Given the large role that climate change played in the 2007 election, and February's Newspoll that showed 73% of Australians believe climate change is a problem, it was interesting to see the way it largely had disappeared from the public debates surrounding the 2010 election.
John Hepburn discusses the role that climate change played in the election results, especially the strong showing of the Greens, in an August post to the Rooted environment blog. He makes the point that both the Greens and the independants (with the exception of Katter) are all pro-action of climate change, and he argues that their sucess is in part to do with the mainstream electorates disatisfaction with the major parties stance on climate change. I think this may be partially the case, especially in the lower house Greens result, but its important to remember that this election was also fought largely in the marginals, and on very local issues, so climate change was pushed out of the media, and that the move to a third party may have reflected a more general disatisfaction with the majors.
However it does seem that the sustainability dialogue has been somewhat sidelined in Australia.
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