 Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the ANU and Canberra Times virtual meet the author tonight with Marion Wilkinson. My name is Frank Yotso. I'm a professor here at the ANU at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy. So before we start, I would like to acknowledge as we do acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose respective traditional lands we are. In my case here in Canberra, that's the number one people we pay our respect to their elders past and present. Thank you very much. As always to emeritus fellow Colin Steele, the convener and founder of the meet the author series which has been running for about three decades now. Some housekeeping. This record, this event is being recorded. We will have a question and answer session. So please submit your questions at any point during our conversation throughout the event by clicking on the Q&A function on your screens. And we will get to questions around about 6.40 or thereabouts, okay? It would be great if you can include your name and where you are with your question. Now I'd like to introduce our author for this evening, Marion Wilkinson. Good evening, Marion. Good evening, Frank. Lovely to be here. Yes, and I'm greatly looking forward to our conversation tonight. So Marion is a multi-award winning journalist with a Korean radio television print online. She's covered politics, national security, refugee issues and of course climate change. She's been a phone correspondent in Washington DC for the Sydney Morning Herald and the age. She was a deputy editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, executive producer of the ABC Four Corners program and of course a senior reporter with Four Corners as well. Marion has won a Walkley Award, a Eureka Prize for Environmental Journalism and she's a member of the Australian Media Hall of Fame. Marion, you've written several books among them, The Fixer on Labour's power broker Graham Richardson and Dark Victory on Australia's response to asylum seekers co-authored with David Maher. Now the most recent book and the reason we're all here tonight of course is The Carbon Club. An inside story of how a network of influential climate skeptics, politicians and business leaders fought to control Australia's climate policy. That's the text on the cover. So congratulations Marion. I'd say your book is really the definitive history of Australia's climate policy at this point and I have to say it is extremely rich in first hand information by many of the players who you've interviewed. So I believe this evening is the first time you are talking publicly about the book since it's released yesterday or the day before. So I think we can call it the launch, the official launch of your book. So congratulations. Delighted. How does it feel to launch a book in these strange times of online gatherings? It is very strange Frank and I know I have lamented to you that it's so sad in a way that I can't get out into regional Australia because I think that is where this story needs to be told most. But anyway it's a delight to be here and to be able to at least talk to people online and people like you who have been involved in this issue for so long trying to work your way through a tortured climate change policy. So I thank people like you and the other people tuning in who are at least still sticking with this idea that we do have to unravel our policy and go forward. I have a feeling we will be sticking with this perhaps one other decade or two to come. Mary, let's jump straight into it. You've chronicled several decades of climate change policy, the ins and outs, the political development, the interest group, influence, all the rest of it. When is the day where you would pinpoint that Australian climate change policy and politics perhaps went off the rails? I would have to say it was the day that Malcolm Turnbull was rolled as opposition leader back in November 2009. That event was a fascinating piece of history to unravel yet again because we've all read the political accounts of it. We knew it was a very important time because Kevin Rudd's CPRS policy, the famous carbon pollution reduction scheme was coming up for a vote in the Senate. They had done the deal, Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd had done the deal with Malcolm Turnbull. They had really hoped this policy would go through and when Malcolm Turnbull was rolled as opposition leader, that policy died and a lot of people forget the day that Malcolm was rolled that the passionate skeptics within the coalition party room and within the liberal party room put up a resolution at the same time in the party room to basically walk away from an emissions trading scheme and that passed by a big majority. To me, that was really the day and how that day was orchestrated is laid out in the book and it's a pretty fascinating read. And so this is probably important to remember. This is always the story of both major parties in Australia and occasionally some of the greens as the minor party there or in fact independents. But let's talk through the Rudd years a little bit. So you've got Kevin O'Sseven coming into the prime ministership in part on a platform on strong action on climate change, which he could distinguish himself with I guess in comparison to the then sitting prime minister Howard. He called climate change the greatest challenge of our generation, got a lot of applause from world leaders and negotiators at the climate change conference in Bali, which I think you covered at the time, right? I did, yes. And then within a relatively short period of time and a lot of domestic politics in between, climate change