By 2353NM  

About 12 months ago, we were asking if the world could ever return to ‘normal’ post the pandemic. Some were looking for equitable economic reform, others were looking for significant environmental reforms and others were looking for improvement in an area close to their personal experience or belief systems. Most of us were hoping for a ‘new normal’ where the world would somehow address the issues that each of us are passionate about.

Unfortunately there seems to be a large group of people that are happy with the status quo and can’t wait to get back there. You could argue that Prime Minister Morrison is amongst this group, with his ‘gas lead’ recovery, social security payments returning to almost pre-pandemic levels, a lack of reform to industrial relations, continual victimisation of some refugees and ongoing corruption (which is really what ‘pork-barrelling’ is). Despite this, and much to Morrison’s consternation and dismay – probably because he isn’t controlling the narrative – there are signs of a ‘new normal’ in an area that no one saw coming.

At the end of January Morrison presented the Australian of the Year award to Grace Tame who was a leading campaigner for the repeal of Tasmania’s law prohibiting sexual assault victims from openly speaking about the violence inflicted on them. In February, Morrison’s tone-deaf comment that he had to be told by ‘Jen’ (his wife) that there was a good reason for the moral outrage over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in the Defence Minister’s Private Office, demonstrated how little attention he paid when announcing the Australian of the Year. You have to wonder if he read the brief (after all, he admits he didn’t read the claims against former Attorney-General Christian Porter before he sent it to the Police).

While Morrison’s comment will never rank up there with former Prime Minister Gillard’s ‘misogyny speech‘ it has reopened the discussion about sexual violence in Australia, despite Morrison ‘spinning’ his hardest to make the issue retreat in importance. As The Guardian article linked in this paragraph shows, the political reporters at the time of Gillard’s speech, some who still hold jobs in the press gallery today, completely ‘misread the room’ then as well.

By March, the media were discussing an increase in women discussing sexual assaults that were perpetrated on them, in some cases decades earlier. Higgins found the courage to share her story again and again of being raped by a senior male staffer in the Defence Minister’s personal office, together with the events afterwards that suggested to Higgins that the whole thing was going to be covered up. We also saw thousands of people parade down streets across the nation to draw people’s attention to the sexual abuse and violence perpetuated predominately on women.

Grace Tame has been using her fame wisely to discuss her story, with appearances at the National Press Club and television including ABCTV’s QandA and Network 10’s The Project. Brittany Higgins is continuing to tell her story, despite the probable personal cost of never working for a Coalition Minister again. When a former student of a private school in Sydney, Chanel Contos, asked on social media for stories from victims of abuse and violence perpetrated by school students, she was inundated. One of the private boys’ schools named in the testimonies of current and ex-school students was Brisbane Boys College. Their School Captain spoke on assembly on 18 March and probably scored his first by-line in The Guardian with an article entitled ‘Stop being boys, be human’

Boys, this speech today is different, and it is the hardest one I have ever had to write. Not because it is difficult, but because it is heartbreaking.

Too many of my friends, our friends, too many of my loved ones, your loved ones, and too many women around Australia are victims of sexual assault.

The narrative needs to change. Boys, it feels like no matter where we look, this issue is not at the forefront of everyone’s mind, but why not? Why is it like this?

and

Let me tell you the numbers. Every single week a man kills his partner or former partner. Before the age of 16, one in five women experience some form of sexual abuse. And 97% of sexual offences are from men.

This is not solely an issue of protecting women but an issue of educating men. Stop being boys, be human.

Every person in this room must not just be an advocate for equality, but in our every action and deed we have to be proactive in stopping the abuse. This starts with putting an end to slurs and derogatory comments about women. It means standing up to any man, no matter how big they are, if we see it happening. And we have to keep our mates accountable, no matter where it may be.

The full speech is available here:

In some cases women are abusive and violent to men. As Brisbane Boys College School Captain Mason Black suggests, it is a far less common occurrence then men inflicting violence on women.

The ‘new normal’ are people like Grace Tame, Brittany Higgins, Chanel Contos and Mason Black who are calling out disgusting behaviour that has been swept under the carpet for far too long in Australia. While world peace, equitable economics and a green revolution would have been beneficial outcomes from the pandemic, if treating all others as humans rather than potential conquests is ‘all’ we get – we’ve done alright.

