The Dead Roo

After a hiatus of nearly a month, here’s another Howard Watch column, analyzing the lies of our Prime Minister point by point.

This column deals with Howard’s weekly radio address, which on the 16th of April dealt with climate change.

To begin with, notice how in this speech the words “climate realism” were absent, instead was talk of “measured response” and “balance”. When I last engaged with a Howard speech on climate change, it was littered with this talk of “realism”; I summed the speech us as “now we call our climate change denial ‘realism’”.

It would appear the Australian public agree with me; the terms “climate realism” no longer poll well and thus no longer appear in Howard’s speech. Perhaps the Australian public cynically equate talk of “lets be realistic” with it’s true meaning, “lets do f-ck all”.

Instead of “realism”, in this speech Howard is at pains to demonstrate that his government is taking measured and balanced action.

To the point by point.

One of the distinguishing features of the Australian achievement has been our almost uncanny ability to find a sense of balance on major public policy issues.

A common debating trick, praise the audience for it’s “common sense” stance, in order to butter them up for the implicit claim to the audience that they agree with you.

It works like this:

Debater (explicit): You are all very sensible people. The way we are all “measured” in our responce to things is sensible.
Audience (implicit): Why thank you, yes we are.
Debater (explicit): I want to be sensible about climate change.
Audience (gut response as bullshit detectors flair): but but, by sensible you mean do nothing but but…
Debater (implied in ongoing statements about how measured the governments position is): but aren’t we all sensible, are you going back on what you said before?
Audience (if successful, this response is elicited): Of course not!

In social psychology this principle of persuasion is called “commitment”. Get the audience to commit to a position, twist the position, trick them into being bound by their earlier commitment. As humans, we’re not very fond of going back on a stated, and to a lesser extent, unstated commitment.

Ours is not a nation of strident ideology or extremes. We embrace both public and private approaches to health policies where other countries emphasize one to the detriment of the other.

In education Australia has settled policies of choice between government and independent schools.

Our strong social security safety net coupled with the policy of mutual obligation means that we avoid the laissez faire harshness of the American welfare system as well as the nanny state mentality of many European countries.

Notice how “ours is not a nation of strident ideology or extremes” constitutes the praise of the audience.

Aside from the obvious falsehoods, notice the audacity in trying to spin the obvious conflicted mess that is the federal position on education, health and welfare as evidence of this “balance”. “We’re balanced, we get the best of both worlds”.

It is critical that this balanced approach be applied to the vital issue of climate change.

Here we are turning the audience’s endorsement of the previous statements, neccesitated by their acceptance of the praise in the first, into a receptiveness for the governments position on climate change.

But of course there is a tendency to baulk when we feel our position being twisted in this way. That’s why this is necessary:

We must avoid extreme overreaction which hurts our economy and destroys jobs.

You wouldn’t want to hurt the economy would you? You wouldn’t take away people’s lively hoods?

But just for a bit of reassurance:

Australia must neither ignore the dangers of global warming nor hastily apply ill-considered meveasures which do enduring damage.

That is why the Government is investing more than $3 billion in practical climate change policies. The phasing out of incandescent light bulbs, investing in clean coal technology and promoting reafforestation are all very practical ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The above statement invites the audience to alleviate any pangs of guilt by deluding themselves. They can begin to renounce their gut reaction that “’sensible’ = ‘do nothin’ when dealing with double talk”. We are doing something.

Nothing states this better than:

We can be sure of their benefits. They are real. They can be measured. They won’t harm our economy.

If you’ve followed my analysis of this speech thus far, you’ll enjoy the conclusion. Like any good conclusion, it’s a brief re-statement of the whole argument:

It is why the Australian Government is working in collaboration with the business community, particularly energy and resource companies, to develop a sensible and balanced approach to emissions trading.

By contrast we will not commit to targets with unknown consequences - such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by the year 2020.

Such a step would put many Australian jobs at risk and cause great injury to the Australian economy.

Unlike Labor and the Greens, the Liberal and National parties will always put economic prosperity and jobs ahead of ideology and targets with unknown consequences.

With an end position:

It is the right way forward with climate change.

It’s a brilliant and dangerous persuasive piece, my hat goes off to Howards speech writer. Listen to it with your guard down, and notice just how your opinion is twisted and manipulated.

P.S. Dealing with the substantive matter, to the people who actually do think that reducing the wattage on light bulbs will stop climate change, say “reducing the wattage on my light bulb will stop climate change” out loud. Notice how totally ridiculous you feel? There is a reason you feel ridiculous.

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