In an earlier missive, last month, I lamented that our PM had managed to leave our Navy short of effective submarine capacity. I think what he’s done deserves to be highlighted further.
Setting aside for the moment the blisteringly stupid behaviour of Morrison over the lying allegation made against him by French PM Macron and the obvious lies Morrison propagated about French ‘sledging’ against Australia and Australians (it wasn’t aimed at anyone other than Morrison), the real seriousness of the matter lies in what he has done to the RAN, and Defence overall.
The French submarines might have been overpriced; they might have been low technology, up against the superior forces of other nations in our region; we might still have had to extend the life of some of the Collins Class subs for a while. But, at least we would have had submarines. Now, the possibility that we’ll have any subs aside from those old Collins units is basically nil. All Scotty’s smirking blather about ‘going nuclear’, the grandstanding in front of the UK and US leaders, the latter of whom seemed to even forget Morrison’s name, well, it was purely for show. It holds virtually no substance at all.
So what Morrison has done in effect is to remove most of the submarine capability from the ADF at a time when tensions are on the increase. That much of the tension has actually been ratcheted up by Morrison himself, as he bangs the drums of war for what surely must be domestic audiences in a dangerous escalation of dog-whistling to the Australian electorate, doesn’t make it any less disconcerting. In essence, what Morrison has done is to put Australia at further military disadvantage for the sake of his perceived electoral survival, and he has left a hole in our defence capability that will not be repaired in this or even the next decade.
Haven’t we suffered enough? How much more of this incompetence and stupid arrogance do we have to endure before we can finally get a government in this country that works for the benefit of the nation, and not just to the advantage of its tin-pot leader?
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Tim Smith refusing to resign over his drink driving is not an outlier, it’s indicative of a culture that remains in our politics.
After blowing 0.131 and crashing into the side of a house, Victorian MPTim Smith vowed to quit politics. Sort of. He’s nowchanged his mind, refusing to stand down, claiming that he was ‘stupid’ but ‘not unwell’. Oddly, he has an ally. Tony Abbott has urged Liberal preselectors in Smith’s seat of Kew to not allow a “spirit of petty censoriousness” to end the public life of the “best Victorian (political) talents”. Smith himself has soliloquised: “Should one horrendously poor judgement render someone’s career over immediately?”
Tim Smith said he was not aware of how intoxicated he was because he had not eaten much that day.
“As a consequence, I blew much more than I ever thought I had consumed. I’m not offering any excuses,” he said.
He claimed he had only drunk “a few glasses” of wine at the dinner with friends.
“It’s selfish, it’s stupid, I’ve been fined, I’ve lost my licence for a year. I profoundly messed up in a life-altering way. I can’t take that back and I’m not trying to.
“It was an appalling lapse of judgment… I’m never touching a drop again.”
But while we get our heads around the above comments, Tim Smith’s drink driving and subsequent behaviour highlight a culture that has long been persistent in our politics.
In 2019, Labor MP Will Fowlesmade headlines for kicking a hole through a hotel doorand was placed on administrative leave to treat his treatment for drug and alcohol issues. He did so with the “full support” of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.
So here’s the latest. A politician (I don’t know who) has gone into a rage after discovering he couldn’t access his luggage. Police say he’s now calmed down but is facing charges. pic.twitter.com/VRKu5p2s2t
— Kellie Sloane MP – Member for Vaucluse (@kelliesloane) July 24, 2019
Fowles said,via a statement that“I have, for a long time, been dealing with addiction and other mental health issues… I will take a leave of absence to properly deal with my health issues.”
That fell short with former Premier Jeff Kennett (who also founded mental health advocacy group Beyond Blue), who slammed him for referencing his mental health issues.
“What I object to very much indeed is him using the coverall of mental health illness in any way contributing to this act… Mental health does not lead to acts of violence, criminality or antisocial behaviour, in a majority of cases. Alcohol and drugs do, but not mental health,” he told 3AW at the time.
The Age has noted that “Labor sources indicated there have been concerns around parliament relating to Mr Fowles’ struggle with alcohol abuse since he was elected in the November 2018 landslide swing that returned the Andrews government with an increased majority.”
Fowles returned to work two months later, has repeatedly claimed that he hasn’t drunk since. He remains the member for Burwood.
Dan Andrews has repeatedly vowed to institute a scheme of random alcohol testing in parliament as early as 2014, and as late as 2016. The plan was also a commitment priorto the 2014 election, with Andrews promising that MPs would lose a week’s pay or face suspension if they were found intoxicated at work.
In 2016, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy noted that he had no objection to the plan, but outwardly questioned how much Mr Andrews believed in the plan,stating that“The Premier has had more than two years to implement this idea,” he said. “We agree it should be introduced along with random drug testing, and while Daniel Andrews is at it, he should also introduce random alcohol and drug testing of everyone on government construction sites – which he canned.”
When quizzed by The Age in 2016, Mr Andrews’spokesperson said: “The Andrews Labor Government will deliver on each and every one of its commitments.”
In 2017, a bipartisan committee to analyse the idea dismissed it as “impractical”, withThe Herald Sunnoting that the “policy to breath-test MPs was informally discussed then dismissed at the House Committee in the past six months and hasn’t been raised by the government since. The government has not pushed the idea since the election.”
Practicality aside, what we clearly have is a cultural problem.
In 2016, The Age asked an unknown Labor MP about their thoughts about the plan being instituted. “Surely we’ve got bigger fish to fry,” that MP said. The example of Fowles’ door, the pieces of the marble table smashed when Tony Abbott was cast aside, the car that Smith drove into a house, speaks to the issue. It shouldn’t be left to these ministers to apply their own standards, make grandstanding apologies, and hopefully be changed by the experience. In 2016, Greens leader Greg Barber said it was up to party leaders to ensure their MPs adhered to standards,noted that“Green MPs don’t loll around the chamber drunk.”
This article was originally published onThe Big Smoke.
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After Sky News chose not to renew his contract, Alan Jones took to Facebook to announce that he was quitting.
If Ernest Hemingway said that courage stemmed from being graceful under pressure, Alan Jones quitting Sky News (after they chose not to renew his contract) in a rambling 1500-word Facebook post is surely the opposite. Carved in the tone of a jilted spouse, justifying all the positives he brought to the relationship, Jonesconfirmed that“the management at Sky News have indicated to me that they will not renew my contract, which ends on November 30.”
Joneswrote, “When I arrived at Sky News and was signed to a 17-month contract, it was made quite clear to me that the 8PM slot was, in the words of management, a ‘dead’ spot. It was clear from the outset that my signing at Sky News brought over a new audience to the station. Indeed, one observation was made last year that ‘since the launch of Alan Jones on Sky News Australia, the network has seen major growth across its digital platforms.’ And, ‘The launch of Alan Jones on Sky News Australia in July saw the channel’s radio ratings double on the iHeart Radio app, making Sky News Radio the #1 Australian news/talk station on the platform.’ In my brief time that I have been at Sky News, the audience at 8PM has significantly increased.”
“On the social media front, it was said that November 2020 was ‘another extraordinary month for Alan Jones on social media,’”Jones wrote, before adding: “In that month, there were 12.6 million views of Alan Jones video on digital platforms, with 68% of the audience coming from YouTube. I made mention of information on the US election being censored by ‘powerful interests’ in the media. That post reached 4.2 million people on Facebook and delivered 2.4 million video views with 617,000 of those watching for longer than one minute, which was described as ‘an extraordinary result’ for Facebook where the audience typically has a short attention span. Sky News rightly boasts significant personalities with strong and legitimate opinions. As a result, people often search the internet in order to refresh themselves with something we have said. In other words, put simply, if you’re not saying anything that is relevant to the viewer or the public, they are not likely to be much interested in checking out your content.”
Speaking in the third person, Jones claimed it was cancel culture that held the knife that bled him. “In recent times my material hasn’t been widely published on these sites as the company has felt under threat from being cancelled. Nonetheless, the figure I have indicated above is significant. People have been googling Alan Jones and immediately the bulk of them go to the Sky News website to access Alan Jones’ opinions,” he said.
So, what happens now? Probably nothing. In 2019, Jones was surprisingly featured on the 7News election coverage, who took the opportunity to draw the conclusion that Scott Morrison’s win meant that climate change wasn’t a thing.
At the time, Labor MP Chris Bowenasked“what is the Morrison government going to do on Monday if it is elected?”, Jones jumped in to cheerfully point out that “well, we won’t have to have a 50 percent renewable energy target… it was a vote on climate change tonight!…you said it was a referendum on climate change, but apart from Zali Steggall, I mean, you people can’t persist with this notion of 45 percent emissions reductions or a 50 percent renewable energy target.”
“Alan, one of the differences between you and I is that I believe in climate change, and I believe it’s caused by human activity,” Bowen said again.
“Well, I believe in the scoreboard!” Jones responded, pointing at the election results. “Have a look at the scoreboard!”