What do you think?

By David C. Paull  

This government’s championing of a ‘gas-lead recovery’ for Australia in response to the COVID-19 pandemic sounds reasonable and pro-active to many in the public. But the blue-print for this Plan goes back further several years and as this article will show, was borne out of a desire by the gas sector to stay relevant amid growing evidence of harm to communities and the environment by this sector. The COVID-19 crisis and the economic hit Australia has endured has provided the perfect cover for this Plan to be dusted off, refined and rolled out for public consumption with the glitter of government sanction. But in doing so the Gas Cabal has revealed themselves in this last attempt to hijack the economy.

As previous revelations have shown, corruption lurks at the core of the gas sector who seem to have been the favoured child by Australian politicians and economists since they opened up the onshore Queensland gas-fields. From the start the mantra has been ‘gas is clean’, ‘gas is a transition fuel from coal’, ‘gas provides jobs and infrastructure for regions’. The fact we have now two ex-gas sector heavies parachuted into the Climate Change Authority does not change the growing amount of evidence of the profound impacts the sector has on greenhouse emissions – but is a revealing move.

Grant King has spent most of his time leading onshore gas development in Queensland with the Australian Pacific LNG joint venture, as head of Origin until he resigned in 2016. Before that he spent time with AGL, Boral and Contact Energy, APPEA (the leading lobby group for the gas sector), and the Energy Supply Association of Australia (who later rebranded as the Energy Users Association, in the minds of the Gas Cartel, users and suppliers are the same thing). King then took up the position as President of the Business Council of Australia (BCA), which he held to his recent appointment, at one point leading its ‘Infrastructure and Sustainable Growth Committee’. This committee was heavy with representatives from gas, aluminium and infrastructure companies, such as Origin, Santos, APA, AGL, Shell, BP, BG Group, Lend Lease and some of their financial backers, HSBC, Meryll Lynch and Macquarie Group.

There is no report from this committee available and any links are no longer found on the BCA website, but the composition of this committee indicate a likely intention to link Australia’s economic development with a growing gas sector.

But what about the greenhouse credentials of gas? Here’s where our second parachute into the Climate Change Authority comes in, Susie Smith. Like King, Smith has been a long-term employee of the gas industry in Australia, holding positions with Santos, more recently as their ‘Manager of Climate Change and Sustainability’ and has been the CEO of the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (AIGN) since March 2017, a mainly gas sector lobby group. Prior to this she was the Chairperson, representing Santos for over 13 years with the Association. Their goal is to ensure that their sector is a key player in any policy debate on energy and climate change and that Australia and business in Australia require a ‘differential’ and ‘fair’ approach to meeting carbon abatement targets.

Of course, even better if you can actually provide significant carbon abatement measures which would help justify a future use for gas. Such is the contention from Smith and King, who co-incidentally, co-authored a report only last year for the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, as part of an expert panel convened to look specifically at additional sources of ‘low cost abatement.’

And they found them, but not without a significant cost. What is being proposed is a ‘goal orientated co-investment program’, in other words, industry with its hand out. Remarkable when you consider the low levels of tax paid, royalty holidays and levels of public subsidy that has been thrown at this sector over the years. What technologies are we looking at? You don’t have to go through the report far to see the key examples they site are carbon capture and storage, industrial process heating and ‘hydrogen fuels for heavy vehicles’. And you don’t have to have a crystal ball to see that these sentiments are likely to be soon coming from our re-vamped Climate Change Authority. But what we won’t be hearing is the industry’s desire to greenwash their figures on fugitive emissions or their desire to avoid taking Scope 3 emissions into account.

King and Smith are trusted operators for the big players in the gas sector who have major expansions planned in the Northern Territory and Queensland, but the other cohort of gas up-and-comers are also being looked after. Particularly through Neville Power’s appointment to the COVID-19 Commission, now looking more like an unaccountable quasi-arm of government. His gas exploration company Strike Energy is one of several relative newcomers to the sector, such as Beach Energy and pipeline operators wanting to get a foothold like Vista and Epic. These companies are desperate for more greenfield onshore development or their future will be very short. Beach Energy is probably confident of getting some results, due in part to the ownership by Kerry Stokes, someone who is used to getting what he wants.

