Writer says the rightwing thinktank is the ‘foremost organ in Australia for spreading climate change denial and doubt’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Naomi Klein delivered a stinging rebuke to Australia’s approach to refugees and climate change, as well as criticising interventions from the Institute of Public Affairs, in a fiery episode of ABC’s Q&A on Monday night.

The Canadian journalist, author and winner of the 2016 Sydney peace prize appeared on the panel alongside two panellists from the free-market thinktank the IPA, as well as Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese and writer Don Watson.

A dispute on climate change policy was provoked by a question from audience member Jim Stanford, an economist with the leftwing thinktank the Australia Institute.

ABC Q&A (@QandA) When will your government accept that our energy system has to change? @SenPaterson responds #QandA https://t.co/hEdd2eEAHs

Sandford asked James Paterson, a Liberal senator and former deputy executive director of the IPA: “When will your government accept once and for all the energy system has to change and start to lead that change rather than standing in the way of it?”



Paterson responded by saying he thought Australia should “take an agnostic approach to energy sources”.

Klein interrupted Paterson and asked, “Do you believe climate change is real?” to which Paterson said he did. Klein continued: “How can you be agnostic about which energy source you use if you believe in that?”

Peter Hannam (@p_hannam) Interesting that @SenPaterson didn't try to paint #climate change as a hoax. IPA will retract his life membership. #qanda

She continued, laying into the IPA itself:

“I asked you if you believe in climate change and I asked you that because you’ve been associated with IPA. We have two people from this thinktank and this is the foremost organ in Australia for spreading climate change denial and doubt. You may personally not agree with that but the IPA publishes discredited climate change deniers, this year, in your facts book, and this is slowing us down.”

Anne Summers (@SummersAnne) Kudos @NaomiAKlein for calling our TWO #IPA panellists out of 5 on #qanda

Georgina Downer, an adjunct fellow at the IPA, responded, saying: “The IPA is absolutely committed to research and discussion of the facts.” She then went on to question how settled the science of climate change is.

Downer said: “The IPA is, we don’t have an IPA opinion on climate change per se. We have a committed line of research into the facts.”

But Klein, who has written widely on the role of free-market thinktanks and neoliberalism in stopping the world acting on climate change said: “The reason that free markets thinktanks like IPA are so determined to raise questions, raise doubts about this issue, where there is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real … If it is true, your whole world view collapses. This whole idea of pushing deregulation and privatisation and ‘government get out of the way’ falls apart because we need to manage this decline.”

Klein said Australia was virtually alone in its inaction on climate change.

“Among wealthy industrialised countries, Australia now stands alone raising the middle finger to the world and saying that we’re not going to act and we will build massive new coalmines, huge natural gas pipelines in the Northern Territory, opening up vast fracking fields. These are carbon bombs. This is unburnable carbon. ”

She said the public “have to stand up to the extraordinary power of coal, oil and gas”.

Watson, an author and former speechwriter for prime minister Paul Keating, had a dry take on the same issue.

“It’s fairly simple to explain,” he said. “You do have a problem with the fossil fuel industry. No one wants to take them on. So you don’t. That’s it.”

Market Forces (@market_forces) Don Watson nails it on #qanda: the fossil fuel industry is strong, so they don't challenge them #ActOnClimate

Klein won applause for her rebuke of Australia’s policy on asylum seekers and refugees also.

Following a discussion of Donald Trump and his plans to build a wall on the border wiht Mexico, she said pointedly: “I think that Donald Trump talking about building the wall with Mexico is insane and racist. But I think what Australia is doing on Manus and Nauru is as well.”

Holly Creenaune (@hollycreenaune) Naomi Klein offered this answer before: the difference between offshore refugee camps & Trump's wall is that our atrocities are real #qanda

Klein said: “I think it’s outrageous. The New York Times called this proposal cruel, short-sighted and shameful. I hear this, I hear this argument that it’s ‘We can’t send a message to the people smugglers’. What about the message you’re sending to refugees around the world? What message are you sending about Australia? And the implication that the only way people die is at sea. They die in war zones when they can’t flee. That’s why we welcome refugees.”