Considering that time is a flat circle, and the 2021 election will be fought over the same issues, we can assume that he’ll continue to have a spot in the mainstream media. So, tell me how cancel culture works again?
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
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The big picture of global geopolitics is often obscured by saturation media coverage of grand events like the G7 Summit in Cornwall (11-13 June 2021) or the G20 Summit in Rome (30-31 October 2021).
Leaks from the leadership teams can heighten interest in the forthcoming discussions.
Forums without pre-summit links can be boring affairs. Britain’s chairmanship of the G7 Summit in Cornwall seemed to fit into that category. Channel 2’s news coverage from Paris described the G20 Summit on 31 October 2021 as a largely unproductive talkfest.
The emphasis at the Cornwall Summit was on the morally responsible links between developed nations. Participating countries and observer states were called to unite around more transparent parliamentary democracy, the new norm of sustainable neoliberal economies within the ongoing imperative of global strategic management through the US Global Alliance.
Image from foreignbrief.com
Australia is a peripheral player on the conference circuit as an invited guest to the G7 Summit with leaders from India, South Korea and South Africa.
Our participation at the G20 Summit in Rome will always be remembered by the dressing down given by President Macron to Scott Morrison as covered by ABC News, (1 November 2021).
The assembled global media will always challenge Scott Morrison’s emphasis on rhetoric to win the next Australian elections. Like many Australians, such events are of nuisance value while political elites largely ignore real concerns across the local electorates.
Image from Business Standard
Domestic politics of developed middle powers is currently going through a very conservative phase. Centre-right governments dominate representative democracies in the developed countries as neoconservatives have become adept at appealing to working class voters to achieve absolute majorities or to fracture the support base of progressive parties through diversionary rhetoric from minor far-right parties.
Amid the boredom of frivolous media opportunities at global forums, anticipations of future tensions might surface. To the delight of Carrie Johnson, the Macrons respond defensively to some banter from Boris Johnson.
Here is my Call of the Board of the political changes associated with recent and forthcoming elections in those middle powers. Recent elections across the middle powers have largely been a confirmation of the status quo. What messages are left in the tea leaves from the recent round of elections across the middle powers?
Canada Stands Firm on National Sovereignty within the US Global Alliance
Justin Trudeau was re-elected in Canada on 20 September 2021 with a second minority government for the Liberal Party. The government will be supported by minority parties. The solid vote for Bloc Quebecois (BQ) adds some diversity to Canadian politics. It is a substantial grouping cannot be ignored by a French Canadian leader.
Tolerance of political diversity enables the Trudeau Government to maintain a strong commitment to national sovereignty. Canada was strongly pressured by the Trump administration to replace the NAFTA trading Agreement with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). USMCA became operational on 1 July 2020 after Canada negotiated amendments to the original agreement to strengthen the place of trade unions and challenge corporate prerogatives.
The Trudeau Government is no stranger to a commitment to national sovereignty in trading and investment disputes with the USA particularly during the Trump Era. The Conversation (1 February 2021) has a good article on these pragmatic disputes which extend to border disputes with Alaska that affect salmon fishing zones.
Cultural diversity has saved Canadians from the limitations of a one party neoconservative state. This was a key feature of those dour years under the leadership of Stephen Harper for almost a decade (2006-15).
Germany Takes the Plunge with Olaf Scholz
Former east-side Chancellor Angela Merkel also brought political diversity to German politics. The synopsis of her life and times was eloquently captured by Channel 5 in Paris for screening on Four Corners on 18 October 2021.
Olaf Scholz is now the Chancellor in coalition with the Greens and the neoliberal FPD Party.
Scholz served as Angela Merkel’s deputy in the previous Grand Coalition. He was also finance minister. The presence of the FPD and Greens in the Scholz Coalition should inevitably facilitate these policy changes with the SPD acting as a moderating rather than a radical influence.
Even during Angela Merkel’s long tenure as Chancellor since 2005, Germany’s pragmatic commercial ties with Russia and China were a concern to British Conservatives. Germany’s economic capacity and commitment to national sovereignty might have contributed to the BREXIT agenda favoured by Boris Johnson. Angela Merkel’s phone networks were bugged to keep the more conventional members of NATO better informed on developments according to Reuter news sources (The Guardian 9 July 2015).
In another independent phase during the Merkel years, the German Government had signed the articles of accord with the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in mid-2015 with the largest equity holdings of any West European Country of $US4.5 billion about the same time as Australia’s LNP signed up with $US 3.7 billion in opposition to cautionary advice from the Obama Administration.
Like Canada, Germany seems to lack the political dogmatism which is a feature of Australian conservatism. Few other countries have such a focus on winning the next election by repetitive news management strategies which is one of the hallmarks of the federal LNP with those nightly news briefing from the prime minister on the moral values of global capitalism and the need for more strategic preparedness.
Scholz served as Angela Merkel’s deputy in the previous Grand Coalition. He was also finance minister. The presence of the FPD and Greens in the Scholz Coalition should inevitably facilitate these policy changes with the SPD acting as a moderating rather than a radical influence.
Even during Angela Merkel’s long tenure as Chancellor since 2005, Germany’s pragmatic commercial ties with Russia and China were a concern to British Conservatives. Germany’s economic capacity and commitment to national sovereignty might have contributed to the BREXIT agenda favoured by Boris Johnson. Angela Merkel’s phone networks were bugged to keep the more conventional members of NATO better informed on developments according to Reuter news sources (The Guardian, 9 July 2015).
In another independent phase during the Merkel years, the German Government had signed the articles of accord with the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in mid-2015 with the largest equity holdings of any West European Country of $US4.5 billion about the same time as Australia’s LNP signed up with $US 3.7 billion in opposition to cautionary advice from the Obama Administration.
Like Canada, Germany seems to lack the political dogmatism which is a feature of Australian conservatism. Few other countries have such a focus on winning the next election by repetitive news management strategies which is one of the hallmarks of the federal LNP with those nightly news briefing from the prime minister on the moral values of global capitalism and the need for more strategic preparedness.
Japan’s National Elections – 31 October 2021
Newly appointed Prime Minister Fumio Kishida retained an absolute majority for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in coalition with the Komeito Party.
The new government of Fumio Kishida will be challenged by IMF forecasts for the Japanese economy during the current trading and investment disputes between the US and rival powers Russia and Japan.
There is a potential problem for more strategic controls over Japanese trade and investment after the Japanese elections in the wider interests of the US global alliance. China is Japan’s leading trading partner and does not seem to have problems with this partnership in both trade and investment.
Although Japan is a net creditor in capital investment flows to the world, the financial burdens of COVID-19 management in Japan have more than halved capital outflows between 2019 and 2020 (UN Center for Trade and Development-UNCTAD).
As a high cost manufacturing nation, Japan simply does not attract large capital investment inflows. There are real challenges to Japanese capital investment in the USA in an era of America First Strategies which commenced during the Trump era.
Expect Japan to deviate somewhat from its current strategic alliance with the US if difficult times return in the mid-2020s and beyond.
There are real opportunities for peaceful trade and investment with both China and Russia. The Annual Eastern Forum in the Russian Far Eastern Port City of Vladivostok offers opportunities to discuss such issues.
The complete list of participants in 2021 included Kevin Rudd who most likely participated online.
Russia has proposed a land-bridge to Japan through the island of Sakhalin. This island was part of the Japanese Empire before 1945 along with the adjacent Kurile Islands.
A road and rail link from Hokkaido to Sakhalin requires an additional 45 kilometres long of undersea tunnel or a continuation of the vehicular and passenger ferry services across the La Perouse Strait.
Construction of the six kilometre long bridge from Russia across to Sakhalin is entirely a domestic construction option for Russia (Global Construction Review 9 December 2019).
The close proximity of the Korean Peninsula to Southern Japan provides more justification for Belt and Road Initiatives (BRIs) to link Japanese ports to both China and Russia.
All of the middle powers in the US Global Alliance like Germany, Japan and Australia oscillate between phases of absolute loyalty to the US Global Alliance and qualified commitment to national sovereignty.
Reuters news agency (1 November 2021) expects Prime Minister Kishida to cling closer to the US Global Alliance while still promising to honour populist commitments to address wealth inequality. Public opinion in Japan favours Fumio Kishida’s leadership rival Taro Kano. Leadership rivalries might re-emerge if trading and investment opportunities deteriorate in the mid-2020s.
Strong prevailing loyalty of the middle powers to the supporters of the US Global Alliance is evident in arms sales to allied countries. Germany is now amongst the world’s top five arms exporters to countries involved in the conflicts in Yemen and Libya as noted by DW News (3 January 2021). Germany also exports submarines to Israel which are fitted with nuclear weapons in Israel according to comments from NTI (18 February 2021).
