Consultant Dan
12 November 2010
Australia's climate and carbon price consultations begin today
Today I head to Canberra to be part of the first community consultation for the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee that was established by Prime Minister Julia Gillard as part of her agreement with the Australian Greens after the last election. It will be hosted by Greens Senator Christine Milne.
My intention is to support a batch of new, renewable energy campaigns, funded by industry and deployed by the climate movement.
The Committee itself met on Wednesday this week and has made some documents available. This is a calculated step, designed to start driving the public debate.
If the Committee is going to achieve its stated outcome, of getting Australia going down the renewable energy path, it has to tread very carefully. Given this, why are these community consultations happening so soon?
The Greens did not want the Committee to open up partisan conversations this early in the process, but the Labor Government insisted and has scheduled two for later this month (one with industry and one with NGOs). This has forced the Greens to have their own, hence today’s meeting.
You can read some reporting on this little controversy: Lenore Taylor in the Sydney Morning Herald, Tom Arup in the Age and of course, the Australian.
Apparently more than 70 people from industry, NGOs and others will be attending. I am looking forward to it. The meeting is only 2 hours long, but I am staying in Canberra overnight as I expect the post-meeting caucusing to be the most productive part of the afternoon (evening and night).
List of Government Advisors
In other news, the Business Spectator has begun a series of articles revealing the ‘faceless’ advisers and inner workings of the Labor Government. Today’s installment lists the advisers who work in each Ministerial office.
The idea is good but the execution is bad, ie the data is not presented as a database or down-loadable file. Perhaps someone from the Gov 2.0 community can do something that presents the data more usefully?
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