Every Saturday it's the task of SMH readers to decipher the runes, to work out in the tea leaves of Duffy's column exactly what is meant, and each week the task grows harder.
Duffy was once an anti global warming, anti climate change sceptic of a fierce enough kind, and every so often he still affects the position. But in his latest offering "Forced to join the hollow dance" Duffy provides only ambiguity.
The hollow dance of the title of the piece is the first clue - what does it mean? Since his article is about the failings of climate change strategies in Australia, is it just a neat reference to the ABC sitcom The Hollow Men, about the ways of bureaucrats in Canberra? Duffy certainly makes reference in the text to the hollow men, and concludes that "The way things are unfolding, the war on carbon will be another war of choice. And it's the hollow men who make those choices".
But wait, if you don't actually believe in global warming and climate change, what does this matter. What's wrong with choice, and what's wrong with hollow men making choices? None of it matters, so let them go to it in their own way. Does the title of the piece actually refer to a deeper charade, a more absurd dance, which we all must join - Duffy included - just to keep the deluded citizenry happy, and avoid moral panic? Is this the real meaning of climate change?
Or might it just be a simple matter of hypocrisy on the part of Duffy? Sure the references to the hollow men are easy, glib and facile enough - it's the easiest of jobs, sending up bureaucrats and politicians trying to guess community attitudes and sail with the breeze. Yet at the same time Duffy seems to take a grim satisfaction from these failings, which seem to promise an avoidance of economic catastrophe - since whatever is going to be done will have only a marginal impact.
What does all this actually mean? What does Duffy actually now believe about climate change?Is it truly a problem? Must we take steps? Provide a plan of action? (A very bold choice Minister, a plan of action which proposes that things actually happen). A close reading of the holey writ is necessary, but doesn't bring enlightenment, except of the 'nothing is but what is not' kind.
At first it seems Duffy believes climate change is now a real problem - if so, this is news to me and news to the world, so bring it on. "... the Federal Government's response to climate change is spooky ... a 'bold' response that will produce much activity but do little to address the problem or offend anyone too much."
So definitively it's a problem. But it seems that the proposed measures "are too modest, the exclusions and compensations too generous". It would seem by definition that what Duffy seeks are immodest solutions, with no exclusions and miserly compensation. Surely not. And at least there's an upside - for a few weeks before, Duffy had written a piece explaining just why the prescriptions advocated by climate change guru Ross Garnaut would be harmful to the economy. Well if you're a Duffy, you can embrace contradictions, as part of the sport of being a columnist.
But of course there's a sting in the tail of the logic. The remedies being proposed are ill considered and will be illogical and ineffective. The real problem is population growth and by extension immigration, running at 180,000 a year, as proposed by demographer Bob Birrell (never mind Peter Costello's injunction to have one baby for yourself, one for the Treasurer, one for the country and one for the little old lady who lives down the road). No, by a sleight of hand, suddenly having all these Asians and Islamics flooding into the country is the cause of increased carbon emissions and the failure of global warming policies. Yep, it's all just a straw dog so Duffy can have a rant about the peril flooding into the country. I guess it's more sophisticated than the way The Bulletin approached the job in the early years of the last century, but it suddenly makes Duffy sound like an old Tammany Hall politician of the Labor kind dedicated to keeping Australia white for the whites. Of course there's no mention of race or ethnicity, but we know where the immigrants come from, don't we Kellyville?
Well we can look forward to Duffy's crusade to keep Australian families to one child - since any population growth must be a problem, by his logic, right? - and to arguing for a zero growth, or even a reducing economy, along with his fierce anti-immigration campaign. If he doesn't, one can assume he's displaying the same cynicism as the government he berates - with easy point scoring and arguments which fail in terms of logic, consistency and effectiveness.
Duffy does a little detour along the way, to have a go at the way Australia constructed its armed assistance in Iraq to ensure that as few Australians as possible died while fighting 'shoulder to shoulder' with the United States. This was a policy of the Howard government, which wisely decided it wanted to sound like it loved Bush and was willing to act as his deputy sheriff, but didn't want a body count or coffins coming home. Flip this, and you can see Duffy, armchair general, thinking that a high body count would be evidence of Australia's real standing in the world, its real commitment to suffering and death. Not sure how that would fly in Kellyville, since chocolate soldiers understand that staying alive is a much better proposition than dying in a hail of glory.
But for Duffy it's evidence of hypocrisy in government, and so the war on climate change will be conducted like the war in Iraq - on Australia's terms and in an ineffectual way. We need bodies on the floor and a high corpse count if we're to be convincing, we need the country's economy fucked over and the world at near collapse.
The apocalyptic implications are interesting, in terms of Duffy's psyche, but what does it all mean?
Where does Duffy stand, what does he actually believe? Is climate change a serious issue, worthy of war and major suffering? Or is he too one of the hollow men he berates? Saying things illogical and contradictory simply for the pleasure of saying them? And does he wear his trousers rolled?
The bottom line, it seems, is that Duffy is incapable of writing a column from a deeply held and deeply considered position, but rather will lash out at whatever comes his way. The cynicism he ascribes to government, bureaucrats and politicians, is the least of it; his incoherence is the real worst of it, since government will make no changes if only hollow men are berating their hollow choices.
We are however left with some considerable insight into Duffy, partly because of his unwillingness to actually say what he thinks about climate change and whether it's real. It means he can pose glib solutions (such as reducing immigration) without thinking it through. It's the simple display of anger and posturing that will satisfy him, and by the way, in the hard copy edition, earn him an illustration (wooden puppets dangling on strings) and a prominent top left hand space while poor old Alan Ramsey yammers on about ninety year old Sydney novelist Jon Cleary in a diminished right hand of the columnists' page. Such things used to matter in the newspaper game - the promotional hand of the editor at work as Duffy backs the ramblings of an editorial about the perils of immigration and rental crises.
So to this week's scorecard for a truly excellent column - in the sense that so much irritation must produce a pearl:
Glib illogicality and incoherence: 11
Capacity for irrelevant carping about Iraq: 11
Capacity for facile reference to a television sitcom: 11 (what an amp he's got)
Insights into the world, whether global warming is
real and what sensible things we should be doing about it: 1
Insights into Duffy: 8
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