just went to one of many issues to be dealt with and perhaps rather than the two hardbasket for Kevin Rudd at the time. What happened? Well, a couple of really important things happened. Of course, the global financial crisis happened and that was a big problem and of course this is being reflected today when now when we look at climate change again, we all have to deal with the COVID recession essentially. But back then that really sort of knocked the government and knocked the opposition. And very importantly for Labor, it energised quite a number of the trade unions and the union leadership who now became even more worried about the transition that they would have to go through. And it's at this time you see some of the big unions like the AWU going to what was called brown labor in the labor caucus, the parts of the labor party, leaders in the labor party like Martin Ferguson who really supported the fossil fuel industry because of its contribution to blue collar jobs. They were really exercised about this. And they really wanted a lot of changes to the carbon pollution reduction scheme as it was seen at the time and they of course got the backing of industry. So these two big forces came together and persuaded Rudd to essentially water down quite a bit of the scheme. This caused a deep fracture with the environment groups that had backed labor in the election. So I think what you saw was a lot of really difficult issues coming together for Rudd at the time and essentially the business lobbies just went into overdrive trying to water down the scheme. Now, this is also always a story of strong ambition versus gradualism and incrementalism, a story of cleanly designed economic policy. Versus accommodating specific interest pressures or addressing specific community concerns. I'll declare a little bit of an interest in this debate at the time in 2008. I was one of the sort of inner circle for Professor Gano on the Gano climate change review. And of course, at the time, Ross Gano took seriously Kevin Rudd's victim that Australia should take a strong role in climate change. And he also, of course, took a strongly principled approach to the policy recommendations on the emissions trading scheme, on Australia's emissions targets, a number of other things as well, including such things as quite importantly, financial compensation to the coal fired power generators. And it quite quickly came to a rupture there between the prime minister and his chief climate change advisor. I love using these props. We can't usually do this, but on Zoom we can. This is a headline from December 2018 in the morning, Harold, where the rupture really between Gano and Rudd came to a head. So what can we learn from that period and that turn of events? Well, that was a big rupture, the rupture between Gano and who was, of course, the Kevin Rudd's chief climate change advisor. And they had been very close. And what happened, you're absolutely right, Frank, and you were in the middle of it, the fight over the compensation for the big power generators, the coal fired power generators that have been privatised, largely in Victoria, South Australia, and a few others really broke that relationship, which took a bit of time to repair, did ultimately repair. But you've got to look at which I try to do in the book at the amazing campaign that was run at the time by the power generators. I covered this at the time and I had forgotten how vitriolic it was, but you literally had some of the CEOs of the power companies and their lobbyists going round Australia and going to every backbencher in Canberra saying, you know, essentially Australia will be blacked out, Australia will be shut down, this is a disaster. And this was something, of course, that was supercharged by people in the opposition. And it was also supercharged by the Murdoch media. In the end, when Rudd first and Penny Wong did their first compromise on this, this is where the division with Ghana came, which I spell out in the book, and I did talk to Ross about it, and to Martin Parkinson, of course, who was head of the Department of Climate Change at the time, Ross came out with his famous line, which was something like, never has so much money been offered to so few for so little purpose in public policy. And both Penny Wong, I think, and Kevin Rudd were not very quietly furious about this. As I say, this was later repaired, but this fight over the generators ultimately really played in also to Kevin to Malcolm Turnbull's demise. And I think was one of the big forces that ended up helping to knock off the Kevin Rudd scheme in the end. Now, suppose we can say that time and time again, the influence by strong existing economic and business influences has acted as a break on climate change policy all along. And perhaps, you know, in not quite so visible ways on many other areas of policy also. And so, you know, I mean, we've we've heard reports about people pointing to lists of electorates that that might, you know, see job losses, in particular, installations were to close as a result of policy. And that essentially being used as a as a threat to sitting politicians. Well, this is, to me, what is so important that we learn from this story. And it's one of the reasons I wrote the book. This is a very powerful story in Australian politics. We know the careers of some three Prime Ministers were was broken over this. And a lot of people say to me, Oh, well, we know, we know that fossil fuel companies give political donations and so on. Yes, but that that's always there. That happens all the time. It happens in a lot of areas of policy. And usually a lot of the companies give to both sides. It's