Joel Fitzgibbon’s resignation from the front bench does not change the policy of the Labor Party. nor its leadership. But it does change the mechanics.
The member for Hunter can no longer be seen just as a rebel, a maverick baying at the fringe of an executive overwhelmingly committed to putting climate change as one of its top priorities.
From his position on the backbench he will be acknowledged as a warlord – a minor one, perhaps, but chief of a formal alliance that will coalesce around discontent over what the critics see as Anthony Albanese’s surrender to the inner city progressives.
And his resignation will force other front benchers to either put up or shut up – to declare their advocacy for the majority decision for a swift transition out of fossil fuels with the aim of zero emissions by 2050, or seriously consider joining Fitzgibbon on the backbench.
It is not clear how many of them there are, but reports vary from four to nine, a reasonably solid core. Some are among the regular diners at the swanky Otis restaurant in Canberra who have been meeting for several months to air their gripes over what they see as the Labor leadership’s move towards the left, away from its working-class base.
In the past they have been tolerated as a harmless supper club, just part of the normal political discourse where like-minded members mull over the loss of the last election and what needs to be done about it. They have been a distraction, but in no sense a threat.
But now they must be recognised as a faction, the party’s right wing seeking to reclaim its former dominance over an era in which the left has held effective power over policy, if not always personnel.
And unlike many of the factional divisions in the past decades, this one will be not about personal loyalties alone – although there will be elements of that – but about ideology. Within the parliamentary party the names left and right will actually mean something in a way they have not really done since the ALP clawed its way out of the great split of the 1950s.
The labels lost their coherence around the time Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam faced off some 50 years ago. By any normal measure, Calwell was a conservative. But he was a Victorian, and his home power base was the hardline political machine run by the Melbourne Trades Hall. Thus he was branded forever as a creature of the left. Whitlam. by contrast, was inherently progressive, but his New South Wales support came overwhelmingly from the right.
So within the caucus, the simplistic trademarks stuck, and endured over the years as their successive mentors took control of factions that had little if anything to do with policy but were all about control of the numbers needed to secure patronage and promotion for loyal followers.
This lack of serious ideology untrammelled the warlords and their troops from any bonds of conviction or principle – it was all about winning, whatever it took. It gave rise to comparisons with the mafia – the capo di capi of the right, Graham Richardson, was anointed as the archetypal godfather, a feared despot not to be crossed for pain of losing preselection or possibly sensitive body parts.
Fitzgibbon will never inspire such terror: he is genuinely dedicated to ideas, to dragging the Labor party room to what he sees as the mainstream, to a position from which Labor can win the next election. His ambition may be wrong-headed, but it is not megalomaniac.
However, it may easily turn out to be destructive. Coal may be king in his electorate of Hunter and in parts of regional Queensland. But it is undeniably on the way out just about everywhere else in Australia, and the rest of the beleaguered planet.
Virtually every day brings a new report of plants, corporations, entire nations, moving to divest themselves from what are rapidly becoming stranded assets. Mines are closing, orders curtailed or cancelled altogether. There is no argument that the future is in renewables. The only question is how urgent the switch must be.
Naturally Morrison tried to exploit Labor’s division. Fitzgibbon had been driven out by ideological zealots, he exulted. Presumable he was referring to Mark Butler and Mark Dreyfus, Fitzgibbon’s most voluble critics.
Dreyfus dismissed Fitzgibbon’s complaints: after a major setback in the last election, the member for his coal-mining constituency was just concerned with being re-elected, he said. Well probably – that is, after all, his day job.
But in fact Butler and Dreyfus are much more in tune with popular sentiment than Fitzgibbon and Morrison’s recalcitrant government. Polls have shown regularly and decisively that Australians are worried about climate change and just want the politicians to get on with it.
However Fitzgibbon and his troops are now openly campaigning to have Butler dumped as Albanese’s environment spokesman. Whether they succeed will the first real test of the clout the fight faction can muster.
Meanwhile in the world beyond the bubble, signs of progress continue. New South Wales, led by its energetic Environment Minister Matt Kean, has announced a bold plan to invest $32 billion in infrastructure to supercharge renewables and drive down prices – oh, and provide a lot of jobs for hard-working Australians. This is a real road map, with a real target: four coal power stations to be phased out and replaced with pumped hydro over the next 15 years. Kean is rapidly emerging as the hope of the nation, easily overshadowing the risible federal minister Angus Taylor – or Morrison, for that matter.
