Climate is being ignored, especially by the ABC — and the loudest voice is of denialists

Data from Isentia shows that climate change has so far been missing in action in the coverage of most media outlets throughout the election campaign.

If you think climate action has been absent from the election campaign so far, you’re right. New data from Isentia shows how the most important issue facing Australia is being ignored by the major parties and the media, just weeks after large areas of northern NSW suffered repeated record floods.

In the weeks since the election began, climate change has been, respectively, the 7th, 6th and 5th most commonly mentioned topic in coverage — and climate received little mention in the debate this week (beyond Anthony Albanese’s focus on “clean energy”) or afterwards.

That suits both sides: the Coalition wants no mention of climate lest it remind voters in urban seats of the comprehensive failure of so-called Liberal moderates to press for effective climate action within a denialist federal government. And Labor treads carefully on the issue for fear of alienating a small number of regional voters — indeed, its biggest climate announcement of the election so far has been to insist coal miners would never be subject to requirements to reduce emissions.

Both sides are also recipients of large donations from fossil fuel companies, and former politicians and staff from both sides can be found working for fossil fuel companies, vividly demonstrating the phenomenon of state capture at work.

And the loudest voice in climate coverage in the election campaign? News Corp commentators have long attacked the ABC for being obsessed with climate issues, but in fact it is News Corp that has the highest volume of coverage. In the last seven days, according to Isentia, 12% of News Corp’s election coverage — bearing in mind it is the dominant media company and operates across television, print and online — was devoted to climate, compared to 8% of the ABC’s.

In fact, the ABC devotes little attention to climate: the cost of living and Medicare have been the two biggest issues in the ABC’s election coverage, as they have been for News Corp. A federal ICAC, and the Solomons debacle, were the next two most frequent subjects for the ABC.

(Despite The Australian’s purported focus on national security, Isentia data shows News Corp has almost completely ignored the Solomons disaster, giving it far less coverage than, for example, its continued hyping of the Albanese “gaffe” from the first week.)

Aged care also received more coverage from both the ABC and News Corp than climate.

The low priority the ABC accords climate doesn’t merely discredit the News Corp lie about the ABC being obsessed with it, it suggests the ABC is now so cowed by the Coalition that it is reluctant to give sufficient priority to an issue that should be at the top of any list of crucial election issues, especially for a public broadcaster.

Instead, it has handed the running on climate to a company that operates as an arm of the fossil fuel industry.

What of other outlets? Liberal-aligned Kerry Stokes’ Prime Media also ignores climate change almost completely — just 4% of its coverage in the last seven days related to climate issues. In contrast, rural media group ACM devoted 16% of its coverage to climate issues — equal with Medicare and behind only an integrity commission. At Nine, climate came third on 13% behind cost of living and an integrity commission.

So, only ACM and, to a lesser extent, Nine are giving appropriate weight to the most important election issue, while News as always remains in denialist mode, and other right-wing groups like Kerry Stokes’ completely ignore it.

And at “Your ABC”, the most important issue affecting you over the long-term (and, for all too many, increasingly the short-term) struggles for a mention — further evidence that something is now deeply rotten within the national broadcaster.

Bernard Keane

Energy security has been sacrificed for climate zealotry

 

• 12:00AM JUNE 20, 2022

In a country renowned for its abundant and affordable power, it is a disgrace that we have a full-blown energy crisis on our hands courtesy of politicians choosing to sacrifice energy security in favour of climate change zealotry (“Net-zero gain in politicians’ bungled play for power”, 18-19/6).

The Morrison government betrayed us by signing up to net-zero emissions by 2050. If it had been truthful, if it had insisted that net zero was against the nation’s best interests, voters would have had a real choice on May 21. Instead, the former government folded like a camp stretcher to pressure from moderates within its ranks in the deluded belief that a second miracle win would come its way.

