Green jobs’ won’t save the debate
There has been a lot of talk about the need to ‘reframe’ the debate about climate change among the Australian environment groups who have tasked themselves with persuading our politicians to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, their attempts to reframe the debate have been as unsuccessful as their attempts to persuade our politicians. The worst example of this failure is the repeated attempts to get people to focus on ‘green jobs’ or ‘low-carbon jobs’ or, these days, ‘clean energy jobs’. Now don’t get me wrong, transforming our energy infrastructure will create a lot of jobs, but focusing on this point is neither successful as a strategy to reframe the debate, nor is it successful at persuading marginal voters to change their minds about the urgent need to reduce emissions.
Related documents
Between the Lines Newsletter
The biggest stories and the best analysis from the team at the Australia Institute, delivered to your inbox every fortnight.
You might also like
Leaders’ debates can be useful, but no debate is better than a scrappy one
Robust debate is better than mealy-mouthed bipartisanship. Televised leaders’ debates can be a good thing if they illustrate the choices facing voters.
There is no such thing as a safe seat | Fact sheet
A notable trend in Australian politics has been the decline of the share of the vote won by both major parties at federal elections. One effect of this is that there are no longer any safe seats in Australian politics: minor parties and independents win more “safe” seats than they do “marginal” ones. The declining
Full preferential voting means you can’t waste your vote
Full preferential voting is a proud Coalition reform – one that benefits every political persuasion Compulsory voting and full preferential voting make up the backbone of Australian democracy, and protect us from voter suppression and disengagement seen in other countries. We owe both to the parties of the centre-right, what would become the Liberal–National Coalition.