The COVID-19 Committee’s gas recovery plan owes a lot to that other special advisor, Australian and corporate idol, Andrew Nicholas Liveris AO. His appointment as a global trotting special energy and economic advisor to the both the Obama and Trump administrations and the Saudi King gave him all the credentials he needed to be picked by the Prime Minister. He is also Vice-chair of the Worley Services board, one of the biggest mining and petroleum service providers in the world, a company likely to benefit from any gas recovery.

His messages to the world are what made his Dow Chemical Company a corporate leader; diversify, value-add and cut regulation. Messages well received in Australia, as this is what it will take to make gas appear more rational, feed into other industries like bricks and cement, fertilizer and hydrogen production, despite each with its own level of additional greenhouse emissions.

Dow Chemical was also contracted to write an energy futures discussion paper by the US Study Centre in 2018. For those who don’t know the US Study Centre is subsidized by the American Australian Association, a pro-American business lobby, set up in 1948 by Sir Keith Murdoch, the same year he also helped set up the Institute of Public Affairs. Among other big names like Pratt and Murdoch we find Mr Liveris, currently a patron of the Association. The paper states in relation to Australia’s future energy market:

“… Institutional arrangements and property rights, free markets, infrastructure development and regulatory and policy settings all play an important role. The architecture of Australian’s energy markets also require reform, if not transformation. Get the institutional and policy settings right, and the market will transform physical abundance into economic abundance and put downward pressure on energy prices and emissions.”

That is of course assuming vast amounts of new gas are opened up, not that there should be any impairment if we follow the Trump lead and demolish environmental regulation completely. What this paper doesn’t mention are the environmental, social and greenhouse costs, but then again neither does the Morrison Government.

Looks like this is it. The Gas Cabal’s final roll of the dice, and it couldn’t be any more stacked in their favour. But Australia isn’t the US, quite yet, arguably, they are too late to save the gas sector from impending market collapse and despite all the rhetoric, it is looking increasingly like the gas emperor has no clothes in this rapidly changing energy sector.

By Andrew Wicks  

According to Scott Morrison, he never criticised the EU. This directly contradicts a statement that he made two hours earlier, one that criticised the EU.

Back in March, Health Minister Greg Hunt rejected a potential delay in the vaccine rollout after Europe blocked one shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccine. At the time, he said, “we are very clear that this does not affect the pace of the rollout.”

A month later, we know the opposite to be true. However, the mental gymnastics present goes right to the top.

At 8am, the Morrison government put out the following statement: “Of the 3.8 million AstraZeneca (AZ) Australia has pre-purchased from overseas supplies only 700,000 have been delivered to date. AZ has not been able to secure an export licence from Europe to send the remaining doses, and they know they would never be approved by the European Commission (EC).”

As journalist Samantha Maiden noted, “… the Morrison government has slammed the European Commission over its denial they didn’t block COVID vaccines to Australia as ‘semantics’”.

Wind the clock forward, however, and Scott Morrison has fronted the media and said that, “First of all, I want to stress that at no time did I make any comment about the actions of the European Union, nor did I indicate any of the background reasons for the lack of supply that we have received from those contracted doses. And so, any suggestion that I, in any way, made any criticism of the European Union would be completely incorrect.”

Fortunately, a pioneering reporter posed the following question to Scott Morrison:

Trust in the Government is critical for Australians to actually take up the vaccine. In recent weeks, we’ve seen blame-shifting with the states. We’re now bickering with the EC about supply issues and along with the issues with blood clotting, which still remains unclear to a lot of people. Are you concerned that the Government’s handling of this may contribute to vaccine hesitancy among the population? And what are you going to do about that?

Morrison responded thusly: “No, I’m not. And I think much of the conflation of the issues you’ve raised, I think, is more in appearance than in fact. I mean, all I’ve simply done today is set out very clearly that 3.1 million vaccines didn’t arrive in Australia. That’s just a simple fact. It’s not a dispute. It’s not a conflict. It’s not an argument. It’s not a clash. It’s just a simple fact.

“And I’m simply explaining to the Australian public that supply issues is (sic) what’s constraining and has constrained, particularly over the recent months, the overall rollout of the vaccine. Look, it happens before every single National Cabinet. You all write stories about how everybody is disagreeing with each other and we come to National Cabinet as always and I’ll stand before you on Friday and talk about the things that are agreed.”

