Climate change has not been addressed by either side of politics in the election campaign.
Welcome to Queensland: home of the Great Barrier Reef, the Daintree rainforest, the Torres Strait Islands and the pastoral Darling Downs.
Sadly, each of these Queensland icons is at serious risk from climate change – whether by drought, cyclones, ocean acidification, rising sea-levels, or, as our North-Queensland communities will testify, floods.
Given the importance of addressing climate change to our state’s future, you’d think that it would feature more highly in the 2009 election debate.
But the climate change elephant – the most important issue of our time – doesn’t even appear to be in the room. It’s been crowded out by the global credit crisis, the police force, and payroll taxes.
Meanwhile, in our so-called ’sunshine state’, renewable and sustainable initiatives are going offshore because they can’t find support here.
Welcome to Queensland, the coal state: home of the Bowen basin, Macarthur coal, and what is set to become be the world’s largest coal export terminal at Gladstone.
We’ve got certainly a lot to change, and the public is ready for it.
Shifts in our climate policies would yield not only massive environmental dividends, but also political dividends for whichever major party proposes them.
Thus far, however, the election campaign hasn’t hasn’t mentioned ’sustainability’ or ‘climate change’ in a statement from either side.
It’s no wonder they are avoiding talking about it – the climate policies of both the ALP and the LNP are decidedly lacklustre.
On the ALP’s watch, Queensland Rail is set to invest $654 million – not on the ailing suburban train network in Brisbane, but on expanding the capacity of regional coal export lines.
They introduced the ‘ClimateSmart’ package which could be more accurately renamed ‘ClimateStupid’, handing out over twice the amount of public money to rich coal companies than to start-up renewables. Bligh and her government are masters at the fine art of spin over substance.
Could ‘The Borg’ and the LNP be a better option? Let’s explore…
They do rightly oppose the Traveston Dam, which the ALP – aided by recent rainfall – conveniently ‘postponed’ until after this election. They could do some serious damage in north-Brisbane ALP marginals by talking up their water management credentials.
Another saving grace, aside from Traveston, is the LNP campaign website – vastly superior to ‘Anna4Qld’. Perhaps that’s where they directed the massive donations from mining magnate Clive Palmer – one of the biggest vested interests in Queensland coal.
It’s no wonder Palmer wants to help get Springborg into power – The Borg is a climate change denier who thinks that global warming is caused by volcanoes. The LNP doesn’t even have a climate change policy.
These are facts that Bligh would do well to highlight – the 2007 federal election showed that the electorate no longer tolerates climate sceptics like John Howard.
To make matters worse, the Nationals wing of the LNP still wants to reverse Queensland’s restrictions on broadscale landclearing.
So a change of government wouldn’t help the climate, or future generations, at all.
With no confidence in either major party on this crucial issue, the best election outcome that I am left to hope for is that enough people vote for independents or minor parties to produce a hung parliament.
Perhaps such a result would be consistent with what seems to be the prevailing view of Queensland politics – that we dislike the mess that the ALP is making of our state, but that the LNP, our only major alternative, is totally incompetent.
Maybe with a hung parliament, both main parties would start listening to community concerns, competing with each other to determine which policies – on climate, healthcare, education, crime or industry – are the most representative of public opinion.
After all, isn’t that the way that democracy is meant to work?
On climate, I suspect that the vast majority of Queenslanders – especially those who’ve recently been flooded out or hit by worsening cyclones – would put their vote behind a major party that came out with an inspiring, Obama-style, science-based climate policy.
The right policies could build a sustainable state, with renewable industries, public transport, and green jobs that Queenslanders could be proud of. Policies like that are just such an easy sell in an election campaign, and look a hell of a lot better than becoming the world’s largest coal exporter.
Sadly, I sincerely doubt that such a seismic shift could happen in the next two weeks. Nonetheless, I issue the challenge to Bligh and Borg: give us – the citizens who you work for – a climate policy that we could vote for with pride.
Go find the climate elephant, and make it your pet issue.
Popularity: 29% [?]
