With all hell breaking loose as catastrophic fires ravage parts of New South Wales and Queensland, all Prime Minister Scott Morrison can advise is to pray. It’s a poor excuse from a government that has criminally refused to take action on the climate crisis.
The Darling remains the canary in the coal mine for the Murray-Darling Basin.
Federal government attempts to silence environmentalists can, in large part, be explained by the successes of the campaign that has stalled Indian mining giant Adani’s Carmichael coal mine from going ahead.
Gough Whitlam was a maverick social democrat who believed a foreign power should not be allowed to dictate Australia’s economic and foreign policies. There seems little doubt the US was involved in his sacking.
Could Indian mining firm Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, in Central Queensland, become a stranded asset? A number of recent events indicate the answer could be “Yes”.
We need to understand Morrison’s attacks on “progressivism” and a “new breed of radical activism” as more than just an attack on our right to protest or the right of investors to decide where to put their cash.
The disastrous results of privatisation, outsourcing and deregulation in the aged care sector have been further exposed in the commission’s report. The aged care system, along with health care in general, should instead be placed under public ownership and control, and made accessible to the whole community.
“We have to rely on bottled water to bathe our babies. There is no fresh water to drink,” explained local Wilcannia Aboriginal elder Brendan Adams. "We are all living in Third World conditions.”
There is a real rebellion taking place. It is time to choose sides.
Environmentalists are going to have to get a whole lot more radical if Prime Minister Scott Morrison gets his way on proposed new measures targeting anti-mining activism.
Governments — and the corporations they serve — understand that as the economic and climate crises deepen, they will need to resort to more authoritarian measures to maintain their ecologically and socially destructive system.
The government's treatment of refugees reads like something out of George Orwell’s seminal work, 1984. Fortunately, 1984 is fiction and we can force them to change.