*****

In Morrison’s world, he didn’t say what he said. The states and the federal government are getting along harmoniously, and criticism of the rollout doesn’t actually exist. What is the above, if not textbook gaslighting?

Dr Jennifer Sweeton, a Stanford and Harvard-trained trauma specialist, defined it as “a ‘sneaky, difficult-to-identify form of manipulation (and in severe cases, emotional abuse)’ that results in the gaslightee questioning his or her own perception, experiences, and even reality. In severe cases, this psychological warfare can result in the victim becoming dependent on the gaslighter for his or her own sense of reality.”

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

By Ad astra  

Note the date in your diary – 15 March 2021 – because the date itself is not memorable. You will never forget the day though – the day thousands of angry women gathered outside Parliament House in their March4Justice campaign to highlight the appalling misogyny and mistreatment of women, both in and outside parliament. You will never forget that our PM was invited to join them, to listen to them, to hear their stories, to empathise with them, to feel their pain, their anguish. Neither will you ever forget that he chose, quite deliberately, to stay within the safety of his Prime Ministerial office, instead offering them an invitation to join him in his castle, where he feels safe. As he often reminds us, he is the PM after all, and avoids attending such rallies, hinting his safety might be at risk, a proposition denied strenuously by Cait Kelly in her New Daily article: Women’s march organisers hit back at claim Morrison would have been unsafe.

Women will not forget.

Already enraged, they were further angered by the insensitive remarks of the very person they most wanted to listen, and really hear – their Prime Minister – the most powerful person in the land, the one most able to respond positively with all the strength and resources of the nation’s federal parliament. Is there any other person in this country that is more enabled to make telling decisions that could counter the chronic misogynist malaise that afflicts our parliament – a malady in clear view to those with wide-open eyes to see. Those who have been living under a rock can catch up by viewing the 22 March episode of Four Corners: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Does our PM, the Honourable Scott Morrison, MP, really believe that come the next federal election these women will ‘forget’ his ineptitude, his tone-deafness, his arrogant dismissal of their concerns? Does he really believe they are so fearful of his authority, so naïve, that they will be forgiving?

Also, does he expect these women to forget that his so-called ‘Minister for Women’, Marise Payne, was too busy to walk a few paces from the safety of her office to join the protestors to hear their anguish and their pleas for a better deal? Will they swallow her lame excuse, set out so revealingly in the West Australian? Does she think voters are so stupid, so naïve?

Women are queuing up to express their disgust at PM Morrison’s behaviour. Cait Kelly has this to say:

The organisers of Monday’s women’s rally outside Parliament House have hit back at a Liberal MP’s claim that Prime Minister Scott Morrison couldn’t attend the march because of security issues.

On Saturday Liberal MP Jason Falinski told the ABC that Scott Morrison couldn’t join the March4Justice rally for security reasons.

“He is the Prime Minister of the country and there are security issues around those sorts of issues, about him going into big crowds,” Mr Falinski said.

But organisers of the protest have hit back, stressing it was a safe space and that the invitation to attend had been extended across the political spectrum. “Women’s spaces are meant to be safe spaces,” insisted organiser Janine Hendry.

“The marches were inclusive, respectful, and kindness was present. When members of parliament and senators joined the Canberra crowd we welcomed them with cheers and applause. Both Mr Morrison and Minister for Women Marise Payne refused to attend the march, instead inviting the organisers to a private meeting. Their offer was rejected before the rally on Monday morning, with Ms Hendry insisting the leaders should come out and recognise the thousands of attendees. “We have already come to the front door, now it’s up to the government to cross the threshold and come to us. We will not be meeting behind closed doors.”

As if to leave no doubt in the mind of the electorate about his appalling tin ear, he redoubled this behavioural trait during his March 23 press conference, when following still more revelations of the revolting behaviour of parliamentary staffers, he sought to ‘explain’ his own behaviour, ‘tears’ in his eyes, with still more references to the most important women in his life – Jen and his girls. In telling words, Angela Priestly exposes this charade in her article in Women’s Agenda: Scott Morrison gave a powerful speech on ‘hearing women’, but then failed on substance.

