The 24th of November 2007 feels like a long time ago.  It was the election that saw the Coalition lose government, John Howard lose his seat and a relative unknown elected as our new PM. There was a huge sense of hope and optimism that night. Indigenous Australians were finally going to get an apology, refugee policy would be overhauled and at long last Australia would sign the Kyoto protocol.

As the lead senate candidate in 2007, the night was bittersweet. The final senate spot in Victoria was on a knife edge but I was behind in the count.  We wouldn’t know the result for weeks but it would be a hard ask from here.  From Kevin Rudd’s election night victory speech it was clear that a bureaucrat was now in charge when the times called for something more.  But for most people on the progressive side of politics none of that really mattered. To them it felt like the nation had just changed course.

For a time I thought they might be right. I was lucky enough to be in Canberra at the time of the apology and for a brief moment the country was united. Kyoto too was important, even if it was largely symbolic and the rest of the world was now debating what should come next. 

Two years on and that feeling of hope and optimism has almost completely evaporated.

Labor proposes to combat climate change by setting weak targets, rewarding polluters and preventing individuals from taking meaningful action. It is a scheme that locks in failure. When it comes to asylum seekers, rather than abolishing the pacific solution it’s just changed the address. As for the apology, he may need to give another one once the NT intervention is over.

It’s now clear that however important those early decisions were, they were easy. The nation wanted action and the PM delivered without fear of political risk. There are parallels with John Howard who early in his first term responded decisively to the Port Arthur Massacre with tougher gun laws. Now faced with the greatest moral issue of our time (the PM’s words not mine), the government has gone to water. A victory for vested interests over science.

Of course this has only been made possible because we have an opposition dominated by Neanderthals. According to the Liberal's senate leader Nick Minchin climate change is just a front for former communists whose real agenda is to de-industrialise the west and send us all back to live in caves. Never mind the science. For Senator Minchin the enlightenment never happened.

It is true that underpinning the climate change debate lies a profound question about the way we live our lives. We are told from the moment we take our first breath that the pathway to personal fulfilment and collective progress is through material consumption. But are current levels of consumption and growth consistent with a genuinely sustainable economy?  They are big questions that have nothing to do with caves.