not that it's unimportant. It's one factor. I think far more problematic for the politicians is the way that the key lobby groups, whether it's the companies that are trying to fight the policy or their political allies have really learned to wedge individual members and individual areas in Australia in order to swing elections or really undermine the campaigns of the politicians. This is now down to a fine art. And when I interviewed people like Greg Combe for the book, who of course was Gillard's climate change minister, he goes into this quite a bit the way people in the Australian coal association would essentially just lay it out, you know, we will be campaigning. We will be campaigning in these particular seats. And I think, sadly, what both sides of politics learned and the minor parties learned is that this is a really easy issue to wedge people on. And all you have to say is that you're going to lose your job, you're going to pay higher taxes. And then this becomes a simplistic argument. And Frank, as you know, we saw it even as recently as the 2019 election, you know, if we do anything about trying to shift our policy on cars from petrol cars, you know, you won't be able to go on the weekend. If you're a trader, you won't be able to drive a car that will take your gear. You can see how these wedge politics have basically just now come to dominate a very toxic political debate on climate change. Yeah, these interactions between Greg Combe and the Australian Coal Association are just one of very many episodes you have in the book, where you describe these things very, very vividly, obviously, on the basis of many first hand accounts that that you have. And I really recommend to everyone just read it in the book because Greg Combe's language he is also of the choice is kind actually in describing the events back then. Well, I did say to Greg when I was, I went back and was checking quotes with all the people I'd interviewed and I sent Greg his quotes. And I did add a little note in the email which was to say, look, don't take out all the swearing in these quotes or no one will believe they came from you. So kindly he did agree for the sake of authenticity to leave some of that in. Wonderful. Now, Marion, in your book, you place quite some emphasis on the role of climate skepticism. In particular, climate skeptic positions taken by people in influence in business and business lobbies as well as politics. Let's let's talk a little bit about that. And and your, you know, your survey of the field in that regard. And now I mean, your book mentions so many people by name. I mean, the register of names, the index runs for pages and pages. Who should we mention? Corey Bernardi, Senator Hugh Morgan. Yes, well, there are a lot of names in there. But interestingly, there was one who I think gave me a much better understanding of why the climate skeptics were so important in this policy. And we all know, of course, that the climate skeptics have been allowed chorus in any policy debate in this country. That's a given. And we know that they at the time, whenever there's a big climate policy was coming before the parliament, they'd get a lot of airplay in the Murdoch media, but frankly, also on the ABC and other places like that. But when I was interviewing a guy called Myron Evil in Washington, he is very prominent climate skeptic, ran something called the Cooler Heads Coalition for quite some time was at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington. And he really laid out the case for me as to why it was he felt it was so important at the time of the signing of the Kyoto Protocol that the corporations that they could persuade to fund the skeptics funded them and why their arguments were so important and why it was so important to push them out, especially in Australia and the US. He said to me, if we let what we he claimed or he believed that the corporations and the political opponents of climate change action, who didn't believe in the science had to let the people who supported the scientists get away with murder, essentially at Kyoto. And his argument was, we have to counter this. Because if we don't, the moral imperative to act on the science of climate change will be with those who want to take action. And he felt that if they didn't come back with a strong skeptic argument that the essentially the conservative groups, the conservative politicians and indeed some Labour politicians or Democrat politicians who did not want to take this action who did not accept the science that they would lose the moral high ground. And this was absolutely vital. And I think he was really onto something here because everyone says to you, oh, well, you know, what will Tony Abbott say to his children and grandchildren or what will the head of Glencourt say to his children and grandchildren? If you have that science, skeptic reassurance that this is not the serious problem people are saying it is, then you don't have to answer that moral argument. And so on the basis of those observations, would you say that for most of people in powerful positions like this, climate skepticism is then an instrument in order to achieve the goals? Sometimes it's definitely an instrument. Sometimes it is just that comforting background noise that goes with the debate. And one thing I found very interesting about this, Frank, was that you know how the climate skeptics, and I know this from covering the carbon wars on the front line for four corners, they would come in and out of the debate. People like Bob Carter, people like Ian Kleiner, well known Australian climate skeptics would come in and out of the debate every time pieces of