Increasing strategic ties between the US Global Alliance and India has seen a boom in arms exports of aircraft, air defence systems, anti-submarine warfare weapons, armoured vehicles, artillery, engines, missiles, sensors, satellites and naval ships. Sales amount to $US151 million in 2020 as noted by Trading Economics.
Germany, Japan and Australia have since become more cautious about financial arrangements with China. Germany finally agreed to fall into line with US requests for more restraint on technological transfers to China with some provisions in IT Security Law 2.0 in early 2021 (European Council on Foreign Relations 5 February 2021). As a response to international sanctions, Russia has increased the price of its gas exports to EU countries and Japan. France is diversifying its sources of natural gas with new supplies from Norway and North Africa due to frosty relations with Britain over the loss of submarine contracts and fishing disputes in the English Channel and the North Sea.
EU Politics in the G20 Era 30-31 October 2021
France goes to the polls on 10 April 2022 in the first round of the Presidential elections. Recent polls carry no joy for the French Left. Its polling has hit a new low and remains highly fractured. The shadow of far-right contender Éric Zemmour adds some complexity for French voters. For the second time running, the final runoff is likely to be between Emmanuel Macron and one of the far-right French political parties.
Italian politics is even more fractured than in France. The Five Star movement changed its allegiance in favour of the Democratic Party (PD). To contain its own defence spending, Italy is one of the five middle powers in the EU which hosts US nuclear weapons at the Aviano (Near Venice) and Ghedi Air Bases (Near Brescia). According to ICAN Australia, Italy has failed to sign or to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Anecdotes from the Federation of American Scientists show that Italy tops the EU list of nuclear weapon vaults and nuclear missiles:
In the meantime, the loyal middle powers are largely in cinque with a common commitment to neoliberalism and more strategic defence spending. The Guardian’s own investigative team (19 July 2021) has reported on the intensity of surveillance of political activists from both governments and corporations:
Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, according to an investigation into a massive data leak.
The investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations suggests widespread and continuing abuse of NSO’s hacking spyware, Pegasus, which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists.
Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.
The leak contains a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that, it is believed, have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.
Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based non-profit media organisation, and Amnesty International initially had access to the leaked list and shared access with media partners as part of the Pegasus project, a reporting consortium.
The presence of a phone number in the data does not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to an attempted hack. However, the consortium believes the data is indicative of the potential targets NSO’s government clients identified in advance of possible surveillance attempts.
The attendance of Scott Morrison at both the G20 and COP26 event rules out an election before March or May 2022.
Current opinion polling particularly from YouGov (Newspoll) is favourable to Labor with substantial swings against the federal LNP in all states and territories (The Poll Bludger):
The Australian reports the latest Newspoll has Labor leading 54-46, out from 53-47 three weeks ago, from primary votes of Coalition 35% (down two), Labor 38% (up one), Greens 11% (steady) and One Nation 3% (up one). Scott Morrison is down two on approval to 46% and up one on disapproval to 50%, while Anthony Albanese is steady on approval at 37% and down one on disapproval to 46%. Morrison leads 48-34 as preferred prime minister, out marginally from 47-34. More to follow.
However, support for federal Labor might still be soft in anticipation of the vast campaigning resources available to the LNP. There is time for Labor to add more marketing magic to this favourable result.
Very unconventional but responsible risk-taking in alternative marketing strategies are needed in the next few months to extend Labor’s current polling lead.
I came across this marketing gem which was developed to attract the attention of Queensland Rail (QR) commuters in Brisbane.
The advertisement is quite unrelated to domestic politics but it emphasises that wisdom can extend well beyond the confines of political elites when it comes to decision-making on vital personal concerns (YouTube on Staying Level Headed). This style of advertising has a lot of potential to engage disenchanted voters in both regional and other metropolitan electorates.
Cleared of a tendency towards misogyny, working people from all genres can rise to the occasion by articulating their concerns in good advertising which trumps the talk-down prescriptions which are a feature of Scott Morrison’s nightly news briefings.
As our prime minister for self-promotion, Scott Morrison will never be short of words to justify his enduring leadership qualities when such issues of concern are raised by electors. His media forays can be very Napoleonic when the need arises (SBS News, 2 November 2021):
Speaking from Glasgow, where he is attending the COP26 climate talks, on Monday night, Mr Morrison said, “I must say that the statements that were made, questioning Australia’s integrity and the slurs that have been placed on Australia … I’m not going to cop sledging of Australia.
“I’m not going to cop that on behalf of other Australians.”
Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback from readers advances the cause of citizens’ journalism. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Replies Button.
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The images of a lonely Scott Morrison at another international summit has proved how deep the antipathy is toward him… and us by extension.
While the most prickly piece of news emerging from the G20 this morning is Emmanuel Macron calling bullshit over the sunk $90bn submarine deal between France and Australia. Per The Guardian, “When asked whether he thought Scott Morrison had lied to him by not revealing Australia’s secret dialogue with the UK and US over the acquisition of nuclear submarines, a dialogue that ultimately became the Aukus pact,Macron was direct in his response. ‘I don’t think, I know,’ he said.”
It’s also worth noting that Macron met a number of leaders at the event in Rome, and Scott Morrison wasn’t one of them.
Now, letting the Prime Minister out without parental supervision usually provokes a response from the populace, as quietly, shamefully disown him just like the toddler running amok at the party. “Whose child is that?”, the world may ask, as we remain silent, disassociating, thinking of our lives without him. Interestingly, the below video clip seems a trifle unfair (and perhaps Scott Morrison is a victim of editing), but it reveals something that happens every time he attends one of these meetings: the leaders of the world like him about as much as we do.
The international view of Scott Morrison oscillates between two polar opposites. Either they don’t know who he is, or they know, and are choosing to ignore him. Recently, Joe Biden (during the announcement of the deal that screwed Macron), famously forgot his name, while looking at him no less, thanking “that fella down under. Thank you very much, pal.”
The 2021 G20 is not an isolated incident, as his trip to the 2019 edition hinted at where our international prestige lay. In the eyes of the world, Morrison is completely out of his depth and has endured the summit as we have at our partner’s work mixer, avoided by all and sundry, forced to retreat to the safe borders of one’s phone.
The loneliness of boredom and the familiarity of being on the outside is wonderfully defined in the image below.
Scott Morrison at the 2019 G20 summit
I realise it’s foolish to draw conclusions from a collection of images, but the alienation of Morrison is fairly obvious, and it is clearly repeating. Something we’ve all done, nomadically travelled to separate conversations we have no station in, those we are politely shut out of before we seek plains anew. He’s clearly the victim of the politest form of denial, the avoidance of eye contact.
Image from thebigsmoke.com.au
Like the chap stranded at a birthday party, he’s clearly hanging in the orbit of the individual he knows best (Donald), although, he’s busy, he’ll hopefully be soon for a chat, and what was that joke about – are you guys laughing at a joke, that Donny is funny, hey? I’m Scott, by the way.
Image from thebigsmoke.com.au
The interesting part of the next image is that his partner is clearly making an effort with Melania Trump, whereas Scott has remained in place, waiting for a look from his mate, hopefully, to signify that it’s finally time to go.
Image from thebigsmoke.com.au
There has been substantial worry that the world will see who we elected, and suddenly think less of us. In Scott’s world (Australia,through the lens of his personal photographer), all is perpetually well. Knowing what we now know, the context that accompanies the below image is spectacularly grim. According to reports, the media at the event were kept in an area away from the leaders as they mingled. Morrison, with his personal photographer in tow (who took the image), allegedly made a bee-line for Macron (and sans mask), interrupted his chat and took the following photograph.
“I said g’day, I said g’day… he was having a chat to someone, I went up and just put my arm on his shoulder and just said ‘g’day, Emmanuel,’ and ‘look forward to catching up over the next couple of days… that’s the way these events tend to work and he was happy to exchange those greetings.”
Clearly, the two versions of the image do not marry, leaving us at a familiar point, where we’re forced to accept his version of the truth. But as Benjamin Law put it: “As embarrassing as it is to see Scott Morrison on the international stage, there’s something relieving about it too—like having a secretly horrible family member making a scene and shitting themselves in public and you finally feeling like you have a witness to your ongoing pain.”
Awkward.
So photos emerging of the G20 mingling event – and NOT from Morrison’s personal photographer. pic.twitter.com/LOw1rcZrBj
In July, we wanted to know how a secret National’s investigation cleared Barnaby Joyce of sexual harassment. Now he’s PM. What happened?
In July, the secret Nationals investigation that cleared Barnaby Joyce was under the spotlight, after the member who oversaw the initial investigation, Ross Cadell, was the subject of an apprehended domestic violence order application.
Cadell (who has since been preselected by the Nationals to take their top spot on their Senate ticket) told Guardian Australian that the application was withdrawn, that it was merely part of his separation and that we shouldn’t worry about it. He said: “I was subject to an application that was withdrawn. I am not going to relive any part of that. Separation is painful for everyone, it is over, nothing came from that, and that is all I can say.”
