Saturday 29 February 2020

Collinsville: the Queensland town on the frontline of the coal wars




The idea of a new coal-fired power station in the town has been a useful political tool but few experts think it necessary, or viable
The only physical trace of Shine Energy, which wants to build a $2bn coal-fired power station in north Queensland, is a small post office box next to an Asian grocer at a suburban Brisbane shopping complex. The same mailbox is shared by more than a dozen online businesses, including the maker of a metal card that spuriously claims to improve the quality of wine.

Company documents show Shine Energy is worth a nominal $1,000 on paper. It has no registered financial obligations, and no physical office at its listed address.
On its website, Shine describes its business as providing “renewable energy solutions”, but the company could offer no evidence that it or its directors, mostly Birri and Widi traditional owners, has ever previously worked on an energy generation project.
What Shine does have in its favour is political support. Over the past year, as the fledgling company began to promote the idea of building of a coal-fired power station at Collinsville, the plan has gathered a string of Queensland LNP politicians as cheerleaders. This month the company was awarded $4m by the federal government to conduct a feasibility study – a grant widely viewed as a concession to pro-coal elements of the Coalition.

Bob Katter
‘There’s nothing to it but politics,’ says Bob Katter. Photograph: Glenn Hunt/AAP

The announcement has pried wide the political schism over coal in north Queensland, and in the process Collinsville and its dwindling population have been thrust to the centre of the energy debate; national headlines have declared the town, where coalmining has been the lynchpin industry for more than 100 years, the new front in the climate wars.
“[The LNP] just make it a political football, there’s nothing to it but politics. There’s no sitting down and thinking the idea through. [The power station plan] is disastrously bad for north Queensland. But politically, because [certain Labor MPs] are anti-coal, it’s very good politics.”

‘Hijacked for political purposes’

The sun shines 300 days a year in Collinsville; beneath the ground locals have dug coal for more than 100 years. In some ways it is unsurprising that this place has become symbolic of Australia’s ongoing policy uncertainty regarding energy generation and climate change.
Just outside of town a solar farm wraps around the derelict coal-fired power station that closed a few years ago; looming behind are the shadows of black coal pits.

Brett Murphy.
Brett Murphy wants a Collinsville power station, if the feasibility study supports it. Photograph: Ben Smee/The Guardian


Like an overwhelming majority of locals, Murphy wants the power station to go ahead if the feasibility study supports it.
“We want growth here,” he says. “We want jobs here. We want the town to grow. We want houses here. We want all the associated stuff that goes with it.”
Trevor Anderson, a motel owner with real estate interests, tells Guardian Australia many people in town had become worried the coal power proposal would attract protests like those directed at the Adani coalmine, whose rail link would run close to Collinsville.

"They have their own agenda. They don’t care about the town"

Anderson says people in Collinsville recognise the world will eventually transition away from coal. But he also speaks in terms very familiar in the Bowen Basin and other coal-producing regions; to date no politician, businessman or activist has turned up in Collinsville with a palatable transition plan.
In that void, the power station proposal has become viewed as a local saviour.
“A number of years ago Collinsville was 4,000 people heading towards 5,000 and we’re currently 1,200 today – and we’re looking at where to from here,” he says.

Trevor Anderson


“This lazy cynicism is shameful. They sell out their own communities and our full potential as a nation. To deny energy alternatives as the Nationals do is to rob regional communities of their future”.
Trevor Anderson owns a hotel in Collinsville and says the coal needs a viable plan to transition away from coal. Photograph: Ben Smee/The Guardian

“I don’t think there’s been a great deal of thinking or attention to what [a climate transition] means for small towns like us. What I see is politicians, tourism people, saying each one of our jobs is going to be replaced by a new tourism job. But I don’t see that as practical at all. It fails to take into account that we own houses, businesses, we have settled families. What exactly is our transition plan for these people? Should we just leave our homes and businesses and move to the south-east?”
Carol Cosentino and Garry Reed acknowledge they are probably the town’s only greenies. Both are long-term locals and both speak about Collinsville in a remarkably similar way to the business owners and miners whose lives are entwined with the coal industry.

