Wayne Swan: Morrison a ‘predatory’ centrist on Climate Change

Via the The Guardian; the Labor party president, Wayne Swan, will argue that Scott Morrison is pretending to be a pragmatist on Climate Change but really has no intention of doing anything and is just using the issue for political purposes.

Wayne Swan is pretty on the money here; the Coalition has repeatedly - and very successfully - been able to use action on Climate Change to "wedge" the opposition while conveniently not having to do the hard work of developing policy to manage a societal and industry transition. This is not a particular surprise; the current Coalition government has given no indication at all that they are interested in or capable of such difficult policy work or as Swan says "solving the bloody problem". Rather the Coalition seems content to coast on their ideologies, regardless of their real world impact.

The Labor Party is tip-toeing around the issue of coal and no wonder given the Coalition’s political successes. However the science is increasingly clear that coal cannot be part of the energy mix long term. Swan seems to be trying to find the right balance here, an acknowledgement that coal needs to "decline" - which some current Labor politicians are baulking at - while focusing on jobs and the viability of currently coal-dependent communities.

In another sense though, this insight is not the important breakthrough that needs to happen here. Labor has lost multiple elections struggling to counter a much more comforting - though the science says insufficient - narrative around climate change - that either we don’t need to do anything about it or more recently that we are doing all the things to fix it without inconveniencing anyone. Finding a way to articulate a reasonable balance between what the science tells us we need to do and managing the impact of those changes on particular livelihoods and communities in a way that can win elections and then drive effective action on Climate Change is the great challenge here. Discussions around a Green New Deal and Just Transition are good starting points but a viable political platform has so far has remained elusive, particularly in Australia.