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The Greens say that with the benefit of hindsight

Monday 2 December was the 10th Anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s Climate Change policy being voted down in the Senate. It was marked with speeches from Anthony Albanese, Ged Kearney, Josh Burns, Patrick Gorman, Pat Conroy, and Tanya Plibersek.

Last week saw the 10th Anniversary of the Greens rejection of Labor’s attempt to pass an emissions trading scheme and in so doing put in train a series of events that were to bring great shame on our nation.

Of course, with the benefit of hindsight the Greens may not have made the decision together with the Coalition to defeat Labor’s CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) in the Senate in 2009.

It was a decision at the time that was a “massive error of political judgement” that would prove to have consequences far beyond that of the environment but also on how we conducted our democracy.

“Australia’s carbon emissions would be more than 200m tonnes lower and electricity prices would be cheaper if the Greens had supported the carbon pollution reduction scheme a decade ago, the Labor frontbencher Pat Conroy says.”

Together with Tony Abbott’s decision to repeal Labor’s ‘carbon tax’ a few years later, they are arguably the two worst policy decisions ever made by the Australian parliament.

The result is that a decade on we still have no national energy or environmental policies and all sides of the debate continue to argue matters of science for which they have no qualifications and repeat the same arguments that they have already had with the same outcomes. No doubt an exercise in dumbing-down the intelligence of our citizenry with debate lasting a decade leaving one speechless.

The ability of thinking human beings to blindly embrace what they are being told without referring to evaluation and the consideration of scientific fact, truth and reason, never ceases to amaze me. It is tantamount to the rejection of rationale explanation.

It is a debate, however, that would eventually come back to bite them on the bum. The past year (especially since the election) the tide of public opinion has sided with the view that serious action against climate change needs to be taken.

When kids are leaving the classroom to protest, and the effects of climate change being evidenced; the science now beyond rebuttal and communities demanding action Scot Morrison is finding himself trapped in his own “Trumpian” lies.

People are now resentful of his ‘do nothing’ approach.

Even Royal Banking Commissioner Haynes has weighed in with a stinging rebuke of the government and big business on their do nothing approach to the problem.

Hayne said that:

“… the country’s “opaque” decision-making processes were seen by the public as “skewed, if not captured” by powerful vested interests, while leaders were “unable to conduct reasoned debates about policy matters.”

And as if it couldn’t get worse finally the truth has come out publicly as to why Morrison has been so smug about Australia meeting its Kyoto targets.

As I have written many times, they intend using credits given to us as a form of encouragement to join Kyoto in the first negotiations.

The current meeting is debating whether to revoke the rule that made credits possible.

Using or not using credits is a moral argument. Without them we cannot reach our target and proves beyond doubt that we haven’t pulled our weight. In the eyes of the world we will be looked upon as international freeloaders.

Australia used to once care about what the world thought of us but now we couldn’t seem care less.

Pat Conroy went on to say that:

“As a result, Australia is still in the midst of a ‘climate war’ with no real climate policy and has higher emissions today than under a scenario in which the CPRS was implemented.”

He conceded that Labor had also made mistakes in its handling of the vexed issue of climate policy, Conroy said the party should have gone to a double dissolution election in 2010 after the defeat of the CPRS.

On that he is correct. They probably would have conceded some seats but still have won.

The Greens in their stubbornness to get what they wanted – with the benefit of hindsight – would have realised that had the CPRS been implemented, emissions for 2020 would have been:

reduced to 459m tonnes compared to the 540m tonnes projected by the department, which are on track to keep rising to 563m tonnes by 2030.

Had the Greens voted for the bill we would have saved the nation much political angst; we would have been world leaders and the economic rewards would, by now, be flowing into government coffers. How incredibly stupid we have been.

My thought for the day

On the subject of climate change, think about this: If we fail to act and disaster results, then massive suffering will have been aggravated by stupidity.

