Doctoral Thesis
The Neoliberalism-Climate-Change-Energy Nexus: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Federal Climate Change and Energy Policy in Australia, 1988- 2015, and the Underlying Logics, Guiding Principles, and Rationalities of Discourse
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Murdoch University
2024
Abstract
This thesis charts Australia’s move from global warming leader to climate laggard underpinned by economic and industry protectionism. This thesis draws on Foucault’s understanding of neoliberalism as governmentality with Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore how neoliberalism has shaped Australia’s climate change debate. This project addresses critical questions about the relationship between neoliberalism, climate change, and energy. It provides an understanding of the interests, influences, and discourses that have informed policy—what I term the neoliberalism-climate-change-energy nexus.
I analyse policies from six government eras: Hawke; Keating; Howard; Rudd; Gillard; and Abbott and supplement this with interviews of ten individuals involved in climate and energy policymaking. The analysis reveals that economic rationalism—an impure form of neoliberalism unique to Australia—has been employed as a political ‘point of truth’ since the Hawke Government. While neoliberal rhetoric is evident across several governments, neoliberal policy practices were repealed or did not eventuate. This highlights the contradictory nature and hypocrisy of neoliberalism and economic rationalism. Most notably, this has taken the form of a consistent pattern of market-based policy rejection in Australia until it has been politically expedient to adopt such policies. However, the capacity of successive governments to pick ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ has remained a consistent characteristic of economic rationalism in Australia and has driven this behaviour.
Neoliberalism has shaped Australia’s climate debate in the following ways: 1) it provided the basis for a consistent economic argument as a counterpoint to Hawke’s early moral position; 2) it has been espoused as the rhetoric of efficiency and competition, manifested early in the economic sphere as privatisation, deregulation, and microeconomic structural reforms and latterly, by an emphasis on marked-based mechanisms; 3) its ethos has remained largely rhetorical and its policy practices have remained limited given the significant and prolonged influence of industry, corporate, and pseudo-corporate elites and interests; and 4) it served to politically ‘neutralise’ climate change and energy policy by diverting attention away from continued industry protectionism and policy inaction to reduce Australia’s emissions.
Details
- Title
- The Neoliberalism-Climate-Change-Energy Nexus: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Federal Climate Change and Energy Policy in Australia, 1988- 2015, and the Underlying Logics, Guiding Principles, and Rationalities of Discourse
- Authors/Creators
- Melanie-Jane Elizabeth Sinclair-Heddle
- Contributors
- A.Prof Martin Brueckner (Supervisor) - Murdoch University, Indo-Pacific Research CentreYvonne Haigh (Supervisor) - Murdoch University, Centre for Water, Energy and Waste
- Awarding Institution
- Murdoch University; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Identifiers
- 991005687462307891
- Murdoch Affiliation
- College of Law, Arts and Social Sciences
- Resource Type
- Doctoral Thesis
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