legislation were before the government. I don't know if you noticed, but after the bushfires in the black summer that's just gone, suddenly those voices were really kicked to the curb in Australia. You actually didn't see them and you haven't seen them that often, or know when there as much as you did. And also the politicians who took comfort from them and really proselytised around them, like the Craig Kelly's and that, you rarely see them, or if you do with even people like Barnaby Joyce, who was a big supporter and I think still is a big supporter of climate skepticism, and Matt Canavan, you don't hear them basically endorsing them and encouraging them the way you did before the bushfires. Let's come to someone who is I think most recently a self described climate change agnostic, and that's former Prime Minister Howard, and his relationship with the United States. And now I mean, in the ebb and flow of climate change policy in Australia, the what happens in the US and particular the US presidency can play quite a significant role. So now early, early moves by the by the Howard government to actually implement an emissions trading scheme back to the late 1990s, you detail these things in the book, and then a fairly, fairly swift and decisive change with a decision not to ratify Kyoto taken apparently, according to your very detailed account of these things around September 11 2001. Can you tell us? Yeah, that was very interesting, because I had been trying to pinpoint when Howard made the decision not to ratify Kyoto, because as you know, the Australia and Robert Hill and his delegation did sign up for Kyoto in Kyoto. And the big issue was ratifying it, because unless you ratified, as you know, it doesn't have any legal effect. So there was this torture debate that went on for quite some time after Kyoto, as to whether Kyoto would be ratified. And this came to a climax in 2001. And what happened was, John Howard had gone to Washington in September 2001. And he had had a lot of things on his plate. But principally, they were trying to push ahead with the US free trade agreement. But what a lot of reporters who followed Howard to Washington and covered him in Washington, didn't quite pick up, was that there were also background discussions going on about Kyoto. And I think it was then that Howard decided not to ratify Kyoto. There were statements he made when he came out of his meeting with Bush, that to me really indicates it was at that time, he really wanted to, to break and finally break and say, let's not ratify Kyoto. What happened, of course, was the day after those meetings, September 11 happened. And the whole issue of climate change in Kyoto was swept from the agenda. There was an election here back in Australia shortly afterwards. And Robert Hill, the environment minister that had really hung in there on Kyoto, he was moved to defence. A new minister, David Kemp came in, who himself was was skeptical of some of the science of global warming. I would say he was a skeptic. He kind of quibbles with that. But nevertheless, there was still a push to ratify Kyoto. I think Howard had already made his decision and then finally made it in this incredibly embarrassing way for his minister. His minister was in Bali at a World Environment Day function. Howard got up in the parliament and basically said, we're not going to ratify it. And as, as Kemp admitted to me, that was a captain's call by Howard. And that's laid out in the book. And I thought one of the most interesting things that was said to me by Robert Hill, Howard's old minister was I think the fundamental reason Howard did not want to ratify Kyoto was his loyalty to Bush. And I think there's a lot in that. Which takes us to the question speculating if we saw a Biden presidency in the US early next year, a different wind would of course also be blowing across the Pacific to Canberra. How would you expect that that might play out? I think that is going to be very interesting for Australia. Biden, as you know, has already made some key statements on the climate change policy. The Democrats are very committed to it. John Kerry, who obviously had worked with Obama on the lead up to Paris. He's been advising Obama, but others have as well, you know, like people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's sort of quite radical on this. She has been on the advisory team as well. I think that, you know, Biden, Biden's team at least, his advisors are talking about carbon tariffs. They are talking about a faster transition away from coal and gas. That I think will put Australia in a very difficult position if Biden gets in a little bit how the Abbott government was with Obama. But of course, the polls are narrowing now in America. And if on the other hand, Trump is returned to the White House, I think no one has any doubt that the Paris Agreement will struggle to essentially remain effective in any way at all. Let's take a minute to talk about the Abbott-Obama relationship. Must have been pretty torturous in some way, in particular on climate change. Both the fact that, you know, the Abbott government, of course, was the one that submitted Australia's pledge and commitment to the Paris Agreement and ratified the Paris Agreement. And then also a certain episode with Obama's visit to Australia. Yeah, well, of course, the Obama visit to Australia came before the Paris Agreement, but straight after, Obama had struck the famous deal in Beijing with President Xi to bring the Chinese on board to try and get a Paris Agreement. This, of course, had been borne out of the terrible, what was seen as the terrible failure of Copenhagen, and more importantly, the