To read this whole production is to be at the theatre. Hawke is right. It is all posturing - sound and wind that signify nothing. The Government will do what it can to roll back Labor's plans, and this Report is simply a little sideshow. The only aspect of it that really caught my attention was this, from the dissenting report:
1.3 The Government accepts the science of climate change.
Yes, I've heard Ministers say it before. But what does it mean? I think it is another piece of theatre, a little ritual bow to the stone figure of the god as you enter the Roman house. The science of 'climate change' is vast, quite unsettled, and full of conjectural and hypothetical papers based on the possibility that the world will really warm to some high figure.
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I would be grateful if Government spokespeople did not use the phrase any more. But I guess that is simply asking too much, politically.
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