Carol Cosentino.
‘People are very desperate to maintain a lifestyle here, a way of life, so they’re grabbing at whatever they can get,’ says Carol Cosentino. Photograph: Ben Smee/The Guardian

“People have stuck together through many hard times and difficult conditions and tried to make a life for their families.
“People are very desperate to maintain a lifestyle here, a way of life, so they’re grabbing at whatever they can get and a coal-fired power station seems like an easy answer. But there’s not much scrutiny of the detail, they just accept everything at face value.
“I think the politicians and some of the media are putting out things that are not necessarily true. It’s glossed over and it’s misleading people. It made me sad but I’m going from sad to angry. Especially at certain politicians that are pushing it and encouraging people into that kind of thinking. They have their own agenda. They don’t care about the town.”
Reed says he’s had discussions with dozens of locals about climate and energy, and that many parrot the arguments pushed by politicians and supporters of the coal industry.
“It’s like they have swallowed George Christensen’s playbook,” he says.

Subsidies ‘could result in higher prices’

The notion that north Queensland needs a coal-fired power station has been a useful political tool, pushed heavily by the LNP at the last state election, but few experts believe it is viable or necessary without heavy subsidies and other guarantees by the federal government.
A series of reports commissioned in 2017 warned that a coal-fired power proposal would likely increase prices. The Queensland government found the generator could only be viable in a high-price scenario – at prices above $75 per MWh – which is well above the current wholesale average of $61 per MWh.

The town of Collinsville.
The town of Collinsville. Photograph: Ben Smee/The Guardian

“The problems with this line of argument are many: artificially suppressing electricity prices by artificially creating oversupply in a region … does not guarantee investment.
“If the private sector believes that the government will enter the market, this will have a chilling effect on new private investment. Ill-judged subsidies for new generation can lead to the displacement of existing, higher marginal cost generation, which then causes the supply-demand balance to revert, resulting in higher prices again.”
Experts also question the notion underpinning the construction of a new power station: that the electricity grid needs permanent baseload generation.
Tim Buckley, from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, says the concept of feeding baseload power generation into the grid is outdated, particularly in north Queensland where several large renewable generators have been built in recent years.
Buckley says the economics of coal plants meant they ran permanently at more than 70% capacity but that the energy generated will be useless when renewables are productive.
“In the new world we are in today, when renewables are not available you need on-demand flexible ramping capacity. You do not want baseload power,” Buckley said.
“If the government is agnostic as to the source of the fuel and they just want grid reliability, then the options are peaking gas, pumped hydro storage and batteries.”
In its own systems plan, the Australian Energy Market Operator says that due to a surge in renewable connections in north Queensland and an “energy surplus”, any large-scale generator connections would not be efficient until other power generators were shut off.

Taking back the means of production

Shine Energy’s chief executive, Ash Dodd, will not answer detailed questions about the proposal, and says the planning work to date is confidential. It is unclear to what extent Shine’s initial business case – prepared by Canadian firm WSP – concluded the project might be feasible.
However, Guardian Australia has learned some details about the status of the proposal, including that Shine has no confirmed investors or off-take agreements, and that the company is reliant upon the federal study to fully understand the project’s viability.
Dodd has previously said the power station could allow for the early retirement of a less-efficient, higher-emitting existing coal-fired plant, such as Gladstone. The Queensland energy minister, Anthony Lynham, has rejected suggestions that any of the state’s generators will be shuttered early. The privately-owned Gladstone plant – the state’s oldest – has contracts to supply power to heavy industry until at least 2029.
Dodd, whose background is as a youth worker, has not responded to questions about whether Shine or its directors have any experience in the energy sector.
He and fellow Shine Energy director Les Muckan are both former candidates for the Katter’s Australia party – Bob Katter says they are “good blokes” despite his own opposition to the power station on the grounds the electricity would be too expensive. A former director, Luke Shaw, infamous in Queensland as the jury foreman from Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s perjury trial, also has ties to the Katter party.
Another officeholder of Shine, Dodd’s cousin Kenny Peters-Dodd, is a respected environmentalist who has campaigned against the Adani coalmine, and whose work has been recognised by the Bob Brown Foundation.
Ash Dodd has spoken in several interviews about the company’s motivation, which has little on face value to do with coal. He says Indigenous people deserve the opportunity to profit from an industry that has been the lifeblood of the local area for more than 100 years.