humiliation of the Americans by the Chinese delegation at Copenhagen. And no one wanted this repeated. This deal was struck. And then just days after that, Obama was flying to Australia for the G20. And as his advisors told me, Obama's advisors told me, they really needed climate change to be on the agenda. And as one of Abbott's advisors told me, they really did not want climate change on the agenda. And so this became, and behind the scenes, clash that started really before, you know, months before. And in the book, I talk about Podesta, who was then, John Podesta, then one of Obama's senior White House advisors, telling me that in his view, Abbott was the Donald Trump of his times, and that Abbott's team was definitely as they saw it as he put it rowing in the wrong direction. Anyway, this did become a real source of tension here. And I talk about how this played out once Obama got to Australia. What happened, though, of course, was that what you're dead right, Abbott was the one who finally did agree a target with Greg Hunt and Julie Bishop in Cabinet. That was the target taken to Paris. But by the time the Paris meeting happened, Abbott had been rolled, Turnbull was in, and Turnbull was able to go and make his, you know, very passionate speech to the to the Paris summit. The only trouble is when Malcolm got home, he couldn't really do anything much about Abbott's climate change policy, because he didn't have the numbers really in the party room. So Malcolm was Malcolm Turnbull was actually stuck with Abbott's policy. Yeah, so Malcolm Turnbull and the whole saga of the national energy guarantee, the NEG. And what what would you say does that tell us? I mean, you know, in a sense, the debate in the headlines of of Australian politics on climate change was always one about mechanisms. It was about the carbon tax about emissions trading scheme about compensation. And then it was in the end on the Turnbull on a really quite arcane, highly technically complex, specific mechanism that would have applied only to electricity generators and retailers. And yet it was a thing that got his Prime Minister ship undone, at least ostensibly. So what what can we say about the the weaponisation of energy and climate change policy? Well, I think the NEG says it all, because there were a whole lot. Well, not whole. There was one key reason why some people in the party room wanted Malcolm to go and Malcolm Turnbull to go. And that reason was they didn't think he'd win the next election. But the weapon that was chosen to be used was climate and energy policy. And for me, that really is the ultimate climax of this saga, that something as important as climate and energy becomes the ultimate internal party wedge to bring down a leader. So it's no longer what really matters in the science in the issue of the just transition about how we go about becoming a different economy. It's just become a political weapon. And I think I had spoken to Malcolm Turnbull quite soon after he lost office. And again, it was like sitting opposite Kevin Rudd, or Penny Wong, or Green Combe, or so many of the scientists, businessmen, businesswomen, who I had interviewed, who've been on the other end of the battle over climate change policy. Everyone's shell shocked. And shell shocked that in this country, you cannot get up a policy that doesn't become a toxic political battlefield. Now, the one Prime Minister who we haven't yet talked about in depth of the past Prime Ministers who were grappling with this issue is, of course, Julia Gillard. And really, that was the high watermark in terms of actual implementation of climate change policy mechanisms in Australia. Australia, in fact, the only major country in the world that implemented a comprehensive world design carbon pricing mechanism and then abolished it again. And that indeed happened under under minority government. And it involved a particular institution, a multi-party committee on climate change. Mayan, would you say there's anything that can that can still be learned from from those years of government? I think there's two things for me that come out of the period of the Gillard government. You're exactly right, of course, that this was a policy of a minority labor government backed by the Greens and independence. This was, I think, in part why their reaction to it by the Conservative parties was as brutal, really, as it was. And I think if you're looking for the most brutal period of politics over climate change in Australia, it is definitely Julia Gillard's period. And I covered it at the time, but going back over it, man, I was really still shocked about how brutal it was, especially all the ancillary people, you know, the death threats and the abuse. And I mean, this was going on on both sides, you know, it wasn't just one side, but it was a horrible period in Australian politics. And yet, as you say, there were some very interesting things that came out of that period. Because in part, I think, Labor had to go into a multi-party sort of situation to get its policy through the parliament. And so you ended up with these very innovative institutions like that we still have today, like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, like the Climate Change Authority, these ones that have survived, even though I think that they've been, you know, they have been, you know, slapped around a bit on the way. But I think that there was a sense here that you could do something and also don't forget before Gillard came in, Rudd had managed to get the increase in the Renewable Energy Target. All these policies together, you see when Labor finally falls in 2013. And the, as one of the Labor ministers