Page 138 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

10 FIGHTING FOR COAL: PUBLIC RELATIONS … 127

based support, the mining and coal industries would be seen as less sec-
tional. The ATIA then jointly launched a $10 million dollar advertising
campaign opposing the carbon tax. The leaked casting brief for the
advertisements argued that the characters featured must look like ‘people
who represent Australian families, small business owners, Australian
workers and retirees’ (Priest 2011). The advertisements appeared under
the heading “Carbon Tax Pain, No Climate Gain”. They anchored in
personal stories from people like ‘Angela, a hairdressing salon manager’,
who was quoted as saying it was ‘the worst possible time to introduce a
carbon tax’ (Australian Trade and Industry Alliance 2011). The tax itself
was described as “the world’s biggest carbon tax”. Among the claims made
in the advertisements was that the cost of electricity would rise 20%, a claim
later found to be misleading and having no ‘independent verification’ by
the national competition and consumer regulator (Priest and Walsh 2012).
The Clean Energy Future package of laws was passed by parliament at
the end of 2011 and involved introducing a $23 per tonne carbon tax to be
paid for by the top 500 polluting corporations starting in July 2012. The
head of the mining lobby, Mitchell Hooke, said parliament has voted “to
reduce Australia’s standard of living” to reduce global competitiveness and
to cut jobs (Maher 2011). The doom-laden predictions were also under-
mined by the fact that, as the carbon tax was introduced, investment in coal
mining boomed. As one report noted: “the impending carbon price has
done nothing to deter investment in the coal industry with spending on
exploration surging faster than any other mineral commodity” (Ker and
Morton 2012). By this time, however, the conservative Opposition leader
had enthusiastically taken up opposition to the tax. Tony Abbott made the
abolition of the ‘toxic tax’ one of the central issues in his campaign to
defeat the government. This succeeded at the national election in
September 2013 and his government abolished the carbon tax shortly
afterwards.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
Following their victories over the ETS and the carbon tax, the coal industry
has continued to produce sophisticated PR campaigns intended to protect
their operations. In 2015, the industry launched the advertising and PR
campaign called “Little Black Rock”, which promoted the phrase ‘coal is
amazing’. This campaign, developed by the MCA, emphasised the eco-
nomic value of coal exports and claimed that new types of coal burning