When Shadow Environment Minister Mark Butler scoffed at Environment Minister Greg Hunt during a National Press Club debate this month, he was scoffing for us all. It was a scoff that expressed an unspeakable frustration: how can the Environment Minister say what he does with a straight face?
Hunt said that the Australian renewable energy target was 'misrepresented'. Butler scoffed, then retorted, 'Yes, by you.' It was a public airing of the exasperation many people have felt watching Hunt twist the facts about climate policy over the last few years.
Of course, all politicians and political parties select the statistics and 'frame' that best suits their position. That's part of the sophistry of political debate. But even among the slippery-tongued ranks of federal parliamentarians, Hunt is in a league of his own.
For three years, the Environment Minister has defended the merits of a 'direct action' climate policy that is allowing Australia's climate pollution to increase for the first time in a decade. A champion debater, Hunt provided the verbal smokescreen for the Abbott government's ideological denial of global warming, a role continued under Malcolm Turnbull.
Hunt's usual tactic is to find the rare statistic that presents his policy in a favourable light, and spread it far and wide. When people use his stat, they accept his framing of the issue.
It wouldn't work if climate change were still seen as a moral issue. But our language on global warming is now largely technocratic. Most people don't understand what all this talk of emissions reduction percentage targets actually means, so they can't spot the spin when it's presented to them.
Let's take a look at some examples. Last year, spruiking the target Australia took to the Paris climate conference, Hunt told Lateline 'that is a 52 per cent reduction on per capita emissions, one of the highest in the world'. This is now part of official Liberal Party script — Coalition MP Steve Ciobo spread it again on ABC's Q&A this week.
What this fails to acknowledge is that Australia is already one of the highest per capita emitters in the world. We can claim a big percentage drop because we're starting from such an extraordinarily high baseline. The 2016 Climate Change Performance Index rated Australia 59th out of the world's 61 biggest carbon polluting countries. Only Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia are ranked below us.
"With no new money in the most recent federal budget for the Emissions Reduction Fund, the Coalition literally doesn't have a credible plan to cut carbon pollution, but Hunt keeps dodging this question."
Imagine you have an absolute clunker of a car — the most polluting on the road. You reduce its tailpipe emissions by half, but even then it's still the most polluting. You can claim to have made an effort, for sure, but that effort needs to be seen in context. Hunt is hiding that context, misrepresenting the Coalition's clunker of a climate policy as something much better than it really is.
Here's another one. Hunt has compared the cost of his direct action Emissions Reduction Fund with the previous Labor government's 'carbon tax'. 'The first Emissions Reduction Fund auction was a spectacular success — 47 million tonnes, $13.95 per tonne of abatement and approximately 1 per cent of the more than $1300 per tonne cost of abatement under Labor's failed scheme,' he said in Question Time.
First, there are questions over whether the Emissions Reduction Fund has paid for genuine emissions reductions at all. Ian MacGill from the University of NSW Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets told ABC's Fact Check 'there's no way of being sure that genuinely 47 million tonnes less went to the atmosphere than otherwise would have happened'. A recent analysis by Australian National University found the government's direct action program has major flaws and likely overstates how much emissions are being reduced.
Second, the two aren't comparable. The Emissions Reduction Fund is money the government spends to reduce emissions, but the carbon price was money the government raised, and then returned as compensation. 'The $1300 a tonne is nonsense because it didn't cost anyone that amount of money; the money was redistributed throughout the economy,' Roger Dargaville, deputy director of the University of Melbourne's Melbourne Energy Institute, told ABC Fact Check, which found Hunt's claim 'untenable'.
There are many other examples. Hunt misrepresented David Attenborough's documentary on the Great Barrier Reef and is relying on an accounting trick to claim Australia will meet its Kyoto emissions reduction targets. With no new money in the most recent federal budget for the Emissions Reduction Fund, the Coalition literally doesn't have a credible plan to cut carbon pollution, but Hunt keeps dodging this question. Instead, he's resuscitating Tony Abbott's carbon tax lines.
The frustrating thing is that proving Hunt wrong on the above is almost counterproductive. One of the main reasons for stalled action on climate change is the issue has become overly abstract. The focus on the means to cut carbon pollution (percentage targets) rather than the benefits (avoiding heatwaves and bushfires, a more stable climate), makes it appear as if the only thing at stake is a numeral. On top of that, in Australia climate change is often presented as a political contest with two warring sides, when it's actually a scientifically established phenomenon in the real world.
Debating technicalities with the Environment Minister just reinforces these ways of viewing climate change. The more political debate there is about percentage targets, the less people see the issue as relevant to their daily lives.
And so anyone who is concerned about climate change and has some policy understanding is left with a dilemma. You can refute the Environment Minister's misrepresentations, but risk alienating the public with technocratic language. Or you can talk about what's at stake, such as the bleaching and dying Great Barrier Reef, and leave Hunt's furphies unanswered. Or you can try to do both, and run out of time to say it all.
What to do? No wonder some people have been left literally speechless. Maybe the only option is to tell the public that the Environment Minister's statements aren't to be trusted. But I suspect they know that already.
Greg Foyster is an environment journalist, an alumni of Centre for Sustainability Leadership, and the author of the book Changing Gears.
Cartoon by Greg Foyster