The Australian Climate Commission said last May we must act now or “the global climate may be so irreversibly altered we will struggle to maintain our present way of life.”

In the lead up to passing a comprehensive climate bill last year, the Australia’s political ‘debate’ over climate change became downright vicious. Some deniers actually threatened climate scientists and politicians who supported taking action to price greenhouse gas emissions.

In response to the ongoing war being waged by denial groups, Australia’s new Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, used his opening speech to the Senate to focus on the importance of addressing climate change. As former Premier of New South Wales, Carr has been outspoken on climate issues throughout his political career. With his new office in the Senate, he continues to sound the drumbeat:

“The land we call our own … is being transformed, as is the rest of the planet. Since the late 80′s I’ve been an unapologetic believer in the grim reality that human activity is changing the earth’s climate,” he said this week. Australia’s ABC News reported on the speech:

“But what if this shock, this chemical experiment with the Earth’s atmosphere is only the first of a series of shocks we might sustain?” he said.

“What about the change in the chemical composition of the oceans as they absorb more and more of the carbon our civilisations have been emitting?”

Senator Carr also used his speech to outline his vision for the way Australia can help promote tolerance between cultures and religions.

“Running foreign policy is about protecting our national interest … but it is also about being an exemplary global citizen when it comes to protecting human rights and protecting the world’s oceans,” he said.

In 2008, Carr gave a speech at the University of New South Wales, in which he called climate change deniers “the present danger.”

Watch it:

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The top six newspapers most negative about the Australian government’s carbon policy are all owned by Rupert Murdoch.

I was struck by a recent analysis from Daily Climate showing a substantial drop in the number of stories covering climate change in 2011. In spite of the dramatic increase in extreme weather events and the white-knuckled political tension around government investments in energy, there was still a 20% drop in coverage of climate-related issues last year.

One of the exceptions to that drop, however, was Australia. News outlets like the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and the Sydney Morning Herald saw a 60% increase and a 21% increase respectively. Australia was a particularly important country to watch in 2011 because of the dramatic political battle that unfolded over a comprehensive climate bill.

But experience in that country illustrates a hole in analysis that simply tracks the quantity of articles — it ignores the quality of those stories.

A recent report from the Australian Center for Independent Journalism attempts to fill in that hole. The researchers looked at climate policy stories in 10 major newspapers from February of 2011 through July of 2011 and tracked how positive or negative those stories were, who was quoted, and what kid of language was used. The results were overwhelmingly negative. Here are some highlights:

• Overall, negative coverage of the Gillard government’s carbon policy across ten newspapers outweighed positive coverage across ten Australian newspapers by 73% to 27%. (Note: After neutral items were discounted).
• After neutral items were discounted, negative coverage (82%) across News Ltd newspapers far outweighed positive (18%) articles. This indicates a very strong stance against the carbon policy adopted by the company that controls most Australian metropolitan newspapers, and the only general national daily. [Note: This is an organization owned by Rupert Murdoch.]
  
• Headlines were less balanced than the actual content of articles. Neutral articles were more likely to be headlined negative (41%) than positive (19%).

In an interview with Climate Progress at the Durban climate talks, Christine Milne, the Deputy Leader of Australia’s Green Party, lamented the domination of negative stories in Murdoch publications:

“The Murdoch press is a very big problem in Australia. It owns 70% of the print media and has run a massive campaign against the climate science and against the climate pricing policy that we’ve delivered in Australia. And it will continue to do so in the hope that the opposition is elected and the whole thing is repealed. This is a critical time in Australian politics and for the climate.”

Remarkably, even though the Green Party provided the political catalyst for getting a climate bill considered in the first place, members of the party only received 5% of quotes in stories on the issue.

When journalists reached out to the business community, which sector got the most quotes? By far, sources directly or indirectly representing the fossil fuel industry, “often without any critique or second source”:

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The Winning Aussie Strategy: Fighting Back Against Deniers and Talking About Climate Change

If President Obama needs a role model for his stance (or lack thereof) on climate change, he should look no further than the Deputy Leader of Australia’s Green Party, Christine Milne.

In a wide-ranging interview with Climate Progress at the COP 17 climate talks in Durban today, Senator Milne outlined her strategy for helping pass a comprehensive climate bill in Australia this year — even when faced with “a massive campaign against the climate science” that rivals the War on Science being waged in America (see Aussie Scientist: “The Murdoch Media Empire Has Cost Humanity Perhaps One or Two Decades in Battle Against Climate Change.”)

One of the main reasons the Australian Parliament was able to pass a price on carbon, said Milne, is because proponents actually led by talking about climate change. And they didn’t back down or shift their talking points when the attacks picked up.

“We fought back. It was a totally committed strategy,” Milne told Climate Progress. “This is about saving the planet’s climate. That is what we are here for. This is why you need real leadership and not just a response to the populist views echoed from the vested, self interests.”

In other words, the exact opposite strategy of the Obama Administration in 2009 and 2010 as it let a climate bill slip down the legislative priority list and allowed the Tea Party to hijack the issue as a completely bogus War on Freedom (see Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?).

Unlike Obama and Congressional allies of the 2009 climate bill, Milne has explicitly called out the organizations working overtime to derail action on climate policy. The same players funding the Denier Industrial Complex in America — the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heartland Institute and the Murdoch Press, among others — exported their tactics to Australia to battle the climate bill, said Milne:

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