Male Voice Over:

The UTS 4 Climate Podcast series is made by Impact Studios at the University of Technology Sydney, an audio production house funded by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research.

Erika Wagner:

What can we actually do? This is a question that gets thrown around in classrooms, in newsrooms, in your own head, about the collective future that faces us.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

What do you think the existential challenge about climate at a time when we’re all focused on the immediate challenge of this pandemic?

Dr Enric Sala ‘Defending Nature’s Last Frontiers’ at World Economic Forum

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1piaqte8Kc

Now we are destroying the Amazon forest at the equivalent of two football fields per minute.

Fran Kelly ‘Half of Great Barrier Reef dead since 1995’ on RN Breakfast

URL: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/half-of-gbr-dead/12769162

The Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals since 1995.

Dr Triona McGrath at ‘How pollution is changing the earth’s chemistry’ at TEDx

URL: https://www.ted.com/talks/triona_mcgrath_how_pollution_is_changing_the_ocean_s_chemistry/transcript

As more carbon dioxide has entered the ocean, the seawater pH has gone down, which basically means there has been an increase in ocean acidity.

Dr Michael Oppenheimer ‘Climate change author explains why oceans are at risk’ on NBC News Now

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRqh45qk5A0

You’re destroying this food chain that humans depend on. So we don’t have a choice. We need to adapt.

Hamish McDonald ‘Flames rip through towns, fears death toll will rise as bushfires rage on’ ABC News

URL:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhmaXS70YnQ

To the south there were bushfires. To the west there were bushfires. To the north there were bushfires.

Professor Gail Whiteman ‘Here’s Why the Melting Arctic Should Matter to Us All | DAVOS 2020’ at World Economic Forum’

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58wkkapojnw

The Arctic is like our circulation system and feeds it to global climate change everywhere. We have lost 50% of Arctic ice in about 50 years.

Simon McGregor Woods ‘Global Warming: Melting glaciers cause dangerous sea level rise’ on TRT World

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNoq825HHg4

The UN’s worst case scenario predicts a 1.3 meter rise by the year 2100. That could swap land currently home to 150 million people.

Karina Carvalho ‘Flames rip through towns, fears death toll will rise as bushfires rage on’ ABC News

URL:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhmaXS70YnQ

It’s been labeled an apocalypse and like looking into the gates of hell.

Sir David Attenborough ‘Sir David Attenborough calls for ‘urgent’ climate change action’ on ITV News

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbZEYz1oGQ0

If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.

Erika Wagner:

Many of us are still looking for the right answer to, “What can we actually do?” And that can be a very overwhelming question. Hi, I’m Erika Wagner and you’re listening to the UTS 4 Climate Podcast. I’m a Marine Science student in Sydney, Australia. I also work at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. For more than 20 years my colleagues have been tirelessly researching, thinking and creating change towards sustainable futures. We know that climate change is one of the greatest challenges we’ll encounter in our lifetime.

Erika Wagner:

At the Institute for Sustainable Futures, we take a solutions-based approach to reducing the impact of climate change and preparing us for its effects. But to many it’s still a politicised or abstract issue. We’ve created a space to explore climate change from all angles and to find practical answers to what we can actually do. You’ll hear from leading thinkers, from politics, economics, science, and journalism, to continue the conversation about climate, our futures and what change we need to see in the world. This is UTS 4 Climate from the University of Technology Sydney, and to begin, we’re going back to understand where Australia went wrong on climate.

Erika Wagner:

Here’s the Honourable Bob Carr, New South Wales longest serving Premier and a former foreign minister of Australia. Bob is joined by the award-winning forensic investigative journalist Marian Wilkinson, who has examined how Australia’s climate policy fell foul of a global political agenda in her book, The Carbon Club. This conversation was recorded on September 23rd, 2020. I hope you enjoy this valuable conversation.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Marian, there was a magic moment in 2009 when it looked like both sides on the national parliament would come together and Australia would put a price on carbon.

Marian Wilkinson:

Yes, Bob. This was a fascinating time. Malcolm Turnbull was opposition leader. Kevin Rudd of course, was in power as the Labor Prime Minister. There was this moment in September 2009, I think when the big breach really happened. And that was, I tell the story in my book, a time when Malcolm Turnbull wanting to get bipartisan support from the Liberal Party for Kevin Rudd’s policy had gone to London and he’d gone to see the conservative opposition leader there, David Cameron, who Turnbull believed that conservatives could do climate policy. This old idea of vote blue go green.