Now here we are in the midst of an energy crisis lumbered with a Labor government not only committed to net zero, but one that ­intends punishing us even harder with its interim target to lower emissions by 43 per cent by 2030. And to make doubly sure that the cheap, secure, reliable power we are entitled to is put further out of our reach, the Albanese government has a climate policy requiring 82 per cent of electricity to come from intermittent renewables in less than eight years. State and territory governments needn’t think they can evade blame. They have the same reckless climate policies as their federal counterparts.

With the threat of blackouts and soaring power bills stalking us, it is time our politicians got off their backsides and started earning their keep by desisting from indulging in climate alarmism claptrap and formulating commonsense solutions that will get us out of this energy mess they created.

Dale Ellis, Innisfail, Qld

Chris Kenny provides welcome commentary demonstrating there are some in the media who understand the situation facing the country over renewable electricity. As a retired engineer who has worked in electrical generation, I find the policies of most politicians display stupidity, and this is world wide. The sensible ­exceptions such as Matt Canavan are very much in a minority.

The argument that renewables are so much cheaper and create jobs is ridiculous. It is easy to do some figures on the back of an ­envelope showing how many ­trillions of dollars Labor’s policy will cost. The importance of ­reliability is ignored. It is going to take rolling blackouts, or teals and inner city Greens trapped in high-rise lifts for long periods, for ­people to realise the importance of a reliable electricity grid.

Raymond Watson, Sunnybank Hills, Qld

Just when the country needs a pragmatic government we have an idealistic, utopian one which, based on its unrealistic ambitions, will most certainly worsen outcomes for all (“Labor is caught in a web of contradictions”, 18-19/6). Any government that determines our future based on a bunch of biased models, such as the one ­behind its 43 per cent emission cut, will soon come unstuck as ­reality bites back.

A forced uptake of unreliable renewable energy, the payback to the states for their roles in destabilising the Morrison government and a wages policy that has no regard for struggling businesses will exacerbate and lengthen inflation and do nothing for productivity. This all adds up to an inevitable decline in living standards.

Ron Hobba, Camberwell, Vic

June 22, 2022 — 5.00am

OPINION

Energy spin can be powerful, but rhetoric won’t keep the lights on

As a rule, you should pay more attention to what politicians do than what they say.

The German Greens once championed the complete exit from coal-fired power by 2030. Now they are part of a three-party governing coalition where idealism has collided with the real world.

In response to Russia cutting gas exports to Berlin by 60 per cent, Germany’s economic minister Robert Habeck, a Greens MP, had the baleful task of telling the nation that rebooting coal-fired power plants was “painful” but “a sheer necessity”.

Germany burns lignite, the dirtiest kind of brown coal. So, the nation is facing a hard truth: most of its carbon-cutting has come through outsourcing industrial production to China and propping up renewable energy with imported oil and gas.

The giant flaw at the heart of the Paris Agreement is that countries are generally held accountable for greenhouse gas emissions generated within their own borders, but emissions generated anywhere are a problem everywhere. Europe’s dirty little secret is that it parades its virtue while exporting its vice. That would explain why carbon has been steadily rising in the atmosphere since the problem was first confronted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

At the world climate summit in November, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – a man with an almost supernatural capacity to say one thing and do another – announced the “death knell for coal power”. It came at the same time his government was planning the first new coal mine in the UK in decades. Now British energy companies have been asked to delay the closure of coal-fired power plants.

Europe’s dirty little secret is that it parades its virtue while exporting its vice.

Closer to home, when all lights went out in South Australia in 2016 the state maintained there was no issue with the balance of its wind-dominated generation and made much of installing a 100 megawatt Tesla battery, which can power 30,000 homes for one hour. But before the battery was running, SA had built nine diesel generators that can deliver 276 MW for as long as there is fuel.

Perhaps nowhere has perfected the “do as I say not what I do” routine better than Victoria. In August 2016 Premier Daniel Andrews trumped a permanent ban on the exploration and development of all onshore unconventional gas. Now, with the energy crisis biting, Andrews has demanded gas from “our ground” be delivered cheaply to his state. The gas in question is fracked, comes from Queensland and is already contracted to overseas buyers. If Andrews wants gas, there is plenty of it under his feet in Victoria. At least now he is allowing exploration for conventional gas.