“We own that country up there, we’re Birri people, that’s our country, that’s our nation,” Dodd told Andrew Bolt during a Sky News interview last year.
“We’ve missed out on those opportunities to use the means of production to create wealth and economic prosperity and positive social outcomes over the years, since 1861.

“We want to use [the land] which is rightfully our own, to make economic prosperity ourselves. We don’t what handouts mate. We want the same opportunity with our private property, our land, to create prosperity.”

Zali Steggall on getting to zero net emissions – Australian politics live podcast

Independent MP for Warringah, Zali Steggall, is seeking bipartisan support for a climate change bill aimed at transitioning Australia to a decarbonised economy. Katharine Murphy sits down with Steggall to discuss her adjustment into politics, whether the bill can pass the upcoming conscience vote, and if modern Liberal voters are willing to embrace climate policy.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/audio/2020/feb/29/zali-steggall-on-getting-to-zero-net-emissions-australian-politics-live-podcast

Independent MP Zali Steggall unveils plans for climate change bill<br>epa08208624 Independent Member for Warringah Zali Steggall holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia, 10 February 2020. Steggall, along with her fellow crossbenchers Rebekah Sharkie, Helen Haines and Andrew Wilkie, will release on the day the climate change national framework for adaption and mitigation bill.  EPA/MICK TSIKAS  AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUTPhotograph: Mick Tsikas/EPA

Scott Morrison's duty is to protect the Australian people. There is no greater threat than climate disruption

Our government continues to focus on the supposedly horrendous cost of climate action without mentioning the benefits
The first duty of a government is to protect the people. There is no greater threat than climate disruption as the world heads to 3C or more warming, possibly by mid-century, yet the prime minister is unwilling to explain the implications.
Asked by Zali Steggall in parliament recently about the costs of 3C of warming, Scott Morrison replied that “we do understand there are costs associated with climate change”, but was incapable of saying what they were.
As a diversionary tactic in our climate debate, it invariably works, focusing attention on the supposedly horrendous costs of action, for example building the new zero-carbon energy system; a discussion which skates over the fact that replacing ageing coal-fired generators with renewable energy will be cheaper than rebuilding with coal or gas, as the solar/wind/battery option slips under the fossil-fuel-energy cost curve.
Commentators repeatedly frame debate around the recent 2050 net zero emissions policy adopted by the ALP, and now supported by many others, in terms of its “costs”, without mentioning the benefits: huge damages avoided by reducing the level of global warming by concerted global action.
In fact those damages, at only 3C, may be beyond quantification. Work from the University of Melbourne in 2019 has shown that on current global emissions patterns, a conservative estimate of costs for Australia would be $584.5bn by 2030, $762bn by 2050, and more than $5tn in cumulative damages from now until 2100. On the other hand, the cost of effective emissions reduction is estimated to be $35.5bn up to 2030, or 0.14% of cumulative GDP, a negligible impact.
Such estimates focus on infrastructure damage, agricultural and labour productivity losses, human health impacts and ecosystem losses, but this is the tip of the iceberg. The costs of extreme weather events are not included, and more importantly, neither are the economic damages that Australia will incur as 3C of warming sweeps through Asia and the Pacific, devastating nations, disrupting major trading partners and supply chains, and likely turning the region – the “disaster alley” of global climate disruption – into one of social chaos and breakdown.
Thirteen years ago, senior US national security analysts looked at the consequences of 3C of warming and concluded that it would “give rise to massive nonlinear societal events. In this scenario, nations around the world will be overwhelmed by the scale of change and pernicious challenges … Armed conflict between nations over resources … is likely and nuclear war is possible. The social consequences range from increased religious fervour to outright chaos”.
Australia’s intelligence community, and the prime minister’s office, are well aware of this analysis, and have a duty of care to brief Morrison on its risk assessment. So when he refuses to admit the impacts of a 3C world, ignorance is not an excuse.
Australian government climate denial has played a leading role in ensuring that a 3–4C future has become accepted in global policy making circles as “politically realistic”. The increasing concern from climate researchers that such a world is likely to be climatically unstable and incompatible with the survival of human civilisation as we know it is totally ignored.
A survey of the scientific literature on the likely impacts of 3C paints a frightening picture. We described such an outcome in a recent report, The Third Degree, on the implications for Australia of existential climate-related security risks. In such a world, it is likely that the structures of societies will be severely tested, and some will crash. The poorest nations will suffer first and most deeply from climate change, but, after three decades of inaction, no nation will now escape.
Water availability will decrease sharply in the lower latitude dry tropics and subtropics, and affect almost two billion people worldwide. Agriculture will become nonviable in the dry subtropics. The Sahara will jump the Mediterranean, as Europeans begin a long trek north. Water flows into the great rivers of Asia will be reduced by the loss of more than one half, and perhaps much more, of the Himalayan ice sheet.
Aridification will emerge over more than 30% of the world’s land surface, most severely in southern Africa, the southern Mediterranean, west Asia, the Middle East, rural Australia and across the south-western US.
Most regions in the world will experience a significant drop in food production and increasing numbers of extreme weather events, including heat waves, floods and storms. Food production will be inadequate to feed the global population and food prices will skyrocket, as a consequence of a one fifth decline in crop yields, a decline in the nutritional content of food crops, a catastrophic decline in insect populations, aridification, monsoon failure and chronic water shortages, and conditions too hot for human summer habitation in significant food-growing regions.
The lower reaches of the agriculturally important river deltas such as the Mekong, Ganges and Nile will be inundated, and significant sectors of some of the world’s most populous cities – including Kolkata, Mumbai, Jakarta, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Lagos, Bangkok and Miami – abandoned.
Deadly heat conditions will persist for more than 100 days per year in West Africa, Central America, the Middle East, South-East Asia and parts of Australia, which together with land degradation, aridification, conflicts over land and water, and rising sea levels will contribute to up to a billion people being displaced. Refugee conventions may give way to walls and blockades.
Of this, the Australian government has nothing to say, a total abrogation of its first responsibility to protect the people, and a massive failure of leadership and imagination.

Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a senior member of the advisory board of Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration.

David Spratt is research director of Breakthrough.

Anthony Albanese denounces 'lazy cynicism' of Nationals in appeal to NSW coal country



Anthony Albanese
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese will defend Labor’s net zero target and accuse the Nationals of clinging ‘to yesterday’. Photograph: James Ross/AAP

Anthony Albanese will travel to New South Wales coal country over the weekend in an effort to persuade regional Australians that net zero by 2050 means opportunity for blue-collar workers and for farmers.
In an address to the country Labor conference in Singleton on Saturday, the Labor leader will blast the Nationals for engaging in “lazy cynicism” and for selling out regional communities by opposing action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Federal Nationals have been out since Labor announced it would adopt the mid-century net zero target, claiming that shift would spell the death of agriculture. But a former deputy leader of the NSW Nationals, Niall Blair, said this week the target Labor adopted would provide a great opportunity for the agricultural sector in Australia to diversify and thrive.

Albanese will tell Saturday’s conference the global community wants Australia to reduce emissions, but it is not demanding Australia stop exporting coal. “In fact, the global steel and aluminium industries – all needed to build solar panels and wind towers – will continue to demand high-quality Australian coal for decades to come”.
Labor suffered negative swings in the Hunter Valley region during last year’s election because of a backlash in coal communities to the party’s climate policies. Albanese will say coal will remain part of such regional economies, but also point out regional economies are increasingly diversified. “The Hunter doesn’t have all its eggs in the coal basket,” Albanese will say.
“Contrary to Nationals’ rhetoric, regional Australia is more than resources alone. Look around you. The mighty Hunter is Australia’s largest regional economy, with an output of more than $47bn each year”.
“Could you imagine Australia without Hunter wine? Could you imagine horse-racing without Hunter thoroughbreds? Down the road we have the University of Newcastle. Up the road, the University of New England. Two of the jewels of our tertiary sector.
“To ignore the diversity of regional Australia makes no sense.”
Albanese will also argue new technologies will create new jobs. “With the development of an Australian hydrogen industry, regional Australia would be a natural home for expanded industries in aluminium, steel, silicon and ammonia.”