Pardon the editorialising, but no woman goes through the awful process of engaging the police as part of the normal process of separation. The subtext here is you don’t do something to risk violence from your partner, whether there’s a pattern or not.
Despite the anger and the headlines generated, the possibility of reinvestigating Barnaby Joyce slipped through our fingers once more. In case you missed it, Barnaby Joyce resigned as the Deputy Prime Minister due to a sexual harassment claim raised against him in 2018. Joyce was cleared and took the job back in 2021. But, here’s the kicker. For all intents and purposes, the matter should remain open, as only an internal (and secret) investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing.
In early September 2018, Barnaby Joyce told Fairfax that he was “not going to enter into any further discussions on this matter…I’ve been informed of the party’s findings and that’s it … I’m going to move on from this ASAP.”
As it stands, no external investigation has been actioned on the matter.
Catherine Marriott, 2012 WA Rural Woman of the Year and a Broome councillor, raised the complaint against Joyce in 2018, alleging that the incident took place after a function in Canberra two years earlier. In July, The Guardian spoke to a close friend of Marriott, who called the latest allegations a “travesty”, and “given the background that has come to light, I do not believe the Joyce investigation result is now credible.”
Marriott spoke with ABC’s 7:30 in 2018 after details of her complaint was leaked to the media. As Katharine Murphy of The Guardian noted at the time, “After Marriott lodged her complaint on 20 February, initially with the National party’s federal executive, it was leaked to the media a few days later.”
At the time, Joyce was in the midst of a separate scandal, involving Vikki Campion, leading some to believe that the Nationals leaked the complaint to the media.
In the interview, Marriott said: ” I walked up to my hotel room and I burst into tears. I then couldn’t sleep that whole night. I didn’t actually sleep for a week. I rang two of my closest friends and I told them what had happened, and they said they couldn’t believe (it)…they were just absolutely shocked, and they said, ‘You can’t tell anyone. You cannot tell anyone…you will be destroyed if this comes out,’ Marriott said.
“Initially, Ms Marriott chose not to report her experience to the police or the National Party, fearing the consequences of a public scandal.
“‘When it happened, he was the Ag Minister. He was a very popular Ag Minister at that time, and I didn’t…I was…I’m just a little human against a big system, and I was terrified,’ she said.”
Ultimately, the allegations were investigated internally by The National Party. After eight months, the matter was closed, with the party failing to return a verdict, citing a “lack of evidence”. The Nationals announced that the final report will not be released to the public.
In September 2018, Marriott released a statement, stating that she was “extremely disappointed that the National party reached a no-conclusion verdict… the result of this investigation has underpinned what is wrong with the process and the absolute dire need for change. This outcome simply isn’t good enough.
Her complaint was handled internally by NSW National Party executive with no professional external expert brought in at any stage to handle the matter
“While dismayed at the finding, I am not surprised as the party never had the external processes in place to deal with a complaint of sexual harassment by a member of Parliament. My complaint was handled internally by NSW National Party executive with no professional external expert brought in at any stage to handle the matter.” (The ABC, September 7, 2018)
In early September 2018, Barnaby Joyce told Fairfax that he was “not going to enter into any further discussions on this matter… I’ve been informed of the party’s findings and that’s it … I’m going to move on from this ASAP.”
As it stands, no external investigation has been actioned on the matter.
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
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Nazdana Sultanfar lives in Afghanistan. Below is a letter she wrote to our Prime Minister asking that her country and the appalling treatment of Afghan women not be forgotten.
Dear Mr. Morrison,
As the whole world is witnessing a change in Afghanistan’s political system, with this regime change in Afghanistan, we are witnessing many collapses. These include the unemployment of thousands of people, the closing of the gates of universities and schools and government offices.
I am Nazdana Sultanfar, a Law and Political Science student, as well as a civil and social activist.
It has been two years since I started my studies at the university, and I have been working in social and cultural work and defending women’s rights. In my activities, I pursue two major goals:
Changing the attitude of Afghan society towards women
Informing women about their rights and status in a family, community and government.
I had and will have big goals. My biggest goal is to be a legal analyst in my community and save my community from misery by making a law. But with the rise of the Taliban, all my activities came to an end. And all my dreams remain like a nightmare. With the university closed, it is impossible to achieve my goals, and I am not only thinking about my future, but also thinking about the future of my generation, especially Afghan girls, who are called the second gender in Afghanistan. Hearing these two words is painful and upsetting to me.
The purpose of my hard work was to prove to men that a woman is not the second gender, but a woman like me is a human being and has equal value, responsibility and rights, Mr. Morrison! Another big problem in Afghanistan is increasing rate of poverty and unemployment, which will cause unprecedented human catastrophe. If poverty and unemployment are not prevented or a specific plan is not implemented, it will be a total humanitarian collapse. It is very painful for me and all Afghan citizens for the moment. Streets are full of women, men, children and the disabled; asleep and awake, hungry and thirsty for a little help to find a piece of bread, and get five Afghanis. I am so upset that I sleep for long hours and I talk to myself and I think that the only logical solution is for me and my generation to study. Then we will end this current situation with science and knowledge.
In addition to poverty and unemployment there is apparent ethnic and gender discrimination in Afghanistan. These two terms have been on the rise in Afghanistan for many years. We see girls deprived from school and university, women banned from work.
Apart from gender discrimination, ethnic discrimination is rampant in Afghanistan, and a single ethnic government has been established, and all decisions are made by the Pashtuns with the idea of Talibani. In the shadow of this government the most vulnerable people are the Hazara people, who have no national or international support. Hundreds of young people with all their dreams and aspirations went underground and slept forever. With the coming to power of the Taliban, the Hazara people are the hardest hit, Mr. Morrison! As a young Afghan, I have no authority or power to do for my community and country. The only thing I could do was to study and gain knowledge. But unfortunately, the gate of the university is closed for me and my generation. The only thing I could do was write this letter to your Excellency, expressing the common pains of the Afghan people. I always follow your Twitter and Facebook.
I ask you not to forget Afghanistan, especially Afghan women.
Best regards,
Nazdana Sultanfar
Nazdana Sultanfar is a second-year student at the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Kabul University, a social, cultural and women’s rights activist.
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The reason Dominic Perrottet became Premier of New South Wales is Gladys Berejiklian chose to join the select group of Liberal Party New South Wales Premiers that resigned before undergoing the scrutiny of a New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption public hearing. Of course, Berejiklian had her supporters, they are the ones that were questioning why ICAC was investigating her, rather than the correct question – why did she resign as a Member of Parliament prior to ICAC passing judgement on her actions?
The answer to the ‘correct’ question will come out in due course and we’re not even going to hazard a guess what the final outcome is. However we can guess why various Coalition politicians seem to have a problem with oversight, such as that provided within New South Wales by ICAC.
Probably the best person to start is with Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. According to The Guardian, Joyce is claimed to have
compared the New South Wales anti-corruption watchdog to the “Spanish Inquisition” and complained that it’s making politicians “terrified to do their job”.
What is Joyce claiming here? Is he openly admitting that politicians can’t act fairly and equitably in doing their job or is he claiming it is unfair that politicians should be expected to act to benefit the entire community, not just interest groups such as, let’s say coal mining companies or property developers?
Transparency International has a definition of corruptions and its effects
We define corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.
Corruption erodes trust, weakens democracy, hampers economic development and further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division and the environmental crisis.
Exposing corruption and holding the corrupt to account can only happen if we understand the way corruption works and the systems that enable it.
It’s no accident that most of the oversight mechanisms set up by state governments have the word ‘corruption’ in their names. Representation of selected ‘special interest’ groups over the needs of the general community certainly fits the definition of corruption offered by Transparency International.
The comparison to the Spanish Inquisition is certainly an overreach. This is an excerpt from History.com
The Inquisition was a powerful office set up within the Catholic Church to root out and punish heresy throughout Europe and the Americas. Beginning in the 12th century and continuing for hundreds of years, the Inquisition is infamous for the severity of its tortures and its persecution of Jews and Muslims. Its worst manifestation was in Spain, where the Spanish Inquisition was a dominant force for more than 200 years, resulting in some 32,000 executions.
Joyce seems to be suggesting that weakening democracy, increasing inequality and so on are valid outcomes from a politician’s work. We already know his attitude to the environment.
ICAC’s public hearing that addresses its concerns with Berejiklian’s behaviour continues this week, but no one except Berejiklian knows with certainty the reasons for what she has or hasn’t done in the past. ICAC obviously has some evidence to support its position and according to her own rules, Berejiklian didn’t have to resign from Parliament until there was a finding against her.
