Missing in action? : the ‘non’-climate change debate of the 2013 Australian federal election

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    Abstract

    While Liberal Party leader – and now PM – Tony Abbott declared the 2013 Australian federal election to be a ‘referendum on the carbon tax’, debate on climate change by both major parties, as a problem and as a policy, appeared to be largely absent. This paper examines the discursive characteristics of this debate by examining the election launch speeches of both party leaders and by using the Leximancer text analytics software to map both the frequency and conceptual relationships within mainstream media coverage. The strength of this software is that it allows a researcher to both map the quantitative nature of the linguistic characteristics of a corpus of texts, and to use this conceptual mapping to examine the results qualitatively. The paper concludes that quantitatively, in comparison with the previous two elections, climate change was a second order issue. Further, a qualitative analysis of the debate that did occur, concluded that it was largely framed in relation to the politically contentious ‘carbon tax’. Building on these results, it then discusses whether the apparent waning of political will by both major parties to substantially engage Australian voters on the need to take carbon abatement seriously, is a genuine reflection of voter apathy, a reaction to an over reliance upon opinion polls or symptomatic of a broader political and media disconnect.
    Original languageEnglish
    Number of pages21
    JournalGlobal Media Journal: Australian Edition
    Volume8
    Issue number2
    Publication statusPublished - 2014

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