Exploring climate change discourses across five Australian federal elections

ABSTRACT It is clear that transitioning towards environmental sustainability requires a strong and sustained effort to address climate change. However, despite high levels of public concern about climate change, it has remained a highly politicised and hotly contested issue in Australia, and Australia’s climate change policy remains inadequate and ineffective. Climate change first emerged as a key election issue in Australia’s 2007 federal election and remained a highly contentious issue in the 2010 election. Although climate change was much less prominent during the 2013 and 2016 election campaigns, it re-emerged as a major election issue in 2019. This paper uses critical discourse analysis to identify and trace climate change discourses in the media through these five federal election campaigns. It explores the main arguments, actors, and discursive strategies associated with two key discourses, how climate change was constructed during each campaign, and the implications of these constructions for the development of Australia’s climate change policy. It is argued that while the discourse of climate change activism has put climate change firmly on the national agenda, the discourse of climate change denialism has contributed to stymieing the development of effective climate change policy in Australia.