Meanwhile, Victoria’s Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio says the development of a capacity mechanism to secure the power supply cannot include coal and gas. Pause on that proposition for a moment. Victoria is demanding that 70 per cent of the National Electricity Market’s generating capacity be excluded from a capacity market.

And this is the minister who struck a secret deal with Energy Australia to ensure brown-coal-burning Yallourn Power Station keeps its capacity in the market until its scheduled retirement in 2028. This raises pretence to performance art.

Last week, this column asked federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen if the short-term fix to the energy crisis was to keep coal-fired generators operating until their retirement date, fix the ones that are broken and include them in the capacity market.

There followed an impassioned speech.

“No, that has been a long-held view of yours, and it is not one I agree with,” Bowen said. “The problem is there is not enough investment in renewable energy. There hasn’t been enough investment in storage. Yes, you can say the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. The rain doesn’t always fall either, but we can store the water and we can store renewable energy if we have the investment. That investment has been lacking for the last decade. That is the problem.”

In no particular order, storing water involves digging a hole in the ground, storing energy is a tad more complex. The question asked about dealing with the real world, in the short term, with the assets that we have. The answer was a lament to a world that does not yet exist.

And this reporter’s long-held view is that “renewables are the future but, today, they present serious engineering problems. To deny that is to deny the science”. I could lie and claim the transition was easy and win plaudits from the conga line of dopes on Twitter, but that show is already oversubscribed.

Some things in politics can be spun and don’t matter. But the electricity system is governed by physics and is really serious. No amount of rhetoric will power it. Like gravity, you get this wrong, you fall.

OPINION

Make no mistake, energy transition will be difficult and costly

June 8, 2022 — 5.00am

Here’s an inconvenient truth: the transition to net-zero emissions will be hard and expensive.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed how deeply embedded fossil fuel is in the world economy and how wrenching rapid change can be. Cutting off the world’s largest gas exporter, the second biggest exporter of crude oil and the third largest coal exporter is the shot heard around the world because when you make essential goods rare, the price rises.

Here the fallout is a surge in wholesale power prices, as the highest cost of generation sets the dispatch price in the National Electricity Market and our gas and black coal prices are linked to international benchmarks. Putting more renewable energy on the grid will not guarantee lower prices because all the talk about how cheap it is rests on an average, or “levelised”, cost of generation, not the actual cost of sustaining a power source that cannot deliver continuous energy unsupported.

As J.P. Morgan’s annual energy paper points out, those costs include transmission, back-up thermal power and, eventually, utility-scale storage. Whatever fills the intermittent power void won’t be cheap – a study commissioned by Industry Super Australia calculated the cost of battery storage for Australia at $6.5 trillion. To that add the rising cost of ancillary services needed to keep the retooled electricity system secure and reliable, a service that was once a byproduct of electricity generation in old-world power stations.

Germany stands as a stark testimony. It has spent more than €500 billion ($743 billion) transitioning its electricity system, boosting wind and solar to more than 45 per cent of generation since 2000. But it had to keep 89 per cent of its fossil-fired capacity to deal with the problems caused by calm, dark days. It now boasts Europe’s most expensive retail power and is strategically exposed because the country can’t function without imported gas.

Europe has at least acknowledged the difficulties involved in decarbonising electricity by designating gas and nuclear energy as “green” investments. The EU’s commissioner for financial services, Mairead McGuinness, says this is because, “we firmly believe that this recognises the need for these energy sources in transition”.

If the energy transition is to succeed here, the road runs through more gas and an end to state moratoriums on exploration and development. This recognition is beyond the wit of some state and territory governments as, once again, extremists rule the debate, putting Australia on the road to a self-imposed disaster that will hit the poorest hardest. It’s the same mindset that allows green activists to demand rapid decarbonisation while reserving the right to oppose building wind farms and ban nuclear energy.

