Right Pulse

ABC reporter Chris Uhlmann, who is meant to be one the more balanced ABC journalists, has summed up what he regards as the key issue in the up coming Federal election:

Climate change isn’t the positive it once was for Labor and one in its ranks recently noted that the Prime Minister shouldn’t keep claiming Copenhagen was a success saying, “you should never tell the punters what they know isn’t true”.

All that said, if most of the electorate didn’t want some sort of action on climate change then the Coalition wouldn’t have a policy at all. To eke out a draw in this battle its position has to be defensible and that means people have to see its alternative as credible. So that’s where Labor has launched its attack. In the end, to paraphrase John Howard, it will probably boil down to who you trust to keep carbon emissions low.

Chris Uhlmann, like his ABC colleagues, clearly has not spotted the change in voter sentiment over the past six months on climate change. Or maybe it is just wishful thinking? Less and less people care about the issue. Early in October 2009 the shift in opinion was first indicated by the Lowy poll. It showed that the majority of respondents didn’t rate climate change as a pressing problem – 52 per cent. A move of 20 per cent over the previous poll in 2006. 20 points!!!

Then we have had IPCC scandal after IPCC scandal, the collapse of the Copenhagen Conference, Prof. Plimer’s best selling book Heaven and Earth, the rise of Tony Abbott and now Lord Monckton’s last minute sell out speaking tour of the country. The fact that the ABC has done its best to either ignore or cover-up this change in sentiment provides more evidence of the group think mentality within the organisation and a sneak into how the ABC is going to lobby for the Greens first and ALP second at the next election.