 

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37 comments

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  1. New England Cocky

    “[T]he 10th Anniversary of the Greens rejection of Labor’s attempt to pass an emissions trading scheme and in so doing put in train a series of events that were to bring great shame on our nation. ….. Together with Tony Abbott’s decision to repeal Labor’s ‘carbon tax’ a few years later, they are arguably the two worst policy decisions ever made by the Australian parliament.”

    Perhaps it is time for the Greens to confess to being the left wing of the Liarbral Party. They whinge about getting more votes than the self-serving nat$ while winning only ONE SEAT in the House of Reps and somehow this means Australian democracy is flawed in an unidentified manner, the facts remain that the party leader is a medical doctor trained at community expense leading a party determined to be the left wing of Australian politics from their middle class background.

    There may be many sound policies that would improve our community but these are lost in the uncompromising fundamentalist approach; “our way or no way”. So far today’s sad memorial demonstrates that position perfectly.

    But how does displacing Labor make sense? The geographic distribution of Greens members and supporters is nowhere near the 156 electorates in the Lower House. Rather there are concentrations in inner metropolitan slum suburbs that are recently re-discovered real estate gold mines for the middle classes.

    This middle class re-coccupation of the inner city from the outer suburbs means many Greens supporters live in basement cellars from where they can see across the wide brown land to the pumped hydro power developments in distant regional centres and object loudly and successfully because they are offended by the water pipes of the development.

  2. John Lord

    In a nutshell.. NEC.

  3. Ken Fabian

    With the benefit of hindsight, Labor could have done differently and gotten a deal with The Greens. To me it looked like Labor under Rudd was willing to water down climate policy to the point of pointlessness to get agreement with the LNP but unwilling to even discuss the bill with The Greens let alone consider strengthening it to the point of effectiveness.

    Labor could be bringing up the successes at dealing with The Greens under Gillard – those that try doing better than those that don’t – but this renewed distancing, in reminiscence of Rudd, reinforcing the near absolute majority Labor/LNP coalition for coal and sidelining the climate issue for another term requires they look past the successes to focus on the failures, with renewed Green blaming.

    This relentless Green bashing by the mainstream parties that own Australia’s government is not edifying, let alone lending any hope that we can see an end to the climate intransigence. Especially dismaying to see Labor as LNP light when Doubt, Deny, Delay as the LNP does it looks to be getting wobbly and their desperation is showing.

    Morrison’s lot should be very pleased that, as record drought and water stress and record fire is all around – and incredibly important international climate negotiations are starting – that Labor will not push the LNP on the one issue they have the least public support.

  4. Robin Alexander

    I am labor voter! But with way things have changed Murdoch input always proves so difficult to overcome as lazy
    voters not followers of politics just believe without thought what is put before them! Bit hard to combat complacency?why and what is it that labor cannot sit down with greens and try have a compromise with them? Frankly on a few issues recently I have agreed with greens? In Senate Senator Rachell Seiwart ferocious fighter! I have watched her passion for those on Newstart? is so admirable! She truly has passion for less fortunate! Now as 82yr old widow pensioner now living on pension only fortunately own my home but I truly feel afraid of my future under LNP gov. Just having HOME CARE for 3hrs fortnight help housework! Government stopped subsidizing this service!finishes end Dec! MY AGED CARE package near impossible to obtain! Told didn’t fit criteria only wanted small package! You have to be near death for grant hope don’t die before you receive it? which happened to my husband 92yrs who I had cared for for 4 yrs! Totally unfair! ,both worked paid taxes all our lives husband to old for Super benefit? So here I am living now under threat INDUE CARD introduction 2020 promised MAY 2019 by then minister Paul Fletcher! This shows government have no regard or empathy for less fortunate AGED & VETERAN pensioners included he said! to inflict this evil card on 80/90yr olds?never comprehend its restrictive uses? Little cash available? Greens are against INDUE? contacted many top labor ministers! no replies?Just truly wonder if they are prepared for this bill hidden under WELFARE PAYMENTS! So just continue to watch shambles of our present government and hope LABOR can defeat them! Defeat package of Indue Card!! money making process for TWIGGY FOREST &FRIENDS & ,LNP has money funnelled into their funds from Indue that is from virtually blood of less fortunates society! Have read pages all about INDUE TWIGGY FORESTS BABY and suggestion in first place for addicts in NT? AUSTRALIAN BANKS DO NOT CONTROL INDUE A US BANK does? a business of money?why not Aussie Banks? Myself think it big money making SCAM! With Nat party people sit in top positions?Larry Anthony was top man National party top man but may not now hold top position!