He will say there are huge opportunities in regional Australia to contribute to the abatement task and gain new incomes streams through carbon farming. “Australia has the potential to capture 1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, generating a new source of income for our farmers in the process.”
Albanese will also nominate forestry and rare earths as blue-collar regional industries that will continue through the transition to decarbonisation.
“Just as coal and iron ore fuelled the industrial economies of the 20th century, [rare earth and forestry] will fuel the clean energy economies of the 21st,” the Labor leader will say.
“If we leave it to the Nationals, we will drift back towards the 19th century. They would rather cling to yesterday and run scare campaigns than embrace the opportunities of tomorrow.


“This lazy cynicism is shameful. They sell out their own communities and our full potential as a nation. To deny energy alternatives as the Nationals do is to rob regional communities of their future”.

Queensland energy minister tells Angus Taylor he's 'deeply concerned' about Collinsville coal plans

Anthony Lynham has written to his federal counterpart, saying no previous studies support the need for more coal generation in Queensland
Anthony Lynham speaks to the media
The proposal to build an energy park at Collinsville in north Queensland, was granted $4m by the federal government for a feasibility study. Photograph: Sarah Marshall/AAP

The Queensland energy minister, Anthony Lynham, says he is “deeply concerned” that plans for a new coal-fired power station at Collinsville are based on assumptions that existing generators will be closed ahead of schedule, potentially costing the state jobs.
In a letter to his federal counterpart, Angus Taylor, Lynham said he was not aware of any study that showed additional coal generation was needed in Queensland, and that he was worried about its impact on other power stations.
This month, a proposal to build an energy park at Collinsville in north Queensland, including a 1,000 MW coal-fired power station, was granted $4m by the federal government for a feasibility study.
The proponent, Shine Energy, which is run by Indigenous traditional owners from Birri and Widi country, had developed a business case with Canadian engineering firm WSP. But it remained unclear what conclusions that makes about the viability of a coal-fired plant, and what additional work will now be undertaken by the federally funded study.
Guardian Australia understands the company’s justification for the plant is partly based on an assumption the Gladstone power station, which is privately owned, will cease operations ahead of schedule. Gladstone is likely to remain open until at least 2029, because it has private power supply arrangements with heavy industry.
Lynham said he understood a report had already been completed and asked Taylor to share that information with the state, which operates the bulk of the state’s power generators.
“I am deeply concerned of the impact this plant could have on other coal-fired power stations in the state – and what assumptions your report makes about their closure to make another coal-fired power station viable,” Lynham said.
“In particular, I am concerned about the potential impact on the 250 employees of the privately owned Gladstone power station and their families, and the assumptions your report makes about their future.
“There are other options where you could support Queensland in the electricity market. Analysis published in recent years suggests that under the Queensland government’s 50% renewable energy target, increasing renewable energy can deliver reliable and affordable electricity whilst achieving significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”
In an interview with the Australian last year, Shine Energy chief executive Ash Dodd said the plant would help to lower carbon emissions because it would allow for the “swifter phase-out” of dirtier plants, such as Gladstone.
The Australian Energy Council has warned against “ill-judged” subsidies for power generation, which it claims could cause the displacement of existing generators, upset the supply-demand balance, and inflate power prices as a result.
Lynham also cited Queensland government commissioned analysis that a new coal-fired power station would require a wholesale price of $120 per megawatt hour (MWh) – double the current average wholesale price in Queensland.
The 2017 report found that a new coal generator could only be viable in circumstances where wholesale prices are at sustained high levels, and where there was no threat of a carbon price during the life cycle of the plant.
“We are aware of no previous study that has supported a requirement for additional coal generation in Queensland,” Lynham said in his letter to Taylor.
Trevor St Baker, among Australia’s most prominent energy financiers, told Guardian Australia this month that any plant at Collinsville would not be viable unless the Morrison government agreed to shield it from changes to climate policy.

Shine Energy did not respond to questions about its assumptions and the viability of the project.

