“There is no link, the facts that cause the fires are the drought and the drying of the environment,”
“I follow the science,” lies Craig Kelly, MP for Hughes, who lobs on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, a pulpit for Piers Morgan, a Daily Mirror, former editor, sacked in 2004, for publishing fake images purporting to show British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners.
Kelly’s claim is as ludicrous as his PM’s own palpable falsehood. It’s in this week’s talking-point kit. Suddenly government MPs are all trotting out the same bullshit.
“Our view of climate change is that it’s real. We accept the science,” Josh Frydenberg lies in a drop to every media outfit in Australia. Yet the Coalition, steadfastly, ignores all scientific advice linking global heating to climate change.
Scott Morrison’s government favours the straw man fallacy. No-one accuses them of denying the reality of climate change – that’s a distortion of the argument that climate change or global heating contributes to the new bushfire holocaust we are suffering – a fire so severe; so intense that it defies all conventional means to bring it under control.
Can Piers Morgan or co-host meteorologist, Laura Tobin tell Kelly that climate change causes the drought and dry? It’s difficult given that Kelly holds that there’s no evidence that climate change is making Australia hotter and drier. It’s woeful, wilful ignorance.
An exasperated Tobin berates Kelly for ignoring scientific reports that 2019 is our hottest and driest year on record.
“At the moment we want everyone to commit in the world to be one and a half degrees to lower our global temperature rise,” Tobin says. “You can’t even commit to two degrees.”
Kelly’s as plausible as an arsonist with a box of matches and a jerry-can of petrol who says he’s only helping other volunteers put out fires. Some punters say he’s been banned from Q&A so he’s now speaking out on “Pommy” TV as he calls it.
Or is he sent by the PM? Fair dinkum, says Craig. Australia’s fire catastrophe was no reason for Morrison to cancel his planned family holiday in Hawaii. The situation is totally under control and besides, fire-fighting is a state matter.
Neither Morgan nor Tobin ask why a plan to prepare for climate change-related natural disasters was left to gather dust in Peter Dutton’s Department of Home Affairs for eighteen months before catastrophic bushfires hit last month.
The bushfire crisis now includes a “mega blaze” of half a million hectares on both sides of the Murray in the Snowy and Upper Murray. The flames have cost twenty-seven lives, destroyed at least 2079 homes, damaged over 800 others and have burned or are currently burning 8.4 million hectares – an area the size of Ireland or Austria.
We can only guess at the loss of wildlife. Above and beyond the human trauma and loss in fire grounds, Australian Academy of Science Fellow, Chris Dickman estimates that 1 billion animals have now been killed in the bushfires — a figure that includes mammals, birds and reptiles, but not bats, frogs, insects or other invertebrates.
A National Disaster Risk Reduction report containing a national implementation plan was published just before Malcolm Turnbull was double-double crossed by Morrison. Then Dutton put it away. But you can bet he was under instruction from his new PM.
Kelly can claim he’s following the science, but follow the (current) leader appears to be the only Liberal game in town. Morrison leaks against you otherwise, as his government has with Gladys Berejiklian, claiming she’s being obstructive of federal efforts to help.
As luck would have it, Good Morning Britain is another show with no scruples at all. Self-styled “climate science-follower”, a dubious generic tag evoking a voyeuristic ambulance-chaser, Craig Kelly does not expect a hostile reception. More a back-rub.
A former editor of Murdoch’s now defunct tabloid rag, News of the World, whose then editor, Andy Coulson, resigned before it closed in 2011 after he’d been caught hacking the phones of dead children, Morgan admits to BBC Desert Island Discs in 2009 that gutter publishing corrupts much of Britain’s print media – as it does in Australia.
“I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide, and certainly encompassed the high and low end of the supposed newspaper market.”
The “everybody does it”, argument is hugely reassuring to all who expect a bit of truth in their news and a few less monsters in their politics, but Morgan, like Morrison and Trump are creatures of a post-truth era in which everyone just makes stuff up.