  5. Phil Pryor

    Ignorant and insolent sluts for money and position have dominated careers in politics here and elsewhere, with wilful loudmouths fronting stupid greed in corporations. Foresight and wisdom are dinosaurs, remembered, but extinct. It is not a right to throw away rubbish; it is a CRIME, and even if a petty act is committed, a throwing away of rubbish usually attracts a deserved fine often on the spot. Corporate c—s head a system of white anting, lobbying, coercing, renting politicians, dictating policy, enforcing profiteering, yet get away with throwing away dangerous rubbish in huge amounts, especially emissions of noxious gases in large amounts. Gaol, execution, exile and transportation was the fate of unwanted and wronged people long ago. Why are the corporate criminals not given this treatment now, for ruining our collective future? Crooks, crime, crims, cruds, cranks, crap and corporations go together. Punish them.

  6. Terence Mills

    I have yet to hear a coherent response from Richard Di Natale as to why the Greens blocked the CPRS in 2009.
    Had the CPRS become law we may never have seen the internal fighting within the ALP that finally brought about their demise in 2013.

    I cannot agree that a Double Dissolution was appropriate as it would have been a tool for the then opposition to attack and diminish the government : we saw what happened to Turnbull when he went to a DD.

    It has always been my view that the DD option in the Constitution is a last resort to avert a constitutional crisis, not a means to foster political ambitions that are more readily achieved by consensus in the parliament.

  7. James Craig

    and tell Bob Brown thanks a 2nd time for galumphing about qld in the lead up to the may19 election .this lnp rabble would’ve been beaten if qld hadn’t been alienated. Bob Brown you idiot!

  8. Kerri

    Last night’s news had a comment from an expert that the carbon credits we intend using are in all practicality expired and that we are the only country in the world to be using carbon credits in this manner.
    Mind you when I tried to google that comment links all led to government emissions “propaganda”.
    Just before googling that, and in response to a comment on Facebook, I tried to google whether our “first family” is holed up in Perth avoiding bushfire smoke only to be led to ERROR 404!,
    Coincidence??

  9. Tracie

    Didn’t the Greens agree to Julia Gillard’s ETS? So what’s the problem here? The fact that they had reason to disagree with this one, or the fact that they disagreed with bad policy at all?

    There was a working carbon price in the end, which was scrapped, but not due to the Greens. It’s due to Clive Palmer and LNP. Please stop targeting the Greens. The price would have been repealed anyway.

    There are much bigger problems at this point, and we all need to come together to fight the hubris.

  10. Kaye Lee

    Tterence,

    “I have yet to hear a coherent response from Richard Di Natale as to why the Greens blocked the CPRS in 2009.”

    “According to Treasury modelling, under the CPRS there would have been no reduction in emissions for 25 years. It gave billions in handouts to coal companies and big polluters, while it locked in emissions targets that failed the science.

    It would not have led to any change in behaviour by big polluters, while any future attempt to strengthen the scheme would have resulted in billion dollar compensation payouts to big polluters.

    It gave a false impression it was going to actually do something – in fact, Kevin Rudd’s own climate change advisor warned it could be better to go back to the drawing board.”

    https://greens.org.au/cprs

    This is the modelling on which they based that claim

    https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-03/Australias_Low_Pollution_Future_Summary.pdf

    I can’t be stuffed reading it. The urgency of our current situation is far more pressing than historical blame games.

    “So what now?

    We’re in a climate emergency, and we need everyone to come together to find a solution that phases out the biggest contributors to the climate crisis: coal, oil and gas.
    Unfortunately, right now, neither of the major parties have a plan to phase out coal, oil and gas because they accept millions in donations from the fossil fuel industry.

