Rhetoric, culture, and climate wars: a discursive analysis of Australian political leaders' responses to the Black Summer bushfire crisis

Australia’s Black Summer Bushfires of 2019–2020 were an unprecedented crisis in scale and impact. In response, Australian political leaders employed a collective understanding of purportedly unique cultural tropes in their rhetoric to make sense of the crisis to the public. Here we explore how and why these cultural discourses are utilized during moments of ecological and existential crisis, and how they differ according to party and ideology. Using qualitative critical discourse analysis of a key address to the media and the federal parliament, we examine the rhetoric of four Australian political party representatives in their responses regarding these bushfires: Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Liberal Party of Australia; Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, Australian Labor Party; Richard Di Natale, The Australian Greens; Malcolm Roberts, Senator for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party. We show how each actor’s rhetoric interacts with and weaves together their discursive climate policy positions, and adopts Australian cultural signs, symbols, and practices relative to new circumstances. Each actor may vary in expressing cultural tropes; we reveal how culture can be negotiated to align with partisan political agendas, even in moments of unprecedented destruction.