Should the cowboys rule?
By 2353NM
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 CNN reported 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.
Joyce is clutching at straws, claiming
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.
What do you think?
This article was originally published on The Political Sword
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14 comments
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New England Cocky
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Michael Taylor
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GL
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2353NM
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Michael Taylor
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Terence Mills
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Harry Lime
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BB
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Henry Rodrigues
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Phil Pryor
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GL
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GL
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Keith
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Joe Carli
Return to home page”Australia’s policy is being dictated by” – a self confessed adulterer, practising alcoholic, fornicator, sexual harasser, misogynist self-serving con-man.
Scummo 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.
”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.”
”ost 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.”
Now the bosses are concerned about climate change will the puppet politicians dance to the tune of the foreign owned multinational mining corporations …. or continue to push their personal pecuniary interests against the best interests of Australian voters in country electorates?
DO NOT expect any change unless there is a change of government …..
I’m looking forward to a photo op of Morrison’s curried haggis.
Michael,
I don’t really want to see photos of a Scummo hot vomit (with or without carrots). His versions of a curry look revolting.
The Bananababy party are there only to serve at the beck and call of Gina and other miners. Little people are useful as tools when there are elections or they need distractions and voting weapons to throw at Scummo when he steps out of line.
@NEC – you forgot to mention in your assessment of Joyce that he isn’t even a very good accountant if he doesn’t know the difference between “gross zero’ (I.e. there is nothing left) and nett zero (i.e. overall there is a zero balance).
@Michael Taylor – thats a mental image I don’t want to think about.
@GL – Ironic that the Coalition goes to each election warning about the dangers of minority government when either the Liberals or Nationals never get a majority of seats in Parliament, isn’t it.
2353, expect anything. There will be photo ops.
Have you noticed that the only concession that Morrison has so far revealed following his negotiations with the Nationals is the return of Keith Pitt to the Cabinet.
Apart from being a National Party boofhead, Pitt is the bright spark who proposed the controversial $250 billion loan facility for the resources sector in return for National party backing for a net zero emissions target.
Pitt was serious about using public funds to lend money to coalminers who aren’t able to secure financing through conventional sources.
Pitt sees it as totally appropriate for Australian taxpayers to be stuck with stranded assets and dud loans to support declining industries.
This is appalling opportunism on the part of the Nationals and a demonstration of Morrison’s weakness.
The Liar and his rag bag of moronic Nats have net zero credibility,and they made it in a ‘canter”
“It’s about time Morrison wrangled them into line”
WTF… Morrison can’t even wrangle a back yard chook raffle. Morrison has already sold his arse to Bananaboy Joyce.
IT’S TIME Morrison and his cowboys are lined up at the OK Corral for the final showdown and good riddance!
The look on the fornicator’s face is representative of a nasty backward looking uneducated thug (one of Hitler’s brownshirts), who’s got Scummo by the balls and he’s revelling in it. The real power behind the throne.
Scummo is the front man, the marketing prick who only cares about the $550,000 he pockets every year. Murdoch just wants the coalition to get through this and get re-elected. This is what all this drama and faux bullshit tantrums is all about.
They’re bastards to the core, every single one of them.
The conservatives have been organising a load of lying, cheating, conniving, jiving, bullshitting propaganda for general consumption, especially as we are to be shamed and disgraced internationally by the Pathetic Misfit from Backstabberyville. Articles today are available by Hughes and Steffen and by Michael Keating, in various publications, and we Australians are badly positioned to do well, be honest, share loads and achieve results, all the while a fellatio friendly fraudy podpolisher named K Pitt has returned to cabinet. Joyce, Canavan, Fat George and others are primitive pathetic of poisoning the planet, and the fat frau of the west is one of many who would profit greedily in uncaring greed. The country party rump of rubbishites run a government of sponsored greedites, all to run our nation into the ground and make us look ridiculous and childish, unfairly and possible fatally. It STINKS. International efforts will stall, leaders will not turn up, Biden and Johnson cannot be understood at times let alone trusted, and we are set to be ridiculed, a picture of a nation’s “leader” with a lump of coal for a joke…seen now by everyone. Behold, the self defeating hypocrite.
The super duper rubber LNP climate ball, with guaranteed never stop bouncing power, is getting a real work out with this piece of crap from Scotty from Marketing.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/net-zero-by-2050-plan-uniquely-australian-morrison-20211026-p5937b.html
That’s not a plan it’s, to paraphrase a line from The Goon Show: It’s a plan of a plan of a plan.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f785a053b097f5054fa0e1b09c1d7edee39440f5/0_292_2075_1383/master/2075.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=998e954df4adaa539a4f5cd3eb953775
Either that or it’s The Donald eight page budget from a couple of years ago with a new cover created by the master of marketing himself. Bloody joke no matter which way you look at it!
Not long ago the International Energy Agency stated that no new coal mines should be commissioned, so what do the LNP do — approve more coal mines. Climate change kills people, the LNP apparently want to see that continue at a quicker rate. People die through extreme events amplified by climate change, also health impacts created through are deadly for numerous people.
Morrison will not fool the leaders meeting at Glasgow. No legislation to lock in any kind of goal for 2030 displays a climate change denial view, and lack of leadership..
In all of my 50 years of voting there has never been a government as bad.
The LNP climate plan…: “We have the technology”.
“LNP climate plan. A plan barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic plan. Better than before.”
— The Sixty Billion Dollar Plan, Opening Narration