We must be careful, however. When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it “fake news” in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful. Not that it ends there. Morrison’s priority as PM, he claims, is to protect freedom of religion, even though this is already guaranteed in our constitution.
Christian Porter is slaving over a new bill to allow churches to discriminate against workers provided that the school or hospital or op-shop “publish policy” explaining its ethos and rules, (something of a challenge given explaining exclusion implies that it stems from reason and not faith or prejudice). But it’s all very fair and merciful.
Religious hospitals, granny farms and retirement homes will “preference” members of their own faith to preserve their “religious ethos”. Unbelievers can die on the streets.
Dutton supporter, Kelly looks more pub bouncer than MP in blue suit and red tie rucked up under a thick, red, neck. He’s eager to get his mug on ITV to help repay the favour he owes the PM by acting as mouthpiece for Morrison’s own climate science denialism.
Big Craig is the founder of bipartisan buddy-club, Parliamentary Friends of Coal Exports, (PFOC) a climate criminal and mining lobby catspaw self-help group which includes Joel Fitzgibbon. Mike Freelander, who holds the south-west Sydney seat of Macarthur, swells the throng, as does the invisible Member for Paterson, Meryl Swanson, and the Member for Oxley, the euphonious, Milton Dick.
Kelly continues to bullshit Morgan.
“On this, climate scientists down here have been very clear and they have said there is no link between drought and climate change.” Kelly outdoes even his PM.
Kelly, as Morrison’s emissary and coal lobby shill, already has zero credibility before he even gets to his own batshit crazy blame-it-on-the big dry and I-follow-the-science big fat lie. His hosts do their homework. Laura Tobin, the woman Kelly calls a “Pommy weather girl” has a degree in physics and meteorology.
A former RAF forecaster for four years, Tobin has also worked as a broadcast meteorologist for twelve years. She’s completed a climate course with the World Meteorological Organisation. Kelly’s sexist weather girl slur is superbly misjudged.
But Kelly barely gets to open his mouth before Tory pit-bull and professional bully Piers Morgan, leaps down his throat. Morgan’s the other co-host of Good Morning Britain ITV’s daily carnival of interrogation, right-wing rants celebrity gossip and fashion tips.
Morgan attacks Kelly for taking a “nothing to see here, nothing to worry about” approach as “your entire country is eviscerated by fires”.
“You are facing now one of the greatest crises you have ever faced, and there is you Mr Kelly, with respect, a senior politician who still doesn’t think this has anything to do with a heating-up planet,” Morgan snorts and rages. Senior?
Kelly, who’s been warned off spruiking climate science denial on SKY, bobs up like a turd in the surf off Bondi, on Morgan’s show. But is there a bit of divine intervention, behind the scenes, to help Craig get a live TV link to London? If he’s free-lancing, it’s not going to help Humpty-Dumpty Morrison win back any credibility as a leader.
“I did @BBCRadio4 against him Sunday. The producer said they had asked for a senior government rep and this is who @ScottMorrisonMP thought was the best person to represent his government,” tweets Labor’s Catherine King.
Kelly denies it. He’s never said anything to the PM but Morrison did warn him off SKY. A “government spokesman” bags the suggestion as“fanciful”. But it’s way too much to swallow. The same PM’s staff denied that he had deserted the nation in its hour of need when he nicked off to Waikiki. Sprung, he blames Jen and the kids – as he blames our failure to reduce fire hazards and arson as the causes of our worst bushfires ever.
Kelly’s interview is widely written off as a car crash but sometimes people do survive car crashes. Both Kelly and his PM have the skids under them. Aloha Morrison is done for.
“Car crash” also unfairly diminishes the salesmanship of our crack elite of climate science denialists. They’re out to crash the planet. Every time Kelly repeats a lie, it gains legitimacy. And like a rat up a drainpipe, Josh Frydenberg’s able to bucket us in more bullshit by publicly correcting Craig and boosting the red-herring of fuel load.