    This is the real reason for inaction on climate change, and blaming the failures of the CPRS is nothing but a cynical attempt by the major parties to deflect when they’re under pressure to take action on climate change.

    We’re committed to working with Labor, and we will keep trying. Greens Leader Richard Di Natale reached out to Bill Shorten before the 2019 election, and is continuing to attempt to find common ground with Anthony Albanese.

    We have a lot of work to do in encouraging the Labor party to work with us as Julia Gillard did, when we delivered world-leading climate laws, but we remain optimistic that, with more Greens in Parliament and unrelenting pressure from the community, we can work with Labor for better outcomes.”

    Nice words, but I see no sign of Labor wanting a bar of it. I understand why, but I despair that it is the case.

  11. wam

    well, lord, I had a coup;e of reads but didn’t see your words to explain your green avoidance over the last tens years?
    Take a leaf out of narrow nose and surmise how bad we could be if they had passed a bi-partisan bill that senile bob rejected in a loonie fit of pique.
    Then go quiet for another ten years whilst the greens white ant and wedge their way back to balance.
    At 90 you can understand the reasons behind boobby’s timing of the caravan and realise the depth of artifice to be found in the
    diludbransimkims.
    Your thought is what the loonies should have thought in 2009 and in 2019. When the strategy was $3m successful but the offshoot scummo, phon and lambe is disastrous
    Eventually a confession, with hindsight, from the next generation of green conmen that they should have realised that scummo will do nothing. The reasoning behind the timing of booby’s screaming mob, the lure of cash, will be missing.
    ps
    Robin activity works the rabbott gave the autocue twits the ammo and away they went even ruperts mob will take albo’s words if the controversy. The hard part will be avoiding the ABC. where rupert can take snippets.
    The greens have nothing to compromise read their manifesto of policies, look at their treatment of their women, since narrow nose’s descent into a pragmatic agenda.
    The two major slogans of scummo are labor and the unions with labor and the greens. The former is necessary the latter is toxic and must be addressed

  12. Wobbley

    Good old politics, a bit like a committee, want a horse you get a donkey in our case but usually a camel me thinks. The greens fcked up, just like the caravan up north during the election. A bit like a red rag to a bull, the Neanderthals up north were very offended about they’re beloved coal being vilified, everything else is fair game though.

  13. Matthias

    Some say ‘careful what you wish for’, others say ‘bring it on’.
    Some ideas in the Climate Action plan for Canberra 2019:
    Get people out of cars and onto buses or bicycles, car free days, or just hoff it!;
    Interest free loans for landlords to retrofit rentals (add costs to the Budget, Pink Batt style scam-merchants revisited);
    Get rid of gas as a source of energy (Australia has exported most of its gas anyway, this makes sense at one level);
    Support food rescue organisations (stagnant wages below poverty line or UBI below the food costs for many), etc.

    By 2025, your carbon footprint could look very different.
    1950 here we come.
    https://www.environment.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/1414642/ACT-Climate-Change-Strategy-2019-2025-Summary.pdf

    The Greens conveniently continue to overlook the ‘Greenwashing’ of various data.

    Example 1 – Emissions over full life of a vehicle, EV versus diesel:
    https://www.dw.com/en/ifo-study-casts-doubt-on-electric-vehicles-climate-saving-credentials/a-48460328
    “Germany is heading down a blind alley, the authors boldly state, because electric vehicles will “barely help to cut emissions” as battery-powered cars emit between 10% and “up to a quarter” more CO2 than a conventional diesel car.”

    Example 2 – When green turns toxic: Norwegians study Electric Vehicle life cycle
    https://phys.org/news/2012-10-green-toxic-norwegians-electric-vehicle.html
    “The electric car might be a trade-in of an old set of pollution problems for a new set. Thanks but no thanks to a misguided cadre selling on the green revolution. Electric cars will eventually be one more pollutant source to campaign over.”

    What is it about the authors of Climate Action plans, why don’t they do a bit more research?

  14. New England Cocky

    @John Lord: High praise indeed JL. Thank you.

