Shouts from the desert

Today's candidates forum organised by the Ryde/Epping Grey Power group was attended by candidates from all parties contesting Bennelong but one. No prizes for guessing which candidate did not attend, preferring not to give other candidates better exposure by his own presence and sending former staffer and Member for Lane Cove, Anthony Roberts, in his place.

In attendance were Anthony Roberts, representing the Prime Minister for the Liberals, Lindsay Peters for the Greens, Maxine McKew for the ALP, Peter Goldfinch for the Australian Democrats, and Robyn Peebles for the Christian Democrats.

Maxine McKew arrived bearing cupcakes (in chocolate, strawberry, banana and caramel iced versions with smiley faces on them) for the customary tea and coffee after the forum. Several people in attendance expressed how impressed they were by this gesture. This is just one small incident in a pattern of behaviour on the part of McKew that leaves those who meet her duly impressed.

Also in attendance were John Booth (commonly known as JB) of The Weekly Times and Evan Mistilis of the Northern District Times, so you should see a write-up of the forum in both of the local rags next Wednesday.

At the start of the forum the MC drew candidates names from a hat to determine speaking order. Each candidate was allocated a few minutes to speak on the subject of climate change. This was followed by a question and answer session. The following reflects my notes and recollection - if any candidate feels they have been misrepresented they should feel free to submit a correction using the "Add new comment" link at the bottom of this article.

Anthony Roberts, speaking for the Prime Minister, raced through reading a verbatim speech provided by the Prime Minister. This speech reflected the Prime Minister's position as it has been stated many times before, with the core theme being that the Prime Minister believes in addressing climate change "with minimal economic cost." There was nothing new or noteworthy revealed in the speech.

Maxine McKew came second. Her presentation was excellent - almost flawless (she did say "um" once). She had a conversational style that came across as strong and credible without being unduly forceful and spent most of her time speaking without any reference to notes whatsoever. On climate change she explained that her views are strongly influenced by having read Tim Flannery's book "The Watermakers". She stated that there was no more time available to wait before dealing with climate change, and that work on both national and international solutions needed to commence immediately. She explained that Kevin Rudd considers climate change to be the number 1 issue for his upcoming Government, and that he had spent some time discussing the economic costs of not addressing climate change with Sir Nicholas Stern. McKew considers climate change to be a community led issue rather than a political one, and interestingly for a Labor candidate, acknowledged the work of Bob Brown over the years in pushing the climate change issue.

Having exceeded her time limit, McKew then proceeded to briefly enumerate the climate change policies of the ALP, referring to her notes for the first time in her presentation (and even then only using them sporadically). For a full list of ALP climate change policies you should visit the ALP web site, but briefly she mentioned: cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% over 2000 levels by 2050; encourage industry to develop its own solutions; ratify Kyoto so as to get a seat at the table for working on post-Kyoto agreements; establishing an emissions trading scheme; requiring climate change impact studies for major developments; creating tax incentives for clean energy; setting mandatory renewables targets; and targetting energy efficiency.

Peter Goldfinch came third. His presentation was strong and flowed well, but McKew's had been stronger - she is quite literally a tough act to follow. Goldfinch noted that climed change is "proceeding apace" and noted the potential for disaster if the Greenland ice sheet is lost, but indicated it is not certain that it will be lost entirely. He stated that even if there are any residual doubts about climate change, this is not something "we can not do something about", and pointed out that the Democrats have been supporting environmental causes since well before the Greens even existed. Major points of Democrat policies on climate change he mentioned were: ratify Kyoto; reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% over 1990 levels by 2020; creating transfer subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy; and setting a renewables target. He also explained that the operation of the preferential voting system in Australia makes it a good idea to put small parties first if they reflect your values, even if you do not believe the party has a chance of winning (I will have more to say on this closer to the election).

Lindsay Peters came next. His presentation still comes across as somewhat monotone and needs some work - there is a significant danger of the audience tuning out when he speaks. He opened with some comments on consumption that are best described as soft socialist positions - a phrase I hesitate to use because of the potential for misunderstanding, but a technically accurate one in this case. He stated the core policies of the Greens, indicating that climate change cannot be treated as an isolated issue. His position is that warming must be limited to no more than two degrees, beyond which disaster will ensue. Key points on climate change policies of the Greens mentioned were: an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, with 30% by 2020; clean coal as a possible longer term goal but not realistic in the short term; nuclear as not being an option under any circumstances; policy centred around renewables, efficiency, carbon taxes and promoting the grown of forests; targetting 15% renewable energy by 2012 and 25% by 2020; and halting the growth of energy consumption within two to three years and subsequently reducing demand. Peters also criticised the ALP for supporting woodchipping and pulp mills.

