‘People do have the right to be climate change deniers, you know’: Scepticism, contrarianism and the challenge to freedom of speech in the Australian climate change debate Myra Gurney University of Western Sydney Email: [email protected] Abstract In Australia since 2007, attempts to deal with anthropogenic climate change have become highly politicised, politically poisonous and discursively fractious. Central to the toxic politics has been a vocal media campaign from so-called ‘sceptics’, ‘denialists’ and ‘contrarians’ who have largely framed their opposition to carbon reduction policies around the scientific basis of climate change in general, and the political and economic implications, in particular. The paper uses the text analytics program Leximancer to examine a sample of the columns, blog posts and related reader comments from the prolific Australian conservative commentator and climate sceptic Andrew Bolt, to explore the manner in which sceptics, denialists and contrarians discursively construct their views in the Australian political and media context. It then discusses the extent to which the alternative narrative constructed by Bolt and his readers is consistent with the broader strategies of climate change denialism and its role in legitimizing doubts about the both the veracity of climate science and scientific consensus. It also considers their argument that alternative views equally valid and to exclude them subjugates their freedom of speech. The paper concludes that the views of Bolt and his reads are not examples of genuine scientific scepticism, but rather contrarianism or denialism that is largely ideologically driven. 1 Introduction The election of the Liberal/National Party government of Tony Abbott in September 2013 has significantly shifted the Australian policy momentum on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Since being elevated to the position of party leader in the wake of an impending ideological implosion over then-leader Malcolm Turnbull’s support for the Rudd government’s proposed emissions trading scheme, Tony Abbott has strategically shifted the focus of the climate change debate and reconfigured the policy initiatives. During the period of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd governments (2007-2013), the discourse of the debate shifted from climate change as ‘the greatest moral challenge of our generation’ (Rudd, 2007) to framing the so- called ‘carbon tax’ as a ‘wreaking ball across the economy’ (Australian Conservative, 2012), a shift that has contributed significantly to political fortunes on both sides of the ideological divide (for a comprehensive summary see Talberg, Hui, & Loynes, 2013). While Tony Abbott states publically that he believes in the existence of anthropogenic climate change, his previous musings, (including the statement that ‘climate change is absolute crap’), have been contradictory (OzPolitic, 2013). His government’s actions are a reflection of this ambivalence, or at least of the degree of influence of his party’s more conservative forces (Seccombe, 2014). Since its election, and true to its promise to axe ‘the toxic tax’, the Abbott government has made a concerted effort to undo the climate change policy initiatives efforts of the previous Labor governments. The Clean Energy Bill (‘carbon tax’) was repealed in July 2014 and the Climate Commission, (an independent body set up to provide the public with information about climate change) was abolished. The renewable energy target (RET) is currently being renegotiated and both a recent Energy White Paper and Intergenerational Report have effectively ignored or played down climate change as a factor in long-term policy. There have been significant cuts to science research funding in the CSIRO and the reliability of temperature data from the Bureau of Meteorology has been questioned (Brown, 2014). Two well-known climate sceptics, businessmen Dick Warburton and Maurice Newman, were appointed to lead reviews of climate policy – Newman (2015) recently stating that the UN is using climate change in order to assert ‘a new world order’. Most recently, the government controversially approved funding to establish ‘sceptical environmentalist’ Bjorn Lomborg’s global development think-tank at the University of Western Australia. Internationally, Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty notes that Australia is now seen as ‘public enemy number one’ of the United Nations climate change negotiations due to take place in Paris in December (Davey, 2015). While opposition to serious climate change policy has been significant in the electoral fortunes of Tony Abbott and the misfortunes of his opponents (one commentator describing it as ‘the black death of Australian politics’ (Hanson, 2010)), a recent survey indicates that Australians still see climate change as a ‘serious and pressing problem’, up five points since 2013 and nine points since 2012 (Lowy Institute, 2014). A case study in media-centred climate ‘scepticism’: Andrew Bolt The role of the media in shaping and influencing public attitudes, and by extension political action, on climate change has been widely discussed (for example, see Boykoff, 2011; Cox, 2010; Hansen, 2010; Lester & Hutchins, 2013; Painter, 2013). 