Guy Beres

As a Labor supporter, perhaps not entirely surprisingly, I prefer Malcolm Turnbull to Tony Abbott as the leader of the Federal Opposition. This is not just because Turnbull agrees with the Labor Party on climate change, and it’s certainly not because Malcolm Turnbull laid bare the ideological chasm between the liberal and conservative wings of his party - a divided and ineffective opposition is in nobody’s interests. However Turnbull, at least on some issues (e.g. climate change, the republic), offered the electorate a glimmer of hope that concrete bipartisan progress was not impossible, and that the nation is capable of moving beyond the one-eyed partisan bickering that characterises our political system, even if just for a moment or two. Turnbull showed promising signs of understanding that the job of an Opposition is not always to oppose; it is to present an alternative vision for the nation and to back that vision up with policy. Sometimes it is better to be constructive. This is a lesson that Kevin Rudd adopted in Opposition to mighty effect, cherry-picking policy from the government whilst magnifying points of differentiation in other areas. Abbott, in contrast, appears to be set on the “oppose for opposition’s sake” approach. Perhaps he should have a bit of a chat to his mate Peter Debnam on that topic.

Despite all this, I am still a bit shocked at how Malcolm Turnbull has behaved since he was defeated in the leadership ballot last week. Immediately after the ballot, Turnbull asserted the following, as Ben Packham reports in the Herald Sun:

“I am not going to run a commentary on Tony Abbott. Lots of people ran commentaries on me when I was leader but I’m going to be more measured in my backbench remarks,” Mr Turnbull said yesterday.

I guess it all depends on what one considers “more measured” to mean, but a week has been proven once again to be a very long time in politics. Today, less than a week after those remarks, Turnbull posted a strident attack on his leader’s position on climate change on his blog, which quite frankly has to be read to be believed:

While a shadow minister, Tony Abbott was never afraid of speaking bluntly in a manner that was at odds with Coalition policy.

So as I am a humble backbencher I am sure he won’t complain if I tell a few home truths about the farce that the Coalition’s policy, or lack of policy, on climate change has descended into.

First, let’s get this straight. You cannot cut emissions without a cost. To replace dirty coal fired power stations with cleaner gas fired ones, or renewables like wind let alone nuclear power or even coal fired power with carbon capture and storage is all going to cost money.

To get farmers to change the way they manage their land, or plant trees and vegetation all costs money.
Somebody has to pay.
So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, “bullshit.” Moreover he knows it.

If Turnbull continues to undermine Abbott’s position in this way, it will lay waste to the Liberal Party. This is, make no mistake, a running commentary on Tony Abbott’s leadership qualities, and it is a commentary that promises to continue well into the New Year. Abbott is already going to find it frightfully difficult to produce a policy on climate change that reduces emissions without significant costs. Even if a so-called “magic pudding” policy is found, it’s hard to imagine it being a dessert that the divided Coalition caucus is going to be happy to eat (insert “just desserts” pun here).

Seriously, how is the Coalition going to be a competitive force if its spurned leader – a media darling - feels able to fearlessly criticise his party’s policies in this way? It is, simply put, unsustainable.

In considering how events have played out with respect to the leadership of the Liberal Party, a certain image springs to mind for me. For just a moment, picture the federal party-room of the Liberal Party in your mind’s eye as an elaborate, archaic, steampunk-ish contraption giving off heat and billowing steam, emitting all manner of clanking and wheezing sounds. There’s brass, there’s rust, there’s lint, there’s probably even some asbestos in there somewhere. It is an engine that has survived beyond its time and in some dubious way evolved, with strange, artificial improvements bolted higgledy-piggledy around the exterior. If you squint you might just make out what appears suspiciously to be microchips “growing” under a moist alcove, or what could well be a miniature LED screen replaying the tumultuous events of the last week or so over and over again, on silent repeat. Needless to say, despite the odd snatch of modern bling, this is a machine that doesn’t hum like your new home computer; it sounds kinda like a Datsun that hasn’t been serviced since 1982.

