Climate change a burning issue (again) in voters' minds

Extract from The Guardian

Katharine Murphy on politics

Australian politics

Katharine Murphy

The Coalition has no choice but to try and fix the self-created disaster that is its climate policy

@murpharoo

Sat 2 Feb 2019 08.00 AEDT Last modified on Sat 2 Feb 2019 10.08 AEDT

‘Climate change is not only a hot-button issue on its own terms. Some of the research suggests it has also become a proxy for political dysfunction.’ Photograph: Glenn Hunt/EPA

This piece of backroom intelligence shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the summer we are all still enduring. Record high temperatures, the hottest January on record; storms; floods in some places, droughts in others; mass fish kills in ailing rivers.
Climate change is back as a vote-changing issue – top of mind for many Australian voters. Private polling conducted for the environment movement and for the major parties suggests community concern about climate change is currently sitting at levels not seen since the federal election cycle in 2007.
If you can remember the events of 2007, you’ll recall that John Howard was forced into a significant about-face on the issue. Within sight of the election that swept Kevin Rudd into power, Howard signed the Liberal party up to emissions trading, a “world’s best-practice” cap and trade scheme, and declared Australia must prepare for a “low-carbon future”.

The research doing the rounds as the major parties bed down their war rooms for the May contest puts climate change in the top-two issues of concern nationally. Women, particularly, are alarmed by the ongoing policy inaction, and that’s bad for the Liberals because the party’s standing among women is already depressed courtesy of the unhinged shenanigans of the past 12 months.
But there’s some nuance in the research. In marginal seats in outer suburban areas – the seats that often determine the outcome of federal elections – cost of living pressures still rank higher than climate change. But people insist that climate is registering in the top-three concerns in several outer suburban seats, where the issue is normally dormant.
The political consequence of all this is pretty obvious. The strength of community concern about climate change leaves the Morrison government vulnerable. The Coalition’s policy record on climate change is appalling. There is no other word for it. Absolutely, indefensibly, appalling.
The Liberals have opened the election year trying to put themselves back in contention. The government is desperately hoping that a full frontal, never mind the nuances, assault on Labor’s controversial tax measures is the pathway to a political fightback executed over the opening months of 2019.
During the summer the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has led a morale-boosting offensive on Labor’s negative gearing and dividend imputation policies on social media, with enthusiastic amplification from cooperative conservative media outlets hungry to sharpen their own “campaign journalism” spears, given the apparent likelihood of a Labor victory.
Frydenberg has endeared himself to colleagues for picking the tax fight. Nobody knows if all the thrashing about and train-crash gifs will resonate in the real world but two tangible things have been achieved.
Labor has been forced to defend its tax policies after a long period of dormancy in the debate, and the joust has delivered a shot of adrenalin to the moribund Liberal base. (As an aside, perhaps we can note that Frydenberg, with the frenzy of activity, might also be positioning himself for whatever fate awaits the Liberals post-election. Bit cheeky but doubtless true).

Coalition and Labor MPs report that the community backlash against dividend imputation is now a thing – a real and palpable thing rather than a febrile media confection – but Liberal and Labor MPs agree the anger is felt most keenly among Coalition supporters rather than people inclined to vote Labor.
Smart people on both sides of politics don’t yet know whether the government can leverage the current softening in the housing market to make negative gearing a point of serious political vulnerability for Labor or not. As they say in the classics, only time will tell.
While the tax fight has been good for internal morale, and may yet catch fire, smart people inside the government doubt it will be enough to turn negative sentiment, and believe it certainly won’t be enough if the government doesn’t try and fix its self-created disaster on climate change.
Internal discussions are under way about what to do. Moderates are sounding out what conservatives can live with.
An obvious course correction would be a cash injection for the emissions reduction fund, a vestige of the heavily criticised Direct Action scheme, and the environment minister has already flagged the ERF’s remit (which is currently paying for abatement) could be broadened to include the protection of threatened species.
Liberals who favour more climate action, and pronto, also point to the potential to increase funding for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Arena (the agencies the Coalition once campaigned to abolish), as well as providing handouts to households – a new package supporting the uptake of renewable energy.

But even if the Coalition manages to land some kind of repositioning without blowing the show sky-high (Hi Tony, happy new year), it’s unclear whether voters will buy it, given the gross stupidity of the past couple of terms, and given the Liberal party last year killed a prime minister in plain sight at least in part because he pursued a policy to reduce emissions in the electricity sector.
Also unclear is how any climate revamp would sit with the government’s aspiration to have taxpayers underwrite new coal-fired power plants, and potentially indemnify them against future carbon risk. Even if voters are forgiving enough to look past the policy car crash and the dumb and dumber intrigues that led to the third leadership change in two terms – that’s a split personality that’s hard to explain.
Climate change is not only a hot-button issue on its own terms. Some of the research suggests it has also become a proxy for political dysfunction, which is a lethal combination when voters are, as MPs report, viscerally angry at an incumbent government (although some Liberals will tell you Morrison isn’t loathed, according to their focus groups, and there’s some sentiment he should be given a chance).
At the moment, most of the political class is talking about Victoria. This is unusual. Normally before a federal election, a collective obsession descends about Queensland. “Whither Queensland?”. Why Queensland? Because the state has a swag of marginals.
Queensland remains front of mind, but Victoria is also turning up more often in dispatches. “Whither Victoria?” is on the agenda because of recent field evidence: the Liberals endured a rout in the state last year. Courtesy of that result, some in Labor think it’s possible Bill Shorten could take government with a southern states strategy, rather than embarking on the more typical mass genuflection to Queensland.
Not everyone buys that theory. Some think the anti-Liberal swing in the state contest won’t translate federally, for a couple of reasons.
The backlash in the Liberal heartland seen in last year’s state election was a cost-free protest vote. Liberals lost nothing by backing in Daniel Andrews, who had a concrete record to campaign on, and was a known quantity.
If Liberals vote for Bill Shorten, there will be a hip-pocket cost – the loss of negative gearing and capital gains concessions, cash rebates from dividend imputation – in other words, Labor’s policy offering federally puts a brake on the scale of the protest vote that might be lodged in May.
Liberals deeply depressed about the state of play in Victoria, and to a lesser degree in New South Wales, think Labor’s appetite to wind back tax concessions will be an automatic stabiliser on their heartland backlash to some degree – but they are conscious that a potent threat is coming from “small-l” liberal independents, which will require the diversion of scarce resources to supposedly safe seats.
Independents such as Zali Steggall and Oliver Yates are thumping the government on climate change, both as a thing in itself and as a proxy for dysfunction within the Liberal party which is imposing costs on the citizenry.
One live litmus test of whether Labor ultimately goes for broke with a southern states strategy – whether they think they can craft a pathway to victory without considering the parochial and materialist sensibilities of central Queenslanders – will be if Bill Shorten toughens Labor’s line on Adani. He went close to doing that last year but baulked at the last minute.
Environment groups and GetUp want Labor to stop the project, and they offer the party valuable campaign resources, strengthening an already formidable on-ground machine, in the event there can be a meeting of the minds.
Thus far Shorten hasn’t shifted and is remaining focused on hearts and minds in central Queensland, kicking off the election year campaigning in the state.

This suggests the Labor leader and the brains trust around him aren’t convinced – at least not currently – that writing off central Queensland is a political risk worth taking. But this is a space to watch.