Facts not fallacies critical to good policy and debate

Progressive, woke activists have much in common with Hanrahan, bush poet John O’Brien’s pessimist, who, in “accents all forlorn’’, lamented “We’ll all be rooned’’. In the lap of luxury at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Prince Charles demanded “a new economic model or the planet will burn’’. The heir to the throne — whose rhetoric is prompting even rusted-on monarchists to reconsider their future allegiances — greeted habitual truant Greta Thunberg at the alpine resort. The teenager goaded political and business leaders for their “inactivity’’ that she claimed was “fuelling the flames … by the hour’’. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, in contrast, acquitted himself well, basing his defence of Australia’s policies on facts not fallacies. The proposition pushed by some — that Australia was not committed to effective action to cut emissions — was false, he said. Climate change was making things worse. But Australia, a huge continent, had a history of extreme weather. Two years ago, then- prime minister Malcolm Turnbull made a similar, valid point: “You can’t attribute any particular event, whether it’s a flood or fire or a drought or a storm to climate change.” Since then, unfortunately, the facts and science that should underpin discussion and policies have been overshadowed by emotionalism and opportunism. Vile, wild statements by the likes of Greens MP Adam Bandt, who tweeted on Sunday that “Scott Morrison is a threat to life. We must rise up against this terrible gov’t with a fury that matches the intensity of these terrible fires’’, are unconscionable and irrational.

For some industries, such as tourism, false and misleading claims about the impact of bushfires have created a new set of serious problems, threatening small businesses, jobs and local economies. Enterprises in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, hundreds of kilometres from firefronts, are reporting cancellations and major downturns in bookings. Misinformation — like false claims that the Great Barrier Reef is “dying’’ — has gained currency online in the northern hemisphere especially, exacerbating the impact of the fires on tourism.

For the sake of communities, families and individuals, policy making and debate about political, social, economic and environmental challenges must be grounded in facts and knowledge, not prejudice and exaggeration. In the economic sphere, business and consumer confidence, both key ingredients in investment, growth and job creation, are under assault from an unlikely source. The Bank of International Settlements, established in 1930 to serve central banks around the world in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability, appears to be doing the opposite. It has asked central banks to think about “green swan” or “climate black swan” events triggering the next financial crisis. Repeated often enough, that prophesy could dent markets and eventually become self-fulfilling, inflicting incalculable economic pain on working families. Such a crisis would also stymie the ability of nations to pay for action to reduce emissions and to mitigate the effects of climate change.

In the same vein, economic confidence is not helped by oft-repeated claims that the labour market is in the doldrums. To the contrary, as Adam Creighton reports on Friday, the economy generated almost 30,000 new jobs in December. Almost all were part-time and under-employment remains a problem. But the improvement reduced the jobless rate to 5.1 per cent. Jobs growth finished 2019 at 2.1 per cent, more than double the OECD average, Josh Frydenberg noted. The nation has a long way to go to lift productivity. But the figures suggest economic policy is on the right track. Productivity will be the key to lifting wages growth in 2020. But even on last year’s trend, when wages growth slipped slightly to 2.2 per cent over the year to September, it exceeded the CPI, which rose by 1.7 per cent. Households, in the main, are starting the new decade with surging levels of prosperity due to rebounding property prices and a bullish sharemarket. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows household net worth, on a per capita basis, jumped over the three months to September by $10,699, or 2.6 per cent, to a record $428,574, the fastest growth since 2016.

Donald Trump, while prone to his own brand of erratic Twitter hyperbole, did well in Davos because he stuck to facts, mainly the reversal of the economic stagnation that affected the middle class and blue-collar workers in the US for decades. The President’s focus on bread-and-butter issues engaged audiences around the world far more than the vague nouns — inclusion, resilience and sustainability — favoured by many of the forum’s elite attendees. On Wednesday, one of our online readers, Jason, summed up many people’s views when he posted that readers want to hear more about people “who do useful work and less from celebrity activists who demand others do useful work’’.