If you'd told Australians in the 70s and 80s that the Great Barrier Reef would suffer catastrophic impacts in 40 years time and the government would both deny and ignore it, they would have been shocked and in disbelief. Australia was a different country then. The level of climate change denialism and the severe fixation on ‘houses and holes’ (property speculation and mining) is hard to believe if you haven't lived here. The change in political culture started taking hold around the year 2000.