ABC, Guardian journos give Pacific Islands leaders a free kick on climate

Left journos gave Pacific leaders a free kick. But the thing is most of the islands aren’t sinking.

ABC host Patricia Karvelas and panelists Lenore Taylor, Peter Van Onselen and David Crowe on the Insiders.

“Trust the science.” It’s the mantra of left-wing news outlets on any climate change story, yet many ­reporters at the ABC, Guardian Australia and the Nine Entertainment newspapers don’t seem to know the science.

The ABC’s reporting of the ­Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Tuvalu from August 13 to 16 was a spectacular case in point. In a bid to wedge Scott Morrison on the public broadcaster’s favourite subject, climate, Pacific leaders received a free kick. But here’s the thing: most of the islands are not sinking. That is what the peer-reviewed science shows.

In a famous paper from the University of Auckland released last year and based on sophisticated physical models, scientists showed many of the atolls on Tuvalu, Kiribati and Tokelau are actually rising. The finding confirms observations from satellite photos showing the islands are increasing in area, Tuvalu by 73ha between 1971 and 2014.

It gets worse. The ABC’s own fact check unit confirmed this in a ruling last year on claims by conservative federal Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly, who had said the Pacific’s islands were not sinking.

The fact check unit said on December 21 last year: “Mr Kelly’s claim checks out. The research cited by Mr Kelly suggests certain islands — specifically larger atolls and reef platforms — can adapt to the current pace of sea level rise.”

Where was Paul Barry’s Media Watch, normally the ABC’s ­climate science policeman? Perhaps news director Gaven Morris should have emailed the ABC’s own fact check to staff before the Pacific Islands Forum meeting so they would not be treated like useful idiots in a cash grab by the states Australia supports with aid.

Patricia Karvelas did not ­appear to know the science when she interviewed Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga on RN Breakfast on August 14.

“What impact is the changing climate having on your country right now?” Karvelas asked.

Sopoaga replied: “People are about to be … swallowed into the sea because of erosion …”

Karvelas offered no defence of the science, allowing Sopoaga to make claims that fit the long-term, and to date false, narrative of ­climate refugees. Remember all the scare stories in the 1990s and early noughties quoting the UN predicting “50 million climate refugees by 2010”?

The interview went on for ­another six minutes as the leader of a nation of 12,000 citizens was allowed to demand Australia stop mining coal and open no new coalmines. Karvelas did not ask how Sopoaga thought Australia could keep the aid money flowing to the South Pacific if it shut down its largest export industry, worth $70 billion a year.

Nor did she ask about the ­elephant in the room: why are the Pacific Islands flirting with China if they are so concerned about carbon dioxide emissions they think will drown their island homes given China produces half the world’s man-made emissions of CO2 and Australia only 1.3 per cent? The best she could do was ask: “Do you think a bit of healthy competition is good for the ­Pacific?”

Karvelas hosted Insiders the following Sunday morning, Aug­ust 18. On the couch were Guardian Australian editor and climate activist Lenore Taylor, Peter van Onselen, columnist for this paper and Network Ten political editor, and David Crowe, political correspondent for Nine’s papers.

Taylor kicked off a session on climate saying Australia had a problem at the Pacific Islands Forum only because it lacked a credible climate policy. No mention Australia has one of the highest penetrations of renewable power generation in the world and has destroyed its competitive advantage in low-cost electricity in the process. PVO chimed in with the right observation: “We let China off the hook in relation to where their emissions are at and where their influence is at in the South Pacific.”

Taylor shot back in the carbon giant’s defence: “China is on track to meet its Paris targets.” That would be the target that allows China to increase emissions each year until 2030 by more than Australia’s total annual emissions.

Karvelas played footage of New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters bagging the island ­nations for their double standard on China’s emissions while criticising Australia, which he said had been generous to the region for decades.

Interview subject for the program was Labor foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong. She claimed with no evidence and without challenge by Karvelas that Labor would have done better at Tuvalu. She eventually was forced to admit Labor would not cut coal exports or ban new mines.

Wong said forum nations were at the forefront of the war on climate change, but she was not confronted with the science on sea-level rise. To be the “partner of choice” for the Pacific over China, Australia needed to do more on climate, Wong said. Again no mention of China’s emissions.

The media really should know more about changes in climate ­science, especially given UN forecasts on temperature and sea-level rise have been revised down regularly in successive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

And journalists covering the Pacific should know much more about the history of Australia’s ­relations with its island neighbours. Since the forum was launched by New Zealand in 1971 this has largely been the work of Coalition governments as Labor after the Keating era looked increasingly to Indonesia and China for its foreign policy impetus. The Morrison pivot to the Pacific is back to the future.

This is something Peters understood even if his Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and many journalists, did not. Even a combative Fiji today is replete with social and business connections back to Australian expats, many influential long before Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama stopped democratic elections in 2009 and his country was barred from the Pacific Islands Forum and the Commonwealth Games.

Yet Guardian Australia was breathless in its reporting of Bainimarama’s criticisms of Morrison in what it badged as an exclusive on August 17. Bainimarama said: “China never insults the Pacific. They don’t go … and tell the world we’ve given this much money to the Pacific Islands. They’re good people, definitely better than ­Morrison …”

Perhaps the Fiji Prime Minister should ask the leaders of north Pacific states such as Vietnam, The Philippines, Thailand and Japan if they think Chinese territorial expansion into the South China Sea is as benevolent as Bainimarama seems to imagine China’s influence in the South Pacific could be.

A rare beacon of sense from the progressive side of politics was Labor deputy leader Richard ­Marles, interviewed by Hamish Macdonald on RN Breakfast last Tuesday. Macdonald tried desperately to link a Papua New Guinea request for a $1.5bn loan to repair its budget to the forum climate troubles and increased Chinese influence in the region.

Marles said it was many years since we had underwritten PNG’s budgets, Australia was giving more than $600 million a year to PNG and “it is really important that we not engage with the Pacific by reference to China”. Macdonald claimed the Pacific was saying “give us what we want or we go to China”. Marles insisted that was in fact not the Pacific’s position and Australia should focus on the ­Pacific for the right historical and geographic reasons rather than to deny access to China.

Marles was correct but the ABC and Guardian Australia saw the entire Pacific Islands Forum meeting and China’s South Pacific interest as no more than a means to damage a new conservative prime minister on climate policy.