One of the greatest environmental policy failures of Australia’s Howard Coalition government (1996-2007) was its failure to tackle climate change, with the Prime Minister shackled to self-proclaimed climate change scepticism for over a decade. Climate change, or global warming, had been an issue of the highest concern to the Australian public for the entire time that the Howard government was in office, and yet no effective policy was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The government’s failure to act on the international or domestic stage for over a decade, compounded the failure of earlier governments, and meant that the challenge of reducing Australia''s emissions steepened considerably. Opposition Labor leader Kevin Rudd appeared to appreciate the urgent need to act, prompted by the Stern report, severe drought and heightened public expectations. He promised a carbon target, a renewable energy target and fund, a review by economist Ross Garnaut into the feasibility of an emissions trading scheme (ETS), and Australia''s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Rudd swept to power on the back of these promises in 2007, ratified the Kyoto Protocol as his first Prime Ministerial act and embarked upon the pursuit of an ETS as his highest climate priority. Three short years later, the Labor government’s ETS proposal was in tatters, and for this and other failures, Rudd became Australia’s first ever sitting Prime Minister to be deposed from office by his colleagues. This paper explores and explains what it argues is endemic climate policy failure in Australia by emphasising the significance of its domestic politics, its structural reliance upon a fossil fuel economy in particular. It considers the relative impact in the domestic context of normative influences, institutional capacity, and pragmatic self-interest, and the role that is played by politics in shaping and constraining climate action.
