In order to assess the ineptitude of The Commonwealth Government
of the colonies that comprise the continent known by the majority of the world
as Australia, I must once more take a break from The Book to procrastinate
over the politics of this wide island. And while I’m discussing geography, I
might as well get this out of the way – Australia is not “the driest continent
on Earth”, it’s the driest permanently inhabited continent -- Antarctica holds
the title of driest given it’s near permanent lack of rainfall. Just pause a
minute, before you start yammering on about how many countries and therefore people
occupy the southern-most continent year round, to remember that it is only a
tiny percentile of one percent that spend more than twelve months on the frozen
land. I am willing to argue this point at length, but it is not what I was
intending to address.
What brings us here is the undeniable fact that Australia is
no longer “the sunburnt country”, it’s just burnt.
Somehow, the Liberal/National Coalition managed to hold
power by the slightest margin earlier this year and Australia ended up with a Paedophile
Protecting; Pentecostal Peddling, Pina Colada Procuring Prime Minister who
decided the best course of action was to nick off to New Zealand while his own
country was on fire (oops, forgot Scott from Marketing is technically a Kiwi
and no one has bothered to take him to court over it), and then decided Hawaii
was the best place to park his arse while the eastern seaboard went up in
smoke.
In a year that saw us lose the second best PM we -- as a
nation -- ever had. As well as, in the spirit of bi-partisanship, Tim Fischer,
who had it not been for his leadership, Australia would not have what are
widely regarded as the best gun laws in the world. Hawkey was well retired from
politics when the Port Arthur Massacre happened but given he’s dead I am confident
he would have taken a similar course of action had it occurred on his watch. I’m
quietly confident that Mr Keating’s response would not be dissimilar, but the
burden landed in the paired laps of Howard and Fischer.
Most of the credit for Australia setting the global standard
when it comes to responsible gun-ownership policy is usually attributed to Mr
Howard (I have been guilty of it myself), but Mr Fischer not only had to
convince his hostile party room but also a hostile electorate. For that, and
the fact he did it without a bullet-proof vest like Johnny was encouraged to do
shows the true measure of a leader. For all of our late deputy PM’s faults and
foibles, he saved Australia from what Howard termed “The American Disease”.
Had it been Hawke or Keating leading a Labor Government without
a majority in The Senate, would the Coalition have voted in favour of such a
drastic reform?
Probably not, because for reasons still unknown to Political
Analysts the country over, Mr Fischer was able to argue the point logically
that “semi-automatic guns should not be in our suburbs and towns”. I won’t go
into depth analysing why he didn’t seem to care about assault rifles in cities
and just go with the argument that the inner city is populated by the transient
and the poor, who are not worth caring about. (Don’t think the influx of luxury
apartment blocks had happened at this point).
The migration of damn near every farmer with a qualification
in anything to the cities of the East Coast is something that Australia should
be concerned about. Iconic stations and properties are progressively bought by
foreign companies for either agriculture or to be turned into a mine, we are
slowly selling our country out from underneath ourselves, yet no one seems to
care.
As our country burns, the barely elected government is
complicit in what can only be described as unfounded denial of the greatest
threat Homo Sapiens have faced in the comparative blink of an eye in
which we have populated this blue-green marble.
That a Swedish teenager knows more about how badly Climate
Change will affect Australia than our Government does is nothing less than
shocking but makes a good argument for lowering the voting age and capping the
eligibility for elected office at, I don’t know, let’s say ten years before one
would be able to access their superannuation or Aged Pension. Just a Thought. Our
youth (and I say that from my middling thirties) are set to inherit a planet
that is well on the way to becoming uninhabitable.
And for what?
Budget “Surpluses” and Bailouts for Big Business that
finance (or are) the industries who -- despite the empirical scientific evidence
they’ve had available for around four decades now – continue to mine, export
and burn fossil fuels for profit. This is serious mismanagement, not only of
the economy but the physical safety of the citizens.
Australia is ostensibly a democracy and our officials are
elected in a compulsory (for those enrolled), preferential vote which is supposed
to give the electorate the least disliked candidate and it used to work pretty
well. Things have changed though. Campaigns are now, much more, being run
through the media, social media in particular, and depending on one’s
preference you will only be exposed to what the messenger wants to tell you. Or
you could just be a Chinese Australian who lives in Kooyong or Chisholm and something
that looked like an official AEC poster told you to vote for the Liberal Party if
you were to vote correctly.
This Wide Black Land (which never ceded sovereignty to The
British Crown) has seen an erosion of what should be, and for a short time, was
a fair and legitimate electoral process. The Government has learned how to
manipulate that and does so at every turn. As a result, we have a bunch of
Hillsong Happy-Clapping Nutjobs in The Big House waiting for The Rapture. This
is not Democracy, this is not Separation of Powers, this is not Leadership, and
to show that I exist in a social media bubble some of the time, This Is Not
Journalism.
That the best reporting on the Australian bushfires is
coming from the BBC and not the ABC is distressing. ABC local radio has, of
course, been announcing warnings and evacuations as they always do and they
provide an essential service, but in terms of in-depth analysis, the National Broadcaster
has been lacking. It’s easy to point the finger at the Murdoch controlled media
and claim editorial bias, but with cut after cut to the ABC’s budget by
successive Governments it seems as if they don’t even have the resources to do
more than send reporters into fire grounds. They even dragged Hamish MacDonald back
to work and sent the poor bugger to Bega. He’s not a bad analytic journalist
but Aunty is stretched so thin that he’s out there in a role that once would
have been delegated to a cadet from one of the regional bureaus.