Then, to reinforce in voters’ minds his ineptitude and his unsuitability for the high office of Prime Minister, he foolishly resorted to his habitual defensive strategy, taking aim at News Corp, upon which he relies for support, accusing the organisation of harassment, only to find he was wrong: “Right now, you would be aware that in your own organisation that there is a person who has had a complaint made against them of harassment of a woman in a women’s toilet.” News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller soon hit back: ”Prime Minister Scott Morrison was wrong today to claim an investigation is under way into a complaint accusing an employee of harassment against a woman in a female toilet. No complaint has been received and News Corp and Sky News are not dealing with a complaint.” Touché.

Even as this piece is being written, more damning accounts of PM Morrison’s inept behaviour arrive by the hour! Better stop writing before it becomes encyclopaedic. No more weighty words are needed. Time will test the prediction that Scott Morrison’s government, like the proverbial smelly fish, is rotting from the head down, and will lose the next election. 15 March 2021 though will stick in our memory as the day the rot began.

Cut-off from overseas travel, Australians still have a wide choice of options for the Post-Covid future. Labor’s Special Platform Conference has opted for a cautious reform agenda in both domestic and foreign policies. Of crucial importance are the conventional resolutions on economic and foreign policies.

The positive traction from this national virtual policy conference will probably come from commitments made from the empowerment of women and environmental sustainability in the challenges posed by global climate change.

Conference made some minor amendments to the draft policy platform. These changes will soon work their way into the final document. I have relied on the draft policy document for my comments.

Building Australia’s Future Prosperity

Commitment to balanced private and public sector investment receives over sixty mentions in the draft platform offered to the national policy conference. There is emphasis on socially just government intervention to advance productivity and skills training.

The specifics of Labor’s tax responses will be determined after the federal LNP’s budget on 11 May 2021.

While an election in the second half of 2021 is not out of the question, most political pundits have opted for the possibility of another budget in 2022 before the election date is announced.

This makes it logical for the policy conference to be long on rhetorical commitments and short on details as the Australian and global economies are still in a volatile state.

Australia’s Place in the World

The conference has reaffirmed the fundamental importance of strategic relationships with the USA through the ANZUS Treaty. There is a concession to rebooting our economic ties with China despite significant areas of disagreement over human rights. A more moderate stand on relations with Taiwan, Hong Kong and the minorities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region would soon cool the current tensions. The National Policy Conference supported such initiatives.

Labor shares the LNP government’s commitment to greater self-reliance in defence. Defence expenditure is to be close to two per cent of GDP.

There are concessions to visits by military aircrafts and vessels from friendly countries including nuclear powered vessels through ports with adequate safety facilities. The document is silent on whether vessels in transit can carry nuclear weapons.

Commitment to Sustainability

Action on climate change has a strong focus to make Australia an alternative energy superpower through Carbon Capture and Storage Programmes (CCSs). The draft policy document noted a cut-back by the federal LNP in CCS commitments approaching half a billion dollars. In contemporary politics, this commitment to sustainability is at all times in the interests of improved economic productivity and employment generation.

Funding commitments to reduce the costs of electric cars worth less than $77,565 are positive initiatives. There are also policy compromises on support for new gas projects and protection of metallurgical coal exports with support from the AWU and CFMEU. Investment in 400 community batteries to will also support the uptake of electric cars.

Gender Equality and Women’s Rights

Empowerment of women is a fundamental principle of Labor values which permeates commitment to the descendants of first nation Australians and to people of more recent multicultural values.

The crisis in Australian politics over the gender divide is already evident in trendlines in Essential Polling Research. Scott Morrison is still the preferred prime minister across the board gender divides in the sample (Poll Bludger, 31 March 2021).

Proactive Pragmatism

Labor’s reform agenda is underwritten by pragmatic and responsible tax policies which end an over-commitment by the federal LNP to its own support base from so-called Mum and Dad investors:

The Motivational Challenge in the Wider Electorate

It is difficult to excite the electorate in formal political debate with both major parties close on primary votes in the 37-39 per cent range. Even with Green preferences, Labor’s primary vote needs to be 40 per cent to secure a strong mandate from the electorate. Even on Labor’s current 38 per cent in primary votes, Labor has a favourable 52-48 per cent margin after the distribution of Green preferences.

The current Green vote comes at a cost in those inner-city electorates and senate spots which are highly contested with Labor.

Much will depend on the effects of the removal of JobKeeper in an economy which is only in partial recovery from the COVID-19 recession of 2020.

