Cian Hussey from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) says IPA research shows that a net zero emissions target "would put up to 653,600 Australian jobs at direct risk" (NH Opinion, 26/6/2021).
A big claim.
Is it credible?
The research is titled Net Zero Jobs: An Analysis of the Employment Impacts of a Net Zero Emissions Target in Australia.
It's not, as you might expect, a hefty academic work, closely argued and densely referenced.
Half of its 16 pages are either blank or devoted to title, contents, and author profiles.
Most of the remainder is a rote recital of where these allegedly "at risk" jobs are located, and an attempt to discredit the job potential of renewable energy.
The actual research issue - the potential effect of a net zero emissions target on existing jobs - is essentially covered in three consecutive paragraphs.
One more paragraph and the authors would have announced that "net zero" is a long lost biblical code for Armageddon.
The authors (of whom one is Hussey) use government data to calculate the total number of jobs in industries where "emissions per job" are above the economy wide average.
The answer - 653,600.
They then simply deem that all these jobs would be "at risk" from a net zero emissions target. All of them.
Variables such as target timeframe are ignored.
The conclusion appears like a rabbit pulled from the hat. But no ordinary rabbit - it mutates before our eyes into Godzilla.
A target won't just put "jobs at risk"; it will cause "significant and irreparable economic and social damage" and "mass job losses", "destroy communities", and be "devastating for Australian workers".
Who knows? One more paragraph and the authors would have announced that "net zero" is a long lost biblical code for Armageddon.
In their rush to predict the worst, they've also overlooked an obvious problem. How would a mere target have such impacts? What if a target is set, then ignored or changed? Would the same jobs disappear?
This is the "research" being used by the IPA to warn that a net zero target will "destroy the Australian way of life".
The same IPA that rails against climate change "alarmism".
Impartial? You be the judge.
However, I don't think that's the main issue. Impartiality isn't in the IPA's charter. The main issue is that an organisation is holding out something as "research" when it's clearly not.
I don't claim to be a research expert.
However, I do know that reputable research is an open-minded activity.
It systematically collects data, interprets it, and reaches conclusions according to peer reviewed methodologies.
The IPA document presents assertion as researched fact. Doubtless the only peer review done, if any, would have been within the echo chamber of the IPA itself.
It's an opinion piece passing itself off as research.
The document describes its authors as "Research Fellows" who work for an "Institute", and it expressly claims to be research.
This would suggest to the ordinary reader there is at least some degree of equivalence between the IPA document and research publications produced, for example, by university academics.
There is no such equivalence.
The IPA is not a place of higher learning and serious scholarship. It is basically a lobby group for neoliberal ideology.
Furthermore, to be considered worthy of publication, credible researchers are under ethical obligations to disclose sources of funding and other potential conflicts of interest.
The IPA appears to do neither.
To be clear, the IPA is free to put forward whatever opinions it wants.
My point is that it's not free to purloin the respectable garb of scholarly research to dress them up.
Hussey also invokes the image of "mainstream, quiet Australians".
The reverence of IPA "research fellows" for such Australians is matched only by an inability to adequately define who they are. This is unsurprising, given the last people who you'd think would be interested in, let alone be able to identify such individuals, would go to work each day at a right wing think tank in the middle of Melbourne.
I am surprised, however, that Hussey didn't follow standard IPA practice and also describe them as "patriotic".
Still, I do wonder - is the IPA fixated on this demographic because they're quietly patriotic, or patriotically quiet?
Now there's a research topic.