Robyn Peebles spoke last. Her speaking style was strong - much stronger than other CDP candidates I have seen. She explained that her positions on climate change (along with all other policy issues) are influenced by her religious beliefs and that included being a creationist rather than an evolutionist. Arising from this belief is her position that mankind is guilty of having failed to take care of the creation with which it was entrusted. She explained that she had been taught to conserve resources as a child but that global warming was unproven (but she seemed to acknowledge the need to err on the side of caution favouring the environment). She incorrecly lumped all pollution into the category of greenhouse gas emissions (there are other forms of pollution, even air pollution, that are not greenhouse gas emissions, with ozone and soot being obvious examples). She supports forest conservation but said we "don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater" - the baby, presumably, being jobs. She sees nuclear fusion to be an answer to environmental issues, and stated that she is open to the progression of technology to provide cleaner energy. She indicated her goals are for a healthy and wealthy planet with children looked after.

After the candidate speeches came four audience questions.

The first question, addressed to all candidates, was "would you vote against your own party if necessary to protect the environment". Peter Goldfinch and Lindsay Peters both indicated that their party considered all votes to be conscience votes so there was no obligation to vote with the rest of the party. Robyn Peebles similarly indicated that Christian Democrats are not bound by party decisions but that their decisions must be based on the Bible. Anthony Roberts noted that it was unlikely that the Prime Minister would wind up in a position where he felt he had to vote against his own party, but that Roberts himself would consider crossing the floor if he felt strongly enough. Maxine McKew admitted she would be bound by the decision of the Labor Caucus and could not cross the floor, but that she felt the range of issues which were subject to conscience votes should be widened and should include environmental issues.

The second question, addressed to all candidates, was "would you support mandatory water tanks and solar heating." Robyn Peebles answered that she opposes mandatory things generally but would support this. Peter Goldfinch waffled on this somewhat but appeared to say "yes" in the end. Maxine McKew said she would not mandate these things but supported subsidies and low interest loans for energy efficiency modifications to homes. Lindsay Peters also would not make these things mandatory but would put incentives in place making them unavoidably attractive to home owners and would reprice water and energy to remove subsidies on them. Anthony Roberts opposed increases to the price of water, supports competition for Sydney Water and opposes desalination, which does not seem to have answered the question at all.

The third question, posed by Chris Stanton of Citizens for Integrity in Government to Anthony Roberts, was "why does the Government continue to promote nuclear energy when responsible management of the waste from nuclear energy is problematic. Roberts challenged the premise that the waste could not be responsibly managed, stated he was opposed to kneejerk reactions and that serious research should go into it even if after that research it turns out nuclear is not suitable. Roberts is personally in favour of solar farms. He turned this question around on Stanton by pointing out that the reason the public knows about the research is that the Government is being open about it whereas they could have just done the research in secret. Peter Goldfinch also gave an answer to this question by pointing out that the Democrats do not support any part of the nuclear industry, right back to uranium mining, and described the proceeds of uranium sales as blood money.

The final audience question was "why is clean coal research and development being given more funcding than renewables." Maxine McKew answered this by stating that she supports clean coal investment while pricing carbon in such a way as to encourage the energy industry to fund research into renewable energy. She noted that the combination of all renewables available in Australia - including geothermal - combined with natural gas reserves gives Australia the potential for a huge renewable energy production and exporting industry. Anthony Roberts stated that the Government has been able to invest $3.5million (yes, million) in climate change initiatives thanks to a strong economy.

In the final part of the forum the candidates were given rapid-fire questions to which they were allowed hold up a card answering "yes", "no", or giving some noncommittal waffle. The questions and responses were as follows:

Y - Yes; N - No; W - Waffle; ? - I did not see any answer held up at all.

The presentation skills of the Bennelong Candidates present ranked from highest to lowest are: 1. Maxine McKew; 2. Peter Goldfinch; 3. Robyn Peebles; 4. Lindsay Peters. I offer no ranking on policy questions for this forum because of the difficulty of finding a single frame of reference for ranking the different mixes of policies.