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Join Royce Kurmelovs as he discusses his new Vantage Point essay, Means, motive and opportunity: How Australia cooked the books on climate.

A generation of Australians was told that action on climate change would wreck the economy. What Australians weren’t told was that this message came from oil, gas and coal producers, and it was laundered into Australian Government policy via a little-known government agency.

With the forensic attention of true crime narratives, journalist and author Royce Kurmelovs traces the hidden history of how an obscure research bureau came to debase Australian climate policy for decades. Once a training ground for economists and public servants, funding cuts in the early neoliberal era saw it turn to industry money and transform into an engine for climate delay. As Australia grapples with worsening fires and floods, Kurmelovs shows the long-reaching and wide-ranging effects of institutional capture and the importance of integrity in the public service.

Copies of Means, Motive and Opportunity: How Australia cooked the books on climate can be pre-ordered online on The Australia Institute website.

About the author

 Royce Kurmelovs is an Australian freelance journalist and author covering the intersection of class, finance and climate change. He is the author of five books, including the best-selling Death of Holden (2016) and his most recent, the critically acclaimed Slick: Australia’s toxic relationship with Big Oil. His second book, Rogue Nation, used the return of One Nation to Australian politics to discuss the rise of the independents and the fracturing of Australian politics. His work has been published by Drilled, Al Jazeera English, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, Rolling Stone and others.