Climate Change Policy - You Decide - NOW

While many in our society like to complain that our elected officials don't know what it going on in "the real world", or aren't in touch with the real issues facing "real Australians", the fact is that we elect them to do a job and run the country, the government, and the economy. Julia Gillard would like that to change.

Climate Change is one of the more contentious issues facing policy makers today. Not only do we have a debate about whether the climate is changing, we also have debates on whether we should have a debate (hard-line climate change believers like to use words like "we need to move on from debate", "the science is settled", and "there is a consensus"), whether it is caused by human activity, what we should do about it, and whether we should do anything if bigger and larger overall polluters like China and India do nothing, preferring economic growth to carbon reduction.

Regardless of what has occurred in the last three years, Kevin Rudd and the ALP ran at the 2007 election on a platform of introducing a scheme to reduce the amount of carbon Australia emits. Faced with a hostile Senate, filled with Liberals and Nationals who felt the scheme went too far, and Greens who felt the scheme didn't go far enough, the scheme did not pass the Senate and was not reintroduced by the Government, or used as a trigger for a Double Dissolution election.

Now, at the next election with Kevin Rudd relegated to local member and the ground shifting in this policy area, Julia Gillard wants to create a "Citizens Assembly" to develop a "consensus" on climate change.

The assembly, which would include 150 "ordinary Australians", would be "informed by experts" about climate change before making recommendations. The speech announcing this, of which The Australian has obtained a copy, apparently states "this must not just be a debate between experts ... it must be a real debate among involving many real Australians".

Firstly, I don't know who to be more offended for first, but experts are experts for a reason: they know what they are talking about. Could you imagine the government creating such an assembly to determine economic policy? Not in a million years. Also offensive is the implication that experts, or to put it more plainly, public servants, are not real Australians, but live in a land of make-believe called "Government land". They have mortgages, grocery and petrol bills, friends, hobbies, children, and all that other stuff that "real Australians" have as well.

It's also a significant abrogation of the responsibility of government, chosen from the party in the majority in the House of Representatives. We elect governments to govern.

There already exists a "Citizens Assembly", which has 150 "real Australians", informed by experts on various areas of policy and public administration: it's called the House of Representatives.

Gillard is being disingenuous as well as condescending and offensive when she plans to handball this key area of public policy, labelled by her predecessor and member of her party as "the greatest moral challenge of our time", off to 150 people, randomly selected like they have just won the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes.

What Gillard should do, considering she has been in Government for 32 months, is outline what she and her colleagues in the ALP is the best course of action regarding this issue, and if the Opposition offers a different policy, then let the people decide at an election, which we will be having on August 21. That way 13,000,000 Australians, rather than 150, can decide on policy direction the Commonwealth Government should head on Climate Change.

Australia needs better leadership than this, and this proposal demonstrates exactly why Gillard is unfit for office.

Wonky Politics

Kevin Rudd apparently loves policy detail. "Policy wonk" is the term of endearment used most often to describe his way of doing things ("control freak" is not a term of endearment).

Rudd led a government that for all intents and purposes still exists. While Julia Gillard may have replaced Kevin Rudd as the leader of that government, Rudd himself is the only change to the government. The continuity is so set in stone that Ms Gillard has chosen to retain two "lame-duck" cabinet members who have indicated they will not continue in the cabinet past the next election.

Another way you can tell this is the same government is the way that they develop policy, which has demonstrated that suggesting Mr Rudd is a policy wonk is a little like suggesting Michael Barlow has an intact tibia bone.

This Rudd/Gillard Government has in fact a well earned reputation for glossing over policy detail in order to announce and implement policies and programs as soon as possible, for maximum PR effect.

The most glaring example under the previous Prime Minister was the insulation scheme. Rather than creating a much needed regulatory framework for the registration and examination of competency of tradespeople performing the work of installing insulation in private homes, the Rudd Government got the money into the economy as soon as possible. This was the main objective of the insulation scheme.

However, this dereliction of basic policy development, admitted by outgoing Finance Minister Linsday Tanner, contributed to thousands of homes becoming "live-wired", and the increase of activity also led to the deaths of a number of installers.

The provision of solar hot water heaters to various community used facilities was also another policy where the overarching objective overrode the proper development of policy detail, leading to football ovals across Australia possessing more solar hot water heaters than they had showerheads.

Unfortunately under our new Prime Minister little has changed. Ms Gillard announced that she had discussed with the President of East Timor the possibility of processing asylum seekers in the tiny nation.

Now, here's a lesson of what not to do in politics, especially government: don't think out loud about policy. 

The result of Ms Gillard's thought bubble has been that the media has been taking her "plans" as official government policy. Only problem is that all Ms Gillard has done is talk to the President of East Timor, not the Prime Minister who would usually make this sort of decision, and the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Her total discussions with these national leaders has probably totalled about sixty minutes.

This policy of a processing facility for asylum seekers on East Timor is light on for detail, hasn't been agreed to by East Timor itself, and is opens Ms Gillard to accusations of hypocrisy, given her previous opposition to the Howard's Government "Pacific Solution", which also processed asylum seekers away from Australian soil.

If Ms Gillard wants to spend longer than 100 days in the Prime Minister's chair, then it may be an idea to increase the level of work done on important government policies between now and the election, or else it may be experienced former government minister Tony Abbott who gets her job.