We didn't come up Shorten, but we learned a lot. What's next?

Climate Action got a bite taken out of it by team Scomo on 18th May, 2019, but an independent shark took away an old lifeguard called Tony, Clive's millions couldn't buy our love & we got a free lesson in managing the message 

Anyone looking for a widespread political climate change mandate in the 2019 Federal Election, probably isn't exactly breaking out the celebration mung beans right now. But things might just be a whole heap better than they appear at first glance. There is actually a lot to celebrate from this election and anyway, mung beans grow fast.

In a world where we need to understand that the rules are changing, it's important to learn what should be relegated to the past. 

For the moment, it seems that Bill Shorten is relegating himself to the past, or at least the cheap seats. It's hard to believe he won't be back when the time is right(er), but for now he's been washed away by the Scomo tsunami. But there were lessons for us all this election.

Political leaders matter, but

Elections are won by the most cunning, at a single vote outing, after millions of dollars and man hours are invested in convincing us to vote for someone we generally don't even like. The good news is that while political leadership is relevant, it's no longer the only game in town.

The most important truth for climate action supporters to take from this election, is that you actually don't have to be in charge to get change. Politicians will come and go, but climate change is forever.  

Bye bye Tony, hello Zali

The pin up person on election night for the new forever fight was the Independent candidate for Waringah - climate advocate, Zali Steggall. Steggall gathered powerful local support, ousted Tony Abbott and finally getting the onion chomping, anti equality, climate change denier out of our lives. In declaring victory, she thanked her supporters for 'voting for the future', and with those four words, relegated Abbott to history.

Apart from doing us all a visual and auditory favour, Steggall is set to change the rules of political engagement. Stand by. She who laughs last, laughs loudest. Independently.

No cigar for Clive

Clive didn't get to burn our house down by taking control of the balance of power. We learned that even if you have $80 million to spend on short, sharp, unconnected generalised threats about society, politicians and taxes, people would prefer that you simply paid your workers the money you owe them and quietly went away.

We got out foxed by Adani - and sadly, Bob Brown

Adani became an argument about jobs and economics and sidelined the real issue - climate. Adani is an Indian owned mine that will create 1200 short term jobs and eventually need about 100 people to maintain it. Says it all. 

But Bill wouldn't call it. Bill wouldn't take a stand either way on Adani and that made the lefties mad and the right wing sure he fully intended to stop the mine the minute he got into power. 

And then there was the Bob Brown show. Full of good intent and with an army of supporters, the Bob Brown convoy literally rolled into town ahead of the election and was met with a frostier reception than he bargained for. It turns out the Queenslanders still don't like being told what to do by southerns - even as they are pretty open to very pointed suggestions. 

Social media really ran election influence

The Liberals simply put a lot more emphasis and brand strategy into online media and it paid off. Professor Bela Stantic from Griffith University's Big Data and Smart Analytics lab - the same person who predicted Trump's win and Brexit in 2016 based on the analysis of social media, predicted Scomo's win. He sifted more than 2 million social media comments across half a million accounts and using 50 key terms. It was clear to him, from all these stats, that Labor had no basis to expect to win.  

Our free education

The Federal Election was a free education on how easy it is to emphasise or marginalise, even powerful voices, and these points are just a few. 

• Scott Morrison proved to be a way wilier fox than we thought. He changed the rules, second guessed Bill Shorten and won by literally marginalising his own cabinet voices, minimising any declaration of real policy and playing daggy dad personality politics.
  
  No one knows what his policies are. He managed his image brilliantly - put on a daggy hat and went around saying "How good is.... pretty much anything". Only a few of his cabinet spoke to media. The spectacular example was his missing Environment Minister? What's her name? (Maybe that should have alerted us to something...)
• The incredible volume of activity, including older style mainstream media supporting climate action from Get Up, the Unions, the Greens was way louder than Advance Australia - and who else supported the LNP? And yet here we are.

Collaboration is the new call to arms for Climate Action

We have to step up shared interest collaboration. The best we will ever get from government will be unhappy compromise.

Climate action groups, influencers, advocates, activists & educators are still way too disparate. While the focus of different groups is important, the collective wisdom is something that we simply aren't good at yet. There are so many influential and powerful groups who understand precisely what the climate risks are, who care for our children and for our future.

Collectively, these combined groups are far more representative of the will of all people and far more powerful. Collectively we are well funded and collectively we have way more opportunity to effect change than any single government, through already existing grass roots support, commercial know how and social media support. We simply have to work smarter together and combine that opportunity. 

We need to look past government - friendly or otherwise - and look to those who care, to collaborate and use the power we have, to make more of the change we can. It really doesn't matter who is in political power.  

​Image: Unsplash | Lubo Minar / Scomo - Reuters

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