Frydenberg rat-cunningly corrects Kelly. The “government’s view is that climate change is causing hotter, drier summers”, but he shrewdly endorses the popular troll-bot myth that fuel load is “a contributing factor” to the bushfires.
“Hazard reduction is just one way of preparing for bushfires – it doesn’t remove the threat of fire,” explains a spokesperson for the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. And the terrible new fire leaps fire breaks.
Kelly’s a useful idiot. The former Rugby knucklehead would be back selling furniture, had not Scott Morrison lobbied NSW Liberals to skip pre-selection for all sitting Liberal members; torpedo party democracy just to keep Kelly on the team. And out there selling denialism. As Chris Graham argues in New Matilda, there’s nothing that Craig Kelly recites in his Liberal talking points that Aloha Morrison hasn’t already said since he rinsed the sand out of his budgie smugglers on return from Waikiki.
Of course, there’s more to it than Morrison’s need to keep Kelly on board. Malcolm Turnbull weighed in to lobby the NSW Party Executive to waive its emergency powers; drop the Morrison plot to help Kelly dodge a bullet. Had pre-selection proceeded, a more moderate Lib/Lab MP, Kent Jones, would have unseated Kelly.
“Today I learned there was a move to persuade the State Executive to re-endorse Craig Kelly as Liberal candidate for Hughes in order to avoid a preselection – in other words to deny Liberal Party members in Hughes the opportunity to have their say.” Turnbull tweeted just over a year ago.
Besides, Kelly threatened to stand as an independent and cross the floor if he didn’t get pre-selected. Malcolm Turnbull weighed in on behalf of his imaginary friends, the Liberal moderates of Hughes, a south Sydney electorate, who are stoked to have a coal lobby shill represent an electorate where the monstrous new bush fire still rages today.
Hold it right there. Kelly is quickly gagged in the name of transparency and broad churchiness that is today’s Liberal Party- where any MP can say anything – provided his PM agrees. Sky News “Political Editor” Andrew Clennell claims, on Thursday, control freak Morrison, “… requests MPs don’t do any international media interviews …”
It’s a dig at Kelly. But only if Sky News had a skerrick of credibility. The supposed ban could well be a PM’s office drop to help boost Morrison’s floundering leadership. There’s no real evidence that this PM has any more sway over his right wing than Turnbull.
Above all, the government insists, now is not the time to talk. Unless you are the PM who gets a fab, fur-lined, fully scripted, designer interview with David Speers on ABC, Sunday to help narcissistic Scott Almighty from marketing to sing his own praises.
My, he’s called out the military. (Reserve). No-one’s done that before. He lies. Black Saturday in Victoria 2009 saw 600 ADF personnel deployed. But Speers can’t go there. Victoria doesn’t exist in the Canberra bubble – nor can the past intrude upon the eternal present of “news”. But, man, can motormouth Morrison talk up one simple phone call.
“I mean, the scale of these fires going across two very large jurisdictions reached an unprecedented level and that required an unprecedented response at that time and one was delivered and delivered very quickly.”
How many reservists have been deployed? If employed they have to get leave from work. “You may not be forced to take any form of paid or unpaid leave.”
How well trained are they? What was the call-up? “We are caught up in an unprecedented, catastrophic and uniquely dangerous bushfire crisis. Drop whatever you’re doing and join us?” A rapid, mass deployment may not be easy.
Morrison expects applause for a desperate afterthought after four years of his government ignoring warnings. Friday, over 30,000 people march in Sydney, alone, in a series of nation-wide demonstrations, quiet Australians take to the street to demand Morrison be sacked over his government’s lack of action on climate change.
Overseas protests are held from London to Lima. Morrison sooks on 2GB. John Stanley’s minding the mike while Alan Jones is on holiday. Oddly, the PM’s courage evaporates when Stanley asks him to book an ear-bashing with Alan on his return.
