Australia - The Petri Dish is on Fire

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.