This curious machine has taken all the ingredients generated by the ructions of the last week and spat out a response to the leadership question, but it is the wrong response. A 42-41 decision is hardly a decision, particularly given that three likely Hockey/Turnbull supporters could not vote (Kelly O’Dwyer, Paul Fletcher, Fran Bailey). It doesn’t seem to be the response a majority of the party-room actually wanted. It doesn’t seem to be the response the eventual victor expected. It is, practically speaking, an non-sensical result. I am not sure that it really matters if the Liberal Party primarily blames Turnbull’s virtuoso but unconsultative approach to the CPRS for what they have now, or Hockey’s bizarrely principled vacillation on the precipice of his triumph. Oddly enough, both men proved their mettle and that they were worthy leaders since late last week, but still failed. What matters in the wash-up is that the moderate, liberal arm of the Liberal Party was holding all the cards over the conservatives and indeed had done so for most of the period since November 2007, but in a collective brainfart of truly epic proportions, they’ve managed to trade in all their aces for zippo, in one fell swoop.

The climate change issue has proven to be the most sublime wedge issue imaginable for the Rudd Government. Numbers-wise, the Coalition has been riven effectively right down the centre by the government’s CPRS, with the liberals and conservatives who played so nicely together during the Howard years now at each other’s throats. The marriage of convenience that holds the Coalition together has been ruthlessly exposed by the government as the shemozzle it really is. There is no effective consensus position for the Liberal Party on climate change, and no successful leader to call the shots first and sticky-tape the party together later, like there was during the Howard Government years. Dennis Glover does a fine job in today’s The Australian of spelling out why this issue so lethal for the Coalition, and why the Abbott Opposition needs to work out a credible position on climate change, and fast:

The evening news reports of the retreat of Greenland’s ice caps and the advance of solar power projects across the deserts of California will have far greater electoral effect than any theories Nick Minchin or Andrew Bolt try to sell on Lateline or Insiders.

Even cautious politicians such as Kevin Rudd are helping voters join the dots when the temperature gets above 40C.

For the coming months, a few predictions. I am extremely doubtful that we will see a double dissolution election. The Prime Minister, already sensing he has been gifted the upper hand by the Coalition’s bungling and the public’s goodwill, will not risk the ire of the electorate by pushing for an early climate change election. The Nationals and the Minchinites, having surprisingly emerged victorious with their candidate, are now perhaps just a little unsettled. Their “Anybody But Turnbull” approach has yielded the cut-through candidate that most gels with their own political philosophy, but has arguably as much capacity to polarise the electorate as anyone in the party. I sincerely doubt the Liberal Party pollsters are thrilled by the collected wisdom of the party-room. The first “post-spill” polls that emerge will be very interesting.

The moderates within the Liberal Party, having fielded two not unpopular candidates in the spill but still managed to lose, are now too enfeebled to challenge the leadership result or pursue the matter further. They will not speak up in support of the government’s CPRS. They will have to grit their teeth and mumble the Howard-era lines that they don’t actually believe in until the leadership changes again. Some may even decide to walk away from the party at the 2011 election. The rest of them will be hoping, of course, that their junk-tech party-room machine can, with a hiss and a puff of brackish smoke, spit out the right candidate for a modern Liberal Party the next time that the opportunity presents.

Which, in all likelihood, will be after Tony Abbott loses the next election.

In my local Cafenatics branch I could not help but notice this excellent cartoon by Joel Tarling, on a free Avant Card:

From the collection of symbols available on the machine to the name of the machine, I think it’s a very clever piece of work no matter which way you look at it. Personally, I don’t begrudge Peter Garrett his foray into mainstream politics, and despite some recent decisions emerging from his office, I still have faith that he is pushing his point of view at every party room meeting that he can. It goes without saying that if enough people of Garrett’s stripes joined the ALP, the ALP would be a very different beast.

Would he have had a greater impact on Australian politics if he had joined the Greens? Time will tell, and I really don’t think we can say for sure one way or the other just yet.

After months of earnest assertions to the contrary, the Rudd Government has finally caved in to the pressure and postponed its emissions trading scheme. Although the nation’s worsening economic situation no doubt accounted for a substantial component of that pressure, its certainly fair to say that the government’s backdown represents a political victory for the Opposition. For some time now Malcolm Turnbull has been promoting the postponement cause, and despite the fact that his party has engineered yet another schizophrenic change of mind on the issue, refusing to back the government’s revised approach to emissions-trading even though it owes much to its own, it would appear that he has won this little stoush with the Prime Minister.