And across the Pacific, president-elect Joe Biden prepares to bring America back into the global consensus for urgent action, most importantly a target for zero emissions by 2050.This will not be a clincher: there will be holdouts and fringe dwellers, but they will be seen as still more irrelevant as the rest of the international community ignores their denialism.
And of course, our boy ScoMo will proudly be at the head of the resistance, fog-horning that the little Aussie battler will not be pushed around by a bunch of foreigners, just as soon as he rises from his knees after completing his ritual obeisance to Washington.
Mungo MacCallum is a veteran political journalist and commentator. His books include Run Johnny Run, Poll Dancing, and Punch and Judy.
mungomccallum@staging-johnmenadue.kinsta.cloud
Comments
20 responses to “Joel Fitzgibbon and Labor’s environment policy”
Joel should reflect on the fact that there is more to the regions than mining and more to mining than coal. He should talk to Farmers for Climate Action for a start (https://farmersforclimateaction.org.au/).
Just as coal is becoming a stranded asset, Joel will find himself becoming a stranded politician. As many comments on this article have highlighted, we need a ‘just transition’ to renewables. Banks, insurance companies and the coal companies themselves are starting to look to a future without coal, so should Joel Fitzgibbon.
Why accept Fitzgibbon’s presumption, Mungo? His electorate boundaries have changed, along with the demographic and interests of his electors. Yes his votes are down, but perhaps that reflects that change in his electorate. Perhaps it is time for Fitzgibbon to change.
Agree, it’s too easy in simply blaming ON voters and former Labor ones at the last election, when there is a need to avoid climate change through good (bipartisan) policy by educating voters.
However, through LNP media many older and/or retired Labor voters have been targetted with cultural and other intangible issues changing their outlook; maybe Fitzgibbon’s ‘traditional working class’ who he claims should be catered to, whoever they are?
If not increasing support for the LNP from constant dog whistling, voters may have much antipathy towards (via glib one line slogans) urban and/or educated elites, unionists, greens, renewable energy sources etc., hence, less likely to vote Labor.
Many voters in Australia now do not vote for good policies but are encouraged to vote against good policies and/or Labor for their own (supposed) self interest… not sure what coming generations think?
Working people, including miners, may be concerned about their jobs, but not less so about the future of their children, as stated by climate science authorities:
“We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet”. –
(Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate advisor to the German Government”.)
“Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The palae-oclimate
record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes” Hansen et al. ( 2012 )
Fitzgibbon like his fellow Parliamentarians both state and commonwealth, irrespective of which party, in seats dominated by the coal and other fossil fuel industries have a duty to develop a long term economic future for the citizens they represent. While those currently employed in the industry will have healthy super packages, their children and grand children will not if current trends continue. Parliamentarians who’s seats included Latrobe in Victoria and Lithgow in NSW did not lead the development of such a future and their constituents are now suffering for this political and economic negligence. Similar situations will emerge in other regions of Australia where Parliamentarians advocate Fitzgibbon’s tradition. Ironically the NSW Liberal party, which has at times stated that it is not the role of government to determine the economic future of ‘communities’ is now very much doing so. And for this they will be re-elected unlike the federal or state ALP whilst ever Fitzgibbon and his so called faction give the Liberal party free reign to wedge the ALP. The NSW Liberal Party is clever here for it can quietly offer such a future without entering a debate internally about the future of coal for the fate of coal does not need the assistance of the government.
Agreed, but this would require serious policy thinking instead of short term responses typical of Fitzgibbon. A fully thought through plan for moving the whole mining chain employment base to the new industries along the lines of that done in Germany is needed.
And the ABC is to be held significantly responsible for our current situation for it has and continues to determine that the pandemic is a far more newsworthy than catastrophic global warming.
I just love it when Joel McCoal refers to the ‘working class’ miners in his electorate, most of whom earn substantail 6 figure salaries probably more than McCoal. In any case Matt Kean has brilliantly wedged him today by making the Hunter a Renewable Energy Zone and thereby attracting many monetisable benefits for the LNP in the area.
Yep yep yep.
