How should we interpret narratives of political strategy for climate policy? A response to Pearse and Jackson

ABSTRACT

In my article in this journal entitled ‘Narratives and counter-narratives of political strategy: revisiting Australia's carbon pollution reduction scheme’, I offered an alternative interpretation of the failure of the Rudd government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, one in which the government's strategy of pursuing bipartisan agreement was not a miscalculation, but rather a reasonable course of action based on institutional norms and precedent. Here, I respond to two replies to that original article. I attempt to set my argument in the context of the current (2022) political environment, in which Labor has returned to government with a narrow majority, flanked by an increasingly popular Green Party.

拙文《政治策略的叙事与反叙事：反思澳大利亚碳减排计划》，对陆克文政府的碳减排计划的失败提出了另一种解释。政府寻求两党一致的策略并非失算，而是基于制度规范及成例的合理行动。拙文发表后得到两种意见，本文是对这两种意见的回应。笔者试图将自己的观点放入当前（2022年）的语境，即工党以微弱多数重新执政、日益受欢迎的绿党为其辅翼的新形势。

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
• climate change
• Australian Labor Party
• Australian Senate
• political strategy

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Joshua Newman

Joshua Newman is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His research examines the politics of public-sector decision making, including policy analysis, evidence-based policy making, and government industry interaction.