  15. wam

    bullshit wobbley the people you insult are workers who were frightened of losing jobs or scummos dole bludgers hoping to get jobs they were real people getting screamed at in townesville with rightwing slimes stirring the job lies and leftwing slimes stirring the screaming loonies. Who would 90% of Australia support narrow nose and his sharpie harpies???
    Get real bring the waiverers from the deniers into the renewables support camp because you’ll never get them into the climate change because it is too esoteric for them to understand.

  16. Kaye Lee

    Matthias,

    Electric car ‘hatchet job’ debunked

    A study claiming that electric vehicle produce more carbon emissions than a diesel car has been promptly debunked by academics and experts in Germany, where it was published last month. The Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) was roundly criticised over its findings which were founded on a relatively high weighting of coal generation in Germany’s power mix.

    https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/electric-car-%E2%80%98hatchet-job%E2%80%99-debunked

    wam,

    Anyone who doesn’t understand about climate change is deliberately being ignorant. It has been explained in as simple terms as is possible. It is not esoteric. It is catastrophic.

  17. Wam

    You have tried that before, Kaye, but you do not talk the the right wing dumb deniers. If you did you would know climate change is natural and it has been so for billions of years(or god’s 4000 years for the bible boys) QED.
    The catastrophe, if real, is not man made is their understanding. They are not being deliberately anything except those $$*(#$&$#@ greens are part of a left wing conspiracy to take our jobs and wreck our economy.
    They are not smart enough to overcome such evidence as boobby’s Screaming caravan. But they were smart enough to let their fear elect scummo

  18. Matthias

    Thanks Kaye, at least two sides to debates.
    I read another University whole-of-life cost analysis of EVs recently (can’t relocate it) which left me with the impression the full, whole-of-life cost of almost any technology, old or new, is never fully accounted.
    My comment ‘1950 here we come’ still stands.
    What ‘zero emissions’ will look like for the ordinary person is something hardly anyone in the West is thinking through fully. How many people will be driving cars in 10 years time? My guess is 2-10% will be able to afford that luxury. As for flying, probably the same percentage. We could have moved to a more sustainable situation via education and public agreement of trade-offs in lifestyle adjustments required, but too many businesses and even individuals are thinking of their bottom line resulting in an inertia against any real change. I get the impression the rug is going to be pulled from under us virtually overnight and the mandates for change are going to be enforced no questions asked, no debate allowed.
    As for politicians fixing anything, forget it. They are part of the problem along with the media.

  19. Bolirvia

    A classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the achievable. I won’t be voting 1 Green any time soon.

  20. Wam

    Ps
    I am not talking about my rabbottian relatives they still are far too frightened of ragheads, poofters, lezzoes, slopes and greenies to listen to me. Hopefully, the haze over Sydney evoking memories of the smog and a good glacial melt in NZ, might get them thinking man made greenhouse gases about which is the crux of climate change?
    But rather the workers who should vote labor but didn’t because of an unintelligent fear induced byxxxxx we will have to wait 10 years for a loonie sorry sans the explanation.

  21. Jack Cade

    Robin Alexander;

    George Galloway, standing in the UK elections as an Independent in a safe Labour seat just vacated by the former deputy Leader of the Labour Party (after he’d spent two years white-anting sabotaging Corbyn, who last time around got the highest Labour vote since 1945) Tom Watson, a ‘remainer’ in a seat which voted over 64% to ‘Brexit’, said that there are now more food banks in Britain than there are McDonalds outlets…

  22. Jack Cade

    The seat Galloway is contesting has never voted anything but Labour. But the Labour Party has put up a 24 yr old candidate that has not even met the local party members and has never spoken in public. The Conservative candidate has allegedly underpaid the employees in his fast food establishment, and has similarly not appeared in public.
    Galloway has been drawing full houses in the hustings despite pressure from both major parties to local pubs etc. not to allow him to appear.
    They truly are, as Galloway says, ‘Cheeks of the same arse.’
    The UK, and us, need somewhere else to go. We are disenfranchised by our political parties. Only 2% of the UK parliament have ever had ‘real’ jobs.