Marian Wilkinson:

And so Turnbull was very encouraged by this and thought that this would help him get support for the policy through the Liberal Party here. At the same time, and I think unbeknownst to him, his nemesis in the party on climate policy, Senator Cory Bernardi, went to Washington and he went to see the most conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill about blocking climate policy and linked up with some of the key climate skeptics in Washington. And what Bernardi saw in Washington was how a campaign against climate policy, particularly against putting a price on carbon emissions could really be used effectively as this kind of wedge politics. And so he came back from Washington, absolutely encouraged by that strategy. And ultimately I would argue that’s where the barrier of bipartisan climate policy really started.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

I think it’s interesting in your book how this figure who most Australians wouldn’t have paid much attention to, Cory Bernardi, walks out of stage right to center stage and having been coached in Washington implements policies of denying climate action. And it made me think about this challenge that climate change denial is very much an American heresy, and it was transplanted from the United States to Australia, very much with the help of Cory Bernardi.

Marian Wilkinson:

Well, Cory Bernardi certainly played a key role. And I think that what he did was he brought to the debate a successful way of using this internal party politics. Prior to that, the climate skeptics had essentially been making their arguments to business, to the public, through the think tanks and attempting to really make headway in the Liberal Party. I think what people like Cory Bernardi helped them do was make headway inside the Liberal Party and really sharpen the divisions. Of course Bernardi himself, and he would kind of admit this almost in the interviews I did with him, he understood there were more powerful figures in the party using him. And in fact, I think one of the reasons he ended up talking to me was that he ended up feeling discarded by the end of the process because he didn’t get the ministerial position he thought he would get for giving so much help ultimately to Tony Abbott in that fight against carbon policy, which helped put Abbott in the Prime Minister’s seat.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Yeah. He even did, according to the book, a training course with conservative Americans in how to mobilise opinion to kill off action on climate change. So he’s learning about building a database of motivated conservatives. He’s learning about directing attention at crucial parts of the political decision making apparatus. And he comes back to Australia with these techniques and in effect presses a button in 2009 and sees enormous pressure created within the Liberal Party to do in Malcolm Turnbull, who’s working with Rudd on this package and to elevate Tony Abbott who pledge to end it.

Marian Wilkinson:

Yeah and it was interesting because one of the people who was really taken with what Bernardi was trying to do, which was very much under the surface at the time the press gallery was following the big fights with Abbott. Nick Minchin who of course was a key skeptic on the opposition benches key position in the Senate. They were fighting Malcolm Turnbull. And so all the press gallery attention was on that, but beneath the surface Bernardi and his supporters were very much operating within the grass roots of the right of the Liberal Party. That’s who they were mobilising to as you say, get these email campaigns going, the phone calls to the offices of the Liberal Party, back-benchers really putting pressure on that way.

Marian Wilkinson:

And it was very curious that, well, probably not so much curious as fascinating that when this was ultimately successful Hugh Morgan, who was a key figure behind the scenes as well, pushing this approach. He wrote this report for the Lavoisier Group, one of the big skeptic think tanks praising these kinds of actions and saying that he saw it as essentially the grassroots of the Liberal Party rising up to as he put it, “defeat green despotism.” And for me, that kind of language, those kind of tactics, really elevated these politics I think, to a level of toxicity almost that we hadn’t seen in Australia before.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

It was certainly a political drama. These events of 2009, you had Rudd putting his leadership on the line as it turned out because down the track he was undone when he had to concede. The government was now operating without a plan for reintroducing a package like this. You had Turnbull in that concentrated fury of 2009 being brought down as Liberal leader and Abbott being given the leadership because of the party tumult over climate policy. And of course you even had the Green Party voted to defer Rudd’s legislation in the Senate and wears the odium of that to this day. Rudd’s legislation was a window of opportunity before Turnbull was cut down, but the Greens voted with the coalition to defer it.

