Dangers for the Opposition in backing carbon-pricing protests: Burgess

The people are revolting. Or at least they will be on March 23, when a number of simultaneous public rallies have been organised to ‘stop the carbon tax’.

I received notification of the Canberra event in an overnight email from Senator Eric Abetz, who is urging Tasmanians to join the main rally at Parliament House, and details of this and other events are starting to show up on Facebook and Twitter.

One Facebook contributor writes: “This is a great cause! The government is trying to impose more taxes on us when they should be pushing for clean/renewable energies.”

An organiser representing the Consumers and Taxpayers Association (CATA) writes on another web site: ” …the meeting with Chris Smith from 2GB has provided an official date, time and place. Chris will be doing a live broadcast from outside Parliament House Canberra on Wednesday 23.3.11 at 12 noon. This will be the nation’s main event rally on that date, he will be announcing that on his program tomorrow [March 4]… CATA will also be inviting Alan Jones to do his program live in Canberra on that date, that is to be confirmed.”

The rally is also promoted on the Menzies House website, which declares: “One of the consequences of the Greens-Oakeshott-Labor Carbon Tax policy is the reinvigoration of grassroots centre-right activism.”

With high-profile figures like Smith and, potentially, Jones on board, the rallies do indeed look set to be an outpouring of centre-right and right-wing anger. And they will be a clear demonstration of the depth of public feeling on the Gillard Government’s carbon-pricing plan – at this stage, to tax carbon for three to five years, before moving to a market-based carbon trading system.

There is a danger for the right in this strategy, however. While there is no doubt great anger over the carbon tax, the ability of the right or centre-right to mobilise public rallies may not match the organising skills of the left.

In 2003, for instance, somewhere in the vicinity of 800,000 Australians, including large union contingents, took to the streets of Australia’s capitals and regional centres to protest the Howard Government’s decision to join the war in Iraq.

And whatever the organising skills of the right, the unions’ organising machinery is mostly unavailable to them on this issue.

Nonetheless, the Canberra protest will make for graphic news footage, intensifying pressure on Labor and the cross-bench members of the Multi Party Climate Change Committee as they move towards fixing the carbon price and decide just who will receive compensation – and how much.

The campaign against the Gillard Government is building to a crescendo. Question time in the House of Representatives has been disrupted for five sitting days in a row now, with Tony Abbott stepping up to the dispatch box at approximately the same time each day to move a suspension of standing orders to allow a full debate on the carbon tax.

The government uses its numbers to vote down the motion each day, but around 30 minutes of the 90 minutes allotted for question time is being lost – in addition to the time being taken up by house Speaker Harry Jenkins screaming “Order! Order!” over loud heckling from both sides.

Yesterday Jenkins jumped from his chair at one point and glowered at the warring MPs, warning both sides that they would receive short shrift from him, “If you do not think that I can deal with things by myself and if you continue to interject”.

At the end of question time, Leader of the House Anthony Albanese rose to ask Jenkins “what precedents are there… to ensure that question time can occur. Indeed, are there any occurrences whereby the ability to move a suspension of standing orders has itself been suspended by the government of the day in order to ensure that government business and the schedule can occur?”

The Speakers’ office will scour the Parliamentary record to see if the Government has the right, at least based on precedent, to stop the daily ‘suspension of standing orders’ tactic being used. My guess is that’s unlikely.

On March 23, therefore, there will be war within Parliament and a people’s revolt outside.

Based on 2004 voting data, and using the mid-point of estimates for the 2003 anti-Iraq rallies around Australia (which ranged from 600,000 to 1 million), approximately one in 15 voters (6.5%) took to the streets to oppose Australian involvement in Iraq. John Howard stared them down, and the rest is history.

The left/right dynamic of that episode is reversed this time – whereas anti-war demonstration were weighted towards left-leaning voters, the anti-carbon-tax rallies will be more right leaning. Most unions will be absent (perhaps all) and Labor voters, though they might be getting a carbon tax they did not vote for, are still being promised an ETS which they did vote for, twice.

What is different this time is the ferocity of the Parliamentary debate that accompanies the marches. In 2003, while Opposition Leader Simon Crean led the argument that soldiers deploying to Iraq “shouldn’t be going” – the street protests far outweighed the Parliamentary protests in sheer volume and passion.

The question that will be answered on March 23 is whether this time the ‘people’s revolt’ will match the withering attacks being waged by the Coalition in Parliament.

This article first appeared on Business Spectator.