The ABC: Labor's climate propaganda machine

Labor propaganda machine in action

Whilst the Howard government was given a rough ride by the ABC over every single one of its policies, Kevin Rudd and his cronies are allowed to get away with almost anything. Kerry O’Brien savaged the Coalition on a daily basis on the 7.30 Report during the Howard era, constantly interrupting and badgering, never letting them get a word in edgeways, forever ridiculing and humiliating, but with Labor he’s about as scary as Kerry-Anne (O’Brien’s a lefty of course, so it’s to be expected).

Since Labor has been in power, the ABC has continued in the same vein… except against the Opposition. It therefore comes as no surprise that tonight’s edition of Four Corners will focus not on the government’s flawed ETS and the quiet signing away of billions of taxpayer dollars to developing countries under a Copenhagen treaty, but on the Opposition’s response to it.

Reporter Sarah Ferguson goes inside the conservative parties to find out what the party members really think about climate change and why they’re so reluctant to back their leader.

In October Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull said, “I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.”

It was a potentially dangerous strategy because it tied his leadership to a single issue. Just how risky that declaration was is only now becoming clear.

At that stage coalition MPs had clear doubts about supporting an emissions trading scheme but now a range of Nationals and Liberals have told Four Corners they don’t believe that climate change is primarily man-made.

“The earth is not actually warming, we still have rain falling … we can go outside and not cook.”

“If the question is, do people believe or not believe that human beings …are the main cause of the planet warming, then I’d say a majority don’t accept that position.”

This may surprise many voters and it’s led some to ask if Malcolm Turnbull’s position as leader is now untenable.

The problems for the opposition leader are reinforced by Liberal insiders who say his handling of the issue was a “folly”. Another says Malcolm Turnbull is simply too “green” for the party he leads. Yet another senior figure justifies his refusal to support his leader’s views by saying it’s important for him to openly question the idea that man is changing the climate at all.

There are so many questions the ABC should be asking Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong – like why Rudd hysterically condemned all who disagree with him on climate as dangerous (a small step away from silencing critics), or why they are keeping so quite about the Copenhagen draft treaty, or why they unquestioningly put their faith in the science from the IPCC, which has been discredited as a politically motivated and biased organisation to the core? But no – they choose to use it as an opportunity to further expose issues within the Opposition.

The only tangential benefit may be to strengthen the position of the sceptics within the Coalition, and weaken Turnbull’s position as a result, but I doubt it.

Thanks to the ABC, we are in a situation where an opposition is under more scrutiny than a serving government.

Read it here.