Marian Wilkinson:

And this has been a narrative that has really taken hold in the Labor Party. And I think deep in the enmity in many ways of the ministers who were around at the time towards the Greens on this. I think in the book, I try and unpick this a lot more because what I think happened in those crucial days when the Rudd legislation was coming before the Senate, the backdrop came to the fore, which was Rudd and his minister, Penny Wong had really wanted bipartisan support on this with the Liberal Party, with the Coalition. They felt that if you were going to bring the country with you, you needed that broad bipartisan approach. And so when Turnbull was dumped and the policy was dumped, Rudd then wanted to kind of turn on a sixpence and bring the Greens on board or believe the Green should come on board.

Marian Wilkinson:

But the truth of the matter was he’d never picked up the phone to Bob Brown. He’d made it clear he didn’t want to deal with the Greens if he didn’t have to on this. And so in essence, Labor was also asking Bob Brown to dump his own credibility, which had challenged the scheme of Rudd’s policies in a number of key areas. I don’t think Brown could have done that without damaging his own credibility and opening up splits within his own party. So everyone ended up being jammed on this. What was interesting of course, was that later, as we know, Julia Gillard did do a deal with Bob Brown did bring in a policy, but because it was a Labor Greens policy, it became an absolute lightning rod for Tony Abbott and the Coalition. And if anything, the politics got even more toxic on climate change. And the issue became, I suppose, explosive for all the political leaders.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

You mentioned Hugh Morgan, and I said when I reviewed your book for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, you’d need a university Marxist or some comparable analyst, Noam Chomsky to pick this one apart. He is on the board of the McCormack Foundation, which controls millions it allocates to the Liberal Party or to conservative think tanks. He’s on the board of the IPA, which is a conservative think tank made a strong commitment to disputing the science of climate and defunding activities that challenged it. And he’s out of the resources sector. So it’s money for the conservative political parties. It’s ideas out of the IPA to clothe them with policies. And it’s the instincts of someone who was in there with a mining giant and he opted to run a furious and obsessive campaign to dispute climate science. And it would seem to have succeeded quite brilliantly.

Marian Wilkinson:

It was a success. I think there’s no doubt it was a success. A lot of people, especially in Sydney, don’t know much about Hugh Morgan, he’s much more prominent in Melbourne. He had, as you say, been CEO of Western Mining Corporation, a very big figure, an influential figure in the Business Council of Australia and in the minerals council. And he was often, if you like by the Labor Party, I think seen as one of these mad uncles who banged on about climate change. I think there was not enough realisation in the Labor Party that he was a hugely significant figure in the Liberal Party. Hugh wouldn’t talk to me for the book, which was a bit of a shame. He says he’s going to do his own book on this, but some of his close colleagues did. And they believed that he was probably after Rupert Murdoch in the 90s, anyway, the most influential businessman in Liberal circles. He certainly had the ear of the Prime Minister at the time, John Howard and of the treasurer, Peter Costello. He dipped in and out of the IPA board but I think that there was no doubt he was an intellectual influence there certainly. He was absolutely taken with this idea that environmentalism was a kind of left wing religion that people who wanted to act on climate change specifically, the European countries had this socialist agenda to reregulate Australia. And so I think him and his right-hand man Ray Evans, who was also of that conservative ilk helped forge those connections with the US Skeptic Movement.

Marian Wilkinson:

And even though I’d covered this issue for quite some time, I didn’t quite appreciate how important challenging the science was to those people. And I mean, taking it from the proposition that they didn’t believe the science, but as one of the leading Washington skeptics said to me, we had to challenge the science because if we didn’t challenge the science, the people who wanted to do something about climate change had the moral imperative on their side. And we looked like we were just being selfish and protecting vested interests. We had to challenge the science for that reason. Otherwise the moral imperative would stay with those who wanted to act on climate change.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

And they ended up doing it even when the evidence was to many of us incontrovertible like the deterioration of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Now you’ve got three chapters on that and you follow the debates of scientists committed to protecting a healthy reef with the people, undercutting them. And you see that clearly as a totemic Australian battle, a reflection, a subset of this national debate about climate policy.

Marian Wilkinson:

Absolutely. And I think it is, and I think it was seen by all sides as that, the environmental side and the coal industry specifically and later the gas industry. But it also is fascinating because I think when you look at the reef, it is such an incredible demonstration of what is happening with climate change. And Will Steffen, quite a prominent climate scientist quoted in the book likes to say that the bleachings we’re seeing on the reef is like a smoking gun on climate change. It’s very hard to refute when you look at what’s happening there. But I think, again, that is the very reason why the climate scientists who deal with the reef have been such an object of attack by the Skeptic Movement in Australia.