And decarbonising electricity generation is the tip of the iceberg because it represents only 19 per cent of the world’s final global energy consumption. As one of the world’s leading energy experts, Professor Vaclav Smil, details in How the World Really Works, “the decarbonisation of more than 80 per cent of final energy users … will be even more challenging”.

“We have no readily deployable commercial-scale alternatives for energising the production of the four pillars of modern civilisation solely by electricity,” Smil writes.“This means that even with an abundant and reliable renewable electricity supply, we would still have to develop new large-scale processes to produce steel, ammonia, cement and plastics.”

One of the pillars, ammonia, is the foundation for industrial fertilisers on which half of the world’s agriculture depends. The chemical process that creates it relies on natural gas, coal or oil. When the fuel used by the farm machinery and the trucks that transport food to the supermarket is added to the mix, Smil calculates the embedded energy in a 250 gram baguette at two tablespoons of diesel. A 125 gram Spanish tomato bought in a Scandinavian market is five tablespoons.

Last year Sri Lanka conducted a real-world experiment in rapidly changing this equation by banning chemical fertilisers in favour of organic farming. There followed the decimation of tea and rice crops, food shortages, soaring prices, riots, the resignation of the prime minister, a presidential apology and the abandonment of the fertiliser ban.

Fossil fuel is embedded in the modern world. In the 20 years Germany has been transitioning its electricity system, the share of fossil fuel in the country’s primary energy supply has only declined from 84 per cent to 78 per cent. The International Energy Agency’s review of the world’s stated policies shows fossil fuel demand will fall from 80 per cent in 2019 to 72 per cent by 2040.

The IEA notes that getting the world on track for net-zero emissions by 2050 requires transition-related investment to rise to around $US4 trillion a year by 2030, “but only a minority of these investments immediately deliver zero emissions energy or energy services”.

The energy transition is inevitable, but it will be a lot harder than politicians, activists, service sector chief executives and billionaire energy hobbyists would have you believe. In trying to solve the current crisis, the political class should keep one thing in mind, no one ever won an election by promising to make voters colder, poorer and hungrier.

A guide to the environment, what’s happening to it, what’s being done about it and what it means for the future. Sign up to our fortnightly Clear Air newsletter here.

5 May 2022. Michael Yabsley.

Dark money in Australian politics — an open letter to candidates supported by Climate 200

When former Liberal Party treasurer and shrewd political fundraiser Michael Yabsley says big money in politics shreds integrity, it's a jarring warning from the poacher turned gamekeeper.

Michael Yabsley was a minister in the Greiner government and a federal treasurer of the Liberal Party and treasurer of the Liberal Party in NSW. He was founder and chair of the Millennium Forum, established to raise money from the corporate sector and wealthy individuals.

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Dear candidates,

When he addressed the National Press Club on February 16, Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes à Court placed integrity in politics — including reform of political fundraising — at the top of the national agenda. Rightly so. He rated it second only to climate change when viewed through the eyes of Climate 200.

He also joined forces with Professor Lawrence Lessig from Harvard Law School, an American academic and one-time Democratic presidential hopeful, by invoking the words of acclaimed American author and philosopher Henry Thoreau: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root…”

While Holmes à Court’s intentions may be good, when it comes to money in politics, the truth is Climate 200 is one of a thousand hacking at the branches of evil.

Complete reform of this broken system is required. Reforms such as real-time disclosure, as important as they are, do not go to the heart of the problem, or as Thoreau would say, the root of the evil. In fact, real-time disclosure and many other proposed reforms are window-dressing to give the appearance that meaningful reforms are being made.

The real problem is big money and the perceptions that surround it. The problem is not how much and when it is given, but the fact that it is given at all.

Why Holmes à Court cannot see this is baffling, initially at least.

The problem for Climate 200 is that it risks catching the big party virus of relying on big money. There’s simply no getting around the fact that Climate 200, funded by Holmes à Court, is fielding 20 of you in the federal election and showing all the signs of relying on and showcasing big money rather than working out how to get it out of Australian politics.  

