Ross Garnaut takes swipe at media as he goes

DEPARTING climate change adviser Ross Garnaut has left his government-funded role disillusioned with the quality of media and public debate.

Ross Garnaut

OUTGOING climate change adviser Ross Garnaut has left his government-funded role disillusioned with the quality of media and public debate, but hopeful agreement is close to putting a price on carbon.

Public discussion of the response to climate change had not lived up to his recollection of the media treatment of other great microeconomic policy reforms.

"It has been a very messy process and with a degree of incivility that is unusual in Australian public policy discourse, to an extreme at times," Professor Garnaut said in an interview with The Australian after taking a swipe at the media in his address to the conference in Melbourne yesterday.

"I reflect upon the media treatment especially the News Ltd group of this complex issue of immense importance for long-term Australian prosperity, and I don't think many people would say we have had a media presentation of the issues as thorough, as reliable and informed as we had as a basis for the reform era of Australia," Professor Garnaut said.

His comments followed an appraisal by The Australian's Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan yesterday that Professor Garnaut's last report was "astoundingly poor, relying on various sleights of hand, misrepresentations and propaganda techniques".

Sheridan said Professor Garnaut had "sacrificed his reputation as a serious policy intellectual and will be remembered for having produced a shoddy report in the interests of partisan campaigning".

Professor Garnaut said he had been concerned about the "misrepresentation of United States policy and action on climate change in parts of the Australian climate change discussion".

"It is a problem for Australia on climate change policy, it's a problem for Australia on economic policy, it's a problem for foreign policy when we presume bad faith in the US government -- yet that presumption has become part of the Australian discussion in parts of the media," Professor Garnaut said.

He said that "some participants in the process, and some in the media, have treated the issue dishonestly and unreasonably, and I think that view is widely held".

"It's been a process of public discussion that does no honour to Australia, which is not up to the quality of the Australian community. What I am hoping is now we are looking like getting a good result out of the policy-making process, that that can mark a turning point."

Reflecting on his departure from the position of government climate change adviser, Professor Garnaut said he felt it had been a productive period. "The 10 papers and the final report that are on the public record represent very solid work that will stand there as an aid to policy-making process," Professor Garnaut said.

He believed discussions were heading towards legislation with carbon pricing as the centrepiece of a set of policies that would allow Australians to do their fair share to reduce the risks of dangerous climate change, and to do it at reasonable cost

"Given the character of public discussion over the past nine months this would be an extraordinary result," he said.

Professor Garnaut said such a result would be a step towards an economically and environmentally rational reform with unprecedentedly long time horizons.

"This is a reform that the costs all come early and the benefits all come later. The choice is between doing this in a market-orientated way or a regulatory way."

He said the defeat of carbon pricing this time around would not be the end of climate change mitigation policies.

"It would, however, be the end of any hope of climate change mitigation policies being reached at reasonable cost," Professor Garnaut said.

"If climate change mitigation policies were defeated this time around it would open the way to myriad regulatory interventions. These would raise costs directly.

"There would be no opportunity to use revenue from carbon pricing to introduce productivity raising tax cuts as a form of compensation for low- and middle-income earners.

"Most importantly, a return to invasive regulator intervention would entrench a deterioration of Australian political culture."

Professor Garnaut said the governance arrangements contained within any agreement between Labor, the Greens and independents were the key to protecting the Australian policy-making process from distortions through pressure from interest groups in the future.

They were also the keys for a continued smooth transition towards greater ambition over time in line with international moves for greater ambition, he said.