Scott Morrison’s failure in diplomacy: the Pacific Forum and climate change
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And as we mark the first anniversary of Morrison’s rise to the top job on August 24 last year, the Pacific Islands Forum seems a good place to start in reviewing the his first year as PM, and what has happened to the country and our politics in the meantime……… Sleeping giant in the Pacific Straddling the minefield of internal Coalition tensions on climate and energy policy is a long way short of giving yourself any room to manoeuvre when you are talking to your Pacific Island neighbours. The Pacific Islands Forum was once a definite Second XI event that Australian prime ministers would try to offload onto a colleague. But it has now become a highly contested event, attended by enthusiastic delegations who consider they have an interest in the Pacific — from China to France and Britain. And this year’s forum came after Mr Morrison had announced the Pacific Step Up: Australia’s attempt to win back, or at least reinforce, its long history of influence in the region as China and other countries take an aggressive interest. The Islands wanted a commitment Australia would agree to start closing down its coal industry — a demand no side of politics was ever going to agree to. But what was revealing was that there was so little else we seemed to bring to the table, other than $500 million of rebadged aid funding which, it was said, would help with the effects of climate change, not its causes. Climate change no longer a hypothetical
The Government might have moved publicly beyond the argument of whether climate change is happening. But it is hard to escape the impression it thinks it is happening to someone else and that, therefore, the politics of the issue — apparently reinforced by the swing in coal seats at the election — is clear cut.But it isn’t of course. In the Torres Strait Islands, sea walls are being breached in big tides and monsoons. Houses, infrastructure, graves and other sacred sites are being lost. Elders from the same part of Australia that brought on the Mabo case have lodged a case against Australia in the United Nations Human Rights Committee, arguing that not doing anything about climate change is a breach of the islanders’ human rights. And if the cynics in the Government view this as not an issue because it involves a far-flung community, an Indigenous one at that, and (yawn) the United Nations, they might like to consider how the structures of their own government are now also being influenced by climate change. When the agriculture portfolio was carved up after the election, David Littleproud became the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management: a range of jobs which bears a striking resemblance to the need to deal with the varying impacts of climate change. Our politics have changed in the 12 months Mr Morrison has been Prime Minister. The Labor Party is no longer in the ascendancy; the tensions within the Coalition have taken on different forms. But those tensions have not gone away. We are in a holding pattern on crucial areas of policy on the economy; strategic issues; asylum seekers and climate and energy. The Coalition saw its election victory as an endorsement of the view the electorate is more conservative, and increasingly driven by people of faith. But making that political assessment of the views of Australians is different from having a clear-eyed assessment of where policy needs to go, whatever the electorate’s views may be… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-24/scott-morrisons-first-year-as-prime-minister/11443562 |
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