Corruption commissions have a habit of being fair and equitable. The Victorian version of NSW’s ICAC, called the IBAC is currently investigating a number of ALP ‘powerbrokers’ who are accused of manipulating the number of members that belong to certain ALP branches. As the members of each ALP branch have some say in who is put forward as the ALP candidate at each election, there are certainly ways for corruption to become entrenched if the ‘right’ person is elected. Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has denied any involvement and Federal Leader Anthony Albanese seems to be sitting on both sides of the fence by supporting the ALP Policy for establishing a ‘federal ICAC’ while resisting calls to publicly reprimand the ALP Federal MP who is alleged to be involved in the Victorian ‘branch stacking’ investigation. Strangely, Joyce seems to be silent on this particular example of ‘politicians being unable to do their jobs’.
Probably unsurprisingly, the Coalition Federal Government seems not to be all that keen on a corruption commission that will maintain an impartial and balanced overview of the workings of those elected to and who work for government. In November 2020, The New Daily reported the then Attorney-General proposing a plan for the implementation of a ‘federal ICAC’, some 11 months after receiving the draft plan. By October 2021, The Mandarin was reporting Morrison joining the Coalition’s ‘pile on’ on ICAC soon after Berejiklian resigned from the NSW Parliament
Responding to a question from Sunrise’s David Koch about whether ICAC needed to be reformed, Morrison said the corruption watchdog was ‘never a model we have contemplated at a federal level’.
“We have a set of arrangements at a federal level that can be built upon, but certainly not going down that path in New South Wales,”
The Mandarin noted
The most recent update on a proposed federal integrity commission was published by the government in November 2020, and consultation over draft legislation for the commission closed in March this year.
However it drew criticism from legal experts and retired judges (known as the National Integrity Committee), who said that the exposure draft was based on a ‘flawed assumption’ and failed to recognise that the role of such a body was not to secure criminal convictions but ‘to uncover serious corruption in the field of public administration and to publicly expose it where that is appropriate’.
To do this, the group argued in a submission, a corruption watchdog must be given wide and special coercive and investigatory powers – it must not be bound by the laws of evidence and should not be expected to function as a judicial body because it was not supposed to be a court of law.
“The exposure draft does not meet the primary purpose of a national integrity commission, which is to enable scrutiny and enhance accountability of government. It is not even clear if the proposed legislation covers ministerial conduct which may be deemed to be corrupt,” the group said.
Crikey gives us a number of reasons why Morrison seems to be delaying a ‘federal ICAC’ with actual powers to investigate potential breaches of legislation and standards. We all face scrutiny from the legal system if we are accused of breaking the law. II’s a pity our federal politicians won’t subject themselves to the same scrutiny.
Amendments to the Federal Treasurer’s media bargaining code will be tabled in the New Year.
In a nutshell, if passed, it will mean that in Australia, Facebook and Google can only publish articles from the Murdoch media, Kerry Stokes media, and Fairfax/Channel 9.
Basically, it will be ensure that the voices of independent (or dissenting) media is muffled in the lead up to the next election.
Approximately 30 online media sites and rural newspapers have joined together to fight this. There are a number of steps we need to take, with the first being an e-Petition submitted to the Parliament of Australia: Petition EN3530 – Designate Google & Facebook to support public interest journalism, as shown below:
Terms:
Reason: Under the News Media Bargaining Code Google and Facebook have struck deals with a small number of media outlets. However, they have refused to negotiate with the majority of Australian news providers – including a range of high-quality outlets that meet the criteria set out in the Code. By publishing public interest journalism these providers fight misinformation and inject expertise into the media ecosystem. Only designation by the Treasurer can bring Facebook to the negotiation table.
Request: We therefore ask the House to request that Treasurer Josh Frydenberg “designate” Google and Facebook under the News Media Bargaining Code to force Google and Facebook to negotiate payment for all publishers who genuinely serve the public interest.
e-Petitions that collect 20,000 names are scheduled for debate in the House.
If we can generate 20,000 signatures on our petition we will make sure that Josh Frydenberg and the Parliament know that a handful of deals with a few media conglomerates is not good enough. We will force the Parliament to debate both Facebook AND Google. We will apply real political pressure on the Silicon Valley do a deal with us.
Our petition has only just been lodged, and we only have until the 24th of November to collect 20,000 signatures.
We urge you to sign our petition. Independent media is fighting for its survival.
This is only Step 1 of our fight. Details of Step 2 will be published in the near future.
Thanking you in advance.
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Is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) radical? Yes. It is especially radical if we go to the roots of the word ‘radical’ which itself means ‘from the root’.
Is MMT innovative? Only in the sense that it is a synthesis of different strands of heterodox thought, though not all heterodox economists are on board.
Is it a ‘trap for the left’? No, not at all.
Is it difficult to work out what Modern Money Theory is? Only, it seems, if one has been trained in the ‘New Keynesian’ tradition that forms the so-called New Economic Consensus (NEC) in mainstream economics.
While these New Keynesians are vulnerable to the charge that their ideas are ‘not new and not Keynesian’, they are willing to recycle the line that Modern Monetary Theory is ‘not modern, not monetary and not a theory’. Unlike the New Keynesians, however, the MMTers are in on the joke.
Some may complain about the word ‘modern’, as the term can refer both to Keynes’s joke that money has been a creature of the state for ‘the past 4000 years … at least’, and to the period since 1971 when the Bretton Woods standard began to break down.
The word ‘monetary’ is used in MMT to describe the monetary system, not monetary policy – although it does have implications for the conduct of policy.
The word ‘theory’ is used by MMT in the scientific sense. A theory is a fact-based framework for describing a phenomenon.
As a fact-based framework, MMT can be harnessed by political actors of all stripes. For progressives, MMT can embolden governments to deliver an ambitious policy agenda or Green New Deal over time. The original New Deal or the Reconstruction in Australian parlance took place over more than a decade.
MMT can also appeal to conservatives. The MMT insight that government spending must precede taxation can give rise to the ‘vulgar’ – and incorrect – interpretation that taxation is altogether unnecessary in modern monetary economies. It could be argued that the New Economic Consensus and its derivatives are forms of applied right-wing MMT.
Taxation serves many important functions according to MMT. The most important is to drive demand for government money. Taxes can also be used to discourage undesirable activities or to reprofile the distributions of income or wealth.
Crucially, taxation removes spending power from groups, but it does not place any claim on real resources. Only spending claims real resources. Increasing taxation can make it easier for governments to spend on public policy by freeing up the potential for other groups to claim real resources, but taxes do not directly pay for government spending in the way this is conventionally argued.
Any discussions of how increasing or raising tax revenue is required to facilitate spending are quite misleading and misdirect the public on how to think about public money.
What has been called ‘movement MMT’ is inseparable from ‘academic MMT’ and any so-called schism is a political choice of the critic. MMT advocates do not engage in ‘motte and bailey’ strategies, so much as adherents to NEC models cannot think outside of those models. It is like fitting a square peg in a round hole. If you succeed, you will either be left with gaps or a square peg so warped that it no longer appears to be square. If you succeed in getting MMT into NEC models and there are gaps, you have missed many things MMT says, and if you succeed you have so warped MMT, it no longer resembles MMT.
“a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
MMT is one of those new scientific truths that does not fit into older models.
A major stumbling block for NEC economists is in thinking that MMT has a simplistic view of inflation, specifically that governments can increase spending as much as they like with no need for an offsetting increase in tax revenue if there is little to no risk of politically unacceptable inflation. However, as MMTers have consistently argued, inflation is more a resource distribution issue than a monetary issue. As Modern Money economist Pavlina Tcherneva puts it, when inflation arises, you find the source of inflation and ‘slay that beast.’
If inflation rears its head, look at the source. Is it a production bottleneck? Spec activity in real estate, fin markets? Does it come from other parts of the govt budget? No-bid contracts to firms? Subsidizing near-monopolies with outsized pricing power? Slay that beast. 8/n
Raising interest rates or taxes is a rather blunt distributive tool. It is there Australia erred in trying to deal with stagflation which the result of a battle of cost mark-ups between unions and businesses in response to a supply-side shock – an increase in the price of oil.
The other issue in the eighties, shortly after stagflation was Volcker’s experiment with targeting the money supply, which was copied by many central banks around the world that led to the high interest rates of that period. It only began to settle when central banks began using inflation rate targeting on a narrow band, two to three percent in Australia.
MMT’s emphasis on real resources enables it to focus on ‘the deficits that matter’. In the current economy, the preference of progressive MMT advocates is to put idle resources – which include unemployed and underemployed people – to productive and fulfilling work. The ABS estimates that labour underutilisation is as high as 13 per cent of the labour force, and this excludes discouraged workers who have abandoned looking for work altogether. The National Australia Bank measure of capacity utilisation indicates that the Australian economy has operated with between 15 and 25 per cent spare capacity since 2008.
It is nonsense to say an ambitious policy agenda like the Green New Deal (GND) will reach capacity almost immediately and cause politically unacceptable inflation. Just like the reconstruction after World War II, it will take time to implement recommended policies and should be done within resource constraints. Whilst it is true that we do have finite resources, the human species is innovative. In the transition to green production, some resources (remembering resources include people and their skills) – say, coal workers – can and will be repurposed.