It’s “disappointing” that people are conflating the bushfire crisis with Australia’s emission reduction targets, ScoMo-Pinocchio tells 2GB Friday.
“We don’t want job-destroying, economy-destroying, economy-wrecking targets and goals, which won’t change the fact that there have been bushfires or anything like that in Australia,” he dog-whistles up a farrago of lies.
We? Only the federal government wants inaction on carbon and greenhouse gases. In fact, every state and mainland territory government in the country has made either aspirational or legislated commitments toward zero-emissions. Victoria has legislated a target of net zero emissions by 2050, while the ACT aims for net zero by 2045.
Job destroying; economy wrecking? The coal industry employs less than 0.4% of the Australian workforce and its royalties contribute just 2% of revenue to NSW and Queensland budgets. That’s before we subtract national, annual tax-based subsidies of $12 billion to boost fossil fuel production and consumption. Tax-payers subsidise wealthy companies?
Abreast of science; prompted by years of first-hand observation and experience, former emergency chiefs step up to write the PM an open letter warning about funding cuts to fire services, the coalition’s criminal negligence of the facts of global heating and the fatal consequences of following ignorance, self-interest and the sirens of the coal lobby.
“In the last year we’ve seen unseasonal fires in Tasmania, Victoria, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia, floods and twin cyclones in parts of northern Australia, longer bushfire danger periods and fires burning in rainforests,” the statement, signed by 23 representatives from each state and territory, says.
“Rising greenhouse gas pollution from the burning of coal, oil and gas is worsening extreme weather and putting people in danger.”
Now “pants-on-fire” Morrison gallantly blames yet another woman. (First it was Jenny and the girls.) This time, it’s NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. She’s refusing federal help to fight fires. Gladys is furious. NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons simply says “it just didn’t happen”. Senior Liberals rush to support their premier, united against the PM’s dishonesty; his latest act of evasive misogyny.
Greens are to blame, lies barking Barnaby Joyce, throwing a hissy fit of relevance deprivation to divert a bit of heat off the PM. Always keen to recycle disinformation, Joyce repeats the old canard that “green caveats” for preventing hazard reduction burns led to the current bushfire catastrophe. Fitzsimmons rejects Joyce’s claims, saying the biggest challenge with hazard reduction is the “weather and the windows available” to do it safely not “environmental clearances.”
On Saturday, his shifty PM is keenly scapegoating, saying people “who say they are seeking those actions on climate change” could also be the same people who “don’t share the same urgency of dealing with hazard reduction”.
None of this is true. It’s easier to blame arsonists and greenies than to act on expert advice. It may divert attention from the government’s lack of consultation and its failure to delegate or deliver collective action, as Monash University’s James Walter observes.
But it highlights Morrison’s own incompetence; his preference for divisiveness in a crisis. This is a government without a clue and a leader without a plan beyond diversion, evasion and scapegoating, lying and gaslighting. It is a travesty of the notion of governance in the public good. Australians deserve better than this grifter.
Above all the ScoMo show has no scruples. A PM who is happy to recycle lies is not a leader – just a dangerous bullshit artist. Up there with Trump and his BFF Putin.
US philosopher Harry Frankfurt argues that whereas the liar cares about the truth – their aim is to prevent others from learning it – the bullshitter does not care about the difference between the truth and falsity of their assertions. They just pick ideas out, or make them up, to suit their purpose. This makes them more dangerous than liars.
“Bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant.”
But it can’t happen so easily without a servile press. Hero of the week is Emily Townsend who leaves The Australian under a cloud – with a silver lining.
“I find it unconscionable to continue working for this company, knowing I am contributing to the spread of climate change denial and lies. The reporting I have witnessed in the Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun is not only irresponsible, but dangerous and damaging to our communities and beautiful planet that needs us more than ever now to acknowledge the destruction we have caused and start doing something about it.”