put it to me, the Lord of the Flies feeding frenzy over climate change really just settled on the country. But before everything was pretty much then overturned or Abbot attempted to overturn it, it was having an impact on Australian emissions. And that is the interesting thing. That's right. And we've got a great many questions coming in. We'll come to them in just one minute. I'd just like to ask you one more question of my own. And that is Marion, how do you see the two major parties positioning on this issue? Now, before the time when COVID is no longer the single, that pretty much a single thing that that occupies the political space, how do you see Labor positioning? How do you see some of the, the liberal party politicians who are on the record as wanting, you know, forward-looking climate change policy? How do you see people positioning? That is a hard one, harder than you think, I guess, to speculate on. Because if you just look at what the Federal Minister, Angus Taylor is saying, what Scott Morrison is saying, one would imagine that there is a fairly clear line ahead for the government, which is gas playing a central role in the future, as the, as basically a supporter of the manufacturing industry here, as a key player in the transition, supposedly between renewables, between coal-fired power and renewables and a determination not to have serious carbon pricing in this country, as Angus Taylor keeps on telling us, you know, technology, not taxes, that this will be solved by a technology roadmap and not by carbon pricing when he says taxes, he's really saying no carbon pricing. So at that, at that level, you would think we are essentially saying we are going to stick to the path that Australia has largely tried to stick to apart from various aberrations when people like Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard come along. On the other hand, I think in New South Wales in particular, but also in South Australia, there is a big push in the in the state liberal parties to move faster towards renewable energy. And that is going to create some tensions, I think, between those states and Canberra. Labor, I think, is in a very difficult position. I have no doubt that they are still shell-shocked by what happened in the 2019 election. I wouldn't say that carbon, their climate change policy lost that election. But I think it had a huge impact in what happened in Queensland, especially those Queensland regional seats. I think that there are serious divisions in the party, I think you just have to look at the AWU, who have come out really strongly to back the gas-led recovery. And I think this is all very difficult for the Labor Party. And I think their position is going to be kind of tortured over the lead-up to the next election as to what they can actually do. Let's come to some of the questions. We've had some pre-submitted questions. One is from Annette. The question is, there has been an initial hope that COVID-19 would be an opportunity to invest in a green economy, or has the economic recession increased the power of the carbon club? What would be saying? Well, that's kind of what we've just been discussing. Yes, you're absolutely right. In Europe, there has been a big push to have a recovery that basically helps push the world along to a cleaner energy outcome. And I think St. Nicholas Stern put it very well that we don't want to go from the COVID frying pan into the climate fire. I think this is certainly the view as we discussed of Biden and a lot of his advisors. The question is, if Trump does return in November to the White House, I think that will really lessen the appetite in Australia to move very quickly. I think might also lessen the appetite in Japan and certainly in China, which really, really matters on this. On the other hand, you are seeing countries like India as well as the Europeans trying to shift and shift fairly quickly. So it's a bit hard to say, I think the issue for Australia though, right now, in this recovery in the post COVID recovery is, are we going to invest a lot in gas? Is this real? Are the propositions being put up by the COVID Recovery Commission, by Morrison, by Angus Taylor for this gas led recovery? Is it real? Or is it just really to protect a few projects like Marabri that people want to get off the ground? I am not completely certain about that. The government must know that investors, that insurers, that banks will be shying away from the kind of investment I think that's being envisaged by some people in this gas led recovery. And I may take the opportunity to highlight that, you know, the ANU and other universities have of course, you know, done analysis research on, you know, what kind of economic recovery spending makes most sense. And it really comes back based on a big body of global evidence from the global financial crisis and other work comes back to some real basics, right? Are you creating jobs? Are you creating jobs for the right people? The right type of skills in the right regions? And, you know, are you getting bang for buck? And are you creating value for the long term? And that value can be social. It can be environmental as well. It can be, can consist of a low carbon future. So yeah, and I think, you know, and fundamentally, you raised this before, Frank, we always talk about mechanisms, but at the end of the day, are we going to defeat the science of climate change? If we actually do believe in the science of climate change, there is a limit, as we all know, there is a carbon, carbon budget limit. And over the last two decades, each time we've had to make a really big decision on this, Australians seem to fall back on the fact