We can also create new productive capacity within available resources, and these include the skills learned by the people on the job in many GND programs building their personal productive capacity.
I started this piece by agreeing that MMT is radical, and it is. It examines modern monetary systems at their root. MMT fits the pieces of economic operations into a coherent and consistent body of knowledge. Once you learn MMT, and think in MMT terms, you know more than most media talking heads on the subject of the economy. How you use that knowledge is up to you.
Darren is a leader in educating people in modern macroeconomics. He played a founding role in educating Australians via social media channels and has engaged some prominent Australians on commentary about Modern Monetary Theory. Darren is a member of Modern Money Australia, Australian Real Progressives and has been involved with the Modern Money Network. You can see more of his work at https://www.darren-quinn.net and https://www.realausprogressives.com
You can find him on Twitter @AusMMT @dquinn03
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While Malcolm Turnbull routinely advocates for climate change, we should not forget what he did and failed to do when he had the opportunity.
Malcolm Turnbull has excoriated Scott Morrison’s net zero plan, labelling it as a “con” and “distraction” authored by the coal industry. In conversation with The New Daily, Turnbull said that carbon capture and storage (which the government is relying on to cut emissions) is “a proven failure and it keeps getting run up the flagpole by the fossil fuel sector as a way to defer action.”
Turnbull has been a notable figure since leaving parliament, offering a counter to the Liberal Party’s views on climate change. He’s often led the criticism against Morrison, with most agreeing with him while wondering where all this was when he was in power.
In April, The Conversation‘s Richard Denniss asked ‘Is Malcolm Turnbull the only Liberal who understands economics and climate science – or the only one who’ll talk about it?’
At the time of the article, Turnbull was “dumped as chair of the New South Wales government’s climate advisory board, just a week after being offered the role. His crime? He questioned the wisdom of building new coal mines when the existing ones are already floundering,” as Denniss wrote.
While it’s easy to point at the image of Scott Morrison fondling a piece of coal as the pertinent point, those with longer memories will remember his stance on climate change during his stint as Prime Minister. He, of course, enlisted the Nationals to topple Tony Abbott, effectively neutering his climate policy out of the gate. As John Hewson wrote in 2016, “The broad-based electoral expectation that Turnbull would stand against all this by continuing with his ‘principled position”‘ on climate was soon thwarted, as it became clear that he had sold out to the ‘right’ and the Nats to gain their support for him to replace Abbott as PM.
“The Nats have since not missed an opportunity to hold Turnbull to account, and have run, dragging Turnbull along, a very high-profile opposition to any further development of climate policy – blaming the SA blackout on renewables, attacking Labor states over their renewable energy targets, supporting new coal mines, and now rolling Josh Frydenberg over his desire for the promised Climate Review to consider an ’emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector, which they painted as a ‘dumb’ attempt at a limited carbon price.”
In 2018, the Turnbull government gave $444 million to a freshly-funded entity called The Great Barrier Reef Foundation; its membership comprised of the former head of the Commonwealth Bank, a director of Qantas and BHP Billiton, as well as execs from Origin Energy, Suncorp, GE Mining and Boeing.
A 2017 trip to Barcaldine highlighted Malcolm Turnbull’s (self-professed) climate agnosticism. He travelled to a solar farm to reiterate to state that we should approach this nation’s energy problem by taking advantage of our great natural advantages (coal, gas), before mentioning that Maranoa (a place that has an industry for all energy theories) is an example that we should follow.
If we wind the clock forward to August 2018, The New York Times reported “Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia abandoned plans for emission targets bowing to pressure from conservatives who considered toppling Mr Turnbull’s government over an energy policy that aimed to reduce prices and bring the country into line with international climate change commitments.
“Mr Turnbull, who looked tired after a weekend of negotiating with colleagues, told reporters Monday morning that the energy policy bill, known as the National Energy Guarantee, would not be introduced in the House of Representatives because there was not enough support.
“‘We are not going to propose legislation purely for the purpose of it being defeated,’ he said.
“Critics immediately called that claim inaccurate, noting that the proposal had support from other parties. But whatever its chances, the defeat spurred intense speculation about Mr Turnbull’s future and frustration among those increasingly worried about Australia’s vulnerability to climate change and its effects, from extreme drought to bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.
“‘All it does is reconfirm that they have no interest in doing anything about climate change or the Great Barrier Reef really,’ said Jon Brodie, a well-known coral reef scientist at James Cook University.”
Which isn’t exactly true. Earlier that month, it emerged that the Turnbull government gave $444 million to a freshly-funded entity called The Great Barrier Reef Foundation; its membership comprised of the former head of the Commonwealth Bank, a director of Qantas and BHP Billiton, as well as execs from Origin Energy, Suncorp, GE Mining and Boeing. At the time, the foundation had annual revenue of about $10 million and only six full-time staff.
As The Big Smoke‘s Matthew Reddin wrote at the time, “And they’d only ever been given $12 million by the government previously, as a deal set to match the donations made at the corporate level. So, all of a sudden, a sum just shy of half a billion dollars flows into their coffers, and an org devoted to selection causes and projects “of note” can spend my tax dollars on it. But why them? Why now? Why from this government, whose other half is made up of members of the National Party, an organisation who never got a vote from anyone who thinks that climate change is real, let alone sitting members of parliament who would believe that funds and resources should be devoted to “green” causes? It doesn’t make any actual sense.”
Six months later, the National Audit Office ruled that the department “failed to comply fully with rules designed to ensure transparency and value for money.” The rules demand clear and specific objectives for the funding.
“For non-competitive grants, assessment criteria provide a transparent means of assessing whether the particular proposal under consideration is of a satisfactory standard that approving a grant would represent value for money,” auditor-general Grant Hehir wrote in his report.
As the ABC noted, “They included ambitions such as ‘improved management of the Great Barrier Reef’ and ‘management of key threats to the Great Barrier Reef’.”
He stood idly by as Australia’s world-renowned science agency, the CSIRO, announced it would cut 80% of its climate scientists, effectively ending Australia’s climate research program.
In 2020, Malcolm Turnbull toldHack that “Australia really needs to address climate change. The need is more obvious than ever. We’ve battled the forces of climate denialism in our Parliament and in our political life…I lost the leadership twice over this. I fought very hard to get an emissions trading scheme passed, and to keep it as Liberal Party policy.”
But as British environmentalist Jonathon Porritt wrote in 2016, “when Malcolm Turnbull wrested the prime ministership from Tony Abbott the international climate community breathed a deep sigh of relief. By contrast, Turnbull had done OK on climate change as a previous leader of the Liberal party, so it was assumed he would do a lot better the second time around.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. As I discovered on my latest visit, Turnbull has been utterly pusillanimous in pursuing any kind of progressive climate agenda. As part of his ‘oil on troubled waters’ strategy, he apparently decided not to take on Abbott’s climate-denying guerilla fighters and has offered zero leadership to Australia’s confused and polarised citizenry either before or after Paris.
“He stood idly by as Australia’s world-renowned science agency, the CSIRO, announced it would cut 80% of its climate scientists, effectively ending Australia’s climate research program. Turnbull is not the only politician having to deal with totally unreasonable flat-earthers. But that’s no excuse. Australia’s citizens deserve a lot better than that.”
Sadly, we know how the story ends. If we’re happy to rally behind him to fight a more contemporary evil, we should not forgive, nor forget.
This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.
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Continental Europe and China share a single landmass and the effort for both parties on a strategy to reach carbon neutral goals requires a unified strategy.
European Union President Ursula von der Leyen has announced that the European Union of 27 member states will become carbon neutral by 2050.
With such a goal to reach this also needs joint cooperation with China as carbon emissions do not have passports as they spread on the same huge landmass of continental Europe and China.
The big goal now is how the 27 member states fit in with a unified strategy with China on clean energy as China also has a goal of being carbon neutral by 2060.
At the forefront of this work in China to make strategy recommendations for a joint EU China strategy to the European Union is the European Union Chamber of Commerce China (EUCCC).
In an interview with both Vice Presidents of the European Union Chamber of Commerce, China Guido Giacconi and Klaus Zenkel, there are sticking points that the European Union needs to urgently address to reach carbon neutral goals in crucial cooperation with China.
Whilst China is making great efforts in regards to a market approach to tackling climate change in co-chairing the G20 Green Finance study Group, co-founded the Network for Greening as part of the Financial System with the Belt and Road Initiative and initiated the Mongolian Taxonomy scheme the Central Bank of Mongolia and the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, much has to be done regarding a workable strategy with outcomes.
There has been great effort from China with the Billion Tree Project covering (and greening) 23 per cent of China, however with still a reliance on 70 per cent coal for energy needs, it has the ever existing problem of offsetting other efforts with producing electric vehicles which depend on coal fired electricity.