Joel is no doubt genuine in his beliefs but he is misreading his electorate. He lost votes to One Nation not the Coalition. His constituency is moving on and he needs to follow not fight for an old order increasingly unsustainable. People in the Hunter want jobs. They don’t necessarily want them to be in coal mines. In fact I suspect few of his senior voters want to see their grandchildren working in the mines, and even fewer high school students are going to bed dreaming of a job as a coal miner. It’s also a repeat of what happened in Far North Queensland 20 years ago. His old-style “working class” constituents are socially conservative (read into this the words I dare not write) and are attracted to the rhetoric from the likes of Pauline Hanson.
Mungo I think you draw a long bow. Workers in regional centres in farming and mining are coming to terms with climate change. Their biggest bugbear is that there has been little national leadership and policy direction from either of the two major political forces, the coalition and the ALP. Workers that need to make a transition to new sustainable industries, just want an assurance that they will have adequate training and decent jobs in the future. The ALP needs to assure workers in mining, fossil fuels and forestry that they will have future jobs. Bowing down or appeasing the large fossil fuel and mining interests will never get the ALP an election win. Fitzgibbon was only interested in getting reelected by appealing to misinformed, and confused old arguments that have had their day. All his talk about going back to traditional labor values is rhetoric and retrograde. Fitzgibbon does nothing to help ordinary working Australians come to terms with the serious implications of climate change, environmental sustainability and the necessity for new jobs to be created in new environmentally friendly industries.
It seemed from a letter writer in SMH yesterday that Fitzgibbon’s electoral boundaries have moved to encompass West Macquarie.
Joel needs to take a fresh look at his electorate. Far from the sooty faced miners of my Hunter childhood, these newcomers will be aspirational and concerned about bushfires, renewables and climate change.
Large parts of the world, including in Australia, have been burning and are bound to continue to burn under 2, 3 and 4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. The pretext of “jobs” has evaporated now that alternative clean power, including battery storage, are possible and can provide as many or more jobs than mining.
It would appear that the “ideology” of poisoned power and climate change denial persist, including within the ALP.
Fitzgibbon is not just blocking essential urgent action to reduce greenhouse emissions, he is also out of touch with potential for support of a Green Transition programme in his local electorate. A successful strategy requires programs for new industries and a transition plan for workers, not just an emissions target. Fitzgibbon’s stand blocks both, ultimately leaving the workers he claims to support worse off.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/hunter-region-coal-cities-join-national-climate-network-shift-to-solar-and-evs-79266/
A long-term aspiration without clear credible milestones isnt a target, its a lie. Of course they’ll maintain zero by 2050: it’s practically meaningless. Weird that this article doesnt even mention the real game; what 2030 targets will labor take to the next election?
If it is such a struggle for parties of either persuasion to adopt future emissions targets god help us what sort of struggle to adopt programmes to deliver on the targets.
It’s all about how you do it. I doubt Queensland punters want Labor to sing hosannas to Net Zero and Energy Superpower. I’d prefer the Deutschland approach, where the nation legislates to exit coal by year X, with structural adjustment Y, to nominated entities Z. Might also fail, but at least it’s saleable.
Stephen, at this stage the Queensland punters may not want the Labour choir singing those hosanas; however, the re-elected with enhanced majority Queensland government must begin the conversation with the very well paid girls and boys in the Bowen basin about the decline in coal over their lifetime; the government will be shouted down in the short term by the likes of Gina and Clive, but the government must persist. The NSW government will soon be doing that in the Hunter, as will governments all around the world. The phrase is a “just transition” and that will require a huge effort. If we don’t do that, we can expect tariffs on our exports with the likes of the EU and others.
Well put, Steve, “just transition” is indeed my meaning. Could we see Anna n Gladys going tag team? At the margin, it seems a bit more likely than Scotty n Anthony.
Stephen, thanks for the affirmation. The phrase, “just transition”, is coming into broader usage here and in the US as a succinct description of what is required (Note that the Germans have a 20 year agreement to phase out all their brown coal but that is still controversial – too slow for some, too quick for others!). The phrase sums up most of the comments on this piece. Let’s hope that Anna n Gladys manage to have the phrase in common use soon. Then we can start moving for the Hunter and the Bowen basin.