Playing Climate Change As Political Game

One of the most important objectives of a majority of political parties is acquiring support and winning elections.In many cases,the policies are reduced to a tool that serves the political interests of big players.Thus there have been frequent inconsistencies by one single party on a certain issue,especially over some highly disputed ones.Climate change,as a "wicked issue",remained highly controversial from its very birth.It was complicated not only because there have been great controversy among the climate scientists,party leaders and the general public over the causal relationship between human activities and global warming,but also because the different approaches to tackling it by those who believed that we have caused global warming and should take actions.Moreover,the public's attention and concern are so easy to be distracted and climate change also went through from the focus of attention to oblivion.As one of the flagship policies pushed by Australia Labor Party(hereafter ALP)to address the increasingly serious global warming,the carbon pricing naturally had also experienced significant ups and downs from the year 2007 to 2011,during which there had been changes of governing party as well as changes of its leader.Nevertheless,this paper will focus on the time period between the year of 2007 and 2011,during which Australia witnessed the rise and fall of Kevin Rudd and the emergence of Julia Gillard as a big player in carbon pricing.Both Rudd and Gillard had demonstrated inconsistency in their attitudes and efforts towards carbon pricing:Rudd played the card of carbon pricing and won the election,but he encountered two successive blocks in Senate and shelved the whole plan;Gillard,after stepping into office,refused to push carbon pricing but she finally resorted to it facing the hung parliament.Therefore,there will be four chapters respectively covering four periods including ALP in field in the 2007 election,ALP under Rudd between 2007 and 2010,ALP under Gillard.This paper intends to explain the rise and fall of carbon pricing und d in.the 2010 election and ALP under Gillard after the 2010 election.er Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard from the perspective of party politics,with the political marketing as the theoretical framework.This paper argues that ALP constantly changed its orientation on the basis of the relative power of diverse groups held in different time periods.There,has been quite a few impressive and through study of carbon pricing,but few of them had approached this case through the lens of party politics.In light of political marketing theory,the trajectory of carbon pricing legislation efforts by ALP is a sound case of exploring Rudd and Gillard's exploitation of carbon pricing as a tool to mobilize support for their own political interests.As this paper mainly focuses on inter-party politics and covers little inner-party politics.As a matter of fact,inner-party politics can also be research perspective for future Australia politics studies and policy studies.First of all,Australia Labor Party is a highly disciplined organization,with its supreme power held by caucus composed by the party members in the two houses.The best illustration of this power is that Rudd's forced drooping of the party leader before the 2010 election.Besides,Australia Labor Party has strong factions which are also called "parties within the party".These factions represent different political and economic interests.The variety in their own interest has necessarily played a crucial role in the party leader change as well as policy change of Australia Labor Party.