Yes, it is worse than the flu: busting the coronavirus myths

People wear protective masks on the subway in São Paulo, Brazil.
People wear protective masks on the subway in São Paulo, Brazil. Photograph: Victor Moriyama/Getty Images

Claim: ‘It is no more dangerous than winter flu’

Many individuals who get coronavirus will experience nothing worse than seasonal flu symptoms, but the overall profile of the disease, including its mortality rate, looks more serious. At the start of an outbreak the apparent mortality rate can be an overestimate if a lot of mild cases are being missed. But this week, a WHO expert suggested that this has not been the case with Covid-19. Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China to learn about the virus and the country’s response, said the evidence did not suggest that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. If borne out by further testing, this could mean that current estimates of a roughly 1% fatality rate are accurate. This would make Covid-19 about 10 times more deadly than seasonal flu, which is estimated to kill between 290,000 and 650,000 people a year globally.

Claim: ‘It only kills the elderly, so younger people can relax’

Most people who are not elderly and do not have underlying health conditions will not become critically ill from Covid-19. But the illness still has a higher chance of leading to serious respiratory symptoms than seasonal flu and there are other at-risk groups – health workers, for instance, are more vulnerable because they are likely to have higher exposure to the virus. The actions that young, healthy people take, including reporting symptoms and following quarantine instructions, will have an important role in protecting the most vulnerable in society and in shaping the overall trajectory of the outbreak.

Claim: ‘Face masks don’t work’

Wearing a face mask is not an iron clad guarantee that you won’t get sick – viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can still penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is the main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly five-fold protection versus no barrier. If you are likely to be in close contact with someone infected, a mask cuts the chance of the disease being passed on. If you’re just walking around town and not in close contact with others, wearing a mask is unlikely to make any difference.

Coronavirus: How to protect yourself


Wash your hands!

Claim: ‘You need to be with an infected person for 10 minutes’

Claim: ‘A vaccine could be ready within a few months’

Scientists were quick out of the gates in beginning development of a vaccine for the new coronavirus, helped by the early release of the genetic sequence by Chinese researchers. The development of a viable vaccine continues apace, with several teams now testing candidates in animal experiments. However, the incremental trials required before a commercial vaccine could be rolled out are still a lengthy undertaking – and an essential one to ensure that even rare side-effects are spotted. A commercially available vaccine within a year would be quick.

Claim: ‘If a pandemic is declared, there is nothing more we can do to stop the spread’

A pandemic is defined as worldwide spread of a new disease – but the exact threshold for declaring one is quite vague. In practice, the actions being taken would not change whether or not a pandemic is declared. Containment measures are not simply about eliminating the disease altogether. Delaying the onset of an outbreak or decreasing the peak is crucial in allowing health systems to cope with a sudden influx of patients.

Morrison's urgent manoeuvring on coronavirus is atonement for summer's bushfire shambles