Personally, I think there are credible cases that can be made for either side of the debate. It goes without saying that while the economy was getting a pummeling, introducing a new, somewhat risky mechanism that threatened to impact profitability and therefore jobs for thousands of Australians was a politically dubious step to take. While I accept the fact that the climate change science demands swift and effective action, most people (myself included) instinctively feel that a delay of a year or two is probably not going to end life on Earth as we know it. In ideal conditions I would love to see action now, but we are living in far from ideal conditions. The government has already spent billions of dollars during the past nine months, stimulating the economy and sending the country into a significant amount of debt in the process. It must have a serious concern that it commands neither the requisite economic or political capital to launch the emissions-trading scheme during this time of crisis.

On the flip side of the coin, one really does have to question the Rudd Government’s commitment to climate change. The science calls for bold steps, not delays or a pragmatic watering down. I frankly don’t understand why the government has only now decided to cave in to the Opposition on this issue. If it really is the case that the economic situation is so dire that implementing the ETS would be unsustainable, the government should have known this six months ago. When economists the world over were saying six months ago that it is likely going to take over a year to get out of this slump, the government should have been paying attention and started sounding the alarm bells then. Instead, it continued to glibly peddle the line that the ETS would be implemented as scheduled, despite the fact that the global financial system was crumbling all around it. Putting the science aside completely for just a second, we would have to conclude that this exemplifies poor judgement.

While we have an Opposition full of climate change sceptics and opportunists and a government with such a wavering commitment to the issue, it’s hard to be very confident that we are eventually going to get an outcome. At this rate, I would certainly not be putting money on a functioning emissions-trading scheme being implemented in Australia any time soon - whether 2010, 2011 or 2012.

Senator Penny Wong has an exceptionally erudite column in today’s Sydney Morning Herald that - I think - does a remarkable job of cutting through the crap on both sides of the climate change issue. With all the hubbub in recent weeks about a mooted further government review of the proposed emissions trading scheme, and the Coalition amusingly promising a stronger scheme but declining to outline what that scheme might amount to, one could be forgiven for being confused about what the hell is happening on climate change.

Wong’s column goes some way towards dispelling this. On one front, she mounts a defense of the government’s scheme and the much-publicised low targets:

By starting to reduce our emissions from next year, Australia will be putting a cost on carbon pollution before some competitor economies. We are doing this because we know it is in our interest to take action now and encourage the rest of the world to do the same. But there is no point in putting a cost on carbon pollution in Australia if it simply results in jobs and emissions being exported to countries that do not yet face a carbon price.

And whatever people think about these so-called “big polluters”, the fact remains that many Australians are employed in these industries.

We are embarking on an economic transformation to create the low pollution jobs of the future, but it is a transformation that will take time.

Wong then goes on to reiterate the case for action:

We can do nothing - and lock in more emissions growth. Current projections show emissions would be 20 per cent higher by 2020 than they were in 2000 if we choose not to act.

Alternatively, we can initiate the scheme to ensure we are 5-15 per cent below where we were in 2000 by 2020. The scheme will result in emissions being up to 30 per cent lower in 2020 than if the scheme is rejected. The scale of this transformation cannot be brushed aside.

Make no mistake - Senator Wong has to sail the government’s emissions trading boat on a profoundly tempestuous sea. She and the Rudd Government are facing formidable attacks from the left; the government’s targets certainly seem on first consideration to be pathetically low. The government is also under considerable pressure from conservatives and indeed polluting industries to water down the plan, or to scupper it altogether given the economic crisis that the world still finds itself in. If the nation emerges from all of this political and economic turmoil with a functioning apparatus to reduce emissions - even if it is a little weak to start with - Wong will have done an amazing job.

The first cut is be the deepest. Yeah sure, there was Rod Stewart, but before him, just remember it was Cat Stevens.

ELSEWHERE: Harry Clarke also thinks Penny Wong is on the right track.

Like just about everyone I suspect, I am shocked and disturbed by the bushfires that have wreaked havoc across Victoria over the last few days. The truly apocalyptic pictures that are coming out the worst hit areas beggar belief, as do the heartwrenching stories of those who have survived the tragedy, but lost so much. I also can not help but be dumbstruck by the incongruity of it all, as Armagnac observes:

Melbourne squirms, wringing its wrists, not knowing what to do or how to help, as all around us firestorms are razing houses, removing historical towns from the map and burning people to death.