  23. Jack Cade

    Sorry, I got the candidates wrong. It is the LABOUR candidate who underpaid his workers.

  24. Anon E Mouse

    What is not discussed, except by accident, is that the Greens decision to block Rudd’s ETS was to do with a deal between the greens and the ambitions of Gillard. This is why they were able to do a deal so easily after Rudd was out of the way. Obviously it was too easy for Abbott to quash though.
    Gillard put a lot of pressure on Rudd not to go to a DD.

    Gillard also brokered a poor deal for Australians with the big miners if you remember.

    Put simply, the Greens were doing side deals, plotting and scheming, and ended up with diddly squat.

    Brown and his role in squashing the ETS was his Meg Lees moment. The Greens are not environmentalists. They are simply political grifters.

  25. corvus boreus

    Terence Mills,
    The closest to a coherent Greens explanation for 2009 that I have heard is that ‘the reduction targets contained in the ETS were insufficiently aspirational’.
    Which is possibly true in terms of achieving the kind of actual emission reductions needed to significantly reduce or halt the current global warming trend, but certainly less valid as an argument justifying idealogical intransigence in a situation where the juggling of dire necessities means that pragmatic compromise towards the modestly achievable is preferable to divisive brinkmanship in faint hope of reaching lofty ambitions.
    All of which still leaves us with a rapidly fracturing biosphere and fast-boiling climate and no hint of any work towards bipartisan solutions (at any level of governance) to what science is now calling a serious existential threat to our continued existence.
    Gotta luv politics, ay?

  26. Adam Abdool

    @Tracie December 11, 2019 at 10:00 am

    After all these years if you don’t understand the importance of the defeat of the CPRS and how it has changed our society and country for the worse, then you won’t get it at all.

  27. Ken Fabian

    I thought blame shifting was the LNP’s own special superpower and the idea that Queenslanders turning away from Labor was because of Bob Brown came straight out of the LNP/MCA/Newscorp songbook. Why does Labor believe it and go along with it? It’s like someone tossing a false document Angus Taylor’s way – it is facile crap but it is irresistible.

    As if the whole course of Australian climate policy history is a consequence of The Greens refusing to agree to a climate policy you could sail coal ships through and had nothing to do with Rudd cutting The Greens out of a Labor and LNP duopoly! And where are Gillard’s achievements in this round of blame shifting and gratuitous green bashing? Does anyone really believe Turnbull could have survived doing a climate deal with Rudd or the LNP could not have wound back the same policy had it gone through with Greens support? It seems for the Labor apologists, yes.

    The simple truth is that a climate policy that is up to the seriousness of the climate problem will at least as extreme as what The Greens propose and a lot more than what The Greens would agree to as compromise. Climate Emergency is not hype, it is simple truth; there is no room in it for coal mining to be a government guaranteed, protected-in-perpetuity industry.

    Labor refused to negotiate with The Greens on the issue under Rudd, remain reluctant and apologetic for their successes under Gillard and seek to blame The Greens again for their miscalculations under Shorten – which probably had more to do with Franking Credits, tax concessions to wannabe landlords and big spending that puzzled the swingers under Shorten than anything Bob Brown or The Greens said or did.

    And now, as vitally important Madrid climate talks start and Australia burns, Labor makes major concessions on coal to please the MCA, BCA, IPA and Newscorp! And Adani. What next; a coal power plant for North Queensland?

  28. Matters Not

    Ken Fabian is on the money. Rudd wouldn’t do a deal with The Greens because he believed in his invincibility at that time. He wasn’t going to share power with anyone – not even his colleagues let alone another Party. And we saw how that turned out.

    Unless the progressive side of politics ‘unite’ in some form or other the LNP will own the foreseeable future lock stock and barrel. Yet, make no mistake, the Libs hate the Nats with a passion (and at any number of levels including at the level of the most basic political ideological assumptions) but they also absolutely love the exercise of power. Through compromise(s) both the Libs and the Nats get at least something of what they want. The ‘progressives’ just get self administered bloodied noses. And further reasons to hate.