Scott Morrison
A loss of public confidence in attributes like ‘capable’, and ‘good in a crisis’ is potentially dangerous for Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and the Coalition government. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Have you heard the Morrison government has a plan?
The Plan® was very hard to miss, given the prime minister used the word “plan” or “plans” more than 20 times when he answered his first Dorothy Dixer in question time on Thursday. Lest any ambiguity remain, Peter Dutton went on to utter “plan” another 16 times if you happened to be counting, and our indefatigable live blogger, Amy Remeikis, bless her, was counting.
Plans revealed themselves in the preambles to questions, and in the answers to questions; a thicket of plans for potential pandemics, for managing the economy, a plan for beating up Labor over its increasingly uncontroversial commitment to net zero emissions by 2050. Or perhaps that one was a strategy.
The urgency and intensity of the messaging was such that I wondered whether we might at any moment see live broadcasts interrupted with a solemn message to the nation at the top of the hour: “Fellow Australians, this is your government speaking. Did we mention we have a plan? Did we mention we have a plan for a plan?”
Before I get branded a shocking cynic, let’s be clear. It is obvious the government needs to have a considered and credible plan for managing a mass outbreak of the coronavirus, because the spread of this illness, and the negative economic consequences associated with it, is a deeply serious issue, not some passing bit of political confection or rank opportunism.
The world is watching unfolding events in a state of shared nervousness. Leaders are warning an epidemic is on the way and the trajectory of infections prompted a record plunge in the US stock market on Friday as analysts warned the outbreak could wreak economic havoc on a scale not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.
In short, this is all profoundly serious, and it is not a drill. So I’m relieved Australia has a plan, because we do need one, and it would great if the government can both develop and execute it competently.
Having acknowledged there is a serious challenge to manage and the country absolutely needs a plan to manage it, let’s drill down a bit further. It’s pretty obvious why the government is intent on telling voters there is a plan for managing coronavirus and other potential crises.
To put it bluntly, Morrison’s theatre of The Plan® is atonement for the disaster of the summer.
If we take a minute or two to recap the sorry story of the bushfires, the only thing the government mastered was looking like a shambles. As the fire emergency spiralled, Morrison presented during a time of terrible crisis as a leader making it up as he went along. In the court of public opinion, the government was constantly running behind events. Haplessness could be measured in increments, from the ill-fated Hawaii holiday through to calling out the defence forces without telling the poor bloke managing the bulk of the blazes.
As well as conveying a compelling impression of a government extemporising inelegantly in full public view, Morrison looked resentful when obvious deficiencies and inconsistencies were pointed out to him. Presenting to the public with pursed lips and barely restrained pique, not every time, but often enough to be memorable, I reckon compounded negative voter perceptions and made the inevitable backlash worse.
Our Guardian Essential poll in mid-January delivered a stark snapshot of the credibility hit. Morrison’s net approval rating shifted from plus two to negative 12, and the Labor leader Anthony Albanese sprinted ahead of Morrison as preferred prime minister (despite the fact the poll shows consistently voters are still getting a fix on the Labor leader).
Because everything is so polarised, because politics has substituted conflict (easy) for reform (hard), because technology is herding people into tribes, and because default mainstream media culture tells people these days it is OK, in fact, desirable, to sit in an enclave that confirms your biases, preferably with noise-cancelling headphones – Morrison didn’t take too much of a hit among rusted-on Coalition voters. They, largely, stuck.
But if our poll snapshot is accurate, across Labor and (critically) undecided voters, one in seven people changed their minds about Morrison between December and January. The prime minister also took a significant hit on the attributes questions we ask the Guardian Essential sample regularly about leaders. There was a nine-point drop in the number of voters rating Morrison a capable leader. Worse, there was a 19-point drop in the number of voters saying he was good in a crisis.
Now I want to consider these specific attributes a little.
Given the Coalition’s defining pitch to Australian voters is always we will keep you safe and secure, because we are conservatives, and that’s what conservatives do (in contrast to wild-eyed progressives, who favour social change over security) – a loss of public confidence in attributes like “capable”, and “good in a crisis” is potentially dangerous for Morrison and the government.
The language of safety, security and managerial competence is the most powerful language Australian conservatives have in their toolkit. That language is resonant enough to win elections.
Security is such a critical part of the pitch that the disastrous summer Morrison just presided over actually begs an existential question for a Liberal prime minister who likes to style himself as the Generation X John Howard.
It’s a simple question.
What good is a conservative who can’t keep Australians safe?
One more brief observation before we wrap up. Looking ahead, I reckon climate change poses a significant dilemma for the Coalition.
Since the Abbott era, the Coalition has been able to weaponise climate change to its political advantage. But weaponising climate change is a whole lot easier when global heating is an abstract risk, or in the minds of some, an entirely hypothetical possibility. I think that becomes harder to navigate when heating is a lived reality – when people are dealing with the practical consequences of natural disasters, like the summer we’ve just experienced. But as they say in the classics, only time will tell.
More immediately, Morrison’s challenge is to stabilise and turn public perceptions. This is a critical mission. The prime minister, a former campaign director, respects research and data, so he will know that recent political history suggests voters make up their minds about prime ministers and governments pretty early in a term.
Those perceptions, once formed, are hard to budge. I reckon Julia Gillard, Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull could all share a story or two about the increasingly transient nature of political honeymoons in Australia.
So, in summary, The Plan® you keep hearing about carries a lot of freight. There are actual, practical plans to manage risks, and there are political projections of risk management. For the government, both will feel important. Implicitly Morrison wants to tell you he is learning on the job.
The past week in politics tells us this. The prime minister and the government need a way to apologise for the summer and reboot, without admitting any liability, because introspection and contrition is really not a hallmark of this government, at least not in public.

If contrition is impossible, because sorry is such a hard word to say, then perhaps competence, assuming that materialises, can serve as a substitute.