You don’t appear to have read my post before reaching your predetermined conclusion. If I haven’t bothered to even look at the Howard government’s greenhouse policies seriously, how do you think I managed to conclude that “theres a strong argument in my view that the Coalitions global warming policies are now at least as good as Labors”? My point is a very simple one. You can’t simply ignore the motivations and track record of politician/s making policy promises. Nor ought one to ignore the substance of announced policies, although given that there are finite limits on everyone’s time and attention, it may not make much pragmatic sense to spend large amounts of time evaluating policy proposals by politicians who you have no doubt are making them patently insincerely. I certainly don’t resile from drawing that conclusion about Howard on global warming; frankly I think you’d have to be a credulous fool to think otherwise. What made me take the time to look at the Coalition policy is that I DO think Costello etc are more genuinely open to such concerns. Indeed I gather Costello took a carbon trading proposal to Cabinet several years ago but was squashed by Howard.

Your view is that Howard is a climate change denialist so you are uninterested in assessing the value of the proposal.

Yours is the type of position that made me raise the issue in the first place. It amounts to refusing to even look at a proposal seriously because you doubt the motives of the proposer. Its a time honoured tradition of the political left.

In short: Interests determine policies so don’t bother about analysing the policies just look at the motivating interests.

I was particularly sorry because I thought the ‘cap and trade’ proposal was a good one. Sound economic theory and worthy of appraisal.

How can a policy be a “good one” in any useful sense if it is never implemented? In fact, it isn’t even a “policy” if there’s no bona fide intent to implement it, it’s just a piece of empty window-dressing. And that is precisely the way I would regard Howard’s greenhouse “policy” if I thought he was likely to continue as leader for the next 3 or 4 years. I simply don’t believe he has any sincere intention of implementing it, because he doesn’t actually believe that global warming is a serious problem.

These issues have nothing to do with the quality of the ‘cap and trade’ policy prescription.

If you cannot evaluate the policy (or don’t have the time to do so) but must take the word of a politician on an issue of fact then motives become important just as they would in a criminal trial where you cannot check but must infer the truthfulness of a defendent.

But this is just saying that the implications of a policy are irrelevant if you cannot evaluate them That is obvious.

It seems to me that if you can think through the implications of a policy you should.

Which isnt to say that we should simply respond to political partys policies by automatically believing those made by the party we generally support (if any) while rejecting as insincere those made by parties we distrust and whose motives we suspect.

There is more value to evaluating motives than Harry allows. Shunning motives entirely to concentrate on consequences ignores what seems obvious to me; motives inform consequences. Using the Workchoices example, if the motive is to destroy the union movement, then the destruction of the union movement is going to a potential consequence – one should always allow room for the attempt to fail – and we should be evaluating whether or not we think that’s a desirable consequence.

But going back to the sentence I quoted, care should be taken to ensure that we aren’t just projecting our own prejudices onto the policy maker and mistaking them for motivation. Just because Teh Left thinks Howard is a war criminal doesn’t mean he actually does lend moral support to Israel specifically so they can kill Palestinian children. And vice versa.

Self-aware use of Occam’s razor is a must.