Europe has had decades of experience in transitioning away from coal with Germany making a further great leap from earlier efforts in 2000 with a massive expansion of solar and wind energy through grassroots citizen-owned power cooperatives via grants with monitored outcomes.
Spain has taken great strides in shutting down their coal industries transitioning into renewable energy and Sweden closed down its last coal power plant in 2020.
However, it must be kept in mind China is a country of 1.4 billion people and a very intensive, well-thought out strategy needs to be put in place, which the European Union can share their experience of transitioning from coal in a strategic way with China, that also takes into account China’s existing structure and local provincial government local considerations.
On a grassroots level there could be scope in relation to China’s poverty alleviation scheme of to empower local cooperatives in this scheme with clean energy initiatives as well changing transitioning the large coal Industries on a macro level to clean energy.
This could include sewage electricity generation that would greatly help rural local low socio-economic areas in China with sanitation and would complement China’s poverty alleviation scheme.
This is a big opportunity for European Union state members to roll up their sleeves and work with China on strategies in a consultancy capacity sharing their transitioning from coal initiatives in embracing local cooperatives in the process, along with the macro steps in closing down their coal industries.
In relation to the Belt and Road initiative connecting China with Europe, both the European Union and China need to have a co-operative approach that can possibly implement a mix of the European grant system for clean energy initiatives and China’s loan approach, depending on the situation of relevant Belt and Road countries.
However, with the European Union recently not ratifying a Comprehensive Economic agreement with China, buying into mostly US driven human rights accusations on China, which in my research hold little evidence, with conflicting claims, is putting humanity at a great risk in hampering a joint strategy in tackling climate change.
Geopolitical finger-pointing with agendas never helps humanity. However, a cooperative approach does.
The climate change clock is ticking close to an irreversible point for humanity and the European Union must decide.
This article was originally published on Dazza Egan Australia & China Watch Journo.
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Commonwealth Government challenged to prevent loss of Torres Strait Islands in lawsuit modelled on world’s most successful climate case
First Nations leaders from the remote islands of Boigu and Saibai in Gudamalulgal in the Torres Strait (Zenadth Kes) are taking the Australian Federal Government to court in a bid to prevent the destruction of their communities by climate change.
In a landmark class action case Wadhuam (Maternal Uncle) Paul Kabai and Wadhuam Pabai Pabai are arguing that the Federal Government has a legal responsibility to ensure Torres Strait Islander Peoples are not harmed by the climate crisis. This is the first climate class action brought by First Nations Peoples in Australia.
If successful, this case has the potential to not only protect Gudamalulgal and all Zenadth Kes communities, but also to help avert the climate crisis before it devastates communities across Australia.
“Our ancestors have lived on these islands for more than 65,000 years. But the Government’s failure to prevent the climate crisis means our islands could be flooded, our soils ruined by salt and our communities forced to leave. Becoming climate refugees means losing everything: our homes, our culture, our stories and our identity. If you take away our homelands, we don’t know who we are. We have a cultural responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen and to protect Country and our communities, culture and spirituality from climate change,” said plaintiff Paul Kabai.
“I can’t imagine being forced to leave Boigu because this island is me and I am this island. There are 65,000 years of wealth and experience here. Losing Boigu will mean losing that. If you take us away from this island then we’re nothing. It’s like the Stolen Generation, you take people away from their tribal land, they become nobodies,” said plaintiff Pabai Pabai.
Torres Strait Islander communities are on the frontline of the climate crisis and face an existential challenge due to rising sea levels driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas. If global temperatures rise by more than 1.5C then many islands in Gudamalulgal will become uninhabitable. Torres Strait Islander Peoples would become Australia’s first climate refugees.
Traditional Owners Pabai and Paul are seeking an order from the court that requires the Federal Government to take steps to prevent this harm to their communities by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The Australian Government has just set a 2050 ‘net zero’ emissions target, which experts say will not be enough to prevent disaster in the Torres Strait.
In fact, leading climate scientists who form the Climate Targets Panel calculate that Australia’s greenhouse emissions need to be reduced by 74% by 2030 (from 2005 levels) and to net zero by 2035 to keep global heating to below 1.5C and avert the destruction of Torres Strait Islander communities.
Torres Strait Islander Peoples have a proud history of fighting for their rights through the courts. Eddie Mabo took on the Government through the courts and established that terra nullius was a lie, paving the way for land rights for all First Nations Peoples in Australia.
The litigation is being supported by public interest advocacy organisation, Grata Fund and international climate law experts at the Urgenda Foundation. The case will be conducted by specialist class action and public interest law firm, Phi Finney McDonald, and the plaintiffs will be represented in court by Fiona McLeod SC.
“People across the country, and in particular First Nations communities, are already being harmed by the Government’s failure to take the climate crisis seriously. We’re proud to support Paul and Pabai as they take a stand on behalf of their communities. Everyone is entitled to defend their rights in court and we believe they have a great case that could make history,” said Isabelle Reinecke, Founder and Executive Director, Grata Fund.
“The Australian Government owes a legal duty to Paul, Pabai and all Torres Strait Islanders not to destroy their land, culture and identity. Paul and Pabai bring this action to require Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will prevent Torres Strait Islanders from becoming climate refugees. Phi Finney McDonald are proud to represent Paul and Pabai in their fight to save their homeland,” said Brett Spiegel, Principal Lawyer, Phi Finney McDonald.
“When we launched our litigation in the Netherlands there was a view that a case like this was impossible and had no chance of success. Instead we won, and this led the Government to adopt a sweeping set of policies to reduce emissions including, significantly, the closure of coal-fired power stations and billions of euros of investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency. We’re very optimistic that the same can be achieved in Australia,” said Dennis Van Berkel, Legal Counsel, the Urgenda Foundation.
A boat ramp in Boigu. Photo Credit: Talei Elu.
Read the full media releaseherefor additional information about the plaintiffs, the case, the legal team and the key climate harms in the Torres Strait.
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For someone who claims to have Australia’s best interests at heart, Prime Minister Scott Morrison makes some strange choices. He originally claimed he wasn’t going to the Glasgow GOP26 Meeting of World Leaders because it would mean he would be required to undergo another two weeks of isolation. We’ll probably never know if the change of heart was new NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s ‘let her rip’ attitude to COVID-19 quarantine or the Queen’s ‘overheard’ comment in Wales that changed his mind. Yet there was far less hesitation in attending the G7 as an observer in Cornwall earlier this year. It seems that the only benefit from physically being at the G7 was a pub crawl in Cornwall and some footage for possible use on ‘Who do you think you are’.
Could the real reason for the hesitance in travelling to Glasgow be that Morrison has nothing of value to contribute? At the G7 he was so ‘popular’ that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson felt it necessary to be at Morrison’s ‘personal’ meeting with US President Joe Biden. It’s probably fortunate that Johnson was there, as Morrison didn’t seem to make a huge impression on Biden. A couple of months later at the launch of the AUKUS agreement, Biden couldn’t even remember Morrison’s name.
Morrison is a transactional politician. He understands that to retain power he has to retain the climate change denier rump of the National Party in his government. One of the strongest members of the rump is Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. As CNNreported recently, ‘Australia’s climate policy is being dictated by a former accountant in a cowboy hat’. And they are right, Joyce is a cowboy along with Senator Canavan, the soon to retire (thankfully) George Christensen and a few others that are making Australia a ‘pariah’ nation. Joyce’s National Party is supposed to represent ‘regional Australia’ where there are many other industries apart from the one that is involved in ripping stuff out of the ground, transporting it to the coast and sending it on a nice cruise to somewhere else in the world. Most of the other industries are already concerned about changes to environmental conditions, not that you’d know it if you listen to the political party that claims the mandate to represent them. However, even the Mining Council announced at the beginning of October they support the ‘net zero by 2050’ objectives.
It’s claimed by CNN and others that Joyce claims he wants to see the figures before he can support a transition to ‘net zero’. Fortunately, the modelling is available.
Matt Ogge, an adviser at progressive think tank The Australia Institute, said Australia faces billions of dollars in economic damage without a more ambitious 2030 goal.
The UK has set a target of driving emissions 68 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030.
“Glasgow isn’t about 2050 targets; the whole game is 2030,” he said.
“It’s about reducing emissions quickly within the next decade.
“2050 is worse than irrelevant. It’s a distraction allowing people to do what they want for 30 years.”
The Institute calls itself ‘progressive’, which probably gives the Nationals’ cowboys an excuse to discount the value of the research that went into the report. The Institute isn’t the only canary in the coal mine – the same The New Daily article reports Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is warning
households of a potential rise in mortgage rates unless Australia gets its act together on climate.
“Australia has a lot at stake,” he said.
“We cannot run the risk that markets falsely assume we are not transitioning in line with the rest of the world.”
Separate analysis by Deloitte Access Economists (DAE) estimates that the Australian economy could lose $3.4 trillion worth of GDP in today’s dollars by 2070 if climate change is unchecked.
