Hope for a competitive and climate-friendly Australia

Benjamin Parr

“Australia, along with much of the rest of the world, faces the challenging task of balancing the need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while at the same time nurturing a vibrant and sensibly competitive society and economy — this to and fro debate continues to dominate Australian federal politics even in 2018. In this chapter, I take the reader on a journey through the messy politics and key policies on these topics and argue that the reluctance of successive Australian federal governments to respond adequately to the climate challenge is due to the existence of a background ‘invisible’ discourse about protecting the international competitiveness of Australia’s fossil fuel industry …”