As a Nation, we are burning. Even those of us who are yet to
see a fire front (and I say “yet” in all seriousness) have felt the effects of
these fires. Increased hospital admissions and paramedic callouts for people having
respiratory issues or heat related issues that are a matter of public record, pressuring
our already stretched health system is only the beginning. Climate Change is
going to test the limits of modern medicine unless we do something about it.
Not being a medical professional, I will leave the research to someone more
qualified, but I’d be curious to see some data on birth defects, miscarriages and
the like that occur in coming years, considering we are now past The Tipping
Point.
This is not The End. This is The Beginning. Dystopia has settled
in Australia. Increasingly militarised police and the discriminatory “Religious
Freedoms Bill” (not yet legislated) seem able to just happen because everyone
is too concerned about where the next place might be to burn. People are
running for their lives, some haven’t made it, and some volunteer to run into
the danger and lose theirs for the sake of others. Not a single State or
Territory (at time of writing) does not have an active fire burning. The smoke
from what have appropriately become known as the Morrison Fires has now reached
the South Island of New Zealand, look at a map and consider the distance for a
minute. I rang my mother from a relatively clear Brisbane to ask about the air
quality in Patearoa this morning (find that and see how far it is from the
coast) and the response was “terrible”.
Australia and, more importantly -- it’s politicians – must pay
attention to what is already a global problem. No amount of platitudes directed
toward our regional neighbours is going to cut it anymore, as the largest (yet
faltering) economy in The Pacific, we should not be The Problem, but The
Solution.
It’s widely expected that several of Mr Morrison’s “Pacific
Family” will have their Island Homes disappear beneath the waves over the next
few decades. Torres Strait Islanders face a similar future. We are in no way
prepared for the influx of Climate Change Refugees that will result from
Australia’s continued ignorance of the detriment to our way of life by the extraction
and exportation of fossil fuels. The argument that Australia only contributes
one-point-three percent of global emissions is a straight up lie and should be
reported as such.
We sit somewhere in the top three exporters of fossil fuels in
the world, depending on who you ask, and that is what the Commonwealth
Government must recognise and appreciate. If we stop supplying the rest of the
world the capability to pollute at the levels they currently do, Australia will
again be punching above its weight on the International Stage when it comes to
Leadership on something we can influence regardless of our comparative size.
Once, we led the world on Climate Change Action, -- when Ms
Gillard was piloting the ship -- only for her to be personally scuttled by Rudd
and have the policy sunk by Abbott, so we begin The Flaming Twenties under a
Government led by a bloke that actually wants this to happen. I have no problem
with any member of Parliament having a personal faith based platform that
influences their vote on particular issues, when, in the once in a million opportunity
arises that a conscience vote is allowed. My problem is with our PM attracted
so much to The End of Days that it seems as if it’s a personal fetish to the
point that Revelation in his copy of the Bible on which he swore his Oath
of Office upon is most likely stuck
together as a result of his masturbatory exuberance.
Australia is the Worlds Petri Dish and we are neglecting
this fact to our peril. A relatively small population, given the size of the
landmass, and pre-existing prevalence for natural disasters placed us front and
centre of the world-wide experiment that used to be called Global Warming. Most
of the country can burn with little threat to human life due to most major
centres being situated within spitting distance of one ocean or another. What
is important though, is that the areas that burn, or will soon enough be hit by
a cyclone, or flood as a result of said storms are our food bowl.
And not just ours. Roughly eighty percent of Australia’s
national agricultural output is exported. Combine that with another two of our
biggest export earners – Tourism and Education – and the proportion of Coal
Mining jobs is dwarfed significantly, making illogical the argument that Coal
is necessary to provide employment in regional North Australia. No one with a
basic grasp of The Universe and its functions is suggesting that all mining
stop or that coal mining be cancelled overnight. But it is widely accepted that
without a hasty transition to renewables we are well and truly screwed. The
Planet. Not just Australia.
We, on this Burnt Country, are little more than a microcosm
of what is on its way, Globally. And the fire season was supposed to only begin
around November, but we had rainforests burning in August. The rest of The World
seems to be paying attention to the fact Australia is on fire and lacking in
Leadership when it comes to addressing the National Emergency, but I fear they
are failing to appreciate The Long Game. The Great Southern Land showed its
hand first and is going hell for leather to beat every other Nation to the Apocalypse,
and damned be the rest of you.
Every Australian I know who has a passport is checking how
many months they have left before it expires and those who have dual
citizenship or are eligible for it are making sure that those documents are in
order. I must admit that I have considered looking up what it will take me to
be accepted as a citizen of Tasmania-East (something I swore never to do) but
haven’t done it – yet.
Because I believe we can overcome this.
Like Howard and Fischer were able to lead The Country and The
World, when forced to do so regarding gun control laws, Scott Morrison had an
opportunity to justify why he was elected but couldn’t have scripted a better
failure had he still been in charge of Tourism Australia.
Australia.
We are better than this.
