I was very glad to read about the US military exercise that involved bombing the Great Barrier Reef, because let's face it, climate change is just taking too damn long to kill the thing.
Sure, climate scientists have repeatedly said global warming is definitely well on its way to killing the reef, but why should we have to wait for the destruction of possibly the greatest natural wonder on the continent? We're all busy people, so let's up the ante and use the reef for a few nuclear tests. Any marine life that survives will glow, so they'll still be a tourist attraction.
The whole climate change thing is getting just a bit serious now. At the same time as reports of unprecedented melting of ice in the Arctic, and a heatwave in China is so extreme bacon fries if left on the footpath, Australia is also set to record one of the hottest years on record.
But the real “national emergency”, according to Tony Abbott, is not the real threat of runaway global warming. It is small numbers of desperate people in boats. As such, Abbott has a plan to not just mobilise the military to “protect our borders” from leaky boats overflowing with desperate people wanting assistance, but to place a three star general in charge of such operations.
Because this is an emergency! It is no time for some namby-pamby liberal bleeding heart solution in which refugees are confronted by a military force headed by a mere two star general!
To try to counter Abbott's racist offensive on the issue, Labor has gone so far to the right it wouldn't seem odd if Pauline Hanson called a press conference to express her concern that all this fear of foreigners has gotten a little out of hand.
The worst part, though, is the attempts to neutralise anti-racist opposition at the same time as appealing to racist sentiments by claiming the policy of ripping up Australia's legal obligations and dumping asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea is actually a humanitarian policy driven by concern for just how dangerous the boat trips are.
All I can say is I hope these bastards never take such an interest in my well-being, so I'm never told: “We noticed you were just about to cross a really busy road while the little man was red, so we kidnapped you and dumped you in a prison camp on Manus Island for a few years, oh and also you can't ever come back to Australia, but are stuck in an impoverished, underdeveloped nation without the resources to provide you with anything like a decent life.
“No, don't thank us, we're just looking out for your best interests. It's what we do.”
Another way to look at it, though, is that the extreme levels of danger involved in the boat trip is an indication of just how extreme the need for asylum is.
Politicians and some media commentators like to go on about so-called economic refugees, as though it is a casual choice and some bloke in Iran looks at their bank balance and says: “Christ, bit short this week — guess I'll chuck the family onto an overcrowded leaky boat to make a life-threatening journey halfway across the world and then get locked up indefinitely in isolated prison camps condemned by the United Nations as hellholes that breed mental illness and frequent self-harm and suicide attempts and then if I'm really lucky maybe eventually be allowed to come in to have my qualifications ignored and years of study wasted so that I can try my luck at getting a minimum wage job cleaning houses. Quick kids... TO THE BOATS!”
“Oh but daddy, can't we just fly? I saw a really cheap flight on Tiger Airways.”
“Fly Tiger? Come on, we're refugees, but we're not that desperate.”
The actual emergency — not just national but global — is almost totally ignored. It is an election campaign in which climate change is either almost entirely absent, or the most advanced discussion is around whether or not to tackle it by shifting to a market-based emissions trading scheme that has utterly failed in Europe one year sooner or not.
Given this, it is tempting to just elect Clive Palmer, because at least he's offering us dinosaurs. (Though in Abbott's defence, the Coalition is offering us Cory Bernardi, but he's not one of the cool dinosaurs, is he? Little kids don't pester their parents for little plastic Cory Bernardi figures so they can play “Let's all hate the gays”. Sure, if you ever actually met a real T-Rex it would probably rip your head off, but it wouldn't judge your lifestyle, and that's the key difference.)
Palmer is a parasite, a man who profits from environmental destruction and a blatant lunatic. But if we insist on not taking urgent action to tackle and reverse the developing ecological catastrophe, then let's at least go down surrounded by giant animatronic dinosaurs.
[Carlo Sands is performing a Green Left Weekly fundraising show called “The Yucky Country: Just make Clive Palmer PM” at the Brisbane Fringe Comedy Festival. The show will be performed on September 3 and 5, at 9.30pm, at the Loft Bar, West End. Buy tickets here.]