Joyce claimed: 'Everywhere there is a power point in your house, there is access to a new tax for the Labor government.' There would be 'a new tax on ironing, a new tax on watching television, a new tax on vacuuming. If you go to the supermarket Kevin will be in the shopping trolley.' | Joyce offered powerful images to convey what Labor's policies meant. Labor offered no answer with cultural power in response. | |
| September 28 | “Let's cut emissions, not jobs" campaign launched by Australian Coal Association | Campaign advertising - again with powerful imagery, that portrays Australian workers and community members opposing Labor's plans | |
| Rudd and Turnbull announce a deal on emissions trading | |||
| December 1 | Abbott becomes Liberal leader: the deal between Turnbull and Rudd is overturned | The night that Tony Abbott seizes the Liberal leadership, he declares, ‘I am going to turn the next election into a contest… The Australian people… do not want to be frogmarched into a premature tax on everything and that's what this emissions trading scheme is... ‘There is no way that what this country needs now is a giant new tax on everything just so that Kevin Rudd can look good in Copenhagen…’... I'm confident that we can and will make Labor's great big new tax the [election] issue.’ | Abbott as a leader prepared to fight a climate change election The great big new tax/ the giant new tax on everything |
| December 2 | Abbott's first action as leader is to block the CPRS legislation in the Senate | Abbott's first action—opposing carbon pricing | |
| December 12 | Abbott writes in The Australian: ‘As things stand, there will almost certainly be a climate change election. It won't just be about climate change, but that will be the totemic issue.’ | ||
| December 18 | Copenhagen climate summit fails to deliver agreement. | John Sauven, head of Greenpeace UK, states, ‘The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport’ | |
| 2010 | |||
| February 2 | Coalition releases its 'Direct Action' climate policy | Direct Action' features planting 20 million trees, solar panel rebates for home owners and initiatives to assist industry and farmers with soil carbon storage. | Visible, tangible images of climate policy in action—tree planting, cash, soil: these are features that Labor's policy lacks. |
| April 27 | Prime Minister Rudd announces that the CPRS will be abandoned | Tony Abbott comments, 'Really it's very hard to take this Prime Minister seriously when he has reneged apparently on this solemn judgement and solemn commitment to the Australian people.' | The 'great moral challenge' can be disregarded. The government no longer believes its own policy is worth advocating for. |
| June 24 | Kevin Rudd deposed: Julia Gillard becomes Prime Minister | ‘Rudd—with help from Abbott—[was] free to cast himself as a martyr to a conspiracy by faceless thugs’ (Chubb, 2014). | • Gillard's ascendancy is illegitimate |
| August 16 | Julia Gillard formally launches her 2010 election campaign. | Gillard tells Channel 10: 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead' | |
| August 21 | Federal election delivers a hung Parliament | ||
| September 7 | Negotiations between Labor, the Greens and Independents result in a minority Labor government led by Gillard | ||
| 2011 | |||
| March 12 | GetUp rally in support of climate action and clean energy, called during a concerted conservative campaign against Labor’s policies (Chubb, 2014). | GetUp (2011) states, ‘The fear campaign against a price on pollution has become so absurd that talkback radio hosts are claiming this means the end of life as we know it... With your help, we'll prove there are more of us than there are of them—and in doing so we'll make a powerful statement for climate action’. It was a day when the far-right were also organising rallies against climate action. | The strength of numbers makes a statement: numbers send a (symbolic) signal |
| March 23 | Tony Abbott speaks at a rally outside Parliament | Tony Abbott addresses a rally in Canberra standing in front of signs reading 'Ju-liar - Bob Brown's bitch' and 'Ditch the Witch' | Abbott associates himself with protesters with these slogans |
| April 28 | Launch of 'Australian Mining: This is Our Story' series of ads, from the Minerals Council of Australia | Images of the importance of mining for Australia and Australian community members (Lawrence Creative Strategy, 2011). | |
| May 16 | Launch of ‘Say Yes’ campaign representing a coalition of NGOs and community groups | In a campaign that features iconic Australian actors Cate Blanchett and Michael Caton, NGOs call for a price on carbon pollution, growth in clean industries and jobs and support for global efforts to tackle climate change (Say Yes Australia, 2011). | Carbon emissions as ‘carbon pollution’; Blanchett and Caton |
| November 8 | Carbon Tax and other provisions of the Clean Energy Act 2011 are passed by Parliament | ||
| 2012 | |||
| March 2012 | Ministers stop using the words 'climate change' | Chubb writes, 'a mid-March 2012 meeting of ministers decided that to continue talking about climate change was playing into Abbott’s hands, so they agreed to stop’. | Labor MPs cannot speak about climate change with conviction |
| 2013 | |||
| September 7 | Tony Abbott wins the 2013 federal election, vowing to repeal the carbon tax | ||
| 2014 | |||
| July 17 | The Senate votes to repeal the carbon tax | Tony Abbott: ‘Today the tax that you voted to get rid of is finally gone. A useless destructive tax which damaged jobs, which hurt families' cost of living and which didn't actually help the environment is finally gone. So that international oddity, that international aberration has now gone.’ Bill Shorten: ‘Today Tony Abbott has made Australia the first country in the world to reverseaction on climate change…Tony Abbott has demonstrated time and time again that he is an environmental vandal with no view of the future.’ Adam Bandt, Australian Greens: ‘This is the Australian Parliament's asbestos moment, our tobacco moment, when we knew what we were doing was harmful but went ahead and did it anyway.’ | Abbott’s portrayal of the carbon tax functions to reinforce an image of it in the public mind: associating it with destruction, damage, a negative impact on people’s wellbeing, thus contributing to a gradual accumulation of cultural power that can be used against Labor’s climate policies in future. |