Thesis
An analysis of political discourse in the Morrison Government’s gas-fired recovery
Southern Cross University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25918/thesis.444
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Abstract
Within weeks of the catastrophic 2019-2020 Black Summer Bushfire season, the former Morrison Government announced a gas-fired recovery response to the economic downturn caused by the global pandemic, COVID-19. What led to the emergence of this plan? The aim of this research was to apply an extension of Foucault’s archaeological theory and methodology, drawn from his text The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), to expose the complexities of political discourse related to the gas-fired recovery plan. I analysed fifteen transcripts from the former Prime Minister (PM), Scott Morrison on the gas-fired recovery using an adapted methodology and four-step analytic archaeological method, developed for this research, which operationalised the dynamic interrelations between discursive formations, discursive practices and knowledge in relation to the gas-fired recovery.
I found that the gas-fired recovery plan represented a bold, comprehensive economic intervention into energy markets by a Coalition Government to create a need for fossil fuels when domestic demand had been in decline and secure the future of the industry against an increasingly successful renewable energy sector. Aided by an allegiance with the fossil fuel industry, enacted in part within the confidentiality of the specially formed National COVID-19 Commission Advisory Board and executed under the National Cabinet, the former PM discursively formed renewable energy to be unreliable and dispatchable generation to be fossil-fuel dependent, effectively undermining the integration of renewable energy sources into the grid. By embedding gas into the National Energy Market and exploiting national clean energy funds and grants to fund gas projects under the pretence of ‘clean energy’ through discursive practices, the former PM planned to safeguard fossil fuels for the next thirty years and deliver a ‘lower emissions strategy’ for Australia that relied entirely on non-renewables. Had the Morrison Government been successful in the 2022 federal election, climate change action in Australia would have continued to be oppressed, cementing the country’s status as a pariah in amongst a global movement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions targets.
This research contributes to the discourse analysis and political science literature by introducing a distinct way to observe political decisions as a body of knowledge and demonstrates how discourse can function as a practice and influence economic processes, institutions, and social relations. Discursive formations and practices are always being quietly constructed as part of, or in response to, political decisions, and those constructed by the former PM can lie partially dormant and be reactivated.
Details
- Title
- An analysis of political discourse in the Morrison Government’s gas-fired recovery
- Creators
- Amanda Williams
- Contributors
- Erika Kerruish (Supervisor) - Southern Cross UniversityHanabeth Luke (Supervisor) - Southern Cross University
- Awarding Institution
- Southern Cross University; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Theses
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
- Publisher
- Southern Cross University
- Number of pages
- 216
- Identifiers
- 991013260811002368
- Copyright
- © Amanda Williams 2024
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Resource Type
- Thesis