that we can bet against the science actually, you know, being, being the critical issue. And I think in this decade, we're getting to the point where it's going to be harder and harder to bet against the science. We have a question from Scott. And the question is roughly, how can we educate Australians to bring serious wide scale action onto a political agenda, not only to turn the ship, but to catch up on the last 20 years. And so I guess the wider, that that raises a wider question that we haven't talked about much. And that is public attitudes and perceptions, you know, which ultimately should drive political decisions in a democracy. So what, what have you observed in terms of how public perceptions shape politicians attitudes based on your work? Well, what I have found interesting in doing this book is that wherever I talk to people or interviewed people about the book and said what I was doing, they were saying, Oh, thank God, I want to find out, you know, Australians buy and large support climate policy. Why hasn't this happened? And I think one of the issues is that climate change has not actually been put at the centre of debate. It's been put on the sidelines of the debate. And fundamentally, I think that has to change not only just within the government, although that's the most important area, but, you know, in business, in education, in communities, because ultimately, again, if we do believe the science, climate change is going to influence so many factors of our lives from agriculture to how we build our buildings, where we build them, we know all this stuff. But, you know, the thing that really shocked me was, I think it was about six weeks ago, maybe eight weeks ago now, when the, the white paper discussion, the white paper of defence, white paper discussion paper came down. And I thought, Well, that's interesting. I know there's, you know, obviously, we're repositioning over China, but I read through it, thought I must have missed something, did a search of it. There is one mention of climate change in that entire discussion paper. And I thought, seriously, do we really think that reviewing what is going to be our forward-looking defence policy, that climate change is not a key issue here? And I, and then I, you know, of course, we come back to the obvious in agricultural policy, in education policy, in building, in all these things, we have to move, if we believe in this, that the science is real, we have to move the issue into the centre of our policy thinking, not as a side order issue. I'll take two questions together here. One is from Pamela. What tactics are most effective in opposing the carbon club tactics? And I suppose you could ask, you know, for politician, how do you deal with, with, with the lobbying pressure, essentially? And the question from Jim, if you had to name one person responsible for Australia's lack of action on climate change, who would you name? I think the last one is, I can't, I really can't because, you know, you could, certainly, there's plenty of people in the book who argue and have been very effective in arguing against climate change policy and lobbying against it. And, you know, Hugh Morgan would have to be one of the key figures in this. I think he is a sort of central, centrally influential person in the Liberal Party, at least up until, you know, the, the end of the Howard period and also for quite a bit of the Rudd period as well. But one could equally argue why didn't Rudd crash, why didn't Kevin Rudd crash through on his policy? Why didn't the, you know, Greens vote with Labor on its policy? You can, you can pick off individual debates. But essentially, there are too many factors influencing those debates. And I think one of the, one of the things I would say about what you do about this lobbying is, is to repeat what people like Ross Gano and Bernie Fraser, who was head of the Climate Change Authority, a long time Canberra bureaucrat says, is that you actually stand up against it. If you're a politician, you try to argue the policy position and the public position. And you do that in a way where you don't duck the hard debate. I think one of the things that really undermined Shorten, Bill Shorten in the last election, was he was perceived by the public as ducking the debate on climate change. People will lose their jobs. You have to work out what is going to happen to those jobs. It's not an easy thing to do. Australia, and this comes through again and again in the book and it came through with every paper I read on this. When I was researching the book, that old dichotomy, Australia was one of the developed countries that has profited the most from the free flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Our wealth, our way of life has profited from that for decades. We are also one of the developed countries most affected by climate change because of our dry climate, because of our propensity for drought, the bushfires, because our cities and towns are built on the coast. We have a lot to lose. And so we are really, as your old boss, Haros Gano, said we're in one of the worst positions, in a sense, in this debate. But it also means we have to have those tough arguments and we have to argue and put these positions honestly. You can't just pretend that either we can stay where we are, relying on coal-fired power. The world won't let us do that. And we also can't pretend that this is an easy transition for us. And certainly what needs to be said is that increasingly this tough choice is looking brighter for Australia because the fundamental cost factors in energy are changing and are changing rapidly in favour of clean energy. And in a low