There is a multitude of measures that can make the system better, but the only way to fix it properly is to strike at the root of the problem: mandate low-value, high-volume fundraising.

‘Vexed, complex and serious’

Climate 200 candidates, I am writing to you about a problem as urgent as it is important: money in politics — a matter that is vexed, longstanding, complex and serious.

Political fundraising, and the way it is conducted in Australia, is eating away at the heart of our democracy and taking us closer to the American style of politics.

Holmes à Court frequently reminds us that Climate 200 is not a political party. I am contacting you as an individual, relying on the key point that candidates supported by Climate 200 are free to determine their own policy positions. (However, I note there is an expectation, according to Holmes à Court, that they will support Climate 200 “values”.)

There is a solution to the crisis. Dark money: How to reform Australia’s political donations system, a Grattan Institute podcast, embraces and details that solution. Its centrepiece is a 10-point reform plan designed to get big money out of politics in Australia. I commend it to you.

In my opinion it is inconceivable that the 10-point plan would be out of step with the values of Climate 200, but that’s not for me to decide. It should go to the heart of your integrity and political fundraising reform-related values.

I want our dialogue to be candid, so it has to be said that some Climate 200 fundraising practices are alarming and put the movement into the same fundraising boat as the major parties.

But this malaise is not limited to the major parties. Other parties and many unaligned candidates have also defended the prevailing culture of money in politics. The rhythm of this view is linked to when MPs get elected. If they are not brought into line by a party machine, they discover that raising a small number of large donations is easier than raising large numbers of small donations.

There is also gravitas associated with support from the top end of town.

The colour of the money

Political life in Australia is littered with money-driven deals, where the colour of the money is somewhere between white and black. Often it is dark.

What Climate 200 has showcased about its fundraising revolves around million-dollar-plus budgets in seats that have been targeted, raised among mainly well-heeled supporters. If that is not the case, it should sack those responsible for your fundraising publicity. Boasting about cutting a $500,000 matching deal with one of Australia’s wealthiest families to support candidates is not a good look.

You’ve got to be suspicious that this is the one area of policy and administration where there has been no dissent for 40 years among the warring free spirits and ideological enemies inhabiting the Australian political landscape. My hope is that you Climate 200 candidates will not blend into this landscape.

By any measure, Climate 200 has sought to benefit from flawed fundraising laws rather than to lead by example. When Holmes à Court said “one of the biggest challenges is fundraising” and that Climate 200 would not disadvantage itself relative to others, he comprehensively left the door open to a brand of “do as I say, not as I do” politics.

If you and other Climate 200 candidates follow what is being done in the electorates I’m following closely, you risk squandering your integrity legacy before you’re even sworn in — should you be elected.

Alarmingly, the unprecedented unity ticket that has supported the fundraising status quo for decades just happens to be about the distribution of whopping amounts of private and public money that benefit all the parties, and in most cases individual candidates.

Until Malcolm Turnbull donated $1.75 million to the Liberal Party in 2016, the largest single donation given in Australian political history was by Wotif founder Graeme Wood of $1.6 million to the Greens in 2010. The record tells us there are very few saints in this game, and the double-speaking angels should get the attention they deserve.

‘Goliaths that rig the game’

Today it’s taxpayer money through so-called public funding that provides the river of gold that pays senior party officials large salaries and has all but replaced the need for parties to have members at all.

At the National Press Club, Holmes à Court said: “Politics is a multibillion-dollar game, where the winners write the rules,” describing political parties as “goliaths that rig the game”. He’s correct.

The problem is that across the political spectrum, certainly since disclosure laws were introduced and commenced in the late 1970s, all political players have been winners on the fundraising gravy train. Everyone has had a go at writing the rules, generally with much mutual benefit. Political conflict has been basically confined to matters of detail, such as the quantum and timing of changed thresholds. This “hacking at the branches” has conveniently stolen attention from the failure to address the root of the problem.