Any further losses to the LNP government’s working majority in both houses rekindles the prospect of an early election before economic conditions deteriorate.

However, the National Policy Conference has not been overwhelmed by critical media coverage from high profile ABC commentators like Anthony Green and Annabel Crabb.

Meanwhile, Australians could be facing another khaki election as in the mid-1960s. This macabre trend distanced the electorate from that close election result in 1961 when an LNP victory in the Brisbane electorate of Moreton offset the possibility of a hung parliament.

Federal Labor is staying on the Straight and Narrow Path with the Biden Administration when wisdom calls for a spark of national independence in our economic and strategic relationships with China as the world’s emergent global power. This is a trend which no amount of LNP election rhetoric can erase.

It is for Labor to improve our relations with our Asian superpower first and foremost before the deterioration in relations becomes a permanent strategic reality to the cheers of the global corporate military and industrial complexes with their generous financial support to think-tanks like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute:

Image from Lockheed Martin

By TBS Newsbot

Scott Morrison pledged to have the country vaccinated by October, starting with four million by March 31. He’s since changed both targets.

At the start of the year, Scott Morrison set the organs of Australia’s health system a pure marketing challenge. The entire population would be vaccinated by October. Doing some quick maths, and that’d mean twenty million people would receive two doses in eight months. The first marker of success, per Scott Morrison, would be 4 million Australians vaccinated by March 31.

So far, we’ve managed to vaccinate 600,000, which is about 15% of the original target. In response, the government has moved the goalposts, stating that they’ll now reach that mark by the end of April. We’ll also no longer be fully vaccinated by October.

However, to meet that target, we’ll have to vaccinate 121,400 a day.

As we reported in February, “Prime Minister Scott Morrison has suggested the rollout capacity will start at around 80,000 doses per week and increase from there. That’s 16,000 a day (over five-day weeks), well short of the required 200,000 a day. The planned peak capacity hasn’t been announced, but even back-of-the-beer-mat calculation would suggest a minimum of 167,000 vaccines per day to give two doses each to 20 million Australians in the eight months between March and October 2021. The longer it takes to reach such capacity, the higher that daily number will get — or we will not reach the target vaccination percentage this year.”

An unrealistic target is one factor, but the rollout has also been impacted by circumstance. Beyond the international supply issues, they have been errors, booking issues, and a general vagueness around who gets what when. Indeed, doctors told publications that they were beating their heads “against a wall” due to issues with the rollout’s implementation.

This week was punctuated by two clusters in Queensland, purportedly spread by unvaccinated health workers. As it stands, Queensland is now experiencing a three-day lockdown, with the known cases up to 15.

Despite all this, Catherine Bennett, the chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, is hopeful. In conversation with The Guardian, she said that the numbers will grow “exponentially” as our rollout has been anything but “usual”.

In February, a group of UNSW researchers offered a different take. “It seems clear that to deliver at the scale needed to meet government targets won’t be possible through GPs and pharmacies alone. What’s needed are mass vaccination sites as proposed in the 2018 NSW Health Influenza Pandemic Plan. In a dedicated centre, trained nurses could vaccinate at a rate of between 80-100 people per hour. A similar approach in the UK has seen conference centres, sports stadiums, churches and mosques all co-opted as mass vaccination hubs, to great effect,” they noted.

This article was originally published on The Big Smoke.

By 2353NM  

Inaction on climate change is already costing Australia’s farmers countless dollars, and urgent political action is needed to avoid more extreme droughts, fires and floods, according to a group of farmers who don’t agree with the statements of Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, Senator Matt Canavan, former Party leader Barnaby Joyce and others in the National Party – who’s claim to relevance is representing the people in ‘regional Australia’.

Prime Minister Morrison recently announced an aspiration for Australia to be a nation that emits net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. As we’ve pointed out before

Every state in Australia, as well as 73 nations, 398 cities, 786 businesses and 16 investors have indicated that while a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 is not easy, they intend to get there.

Morrison’s stated aspiration is similar to his pronouncements on Australia’s COVID19 response – stand up slightly after the real decision makers have worked out what to do, make a wishy-washy statement that has some relevance to the matter at hand and bask in the reflected glory of the successes of others. Even when the issue is solely a Federal issue such as quarantine for potentially infectious people coming into the country or the management of carbon emissions, Morrison is quick to abrogate responsibility to ‘the states’, ‘the market’ or ‘the regulator’ but quicker to claim responsibility when something implemented by others due to federal government inaction works as intended.

