This could be tipping point for Aussies and PM

What are the chances that, in the future, Australia will look back on the weeks around Christmas-New Year 2019-20 as the period in which two tipping points occurred — the beginning of the end of Scott Morrison’s prime ministership and a step change in Australians’ stance on climate change?

Let’s take the Prime Minister first. With an unexpected election win behind him, his authority seemed unassailable.

But things are changing. His bringing into Parliament in 2017 a lump of coal, once treated with more amusement than antipathy, is now being railed against by cartoonists and letter-writers. His Hawaiian holiday came to be seen as a political miscalculation for the secrecy and lack of transparency it involved. And last week’s trip to the far south coast of New South Wales saw his proffered handshake shunned and abuse screamed as he passed by, while the reactions to his announcement on the weekend of an expanded Defence Force contribution to the fire management effort were far from all positive. It smacks, said some, of marketing (Morrison’s pre-politics career), or even of naked political advertising.

His leadership is being questioned, even on his own side of politics. Negative comments have come from former party leader John Hewson, the Young Liberals and high-profile State MPs.

Then there is his dogged insistence that (a) Australia contributes such a tiny fraction of the world’s emissions that nothing it does will matter and (b) the country is doing all it should to reduce them. His response to climate change is weak, even denialist.

Such things add up. Momentum develops. Remember Tony Abbott, whose gaffes and missteps came to dog his every step? First came the knighthood granted to the Duke of Edinburgh, followed by petulant criticism of complaints about Australia’s record on asylum seekers and their children. Then he argued that Indonesia should “reciprocate” for Australia’s generosity after the 2004 tsunami by sparing two Australian drugsmugglers from execution. This was tawdry, even embarrassing. So was his comment that Aborigines’ “lifestyle choices” in living on their ancestral lands was problematic in relation to the provision of services.

When momentum develops, it’s hard to reverse. Commentators mocked Abbott and he became marked. The polls

Australians might be coming to see climate change as being as important an issue as the economy and health.

persistently indicated that he would lose the next election, his party turned against him and he lost the prime ministership.

And Australians’ view of climate change? Polls have long shown that they accept the reality of climate change and the danger it carries. Most also accept that human action contributes to it. So far they have not backed their convictions with their votes, partly because a coalconflicted Australian Labor Party has difficulty in making a clear case for tackling the matter.

But now climate change is ensconced in the public mind as intensifying the drought and the fires. In a summer with many temperature records being set, after years of drought and now with fires on an unprecedented scale, the links are easy to draw. Australians know climate change is a global issue, but they are seeing that their Government might be contributing to the problem as it is manifested right at home. They might be coming to see climate change as being as important an issue as the economy and health.

Where does this go? At the COP19 meeting in Madrid last month, Australia was criticised for blocking global action on climate change and defending a nakedly self-interested position on emissions reduction. What chance is there, given its association with a small number of other countries in undermining an international consensus, that some will seek to impose sanctions? Could they insist that major coal-producing countries make progressive reductions in production, say at about 2 per cent per year, with external verification to guarantee compliance?

Scott Morrison needs to note what is happening and where it might all go. And his response should not focus on marketing.