Based on actions and appearances to date, Climate 200 is shaping up as the next in line to co-write the money-in-politics rules that give us the tainted system we have today.

Extraordinarily, the response to Holmes à Court’s address at the National Press Club was borderline hostile, reflected in the bevy of media questions. “Disingenuous” was one word used to describe part of what he had to offer. “Slippery” is closer to the mark. But that’s a term used for more seasoned players in the rough and tumble world of real politics. Welcome, Simon.

Frankly, Holmes à Court’s account of two things did not pass muster: meaningful commitment to fundraising reform, and whether or not Climate 200 is a party. Failure to understand the origins of the money-in-politics problem, as appears to be the case with Holmes à Court, means guaranteed failure to provide a credible solution. Or does he, like other politicos, understand the problem but like them is unwilling to take the hit to the bottom line necessitated by having to comply with higher standards and a more demanding fundraising model of chasing small donations?

Seeing Climate 200 fundraising on the ground challenges fundamentally that it understands the depth, longevity and complexity of the problem.

Poacher turned gamekeeper

When it comes to political fundraising, I am a poacher turned gamekeeper. I have been federal treasurer of the Liberal Party and treasurer of the Liberal Party in NSW, as well as founder and chair of the Millennium Forum, established within the party specifically to raise money from the corporate sector and wealthy individuals.

I also founded a national government relations firm, which operates to this day on a bipartisan basis.

I know the money in politics scene inside-out. And I know it casts a long, dark shadow over the integrity of the democratic system.

I ask that you accept on face value the fact that while I remain a committed member of the Liberal Party, I reserve the right to criticise its track record on money in politics, and to advocate for reform. I also reserve the right to criticise other parties or organisations that fall short when it comes to money in politics practices.

Crikey political editor Bernard Keane said recently: “Michael Yabsley’s proposals are excellent and would, I believe, go a very long way to addressing the toxic role of donations in politics by removing corporate donations and forcing political parties back to the community for funding. They’re the most democratic reform proposals I’ve ever seen on donations.”

Dark side of fundraising

The ABC’s two-episode Big Deal series last year lifted the lid on many important aspects of the dark side of political fundraising and election funding.

Across the political spectrum there are no more uncomfortable home truths than those associated with the grubby subject of money, whether that money comes from the private or public purse.

In my paper Dark Money, I also reveal how public funding, or what I prefer to call taxpayer funding, has been debauched. Subject to an independent inquiry, I have no doubt that public funding practices would be revealed as comprehensively flawed through decades of malpractice.

Public funding as it operates is part of the trust deficit problem in Australia, not part of the solution.

If you are elected on May 21, your voice in Parliament could be critical to this issue and its advancement. The major parties will never take this cause on without external pressure. It’s a gravy train that suits both sides of politics and most other political players as well. Frankly the train needs to be derailed by a combination of new voices like yours and old voices like mine.

The only way to kill this disease is by rendering so insignificant the amount of money that can be lawfully donated that it could never be considered an inducement that affects policy, commercial transactions, preference deals or any other goings-on that characterise the often byzantine, sometimes nefarious world of politics. 

That is the centrepiece of the dark money reform proposal.

Frankly I do not know the fundraising and election campaign funding practices of Climate 200. I do know that fundraising practices vary from candidate to candidate and seat to seat, as they do within and between parties.

Clearly I have taken a close interest in what Holmes à Court has had to say about integrity in politics, including political fundraising. His role is confusing as he insists he doesn’t play a leadership or decision-making role in an organisation that in his words “has no hierarchy, no leader, no head office and no coordinated policy platforms”. He says the organisation relies on “spontaneous outcomes and an entirely individual set of responses”.

But what I have seen from Climate 200 generally and among candidates in seats like Warringah, Wentworth, North Sydney, Kooyong and Goldstein is enough to make me think here we go again.

