Katharine Catches Up
A blinding realisation occurs to Katharine Murphy. “What I’m trying to convey this weekend,” writes the Guardian Australia’s political editor, “is Labor has paid a price electorally for pursuing climate action.”
A blinding realisation occurs to Katharine Murphy. “What I’m trying to convey this weekend,” writes the Guardian Australia’s political editor, “is Labor has paid a price electorally for pursuing climate action.”
Many of us have been alert to this for some considerable time, but it’s big news to Kath, who begins her piece by musing about the “despair” she encounters “among the community of politically engaged people on social media, day in and day out, heaving and crashing. My inbox is studded with it. Progressives, engaged folks, are clearly angry, frustrated, thwarted”.
Of course they are. Carry on, Katharine:
Anthony Albanese has copped a hiding on social media and elsewhere this week for visiting coal communities during the bushfires – the visit seen as a portent of capitulation by Labor on climate policy. I want to work through the points I’m going to make about this reaction, step by step, just so we are clear.
Lucky us.
If Labor does ultimately capitulate on climate action, producing an execrable policy for the next federal election, then I will be the first one lining up with the rhetorical baseball bat. I will be taking no prisoners.
Up against the wall, you redneck mothers!
But rather than fly off in a rage because Albanese went to Emerald, or looked sideways at a coalminer while Sydney choked in smoke …
It’s not as though Albanese is trying to befriend arsonists, you know.
… I’m content to wait and watch, not because I’m a naturally patient person, or a trusting person, or a generous person, but because I’m a student of history.
More precisely, a mature-age student of history.
History tells us that Labor has made mistakes on climate policy, significant errors of hubris, fear and poor judgment, that have set back the cause of progress.
But history also tells us this political party shows up on climate action. It is the only party of government in Australia that does, election cycle after election cycle.
Labor has won just one federal election outright in its last nine attempts. They keep turning up and voters keep slapping them down.
The other lesson of history that may not be obvious is this. Labor has lost two elections on climate change – 2013 and 2019.
How is this lesson of history not obvious ? How? Everybody else seems aware of it. For that matter, how is this even a “lesson of history” at all? These elections happened recently. Murphy wrote thousands of words about both of them – and she’s only figuring out now, in December 2019, why Labor lost. This is spectacular.
A backlash against climate action in regional Queensland was also part of the story of Labor’s election loss in May. I don’t think a lot of progressive people have really grasped this basic fact …
If this is the case, “progressive people” are even greater idiots than we take them for.
So what I’m trying to convey this weekend is Labor has paid a price electorally for pursuing climate action.
Katharine Murphy is the Perd Hapley of Australian journalism.
I don’t high five this fact. I don’t find it comforting. I can’t fathom, given what the science says, given the clear evidence that warming is under way, why there is even a debate in this country about what needs to happen, why climate change goes on being Australia’s Brexit.
Because, just like Brexit, Australians keep delivering their verdict at the ballot box and governments keep ignoring them.
But there is a “debate”, pushed by corporates with vested interests, and culture warriors intent on routing progressivism, whatever the cost; and materialist anxiety is stoked assiduously by poisonous agitprop rags like the Daily Telegraph, and other alleged news outlets in the Murdoch stable that act like sheep dogs rounding up thought criminals …
Sheep dogs typically round up sheep. There’s a clue in the name. Still, I like Kath’s description and will campaign to run it below our masthead. “The Daily Telegraph: Assiduously Stoking Materialist Anxiety since 1879.”
Maybe Labor will, ultimately, surrender. It’s certainly possible. But what’s happening now isn’t surrender – it’s an attempt to stitch climate action and blue-collar jobs together. It’s an attempt to craft a nuance.
Now some progressive people will argue that’s impossible, so don’t even bother; Labor should just draw a line now and say we are for climate action, no compromises, no redux on the messaging. If you don’t like it, vote for someone else.
That’s fine, as long as the people making these arguments understand a couple of basic things.
Labor can’t win an election by saying that.
For Murphy’s readers, this counts as some kind of astonishing breakthrough. Seriously.