Sitting in my apartment in Melbourne as the sun slowly sets on a rather crisp, pleasant day in the city, it is hard to believe that all that chaos and destruction is just thirty minutes away. It does not seem fair that this metropolised little world, geographically so close to the chaos, has been spared the terrors or our regional friends and neighbours. Most of us, no doubt, toddled off to our places of work and study today just as any other day, our thoughts drifting, but our immediate concerns still squarely focused on the humdrum of everyday life. If only we could all somehow share out the misery and pain amongst us and lift the burden from those who have completely unfairly borne the brunt.

All we can do is ponder how we can all do our little bit to help. For this camper, that means looking into donating both money and blood.

You can donate money online here at the Red Cross website. I have had some issues getting my payment through today for some reason, but you may have better luck.

Reportedly urgent demand for blood in Victoria has been met following a wonderfully massive public response in the aftermath of the tragedy, but you might also want to consider donating blood.

Channel Nine are also reportedly hosting a fundraising telethon on Thursday night.

It has been a desperately interesting week for the environmental movement and indeed the fortunes of the Rudd Labor Government. On Monday, the Prime Minister delivered a speech at the National Press Club, releasing his government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) white paper into the spotlight. The result was not pretty. The unconditional 5% by 2020 carbon emission reduction target promised by the government was immediately attacked as being a paltry figure, particularly given what the science currently tells us about climate change. Even the government’s proposed 15% carbon emission reduction target for 2020, which is conditional on a global agreement being reached, did not nearly meet the expectations of many observers and environmental activists.

We now have a situation developing where the broader “green” movement in the non-party-political sense of the term may choose to part company with Federal Labor. After its ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the Rudd Government was given the benefit of the doubt on environmental issues by many supporters of the Greens and members of the Labor Left. There is little doubt that some Liberal voters have been attracted to the new broom the Rudd Government ushered in on environmental issues immediately after its election; voters who may after this week decide to reconsider where their loyalties lie. Let’s also not forget that there are a number of inner-city marginal seats that Labor may struggle to retain at the next poll if the local Green campaigns are fought primarily on the climate change issue, which is looking increasingly likely.

My own view is that the climate change issue is one that is going to need to be addressed, discussed, and revisited almost perpetually over the course of the coming decades, and that in the immediate term, there is nothing particularly wrong about the initial targets that the government has set. Firstly, it is worth re-iterating that the government’s 5% target refers to a reduction in overall national emissions, without considering population growth. The white paper seems to suggest that this 5% target equates to a per capita reduction of some 27-34% below 2000 levels, and 34-41% below 1990 levels. This seems to compare quite reasonably with the commitments offered by both the United Kingdom and the European Union at the present time. While we might observe say that the per capita reduction numbers are somewhat besides the point with respect to the requirements implied by the climate change science, population growth is something that can not simply be ignored in a policy sense. In essence, significant per capita cuts are going to be required in order to meet the national 5% target. It is not the gimme it appears. It is all very well for folks sitting on the sidelines to demand that the Prime Minister puts Australia out on an economic limb by going bold on climate change and hoping that others will follow; they of course will not be held responsible for the repercussions that follow in an economic sense, and of course an electoral sense when an even more enviro-pragmatic Turnbull Opposition is returned to office in 2010 should the economy be wrecked by the Rudd Government’s actions.

Secondly, the economic outlook is extremely uncertain at the present time. It is little wonder that not a great deal has been achieved in the way of commitments to emissions reduction at the Poznan conference, coming as it does in the midst of a quite severe global economic downturn. What sane government is going to make a commitment to cut carbon emissions massively during a time when the world is on the brink of global recession, and the world’s major polluters are not really even close to coming on board and signing up for a new multilateral deal? What average punter who has just lost their job (an there are an increasing number of them by the month) is going to invite any potential for more imposed self-harm through aggressive government action on the climate change issue?

Don’t get me wrong, I do agree that the 5% target is fundamentally speaking, less than that which the climate change science demands of the Rudd Government (and the rest of the world) at the current time. Unfortunately, there is no realistic sense in which Australia announcing a more aggressive target this week at Poznan was going to “save the world”. This is a problem that does not have any quick and easy solutions. No sweeping hand of any single government has the authority or power to resolve the issues that activists seem to want resolved, and resolved now. We are as a nation and a society are going to go two-steps forward and one-step back on this until momentum gathers further, the imperative to act is even greater, and the stars align in such a fashion that a global deal on carbon emissions is not as intractable as it might appear at first blush.

NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal handed down his government’s much awaited mini-budget today, and boy has he been hit with a few brick bats in the media. Ross Gittins has effectively panned the mini-budget, commenting that it will “impress no one and win the Rees Government no friends”. One of the most contentious new measures has been a move to introduce a kind of cutdown congestion charge to two of the inner city’s toll roads. Roozendaal outlines the scheme in his budget speech [PDF]:

The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Tunnel will become the first motorways in Australia to switch to time-of-day tolling.

…

The toll on these roads will be a ‘peak’ toll of $4, a ‘shoulder’ peak toll of $3 and an off peak toll of $2.50.

This is the first change to the Harbour crossing tolls in six years.

Mr Speaker, every cent of the extra revenue raised will go to buying new buses.

Despite the fact that this new measure comes in difficult economic times, I honestly think that on balance, it is a welcome step forward. If New South Wales does need more money to invest in public transport (and I don’t think this is in dispute), why not raise it through a new measure that acts as a disincentive to motorists? Why not ask the people who are causing Sydney’s ugly traffic snarls to pay for it? As Roozendaal says, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tunnel tolls have not changed in six years - if we really are concerned about climate change and decreasing traffic on our roads, then an increase is more than due. It is probably worth adding that the cost of the toll will actually drop by 50c per trip for people who use either tollway in off-peak times.

Predictably, both NRMA President Alan Evans and the NSW Opposition have condemned the congestion tolling concept, but the reasons they give for their opposition seem fairly half-baked. Besides throwing tee-hee slogans like “Nathan ‘Ned Kelly’ Rees”, “daylight robbery” and “highway robbery” out there, Evans’ main argument in opposition to the new measure is that Sydney does not currently have a sturdy enough public transport system for motorists to switch to. This seems to be the line that Barry O’Farrell is pushing as well, with the Opposition Leader suggesting that CityRail can’t cope with any increased utilisation during peak hour. While there is an element of truth to what both Evans and O’Farrell are saying, they are also somewhat missing the point. This new measure is being used to pay for more buses for Sydney. In other words, better public transport. In the current fiscal environment in New South Wales, assuming that we do actually want to improve the state of Sydney’s public transport, I feel that the new congestion tolling regime is quite reasonable.

So am I saying the measure is perfect? Hell no. Anyone who drives around Sydney or has done so over the last decade will know that there are several other key arterial roads that could do with a lot less traffic on them - Victoria Road, Parramatta Road, and the City West Link to name just three. Presumably because these roads do not currently have the infrastructure necessary to support a toll-based congestion charge, the traffic snarls on these three roads will not be going away any time soon - in fact, they may even increase as some drivers change their route in order to avoid the increased tolls. The measure, bound as it is to the Sydney Harbour toll roads, also unfairly targets those who live north of the harbour and work in the CBD or south of it, and vice-versa.

It will be interesting to see if we see the vigorous public objections to this charge that Ross Gittins predicted we would see if a congestion charge was introduced back in 2006. The NSW Government has not gotten a lot right in recent history, but I think it deserves a bit of kudos here for delivering a spot of tough love to motorists and indeed the motoring lobby.

I have not had the opportunity as yet to completely digest the draft Garnaut Report [PDF from SMH], although I have had time to be annoyed that the government feels comfortable basing decisions on predictions of the distant future when it seemingly does not have the ability to predict the demand for downloading a report from its website now. As I type the Garnaut Review website is completely out of commission and seemingly accepting no traffic. One wonders if the entire domain is being relocated to a different network or provider. Whatever is going on, it is a hardly acceptable level of service. People should not be prevented from viewing information disseminated by the government because it did not adequately predict demand for that information.

But on to more material matters. What I have read of the report so far certainly provides food for thought, and by the looks of things, there are quite insightful nuggets of wisdom embedded throughout. What I appreciate about Garnaut’s analysis is his intellectual pragmatism. I have little doubt that his blue-blooded contrarian streak questions whether the devastating potential consequences of climate change will come to fruition. I have little doubt that the imposition of government controls that could serve to damage the economy in the short-term run counter to his natural intuition. Despite all of this, like most of the rest of us who do not immerse themselves in the climate change science literature full-time, Garnaut knows that he has little recourse given the available evidence but to presume that the scientific mainstream is right, or in the very least, not far from. He therefore respects the need for potential short-term pain in order to reduce the likelihood of severe long-term pain. This is an entirely rational approach under the circumstances.This characterisation of the political problem facing the nations of the world from the draft report sums things up fairly well (pp. 12-13):

Effective international action is necessary if the risks of dangerous climate change are to be held to acceptable levels, but deeply problematic. International cooperation is essential for a solution to a global problem. However, such a solution requires the resolution of a genuine prisoners’ dilemma. Each country benefits from a national point of view if it does less of the mitigation itself, and others do more. If all countries act on this basis, without forethought and cooperation, there will be no resolution of the dilemma. We will all judge the outcome, in the fullness of time, to be insufficient and unsatisfactory.