I have seen enough first-hand to say that while some Climate 200 candidates are on board with the key reforms I have spelt out in Dark Money, others including Holmes à Court have already caught a strain of the big-party virus: a liking for big money and showcasing high-profile donors. This underlines a major trait in fundraising, where many givers and receivers like to be part of the “rubbing shoulders scene”.

The ‘rubbing shoulders scene’

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for rubbing shoulders — providing the price for the privilege is capped at $200. Dark Money is all about getting big money out of the equation.

A key part of the Dark Money campaign is to illustrate that the low-value, high-volume fundraising model will allow political parties and candidates to meet their financial requirements and will put political parties in touch with a large number of small donors rather than a small number of large donors.

This proposition is no long shot. If just 2% of the 17 million Australians eligible to vote donated an average of $200 to political parties of their choice, $68 million would be collected — about the same amount ripped off unwitting taxpayers in public funding at the past federal election.

Put another way, in a federal electorate with an enrolment of 105,000, if 2% of voters donated an average of $200, that would raise $420,000. Is anyone going to seriously argue that’s not enough? Or do we now say $2 million campaigns are the new normal?

Late last year Holmes à Court gave a very bad answer to a very good question from Peter FitzSimons, who asked: “Is the list of donors to Climate 200 publicly available?” His answer was: “We will abide by all the rules of the Australian Electoral Commission assiduously and list all those who contribute above the disclosure limit.”

This is the stock answer used for decades to justify what parties and candidates want to do, rather than what they should do.

An inescapable truth

Frankly, I see a greater opportunity for reform by convincing a cohort of new candidates, such as you, and the organisation supporting them, than the major political parties whose bread has been buttered the same way for decades.

But what some Climate 200 candidates are doing does not pass muster. For you, the inescapable truth is that the public profile of Climate 200 fundraising has little to distinguish itself from what the major parties and most of the other parties have done seamlessly since contemporary fundraising records were kept.

The danger is you will squander that opportunity because what you are doing does not align with what you say should happen. For your integrity message to have credibility, it’s not enough to just say: “We are doing what the Australian Electoral Commission requires.”

Reasonably you will ask if I am writing to the major parties in the way I am writing to you. No, I am not. That will happen after the election. I could not let the election come and go without pointing out the wrinkles and warts on what Climate 200 is doing.

The 10-point Dark Money reform plan is, I believe, beyond the grasp of most in the major parties, simply because big money is so entrenched in the way they operate.

That said, there is encouraging support for the Dark Money reform plan among many former members of Parliament from across the political spectrum and across jurisdictions around Australia. They are joined by many Australians of note who loathe the omnipresence of money in politics. They are prepared to stand up and be counted.

The real test is not what serving or former MPs or leading Australians think. The real test is what the electorate thinks about money in politics — money in politics accounts for a significant part of the trust deficit in Australia today.  

The 10-point plan was launched in Sydney in November 2021. I urge you to consider it and would be happy to discuss it further with you. And I would welcome all aspects of it being put to a citizens’ jury.

This is moral relativism with a price tag. The price tag is public trust and the integrity of our democratic system. That’s a big price to pay. It’s too much and it’s time we stopped. Because as while the political fundraising process allows things to be done for money and because of money, it will remain tainted and compromised.

History tells us that basically enduring change happens in one of two ways. Governments either lead or follow. Governments follow when enough people in the community stand up and be counted about something that demands change. Matters as diverse as the environment, to institutionalised child sexual abuse, to smoking, to women’s rights — each are examples of change that has happened under pressure.

The process of change is helped if the calls for reform are evidence based. There is no shortage of evidence about the role of money in politics in Australia, although much of it is muted because political interests across the political spectrum have collaborated to keep things as they are. 

Low-value, high-volume fundraising cannot only generate sufficient income for political organisations. At the same time it can democratise and empower large numbers of people to participate in their organisation of choice. 

Money in politics is not the only thing that explains the trust deficit that relates to public life in Australia, but fixing this one defined matter would be a good start. 

I would welcome the opportunity to meet and talk to you during the campaign, or any time after it, whether you are elected or not.

