Monthly Archives

January 2020

If Mr. Morrison’s government genuinely believed the science, it would immediately put a price on carbon, declare a moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects and transfer the fossil fuel subsidies to the renewables industries. It would go to the next round of global climate talks in Glasgow in November allied with other nations on the front line of this crisis and argue for quicker and deeper cuts to carbon emissions around the world. Anything less is to collaborate in the destruction of a country.
But the government is intent on doing nothing.
And to the names of those historic betrayers of their people — Vidkun Quisling, Benedict Arnold, Mir Jafar — perhaps one day will be added that of Scott Morrison, the prime minister of Australia who, when faced with the historic tragedy of his country’s destruction, dissembled, enabled, subsidised and oversaw omnicide, until all was ash and even the future was no more.

Richard Flanagan
January 29, 2020

Murdoch and Liverpool

By Media4 Comments

In the UK, the Football Association (FA) runs an elimination competition called the FA Cup and in the 1988-1989 competition, Liverpool played Nottingham Forest in a semi-final at a neutral…

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January 27, 2020

And being PM means taking responsibility for handling what befalls the nation. Our history is full of Prime Ministers who had events turn against them, whether it was James Scullin becoming PM two days before the 1929 stock market crash, or Robert Menzies turning up just in time to have WWII declared on his watch, or Gough Whitlam's optimistic new government colliding with the Energy Crisis, or John Howard facing the horror of the Port Arthur Massacre, or Kevin Rudd being in the chair for the GFC.
All stepped up and faced the challenges, and in several cases paid a terrible personal and political price.
But until now no PM had ever responded to a devastating national emergency by denying it, then saying it was a state issue, then blaming their wife for them taking a holiday, then systematically failing to take timely action before waging a propaganda war starting with "arsonists" and ending with an attempt to spin it such a way as to benefit mining companies.
That takes a very particular type of coward.

Andrew P. Street
January 25, 2020

The Boycotting of Murdoch

By Media6 Comments

Australia under the Liberal and National parties has generally become a corporatocracy1, where the only entities of consequence are corporations and those state bodies that are needed to ensure their…

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January 20, 2020

Australia Day is when we are expected to selectively forget about what happened in the past so that we can move forward as a better country, and ANZAC Day is when we are told to never forget about what happened in the past so that we can move forward as a better country.

Milly Majich
January 19, 2020

[Morrison] has now been revealed as a dangerous incompetent, an opportunist populist combining policy vacuity with a reckless opportunism and a political tin ear.

Mungo McCallum
January 14, 2020

Climatic changes may mean that by the middle of next century, every year would be a potential “Ash Wednesday” year of extreme bushfire danger, according to CSIRO scientists. The risk would be greatest in south-eastern Australia, the nation’s most fertile and densely populated region, the scientists have told the national Greenhouse 87 conference. It is the first time the possibility of such a dramatic increase in bushfire risk has been linked to the global warming many scientists will occur within the next 50 years.
[Sydney Morning Herald, December 4, 1987]

Bob Beale
January 12, 2020