Marian Wilkinson:

And in a way I think that’s very tragic because what is happening on the reef and the research that Australian reef scientists contribute to the science of climate change is enormously important. And you can see that Bob, when we’ve had in the last five years, three really significant bleaching episodes on the reef, and you look at the water temperatures and they rise at the same time, and it is very clear what’s happening. And I think the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park authority, chief scientist, David Wackenfeld keeps on saying that the 1.5 degree target to try and keep the temperature rise somewhere around that is absolutely crucial in his view for preserving the Great Barrier Reef.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

I see the issue is taken on from time to time by The Australian, continuing to prosecute the case about the reef and arguing that the claims about bleaching alarmist and even rigged. I noticed too last Sunday night in the documentary on Rupert Murdoch broadcast on the ABC and the last of the three episodes being interviewed by The Australian’s, Paul Kelly in 2012, Rupert Murdoch States the case against the science of climate change and speaks with obvious sincerity. They’re not cautious comments. They are somewhat incautious, but it’s what the man’s thinking.

Marian Wilkinson:

I think it was so interesting. I think it was back in 2011 when James Murdoch was on the rise in the succession stakes of the Murdoch empire and both he, but even Rupert Murdoch moved for News Corp to take action on climate change, to talk about News Corp cutting its own emissions and so on and so forth. I think as James fell in the succession stakes over the phone hacking scandal, as we know, and Lachlan came back into the picture, you really saw that thing about that flutter of concern about climate change.

Marian Wilkinson:

Rupert Murdoch himself seemed to go silent. It’s a curious thing. I think with the Murdoch media, that there’s so much good journalism gets done there on this issue. I know that all those editors, Chris Mitchell, who was a former editor there will argue absolutely till he’s blue in the face there was no bias there. But I think we do have to look at James Murdoch’s recent comments when he made his separation from News Corp earlier this year. And he himself said, one of the reasons he did so was because of News Corp’s attitude to climate change. And I think that probably tells you that it’s understood absolutely at the heart of the company and the heart of the family, what the problem is on covering climate change from whether it’s Fox News or the publications in Australia.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Yeah. A Win by Biden is going to change these dynamics. I’ve read he’s climate policy, very explicit goal to getting carbon out of the electricity grid by 2035, no talk of gas as a transition fuel whatsoever. And that clear commitment that Australia nationally still hasn’t made to net zero emissions by 2050 and a big fiscal stimulus based on electrifying America, an electric car fleet charging stations across the US. Biden win backed by a Democrat majority in the Senate. Well, we’ll see Australia somewhat isolated on all of these fronts, talking up gas, not making that 2050 commitment.

Marian Wilkinson:

Well, I think all eyes, frankly, in the area of climate change, the people who are really interested in what is going to happen, policy wise, whether here or in the UN talks are all focused on this next US presidential election. And I think without doubt is going to be one of the most important elections as far as climate change goes. If Biden wins, he is under a lot of pressure within the party to push forward strongly on climate change legislation and funding. And I think that will, as you say, put Australia under pressure because as you know, Biden has openly in his program, talked about carbon tariffs on manufacturing, on products.

Marian Wilkinson:

This I think will be a big issue for Australia. And it comes at a time when, as we’ve seen with the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison and the Energy Minister, Angus Taylor talking about this gas-led recovery, that they really see it as playing a key role in Australia’s manufacturing industry as does the Australian Workers Union very important union within the Labor Party. Now, if the US starts seriously talking about carbon tariffs, and if the Europeans do the question is where will that leave an Australian manufacturing industry that is reliant on fossil fuel, even if it’s gas, which is slightly better than coal in the climate stakes. I think for the long-term, if not the medium-term that is going to be problematic for Australia, very problematic.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Yeah. And meanwhile, Australia is ended up being with Saudi Arabia or Brazil, unlike the Europeans or the Biden forces in the US, unlike Canada. And I’m even looking at the rush to renewables in India and the announcement by Xi Jinping that offers some hope that the massive investment in coal-fired power, that was part of the Chinese response to the COVID economic downturn might not go ahead. Australia could very much be a carbon outlier, and I think it would be an uncomfortable place for the Australian public to be. But I, for one, I’ve got no reservations about highlighting that’s where we will end up if those dynamics fall into place.