However, this time round, the ‘country bumpkins’ from the conservative rump of Morrison’s Coalition Government are upset. As David Crowe points out in the Nine Media newspaper titles, the ‘country bumpkins’ don’t believe the science and want to put one of their own, Barnaby Joyce, back into the leadership role of the National Party.

The ‘country bumpkins’ are building a straw man (something they might be good at if they really had any experience in their claimed constituency) by claiming the cost of a $30 carbon price on every tonne of burps and farts from the nation’s cow herd, then claimed this would cost farmers $70,000 each. As David Crowe goes on to point out – Morrison ruled out a carbon tax the previous day. The argument is a furphy, but watch the ‘country bumpkins’ claim that their hard work behind the scenes has saved regional Australia from an absolute catastrophe (and tearing down the straw man they constructed – the real point of the exercise). The Guardian recently presented an analysis on how the adults over the other side of the Tasman are managing a transition to a ‘net-zero’ emissions economy by 2050 – and it does include addressing every tonne of ‘burps and farts’ from cattle.

Fortunately a representative group of those who really understand and run successful businesses in regional Australia disagree with their alleged representatives – and demonstrate that they are not the ‘country bumpkins’ in this discussion

“In 2019, the last year of the drought, Australia imported wheat,” said Charlie Prell, a sheep and wind farmer from Crookwell and chair of Farmers for Climate Action.

“The potential impact of climate change on food security, not just pricing but the availability, is dramatic – the wheat fields [sic] are going through the floor.”

Mr Prell stressed he was “not a zealot” but a farmer who didn’t want to see his communities suffer the consequences of unmitigated climate change.

The National Farmers Federation also supports a target of ‘net-zero’ by 2050

The industry is making strong headway in reducing its emissions, with red meat expected to be carbon neutral by 2030, pork by 2025, and work underway for grains and dairy.

Mr Prell knows about this first hand – on his sheep farm he has wind turbines, which creates another revenue stream that’s not seasonal.

… and Ernst and Young have found that if nothing is done by 2070, the Australian economy will have a COVID19 sized hole each and every year.

Either a ‘net-zero’ by 2050 target is policy (despite the weasel wording) or it isn’t. Morrison has done nothing to convince any of us that the environmental statement was anything more than smoke and mirrors. He certainly hasn’t stood up to put the ‘country bumpkins’ back in their boxes, or to ensure everyone was on board before making the announcement.

If you want to argue the ‘country bumpkins’ aren’t in the same party as Morrison so he can’t control them, technically you have a point however federally the Liberal Party and the National Party have been joined at the hip for decades. What spin will Morrison and the ‘country bumpkins’ employ when the EU and possibly the USA decide to put a ‘cross border carbon tax’ on nations that are seen as environmental freeloaders – something that is far more likely than you might think.

What do you think?

By 2353NM  

We really shouldn’t be surprised that Facebook banned news coverage from their platform for around a week in Australia recently. Their ‘real’ objective isn’t to be the world’s back fence that everyone leans on to have a chat, it is to sell advertising that is based on your interests. They analyse your interests based on what you don’t scroll past or look at on other webpages that have an interface with Facebook, store the information then go to advertisers and promote that 10,000 people living in the state of Victoria with an interest in poetry will be aware of your new poetry book if you buy some publicity using their targeted advertising system. The targeted advertising they sell is quite profitable, and effectively they have the market to themselves. After all, if you want to check in on family and friends on an alternate social media platform, you have to convince your family and friends to move to that platform as well.

So, when the government of a middle ranking, western democracy threatens that income, Facebook responded as it does best, by throwing all their toys out of the playpen. Certainly there were other options and negotiation eventually won the day, but you have to remember where Facebook came from to understand their mindset. Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook) wrote a computer program to rate the ‘hotness’ of the girls at his university and shared it with his fellow Harvard University students, until the University closed the system down.