carbon world, Australia no longer looks like an economic loser, but like an economic powerhouse based on renewable energy advantage. And so me personally, I would say that is the great hope for Australian climate change policy in coming decades. Simply the fact that economic advantage, long-term economic advantage for our country will more and more align with strong climate change action. And so that this grand clash of two objectives that you described will become less of a future in the future. And that's what keeps me hopeful. And I think what is fascinating, Frank, when you go over, back over all these policy debates back to Howard's time and Kevin Rudd's time, what's really interesting is reading back over the inputs by people like the Business Council of Australia and various big business lobby groups. As they go about trying to fashion the policy to change the policy to undermine the policy sometimes, the lack of understanding that renewable energy in its various forms will ultimately be economically successful really crosses their mind. And that's I think one of the powerful things about looking back at these debates, you see how wrong the decisions were of people who were trying to pick winners. Renewable energy was always, as one of the people I spoke to put it, they were always the Cinderella in the corner. Renewables were, you know, just at a small issue that would never really make much of an impact on Australia. And if you think people thought like that even a decade ago, and what is going on in Australia now, let alone the rest of the world, is it just puts a lie to that. And it's interesting how really clever people got that wrong. We're rapidly running out of time. We've got about 10, 11 unanswered questions. And please accept my apologies for my poor timekeeping that we can't come to them in the discussion. However, Marion will be able to see them on the chat sort of questions cover a wide range of questions such as, you know, the question about the the wisdom of a gas-led recovery. Can Australia take once again a leadership position internationally on climate change? What about the influence of Pacific Island countries in on on Australia's strategy and many more? Perhaps we'll we'll conclude on just one question and that's posed by John Morrison here. So John is asking how much of the hostility to climate change action on the right of the political spectrum do you think was driven by genuine ideology and how much was political opportunism and in that respect also where does the the Murdoch media currently sit on this question? I think I think that's both of those are very good questions. And the first one, I think it was always a mixture of ideological belief and political opportunism. I interviewed one of Malcolm Turnbull's allies in those awful days after the brawling over the neg when, you know, people like once again the whole lives were shattered over those awful kind of debates, not the least, of course, being Turnbulls. But I asked him, I asked this ally of Turnbulls, how many people still in the cabinet and in the party room, a coalition party room, are climate skeptics? And this guy said, well, probably a third of the cabinet, probably a third of the coalition party room. But it depends what you mean by skeptics. He said there's the skeptics in that they don't believe they sincerely do not believe the climate the science of climate change. He said, and then there's the skeptics in that we can use this to fight the Labour Party, so it's stupid for us to do anything in this space that takes away from that fight because this is red meat for our base. And that was his words. And I think that really tells you again, you know, the political opportunism plays a big, big part in all this. On the Murdoch media, I think clearly the Murdoch media have been very influential in this debate. I have a number of friends and I'm a great admirer of some reporters who work for the Murdoch media, but it's foolish to say they haven't been a big part of this debate. You talk to any politician who's ever been involved in this and they regale you with the stories of being, you know, sort of on the edge every day that a policy is going through on climate change. And we only, I think, have to look at the words of James Murdoch when he was splitting with the company recently, where his spokesperson said that James Murdoch and his wife, one of their profound disagreements with the family at the moment, especially in the wake of the Australian bushfires, was their reporting of climate in their media. So yes, I think they're definitely a factor. But again, since the bushfires, I would have to say there is a lot less of the some of the reporting that we'd seen in the past. But of course, there is still quite a bit of it left. Yeah. And you know, that is, I guess, their prerogative. And as long as they own those newspapers, I think that's what they'll be doing. Marian, thank you very much for spending this hour with us. Thank you for your insights. And indeed, thank you for writing this book. I think it's an important public service, actually. So great to have you with us. And good luck with the rest of the activities promoting the book. Thank you so much, Frank. And thanks so much to the ANU and to Colin Steele for this opportunity. And for everyone that's paid me the courtesy of listening and joining this debate. I really very feel very fortunate to have your company tonight. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you to everyone who tuned in. And thank you to everyone who's watching and listening later online. And keep your eyes peeled for the next episode of Meet the Author. Thank you and good night.