Commercial finance manager who reads between the lies, Emily Townsend emails executive chairman Michael Miller in a sensational open email to all staff.
News Corp papers highlight issues such as arson and hazard reduction to divert readers from climate change’s role in creating longer, more severe fire seasons. Arson may be responsible for one or two fires so far but it’s a major cause in the Oz.
Hazard reduction is no longer quite so relevant to today’s climate. Former NSW fire and rescue commissioner Greg Mullins tells ABC 24 climate change means it’s often too dangerous to burn: “Extreme drought like this, underpinned by 20 years of reduced rainfall, has meant the window for hazard reduction is very narrow now.”
Cutbacks in forestry and national parks personnel mean hazard reduction has fallen to volunteers. But in the end, the best hazard reduction is in calling bullshit to climate science deniers, for ultimately they are a type of arsonist, too.
Naomi Wolf is checking Bullshit Morrison’s dubious claims that the Australian government has sought overseas fire assistance. Dr Wolf calls Morrison’s office. It stonewalls. She’s amazed at how we Australians just take this lying down, tweets indefatigable, investigative reporter Ronni Salt.
“His office is not aware if either offers have been accepted”? In a working democracy the head of state knows if national offers of crisis assistance have been accepted. As does his office. “It’s alarming how they’ve tried to habituate people to no response,” she tweets. It’s even more alarming how the PM will just make up stuff.
War breaks out between NSW Liberals and Pinocchio Morrison, over his incredible story that the state government rejected offers of navy ships to help evacuate bushfire victims from Mallacoota and other fire-ravaged south coast towns. Further stretching credibility is that the story is dropped by the PMC to The Daily Tele’s Sharri Markson.
Labor also is losing credibility as an effective opposition on the need to get real about global heating. Terminally conflicted opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, wrings his hands in despair. Yet his recent advocacy of coal exports aligns him with other Labor MPs in the Kelly gang; the Parliamentary Friends of Coal Exports, (PFCE).
Albanese articulates his vision as shadow Prime Minister. He gets up to over-share his despair. No, Albo, no. Read the government and other, independent modelling that shows our economy will grow at just the same rate without coal.
“Despair not just that Craig Kelly has those views and continues to advocate them, not just here in Australia, but globally, and be seen to be representing the Australian government’s position, but the knowledge that he’s one of the people who has held back action,”
Albo sobs, backing the Coalition’s coal export toxic nonsense. Can our shadow PM not see how promoting coal makes him another “one of the people” to hold back action? Shut your coal-hole, Albo.
“I have seen a number of people suggest that somehow the government does not make this connection,” Morrison says deploying Trump’s favourite clapped-out bandwagon tactic “people say” followed by a fishy red-herring “The government I lead has always made that connection and that has never been in dispute.”
The Bureau of Meteorology’s clear advice is that climate change is “influencing the frequency and severity of dangerous bushfire conditions in Australia and other regions of the world, including through influencing temperature, environmental moisture, weather patterns and fuel conditions”.
In the 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review of the scientific evidence of the impacts of climate change on Australia and its economy, Ross Garnaut predicted that without adequate action, Australia would face a more frequent and intense fire season by 2020.
The bushfires that have ravaged our nation over the last four weeks, and which are likely to burn for at least a month more, are not just devastating farms, homesteads and forests. They also expose the wilful abdication of responsibility of a government in thrall to the coal-lobby and its servitude to a small but shrill group of climate science-deniers.
While Craig Kelly has widely been pilloried as a national embarrassment and a disgrace, he may have done us all a favour. His ITV interview debacle helps reveal the monumental ineptitude of the Morrison government he represents.
Above all, Kelly epitomises the Coalition’s dangerous, wilful ignorance, its mining industry muppetry as much as it helps expose the toxic nonsense of the climate science deniers and coal lobby shills which poison its ear and hence corrupt our body politic.
Scott Morrison and his government are as straw men in a firestorm.
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