The morals and ethics behind the company seem to have stayed the same as Facebook became legitimate and grew. Until shamed into action, the company saw nothing wrong with Donald Trump’s misinformation campaign, providing the platform for a number of terrorists to broadcast live the killing and inflicting of serious injury to others or re-publishing ‘information’ about crackpot theories such as COVID-19 vaccinations being used to inject 5G receivers in your body on their site. They eventually get around to identifying, and either moderate or delete the offending posts. It’s hard to ignore that the ban on news coverage in Australia was immediate, poorly targeted and removed posts from organisations such as Queensland Health, 1800 Respect, SA Health and even Communications Minister Fletcher’s favourite example, North Shore Mums from view. Typically, Facebook again rolled someone out to say they were sorry that the implementation was flawed, but in the next breath went on to blame someone else for their failings. In short, the business model is, “we’ll do what we want, you will be grateful that you get anything and by the way, it’s our way or the highway.”

It’s our way or the highway is a characteristic shared by Facebook and the Morrison Government. At least they should have understood each other’s bargaining position. As Katherine Murphy recently pointed out in The Guardian

My colleague David Marr has noted recently Morrison’s reluctance to be transparent dates from his “on water matters” days in the immigration portfolio. Marr noted during those days as immigration minister, with the “uncomfortable piece of set decoration” General Angus Campbell at his side – “neither man answered a single question that mattered”.

Not answering a single question that mattered seems to also be a policy that Morrison has carried into his Prime Ministership. Last month, The Monthly published a long article that listed a number of occasions where the Morrison Government’s senior members have been less than open and transparent with us, the people that pay for the excesses and demonstrations of absolute power.

Commencing with the premise that in the Coalition Government

Private-sector leadership is sought and the public service is mocked. Economic stimulus is funnelled through business while government agencies survive in a state of austerity, under constant threat of “efficiency” cuts. Under a Coalition with few plans for government beyond diminishment, but a fierce sense of entitlement to power, the eventual devolution of standards was inevitable.

The Monthly’s editor, Nick Feik concludes by suggesting

The next time a scandal breaks – and one will break soon – the public might be outraged, but will be neither shocked nor surprised. This is simply what happens with a government that pursues those who keep it accountable, ignores ministerial codes of conduct, is unconcerned by conflicts of interest, is intent on shielding its workings from the public, and distrusts its own agencies and institutions. To the Coalition government, citizens are, as the saying goes, like mushrooms: to be kept in the dark and fed bull***t.

While Feik has a point, it seems that in February a scandal broke in the halls of Parliament House that even Morrison can’t silence by convening an enquiry or an investigation that reports back long after the caravan has moved on. This time, the scandal is coming from within the halls of power on Capital Hill.

Brittany Higgins, a former employee of the Ministerial Staff of Minister Linda Reynolds, alleged that she was raped in the Ministerial Offices after a party in 2019. It seems that at the time, the area was cleaned rather than protected to enable Police to gather evidence, Higgins was ‘counselled’ that a Police investigation leading to a criminal prosecution would be detrimental to her current and future career prospects and the Coalition would arrange a Parliamentary investigation. Higgins publicly revealed the rape by a senior staffer in February 2021 after the promised investigation had seemingly been taken down a dark corridor and strangled. Three other Parliament House staffers have since come forward and made similar allegations against the same senior staffer who seemed to have a magical ability to be able to move to a different Minister’s Offices when things got ‘difficult’. Friends of another woman (who has since taken her own life allegedly due in part to her horrific experience) have released documentation that claims that a current Federal senior Minister raped her in 1988, prior to entering Parliament.

For the record – any form of assault is never acceptable.

Morrison’s response was also not acceptable. He was purely transactional (start an enquiry, yada, yada, yada) until his wife had a chat with him and pointed out the moral and ethical concerns of the nation by suggesting he should reflect how he would feel if one of his daughters was sexually assaulted. Incredibly, Morrison told the press of the conversation so you could question if he really sees the poor behaviour and lack of morals or ethics in his actions. And well done Mrs Morrison for ‘having the discussion’.

Facebook has demonstrated its absolute power by removing newsfeeds from its platform because it could, or the numerous examples of ‘pork-barrelling’ discussed in The Monthly occurred because the Coalition was exercising its absolute power. While both alleged rape perpetrators have the right to protest their innocence until the matters are tested in the appropriate Courts of Law, the number of individuals who have bravely told their stories suggest there is something to see here. It seems there is considerable evidence that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

What do you think?