2 But climate change ‘scepticism’ or ‘denialism’ goes beyond the questioning of the science: it is at once a political and psychological phenomenon (Hulme, 2009; Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2012; Manne, 2012; Oreskes & Conway, 2010) as well as one that reflects a complex mix of deep seated cultural, political and ideological insecurities that underlie our attitudes to the environment in general and climate in particular (Chakrabarty, 2009; Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982; Merchant, 1993). With respect to strategies proposed to combat the influence of prominent voices of climate change scepticism despite the significant level of consensus (e.g. see various publications from Climate Council of Australia, 2015), attitude formation more broadly, and to contentious and ideologically confronting issues such as climate change more specifically, is not a simple matter of stronger evidence or more effective communication. According to Festinger’s (1957) theory of ‘cognitive dissonance’, when confronted with information, views or evidence that clash with other strongly held views, we have a powerful motivation to avoid or reduce ‘dissonance’ or discomfort, often leading to illogical rationalisations or maladaptive behaviours (Mooney, 2011). Further, there has been a developing interest in the psychological and ideological genesis of belief systems and their impact on climate change scepticism (for example Bliuc et al., 2015; Kahan, 2014; Markowitz & Shariff, 2012; Roser-Renouf et al., 2014; Wolf & Moser, 2011), leading to the conclusion that other strongly held views (religious, political, ideological) hold significant sway on both the level of scepticism espoused (Donner, 2007; Whitmarsh, 2011) and our assessment or evaluation of evidence. However, to what extent do the more extreme examples of climate change ‘scepticism’ as espoused by conservative media commentators in particular, reflect or feed these interpretative frames? Using the Australian political and media context, this paper examined the writings of high profile conservative commentator Andrew Bolt whose prolific and strident campaign against the ‘orthodoxy’ of global warming belief has played a major role in the Australian political discourse around climate change policy in recent years. According to a study by Bacon (2013), Bolt and fellow News Limited columnists including Piers Ackerman, Miranda Devine, Tim Blair and Terry McCrann, have been cultivated by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited publications, to foster a highly inflammatory and controversial agenda which has had the effect of ‘successfully turning climate science reporting into a battleground’ (p. 113). This phenomenon has been noted elsewhere (e.g. Boykoff, 2013; Oreskes & Conway, 2010) and Bolt’s arguments and approach are consistent with the general denialist strategy as mapped by Farmer and Cook (2013). Andrew Bolt is worthy of study for a number of reasons. He is touted as having ‘Australia’s most read political blog’ and his regular newspaper column is syndicated in several Australian capital and regional newspapers. He hosts his own weekly political talk show, The Bolt Report, and has a nightly segment on radio 2GB. He is reportedly a particular favourite of powerful Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart who describes him as ‘one of Australia’s best journalists’ (Crikey.com, 2011). He is unapologetically partisan in his views, and both his columns and his blog regularly lambast and deride the actions of ‘the Left’ while sparing any similar level of critique for the conservative side of politics. He consciously flouts the norms of journalist balance, and his polemical style, it could be argued, is a characteristic that endears him to his audience. 3 In terms of the overall volume of populist ‘debate’, Bolt plays a significant role as an agent of climate change denialism in Australia. Bacon’s (2011) study of Australian media coverage of climate change for example, estimated that Bolt accounted for almost half of the number of words in articles written on climate change, climate science and climate policy in the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun newspaper, 96% of which as negatively framed. In terms of his reach and impact, Crikey.com’s 2011 Power Index named Bolt as its number 1 ‘megaphone’, stating that: No other commentator has been as successful at undermining public trust