    But some refuse to call time. Preferring 100% of sweet bugger all.

  29. John Lord

    Corvus Boreus. The logic of your comment is the truth of it.

  30. george theodoridis

    @New England Cocky and others: A good policy is a good policy. To go screwing around it and to start compromising it, it is to compromise what is good about it. The policy that the ALP (barely a shade less fundamentalist than the LNP) presented to them all those years ago, was, in every respect a policy against the environment and for the politicians, so they rejected it.
    Why don’t the thugs from both these parties present us with something? Anything?
    During last Q@A, Albo sounded and looked like a horse eating its carrot from its arse. A total idiot, a mealy mouthed waffler who told us that – wait for it, “if we don’t sell this putrid shit to those countries that want it… someone else will!”

    One weeps these days, listening to this mob and one shed tears that would make Niagara jealous if he was hoping to hear any words of some reason.

    Had we a leader or two in that idiots’ castle, we’d be the leaders in the world on renewables, safe, and cheap energy. We’d show the rest of the planet how to harvest and harness energy that is easy to garner, easy to store, easy to use and safe for all concerned.

    But fate or whatever has robbed us of such a human being and we are stuck with… politicians. Career politicians, far too well remunerated, in far too lucrative a job, needing them to do far too little. So they give excuses, blame everyone and everything else, and call on fairies to intervene.

    The Greens? They are not and never were in power. They said no to a bullshit bill a decade ago. That’s TEN YEARS AGO! Albo is still talking about mining the crap!

  31. corvus boreus

    John Lord,
    Thank you, some attempt at a logical summation of events past is about all I can offer, as I cannot realistically either sustain any valid hope of salvation or proffer any practicable solutions for our future.

  32. Patagonian

    @Tracie, the ETS may not have been perfect but it was a start and and once the populace accepts such change, it is easier for government to improve it over time and far harder for wingnuts like Clownshoes to rip it away. Instead, the Greens’ actions gave strength to the rabid climate deniers infesting the Liberal and National Parties which has in large part resulted in a complete polarisation of the issue.

    I used to have some time for the Greens, but after their role in the destruction of the ETS and their rejection of the Malaysian solution which has allowed asylum seekers to be horrendously abused without hope of change, I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.

    The Greens’ obsession with perfection has given license to many of the excesses of the ruling rabble. And as for Di Natale, IMO he’s another closet Liberal wet.

  33. corvus boreus

    By the way John, you have my sympathies regarding the gibberish-spouting stalker-troll who seems to have developed a negative fixation upon your articles and thus attaches themselves (like a haemorrhoid) onto everything you write.
    I understand that you have done little to nothing to provoke or encourage this obsession.
    It must be irritating, not to mention discouraging for you knowing that your considered musings (regardless of subject matter) will be automatically responded to with yet another formulaic regurgitation of the exact same garbled nonsense.
    Your contributions warrant greater respect.

  34. johno

    Anon, The Greens are not environmentalists. They are simply political grifters.

    Labor, LNP, PHON etc are definitely not environmentalists either. No wonder the Oz environment is so f#cked.

  35. corvus boreus

    Johno,
    A friend of mine, a formidably qualified and educated person that I trust and respect, both personally and professionally, entered politics at the local government level.
    When she first did so it was under the wing of the Greens political party.
    After several terms of solid community representation she put up her hand as a candidate for NSW state parliament.
    This time round she cut her past association with the Greens and ran as an independent (she placed a solid second).
    I think the fact that this person, a very competent and committed environmentalist, ended up choosing to shun the Greens as a political vehicle speaks volumes about the current health of that party.

  36. New England Cocky

    @wam: Oh dear, oh dear oh dear ….. you do write a lot of waffle!!! With so many offerings let me just respond to two.

    1). @10:08AM Your unsolicited diatribe against the Greens based on personal opinion rather than objective fact.

    2). @12:40PM “[C]limate change is natural” … which is the reason for 17/19 years of the hottest recorded temperatures have occurred since 2000 ….. perhaps you could read at least some of the 40 years of scientific evidence before posting.

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