Not since the Federated Actors Guild launched a musical campaign against the AIDS virus in the movie Team America has a group of celebrities caused such a stink.
The decision of actors Cate Blanchett and Michael Caton to front advertisements supporting the Federal Government’s climate change policies has been denounced as a shocking act of impertinence by a pair of cashed-up lefties who have no right to enter the debate.
The attacks on the pair have been over the top and underscore the increasing shoutiness of modern discourse. On news and opinion websites (including the two I work for, The Punch and news.com.au) we have seen the usual procession of anonymous haters line the pair up over their supposedly unwelcome foray into publc policy arena.
The attacks on Blanchett have been particularly personal and aggressive. The National Party’s Barnaby Joyce directly accused her of risking people’s lives – “you’re really going to hurt people Cate, you really are” – while others honed in on the actor’s extravagant property in Hunter’s Hill, on Sydney’s Lower North Shore, as evidence that she is some kind of fraud. Much was made of the fact that she had installed some 32 solar panels on the roof of the harbourside property, as if it said something about her obscene wealth. A more reasonable analysis is that all it shows is that she is prepared to put her money where her mouth is.
If the more rabid conservatives are going to attack Blanchett for being too flushed with cash to have any standing on this issue, they might also care to explain where they stand on the likes of billionaires such as Clive Palmer underwriting the Minerals Council campaign against the mining tax, or donating millions to the Coalition, or Gina Rinehart spending a sizeable chunk of her inheritance on a stake in the Ten Network. One of the more peculiar features of the debate is hearing extravagantly paid radio personalities, who are not just on vast salaries but are also paid in a share of company profits, saying that Blanchett has so much money she will never be troubled by tax issues anyway. Quite.
These advertisements are 100 per cent privately-funded and in a democracy such as ours people have every right to spend their money as they wish to make their point. That said, there’s a separate issue as to whether the advertisements are tactically smart. It’s more likely that rather than galvanising support for a carbon tax, they will have the opposite effect of alienating mainstream voters who simply want details about how much the carbon tax will cost them, and what type of compensation they will get in return.
The left of politics in Australia seems to be permanently afflicted by what could be described as the Don’s Party syndrome, whereby affluent and educated people think you can win debates by telling people what’s good for them.
Advertising executive Adam Ferrier wrote a good piece on The Australian yesterday fleshing out the point.
“One of the risks of any green campaign is that it appears like lefty, progressive, idealistic and elitist, detached from the struggles of everyday people,” Ferrier wrote. “At worst, Cate is at risk of making the cause elitist. For the millions this (ad campaign) cost, there are so many other ways to change behaviour than having an elitist talking head spruik a carbon tax as easily as spruiking x, y or z.”
The best example of this was the republican campaign, which culminated with a tragi-comic cocktail reception for the failed yes vote on the night of the ballot where Rachel Ward sobbed on husband Bryan Brown’s shoulder as Malcolm Turnbull declared that John Howard had “broken the nation’s heart”. What had really happened was that the republicans had completely stuffed their campaign by leaving much of the talking to celebrities while overlooking their first responsibility – to explain how a republic would work, why we needed one, and how life would change for the better under the new constitutional model.
The same mistakes are being made now by progressive people who believe in climate change. And the same mistakes are being made, spectacularly, by the Gillard Government. The PM looks like she is dancing to the tune of the Greens purely because of the disastrous quirk of democracy at last year’s election, where no-one actually won, and she decided to break her own promise of not introducing a carbon tax in order to form government. We are now moving headlong towards putting a price on carbon – ie, introducing a tax – and the Government is trying to win a debate when it is yet to provide people with any detail. It’s a ludicrous manoeuvre, asking people to take you on trust when you have already breached their trust by changed the position you adopted in the election campaign. Until such a time as the Government releases details of how it will actually work, how much it will cost, how much compensation families will receive, they are sitting ducks.
The pro climate change lobby and actors such as Blanchett and Caton can say and do what it likes in an attempt to bolster its cause, and spend as much money as they wish in the process.
As Bob Carr wrote on his Thoughtlines blog yesterday:
“Is it being implied that an Australian who enjoys success in an international market and the rewards that come with it forgoes the right to participate in public debate? That is the implication here. By the same standards a wealthy Australian or a chair or CEO of a big company would have to forgo the right to say anything about corporate or personal taxation. The idea is nuts.”
There is a separate issue though as to whether it will actually bolster the cause. In the absence of policy detail, and with the voters still smarting from being misled by the PM, you would have to say they’ve probably done their dough.
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