Resolution of the international prisoner’s dilemma takes time—possibly more time than we have. The world has squandered the time that it did have in the 1990s to experiment with various approaches to mitigation.

Climate change is a diabolical policy problem. It is harder than any other issue of high importance that has come before our polity in living memory.

The prisoners’ dilemma, of course, is a well known logical problem that has important applications in mathematics, economics, computing and psychology. In raw economic terms, Australia would be best served in the short-term if all other nations on the planet cut emissions multilaterally, and we were allowed to continue emitting as much carbon as we pleased. Of course, this is not a tack that every nation can afford to take with respect to climate change. If all other nations decide to cut emissions only when the largest polluters except them cut emissions, the world will remain in a state of emission cut deadlock perpetually. This is a scenario that calls out for leaders; for a few select nations to put their hands up and show the rest of the world how it is done.

Brendan Nelson’s populist response to the draft report indicates that he either does not understand this point, does not really accept mainstream scientific opinion, or otherwise (most probably) has decided that there is more to gain politically from opposing any climate change policy that might involve short-term economic pain:

“It will be an act of environmental suicide, an act of economic suicide, if Australia were to be so far in front of the world implementing an ill-considered, not yet properly developed and tested emissions trading scheme if we haven’t got a genuinely global response,” he [Nelson] told journalists.

It would seem that the leader of the Opposition, cast as prisoner in the apocryphal dilemma, would rat on his fellow prisoner in an instant in a ruthless and foolish attempt to try and stay ahead of the pack. Given what we know about the mainstream climate science, Nelson seems to be risking a lot more than five years imprisonment by refusing to give an inch until some of the other nations of the world give a mile. This approach is a continuation of the willingly ignorant purposelessness that characterised the Howard Government’s approach to environmental issues, and I think that most people who give a fig about what is going to happen on this planet over the next few decades will see that.

One thing I have pondered from time to time whilst living in London is to how the air quality compares to that back in Australia. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the situation might be worse over here, but it is only anecdotal. While obviously London is a much larger and busier city than the likes of either Sydney or Melbourne, it’s probably arguable that the major cities in Australia have much more of a car-centric transport culture than the British capital. During his eight year reign as Mayor for London (which only ended a few months ago), Ken Livingstone made a political point of discouraging commuters from driving their cars into the city, most famously and controversially through the introduction of the London congestion charge.

Mercer Human Resource Consulting have recently released their 2007 Quality of Life Report, which if you are feeling extraordinarily affluent and interested you can purchase for $USD 390. The report compares and ranks 380 cities worldwide with respect to 39 separate criteria across 10 categories. Setting aside for a moment the issues associated with having valuable data like this only available to those willing or able to pay, this seems like a report well worth digesting. Fortunately for freeloaders some high-level summary statistics from the report are available free of charge (including the “Top 50″), from which we can glean the following interesting tidbits in relation to health and sanitation rankings:

• The top ranked Australian city for health and sanitation for 2007 was Adelaide at 35th.
• Melbourne and Perth tied for 43rd place, with Brisbane coming in at 47th.
• Sydney came in at 62nd with London following marginally at 63rd.
• All Canadian cities part of the survey featured in the top 25.
• Seven cities in the United States were ranked higher than Australia’s highest rating city.
• Auckland and Wellington came in ahead of any Australian city in joint 18th place.
• Glasgow is the only city in the United Kingdom to have made the top 50.

Of course these rankings are apparently calculated from a variety of metrics relating to health and sanitation (e.g. hospital and medical services, water and air quality, etc), and not just air pollution, but these comparative rankings are quite interesting regardless. Also of interest is Mercer’s “quality of living” rankings, where patriotically speaking, we must note, Australia performs significantly better.

ELSEWHERE: More in this story from Forbes, which also has an exposè-style photo from each of the worst 25 ranked cities for health and sanitation. Unsurprisingly, most of the worst 25 cities are from third-world nations without strong public health infrastructure or investment patterns.