The Sunday Telegraph
By: Simon Kearney
Practical environmental solutions must replace sledge-hammer tactics, experts warn national political editor Simon Kearney
"When I found out what was going on, it was like, oh my God I know nothing about program design,'' a public servant says, as if addressing colleagues around the water cooler.
"It's not like DCC (Department of Climate Change) has any expertise in this area. DCC is not a program manager,'' continues the public servant, obviously annoyed about a government decision.
This is not some lowly, very annoyed bureaucrat, grumbling to colleagues. It is a senior, very annoyed bureaucrat, trying to give a lot of junior colleagues a boost -- within earshot of a The Canberra Times reporter last month.
The speaker was Dr Martin Parkinson, head of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. The government decision being discussed was the announcement the DCC would be made responsible for fixing the Rudd Government's trouble-plagued home insulation scheme.
The outburst of honesty from the departmental Secretary about fixing a boots-on-the-ground policy mess instead of implementing a world-first emissions trading scheme (ETS) appears to be a cry of exasperation. Certainly, the political climate has changed for climate change. The writing was on the wall from the middle of last year.
The Lowy Institute's respected survey of Australian attitudes to a host of foreign policy issues found that, by mid-2009, Australians had moved on.
It was no longer the number one challenge, in fact it was number seven, of 10, just below controlling illegal immigration.
As a threat to Australia's interests, global warming was down as well, to fourth position, behind energy security, terrorism and the threat of new nuclear powers emerging.
Seemingly oblivious to cooling public opinion, the government set up the DCC under Minister Penny Wong.
Its public servants drafted laws for an ETS, travelled the world preparing for what was billed as the biggest climate-change conference ever, Copenhagen 2009, and readied us all to take on what the Prime Minister said was the "greatest moral, social and economic challenge of our age.''
Fast forward two years and Australians have stopped caring as much, Copenhagen proved to be a flop, and the Rudd Government stands accused of misleading the public over its ETS.
"The government used Copenhagen to put enormous pressure on the Liberal Party and they used Copenhagen to suggest we had to act early and we had to act now,'' says Richard Dennis from The Australia Institute.
"The Rudd Government deliberately misled people that it was about getting a certain kind of emission trading. The world never cared, all they wanted to know was what emission targets we were willing to sign up to.''
Dennis is no climate sceptic.
He firmly believes climate change remains the big challenge -- bigger than holes in the ozone, nuclear weapons, Y2K, or any number of challenges that have dogged us over the last few decades.
"There aren't any policy challenges facing this government, or in my son's lifetime, that will shape our cities, society, economy and our interaction with other countries as much,'' Dennis says.
But politically, he says, attempting to rush an ETS before a conference about emissions targets has left the government looking silly.
More importantly, it took an issue that was supposed to be above politics, and made it look very political indeed. "What the Rudd Government did was use the upcoming world meeting (Copenhagen) as a sledge hammer to drive a wedge into the Coalition,'' Dennis says.
It's not that Australians have stopped caring about climate change.
Get Up national director Simon Sheikh says the grassroots political action organisation's 350,000 members are still concerned about climate change, they just want to see some action -- any action.
Sheikh argues that Kevin Rudd needs to take a leaf out of John Howard's book when it comes to dealing with a recalcitrant Senate and pass something. "He's losing credibility because he doesn't take action. He's got an opportunity to pass something in the Senate. Clearly there's a need for a simpler approach,'' says Sheikh.
Get Up's wide-ranging research and polling has found people still want to see some action on climate change, they want business to pay for it and they are prepared to vote on it.
This will be a problem for the government who could find votes leaking to the Greens on the issue as they attempt to stem a loss of support on the Right over asylum-seekers.
In the midst of it all is the sense practical environmental issues have been forgotten. The Institute of Public Affairs' Tim Wilson asks what has happened to programs to combat salinity.
"There is a desperate need for practical environmental issues to be addressed. The greatest problem is salinity. It hasn't got the attention it deserves,'' he says. Wilson argues that a climate-change cheer squad in government took control of the policy agenda, and the government's purse strings.
"These people were just running amuck,'' he says. "The DCC should never have been established and should be abolished. It consumed every issue.''
In a rare moment when not riding a bike or running a marathon, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott appeared on the ABC's Q&A program last week where he was asked what the Coalition should have done differently at the last election.
"We should have ratified Kyoto. I mean, maintaining our Kyoto commitments but not ratifying Kyoto looked odd,'' Mr Abbott said.
Ironically, Mr Abbott's subsequent stance, to oppose an ETS, and the poll support it garnered, showed he had not made the mistake of missing the nation's mood twice.
"People are looking to solve problems. As a species, we're terrible at acknowledging our successes and celebrating them, we're always looking at the next problem,'' Wilsons says.
He argues Kyoto was the road block and once it was passed, the mood changed. Dennis disagrees. "It vanished the day after Copenhagen,'' he says.
After selling the country on climate change at an election and even getting the Opposition on board for a while, after Copenhagen the government said it needed to sell the issue better.
We all know precious little has been said about climate change since -- except, perhaps, around a few Canberra water coolers.