Marian Wilkinson:

Yeah. I think that somehow within the Federal Government, and among federal politicians on both sides of the divide here, there is little understanding that within the global climate talks within that framework of getting to net zero by 2050, there is an understanding by most countries that there is a limited budget for the amount of emissions that can go into the atmosphere. And when I look at the plans on the table in Australia, especially for a gas-led recovery, especially to look at the number of gas developments that’s on the government’s wishlist.

Marian Wilkinson:

There seems to be an understanding or a belief I should say, in Australia, in Canberra, that Australia doesn’t have to be part of that global budget on emissions. And that somehow we will, as a rich first world country, we will be able to go to the climate talks and say, “East Timor, don’t develop your gas interests, even though you’re impoverished, Papua New Guinea, don’t you develop yours President Erdoğan, don’t you develop your gas resources under the Black Sea because we in Australia need that big share of that budget so we can develop ours. And I think how will that go down in Glasgow in 2021? I don’t know what you think, Bob, but I don’t think there’s a real understanding in the federal political parties that this is a limited opportunity here and Australia is not going to be given a free pass.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Yeah, I understand. But if Canberra doesn’t understand it, the boardrooms and investment houses do, and they’d be worried about putting money, for example, in some of these gas projects, gas-fired power stations, or the development of gas fields as Liveris has recommended. If pressure on a future Australian government is going to see them close down. They won’t have the 30 or 40 year life that they need as investors to get their investment back. So I think the decision’s going to be made for us. I hope it is by boardroom decisions, by decisions by banks and investment banks. But it does leave you thinking, and let’s wrap up at this point about why a clever country like Australia got it so wrong, failed to come up to settle on some smart way of pricing carbon to make a gradual nonthreatening transition. And with a few sentences, what would you say that the sheer power of the carbon sector here or smart political organisation on the conservative side, Bernardi and Hugh Morgan, the influence of News Corporation? What’s been decisive?

Marian Wilkinson:

Fundamentally of course, I think you can’t go past the fact that we, as a first world country, we’re in incredibly advantaged by the fossil fuel industry. And so much of the country’s export wealth and certainly a lot of the wealth in the regions in WA, Queensland, the Hunter Valley came from that. And when this big decision had to be made about the other side of that ledger, how much it would cost us in the long-term because of climate change, there was a natural reluctance to look at what we had to do.

Marian Wilkinson:

I think, into that came the power of the political organisations that really wanted to exploit this for political advantage, both with their enemies across the aisle, but sadly with their internal party enemies as well. And I think we’ve now got to the stage where this terrible toxicity of politics in climate change has become as much a political weapon as it is protecting the fossil fuel industry. And I think we’ve got to really separate that out if we’re going to move beyond this. Because as long as people in the main political parties use this as a weapon to thump their enemies, the politics of climate change is not going to move on. But the more we do this, the more, the reality of climate change essentially kind of will come in on the Australian public, who increasingly, I think do want sensible rational policy on this from the Canberra leadership.

Erika Wagner:

That was Walkley Award winning journalist, Marian Wilkinson in conversation with UTS Industry Professor, the Honourable Bob Carr. Now next time on the UTS 4 Climate Podcast, we’ll hear from one of Australia’s most experienced social researchers, Rebecca Huntley.

Rebecca Huntley:

And I think that understandably for a long time, the climate conversation started with the science and we needed to, we actually did need to get the community across the science to some extent, but there were limits to how much the science can get us further along. And it’s these stories of transformation, of recognition that the climate is changing. And this is what I’m doing. This is how I’m making this happen.

Erika Wagner:

Hear Rebecca, in conversation with Bob Carr on how we can talk about climate change in a way that makes a difference. I’m Erika Wagner. Thanks for listening to the UTS 4 Climate Podcast. I hope you can join me next time.

Male Voice Over:

UTS 4 Climate was created in response to the 2019 student strike for climate. It is a statement of the university’s commitment to addressing the global problem of climate change through our research, our curriculum and operations. To continue the discussion about climate change and to see some of the inspiring projects UTS researchers are working on, go to the UTS 4 Climate website, uts4climate.uts.edu.au. The UTS 4 Climate Podcast is made by Impact Studios at the University of Technology, Sydney in collaboration with the Institute for Sustainable Futures. At impact Studios, we combine academic research with audio storytelling for real-world impact. The production team live on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation whose lands were never ceded.