Exploring climate change discourses across five Australian federal elections

ABSTRACT

It is clear that transitioning towards environmental sustainability requires a strong and sustained effort to address climate change. However, despite high levels of public concern about climate change, it has remained a highly politicised and hotly contested issue in Australia, and Australia’s climate change policy remains inadequate and ineffective. Climate change first emerged as a key election issue in Australia’s 2007 federal election and remained a highly contentious issue in the 2010 election. Although climate change was much less prominent during the 2013 and 2016 election campaigns, it re-emerged as a major election issue in 2019. This paper uses critical discourse analysis to identify and trace climate change discourses in the media through these five federal election campaigns. It explores the main arguments, actors, and discursive strategies associated with two key discourses, how climate change was constructed during each campaign, and the implications of these constructions for the development of Australia’s climate change policy. It is argued that while the discourse of climate change activism has put climate change firmly on the national agenda, the discourse of climate change denialism has contributed to stymieing the development of effective climate change policy in Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• climate change
• climate change activism
• climate change denialism
• discourse analysis
• media
• politics

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of Michael Howes, Sally Russell, Dianne Hytten, Jillian Matchan and Lesley van Essen to the research on which this paper is based.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen F. Hytten

Karen F. Hytten is a Lecturer in Environmental Management in the School of Agriculture and Environment at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Her research focuses on climate change politics, climate change policy and climate change engagement.