The New York Times' Thomas Friedman Drops in on Australia and Has a Quick Chat With the Prime Minister and Others. (May 4, 2007)

    Earlier this week, Thomas Friedman, one of The New York Times' stable of top op-ed columnists paid Australia a flying visit, and he devotes his May 4 column to our "Big Dry".

It's always of interest to see ourselves in the eyes of others especially when they are as bright and observant as Mr Friedman.

And you may remember it was just a few months ago that his fellow columnist, Maureen Dowd referred to our Prime Minister of being "two sheep short of a paddock".

Mr Friedman doesn't relate if that was mentioned during their chat.

...“the big dry,” a six-year record drought, has parched the Aussie breadbasket so severely that on April 19, Prime Minister John Howard actually asked the whole country to pray for rain. “I told people you have to pray for rain,” Mr. Howard remarked to me, adding, “I said it without a hint of irony.”

 

And... [i]t actually started to rain! But not enough, which is one reason Australia is about to have its first election in which climate change will be a top issue.

 

[Mr Howard] knows that he must offer programs to reduce global-warming greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, but wants to do it without economic pain or imposed targets, like Kyoto’s. He is proposing emissions trading and nuclear power.

 

The whole issue has come from the bottom up, and it has come on so quickly that neither party [Labor or the Coalition] can be sure it has its finger on the public’s pulse.

Michael Roux, chairman of RI Capital, a Melbourne investment firm told Mr Friedman, "What was considered left a year ago is now center, and in six months it will be conservative — that is how quickly the debate about climate change is moving here. It is being led by young people around the dinner table with their parents, and the C.E.O.’s and politicians are all playing catch-up."

From the political viewpoint Mr Friedman puts it this way, "While [John Howard] tends to focus on the economic costs of acting too aggressively on climate change, his challenger, Mr. Rudd, has been focusing on the costs of not acting. Today, Mr. Rudd said, Australian businesses are demanding that the politicians 'get a regulatory environment settled' on carbon emissions trading so companies know what framework they will have to operate in — because they know change is coming.'

    "And while coal-mining unions oppose global warming restrictions, service unions, which serve coastal tourist hotels, need to embrace them. You can see all of this and more in Australia today. Politics gets interesting when it stops raining."