Kind regards,
Michael Yabsley

 

OPINION

Mind the gap: The rich-poor divide on clean power is getting wider

By David Fickling

June 23, 2022 — 12.31pm

To look at the way richer countries are spending money on the energy transition, you might think we’re within reach of bringing climate change under control.

Investment in clean energy has only accelerated in the years since COVID-19 struck. In the second half of the last decade, it grew at a 2 per cent annual rate. Since 2020, that’s risen to 12 per cent a year. This year, it will hit $US1.4 trillion ($2 trillion), the International Energy Agency wrote in its annual investment report on Wednesday, putting green power comprehensively ahead of the roughly $US1 trillion that’s being spent on fossil fuels.

If you assume those trends will continue, it looks even more promising. Just continuing to inflate existing spending at current growth rates would imply that advanced economies and China spend in the region of $US650 billion a year on clean power over the remainder of this decade, the IEA wrote — within sight of the $US850 billion-odd that’s needed to put the world on track to zero emissions by 2050.

The problem comes when you look elsewhere in the world. In emerging and developing economies (excluding China), clean power investment needs to grow at 25 per cent a year up to 2030 if it’s to hit levels consistent with net zero. In practice, spending remains stuck at the levels it was at in 2015, when the Paris Agreement was first signed.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s a dearth of funds for carbon-free power in developing countries — these nations get too little investment overall, and that lack of physical capital is one reason they’re poor.

Since the 1970s, Indian politicians have complained that only rich countries have the money to pay for pollution reductions in their lower-income peers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call last year for a $US1 trillion fund from developed countries to finance his nation’s energy transition is merely the latest example of that trend. The true sum could run to $US12.4 trillion in India, with $US94.8 trillion needed for emerging markets as a whole, according to Standard Chartered.

Rich nations can green their own economies all they want. If they don’t provide the funds to repeat the trick around the world, it will all be in vain.

It’s a long-standing problem that will likely worsen in the short term. One of the advantages of renewable power in rich countries is that its expenses are almost all up-front, determined most importantly by the cost of borrowing. Finance represents about 60 per cent of project expenses for renewables, according to the IEA. Consumers of oil, gas and coal, on the other hand, have an ongoing need to buy their fuel in a volatile commodity market, making their long-term profitability highly unpredictable.

As interest rates rise, however, the cost of capital for clean power is going up as well. That’s being felt most severely in emerging markets, where the cost of capital is as much as seven times higher as it is in developed countries, and interest rates are likely to climb in tandem with the US Federal Reserve.

Solving that problem is notoriously challenging. International investors remain reluctant to dedicate their cash to countries where the rule of law is often weaker, and where the creaky nature of infrastructure such as power grids risks dooming energy projects before they’ve even been connected.

State-owned utilities are often, as with India’s electricity distribution companies, dominant enough to deter private-sector competition but financially too frail to deliver the foundations that a vibrant clean power sector needs.

It has to be solved, however. One of the most troubling aspects of the IEA’s latest report is the extent to which coal, the dirtiest fuel, is still sucking up capital. While oil, gas and clean energy are all receiving less investment at present than most of the IEA’s energy transition scenarios would suggest will be necessary over the rest of this decade, coal is getting substantially more.

That’s in large part because the world is now more acutely aware of its energy security, and awash with underutilised coal-fired power stations. In Pakistan, the cost of buying oil and gas from overseas has left the country dependent once again on cash from the International Monetary Fund to meet its international obligations. Domestic coal reserves represent an alluring way to diminish that import dependency, an argument that’s also attractive in Indonesia, Vietnam, and most particularly India and China.

The only way to counter the fear of a world where poverty and insecurity are sending globalisation into reverse is the opposite: to unleash the flood of capital pent-up in developed countries so that it can fund the cheap, clean energy that lower-income nations need to develop.

Rich nations can green their own economies all they want. If they don’t provide the funds to repeat the trick around the world, it will all be in vain.