"One of the leading journalists who writes about politics in Canberra rang me the other day and wanted to talk about some of this party room gossip [about leadership]," a besieged Malcolm Turnbull told the ABC1's Insiders last week. "And I said: 'Why don't you write a serious piece comparing the way in which the Labor ETS in Australia fails to protect Australian jobs and Waxman-Markey protects American jobs?' This is the legislation in the US House of Representatives. And his answer to me was: 'What's Waxman-Markey?'. No idea. No interest. No knowledge of the real issue." The opposition leader is hardly alone in lamenting the Australian media's sparse coverage of Labor's proposed emissions trading legislation.
"I could count on one hand the number of journalists who are across the details of the government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme," revealed George Megalogenis in the Australian Literary Review this month. "I can't think of a bigger reform that has generated so little public demand for scrutiny."
Both Liberal leader and esteemed political journalist are right: for all the reams of newspaper copy and endless airtime devoted to the climate change debate, the Australian people are none the wiser about what the Rudd government claims is the most important economic reform in a generation. This week's obsessive coverage of the Coalition party room's deliberations over whether or not to back pro-industry amendments to the CPRS was more of the same.
There are, of course, some rare exceptions. Two months ago, for example, The Australian ran a lead front-page story on how the ETS would make household grocery prices rise by 5 per cent, costing some households hundreds of dollars a month. The following day, the Fairfax press followed up the report, but not, alas, the public broadcaster's AM, PM or Lateline programmes.
For the most part, the so-called quality press, radio and television programmes champion this scheme, without examining how it would work and what it would cost. The logic goes like this: if you're really sincere about combating climate change, you must give unconditional support to Labor's ETS.
To the extent that the Canberra press gallery subjects the ETS to any scrutiny, it is the federal Coalition's policy. Never mind that it is the Rudd government, not the opposition, which plans to impose potentially crushing costs on business and consumers. The ETS is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Kevin Rudd is hoping that no one notices.
The irony here is that, measured in terms of print copy and air time, there is much more media coverage of the climate change debate in Australia than in the US. A comprehensive search of newspaper articles on emissions trading (or cap and trade, as the Americans call it) from 1 January to this week reveals a yawning gap between the two nations. The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have altogether published 1,030 news articles, editorials and opinion pieces on the ETS this year. By contrast, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have altogether published only 266 news articles, editorials and opinion pieces on cap and trade. That is a ratio of almost four to one. Type in "climate change", and the disparity between Australian and American press coverage is just as clear.
It's the same story with respect to television. Hardly a day goes by without an ABC nightly news or current affairs segment airing an item on the ETS. But the major networks in the US -- PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox - hardly touch the subject.
And yet, as Turnbull and Megalogenis recognise, the Australian debate has so far been conducted in a reality vacuum. Emissions trading, it seems, is seen simply through the prism of the Liberal leadership and not in the context of crucial international developments that will set a framework at the Copenhagen conference in December.
The US debate is especially important to Australians. Take the climate and energy bill, commonly referred to as Waxman-Markey (named after two leading Democrat congressional co-sponsors, Henry Waxman and Ed Markey), about which Turnbull claims most Australian journalists know nothing and to which the Senate will make significant pro-business amendments. It offers far more protection and incentives to industry and jobs, especially in the power-generating firms and trade-exposed industries such as mining and manufacturing, than does the proposed Australian system. Indeed, the bill passed the US House precisely because of what the Wall Street Journal identified as "the extravaganza of log-rolling, votebuying, outright corporate bribes, side deals, subsidies and policy loopholes". The CPRS is not prone to such corporate welfare.
The US bill, further, would auction 15 per cent of allowances while the rest would be given away; the CPRS does not hand out so many free permits.
All of this matters. Why? Because if Canberra's final legislation differs dramatically from Washington's version, our exports would cop a carbon cost not borne by our competitors. Australian industry would be internationally uncompetitive.
The second reason why the US debate is so important to Australians is this: the UN talks slated for December will flounder without a clear plan from Washington. And in the absence of US leadership, unilateral action could inflict collateral damage on our economy and way of life. Yet all the available evidence indicates that a final Senate bill won't be signed by the President before Copenhagen.
It was not supposed to be like this. During last year's presidential election campaign, Barack Obama and John McCain supported tough action to reduce carbon emissions. But although Waxman-Markey passed the House of Representatives narrowly by 219 to 212 in June, the ETS bill is now stalled in legislative limbo.
There are many reasons for the changing political atmosphere in the US. The global financial crisis has pushed green policies further down the political agenda. Saving the economy and creating jobs takes priority in a nation with double-digit unemployment. Meanwhile, healthcare is dominating the Senate's agenda, while the issue of troop increases to Afghanistan preoccupies the White House. Moreover, just as this week's Lowy poll highlighted shifting Australian attitudes towards climate change, US polls are increasingly showing more American scepticism of man-made global warming.
So spare a thought for Malcolm Turnbull. The Fourth Estate devotes more effort to emissions trading than the US media. But, as we witnessed again this week, it subjects the Liberal leader and his colleagues to far more scrutiny than it does to the Prime Minister, whose legislation is what really matters. And its treatment of the proposed all-important US laws, upon which any prudent Australian government should base its climate change response, is virtually non-existent.
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