More than 880,000 jobs could be lost in key industries like mining, construction and tourism, DAE found.
Regardless of any actual or believed political bias, you do have to ask the question whether the research would be any less accurate than the $60 BILLION ‘rounding error’ in JobKeeper last year, a process the cowboys must have agreed to after they studied the figures.
he was “perplexed there’s not more discussion about what’s happening in the UK and Europe with energy prices”. He went on:
A 250 per cent [price] increase since the start of the calendar year. A few days ago, 850,000 people losing their energy provider and a real concern over there about their capacity as they go into winter to keep themselves warm and even keep the food production processes going through
In a perfect demonstration of cherry picking usually producing the wrong answer, The Guardian looked at the same issue and found:
Britain was suffering more than most from global supply chain problems mainly because EU workers had left and strict Brexit immigration rules meant no more could now come in, Der Spiegel said, creating labour shortages “everywhere where the work is hard, dirty and poorly paid”.
Economically isolated, the country faces “an autumn of discontent for which Brexit is not the only reason, but a key one”, it said. “The government, however, insists none of this has anything to do with leaving the EU, sticking defiantly to its Brexit success story – even if its statements are getting more and more bizarre.”
So much for Joyce’s ‘wisdom’. Funnily enough (and further proving Joyce has no idea)
it was also “geographically selective”, with no reports of panic buying in Northern Ireland, which has an open border with an EU member state. Nonetheless, “the Brexiteers invariably find other culprits for bad news”, the paper said, and much of the UK media were more concerned by “the government’s competence in dealing with the crisis” than the “structural hurdles imposed by Britain’s new status”
The Australia Institute is correct. While it is possible to make cosmetic changes quickly, deep rooted structural change to infrastructure takes time. We can’t continue like we are until 2049 and somehow wave a magic wand and be at net zero emissions or better in 2050. It just doesn’t work like that. The sooner the climate change denier cowboys work that out, the better. It’s about time Morrison wrangled them into line.
At a critical time when farmer lobby groups should be showing leadership in order to maximise the opportunities that new climate-adapted agriculture can offer, the National Farmers Federation have decided to back with the climate-denying National Party and continue with ambit claims based on disinformation that undermines the credibility of Australia at Glasgow COP26.
Standing on her Namoi Valley property for the ABC camera the head of the National Farmers Federation (NFF), Fiona Simson states her position for giving farmers a fair go under any future international agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Key to this is idea repeated by the Nationals recently in the media by David Littleproud and Keith Pitt is to ‘reward farmers for their stewardship of the land’ but more than that as Fiona articulated to the ABC, farmers need ‘compensation’ for ‘doing the heavy lifting’ imposed on them through Kyoto Agreement, that being to retain bushland – which has resulted in a loss of income for farmers.
As Fiona put it, the obligations imposed on farmers under Kyoto has created a “festering sore created by statutory theft”. Essentially her claims follow the line that the Commonwealth made Kyoto commitments resulting in farmer’s property rights being taken away by the states to enforce these commitments, in doing so, halting land clearing and creating a surplus of credits.
As reported by the Guardian, the NFF says it supports an economy-wide aspiration of net zero emissions by 2050, but with two conditions. It says emissions reduction needs to be economically viable, and farmers must not be burdened by “unnecessary regulation”.
There is a lot to unpack here, but the NFF claims just don’t stack up.
The uptake of workable carbon sequestration schemes has been delayed
Currently carbon sequestration schemes (both for soil and vegetation) for landowners have had a limited rollout and impact. This has primarily been because the government’s failure till recently to link soil carbon with an income stream and has not provided credits for the retention of remnant vegetation, along with other practical issues of the schemes reducing their effectiveness. This has primarily been the fault of the recalcitrance of the National Party and the NFF who have generally been very cautious in supporting carbon-friendly methods.
The NFF has recently welcomed the carbon saving proposals of the Farmers for Climate Action but warned that it could not support any reforestation of ‘productive lands’, ie. lands with better soils that have suffered disproportionately higher levels of biodiversity loss.
Importantly, as reported recently in the Guardian, when the first vegetation laws to regulate land-clearing in NSW and Queensland were introduced, these had nothing to do with international carbon commitments but were due to concerns of widespread land-clearing and its impacts on biodiversity and water. Kyoto came some seven years after these laws were introduced. Despite this, Simson claimed that the government needed to compensate landholders for land clearing regulations that pre-dated the Kyoto period as a “goodwill exercise”.
Private land vegetation laws have not prevented land clearing
Despite the platitudes of Government sources and those who have accepted this dogma, the introduction of private land vegetation laws in the erly-1990s was not the end of land-clearing at all. While the initial introduction saw the levels fall to what may be viewed from an environmental perspective to acceptable levels (up to 1 million hectares a year in Queensland between 1988-1990), subsequent changes to laws in Queensland and NSW has seen levels rise. If we look at land clearing statistics since 2001, approximately 5 million hectares has been cleared Queensland, while 2.5 million hectares has been cleared in NSW in the same time (see WWF report here).
These figures include regrowth vegetation, but do not include illegal clearing undertaken outside the vegetation rules and largely unaccounted for in the official figures which is allowed clearing.
Emissions from Land use change still rising
According to the Government’s latest prediction in 2020, emissions from the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector (which includes land-clearing, or ‘forest converted to other uses’) went from a total contribution of 91 MtC02-e (second biggest contributor to electricity) in 2001 to a negative contribution as a net sink in 2020 (-18 MtCO2-e). How can this be, given the ongoing levels of land-clearing during this period with a more recent spike since 2016?
The LULCF category is broken down in the March 2021 update to the national emissions figures (below). According to the government, while grasslands, wetlands and croplands have remained more or less neutral, ‘land converted to forest’ (natural regrowth) and ‘forest land remaining forest’ have largely offset this loss from clearing. How this is the case from the graph is not clear.
Even so, the Government is predicting another rise in the LULUCF category to 2030 when it will be -5 MtCO2-e, a decrease of 13Mt equivalents (Table 2, p.13 of the 2020 Projections report).
Overall, the government states that:
“Emissions to 2030 are projected to grow four per cent above 2020 levels, driven by higher emissions from LNG production, increased transport activity, a declining forest sink … and growth in agricultural activity after a return to average seasonal conditions.”
The government is factoring in further expected carbon losses due to decline in vegetation and soil carbon. In other words, they are not at all serious about future on-farm carbon sequestration.
There has been minimal loss of ‘property rights’
A re-occurring claim by the farming lobby and the National Party is that farmers have lost property rights to secure Australia’s emissions targets. This claim arises from the assumption that farmers have every right to remove every tree and bush from their properties and that there exists no public interest which should stand in their way.
One way of looking at this is to examine to what extent land has been set aside from routine agricultural practice, or as lobbyists say, “locked up”. In fact, native vegetation laws in Queensland and NSW have to a large degree accommodated the assumptions of preserving property rights through a large number of exemptions which require no approval and an application process to be able to clear that makes most remnant vegetation and regrowth still open for clearing and modification.
In Queensland mapped ‘high risk’ zones may still be cleared upon application, though endangered regional ecosystems cannot be removed. In NSW, endangered ecosystems can be cleared under certain circumstances as this state has embraced a system of self-assessment, whereby oversight by government experts is no longer necessary.
While Queensland now relies upon prohibiting clearing from the most sensitive ecosystems, NSW relies more on conservation agreements, which are in fact, voluntary. Most private land conservation agreements entered into by landholders are now registered under the Biodiversity Conservation trust (BCT). Many of these are agreements with sunset clauses, (10-15 year agreements) while considerably fewer are ‘in perpetuity’. There are over 2,000 private land conservation agreements in NSW of various types suggesting a good uptake by landowners willing to enter such agreements.
The Commonwealth also enters into conservation agreements, but has made little contribution with only 25 such agreements currently on their books, most arising through legal actions against the landowner or by the odd large corporation as signs of goodwill.
So as the nation waits with bated breath as to the contents of the National Party’s ‘list of demands’ for Australia to take to Glasgow, ones wonders if it will contain the usual claims made by the private property and mining lobbies that have featured so strongly within the policy positions of the Party.
It has been stated in the media that senior government players have been signalling agriculture will likely be excluded from any heavy lifting on abatement – but not from the income streams associated with carbon sequestration. Setting up a carbon abatement scheme which provides incentive for landowners to retain remnant vegetation, improve soils and revegetated their properties should be the priority outcome.
However, given the ongoing farm wars based on essentially a re-write of history, misleading information and luke-warm commitments to farmers, will the position of the NFF and the National Party in fact jeopardise a legitimate voice for the agricultural sector and our chances of securing a forward-looking carbon plan for the agricultural sector? Judging by the past performance of these parties, only a fresh vision, such as championed by the Farmers for Climate Action is likely to give this country any credibility in the international sphere.
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