Green Left Fighting Fund

Our society is heading in the wrong direction. According to a new “Australia’s Electricity Generation Mix 1960-2009” report commissioned by Environment Victoria, the proportion of Australia’s electricity generated by renewable energy has fallen from 19% in 1960 to 7% in 2008. Because Australia today generates 10 times the amount of electricity as it did in 1960, coal-fired electricity generation has increased by more than 1200%.

For many Australians, Fairfax Media is a benign alternative to Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire. Well-meaning people buy Fairfax newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age because they believe they present a fairer picture of the news. But just how fair is Fairfax?

In his April 13 speech on his country’s $14.3 trillion government deficit, US President Barack Obama called on the US Congress to change the US tax system “so that the amount of taxes you pay isn’t determined by what kind of accountant you can afford.” He said: “In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. And that’s who needs to pay less taxes?

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is reputed to have said: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” This sums up the problem we face from human-caused climate change. A “climate scoreboard” published by Climateinteractive.org calculates the impact of the current commitments by the world’s governments to cut carbon emissions. It estimates that if the promised emissions cuts are carried out in full, the earth would still warm by about 4°C by 2100 — far above the maximum warming of 1.5°C needed to maintain a safe planet.

I was having a conversation about the likely outcome of the NSW elections on Radio SkidRow, a Sydney community radio station, just days before the March 26 election. “We know what is going to happen after [the Liberals'] Barry O’Farrell wins the election, don’t we?” I said. “He’ll wait a couple of weeks then he will announce that Labor has left the cupboard bare so they’ll have to bring in an emergency budget.

I am sure we all shared similar reactions to last week’s earthquake-tsunami tragedy in Japan. First, we blinked at reports of a big earthquake. Perhaps for a moment our response was dulled —worn down by the string of recent disasters: the Christchurch earthquake, the Queensland floods and cyclones. Anyway, this was Japan, a rich country and probably the most earthquake-prepared nation in the world.

Australia’s most famous racist and one-time MP Pauline Hanson won the attention of big business media at the March 10 ballot draw for the NSW Legislative Council elections. However, more significant than Hanson, is the attempt by conservative forces to replicate the right-wing populist US Tea Party movement in Australia. This push is headed by right-wing politicians and media shock jocks, and aims to mobilise people on a populist and racist agenda. Last August, a website called the TEA Party in Australia was launched. TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already, the website says.

Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire just got bigger after the British government approved his takeover of the British satellite pay TV group BSkyB on March 4. Not even evidence raised in the British parliament of his minions from the notorious rag News of the World hacking into the phones of politicians and other prominent figures (including members of the British royal family) slowed down this latest takeover.

In the previous issue of Green Left Weekly, I wrote about how the federal Coalition had resurrected the ghost of Pauline Hanson with its cynical plan to exploit the racist fear of Australia’s Muslim minority communities. But since then, there has been a parade of political ghosts. The first to emerge was the former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett, who chose to give some public advice to aspiring NSW Liberal premier Barry O’Farrell.

The cat is well and truly out of the bag. The February 17 Sydney Morning Herald reported that Liberal immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison had “urged the shadow cabinet to capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about ‘Muslim immigration’, ‘Muslims in Australia’ and the ‘inability’ of Muslim migrants to integrate”. Morrison argued in a December shadow cabinet meeting that the Coalition should ramp up its questioning of “multiculturalism” and appeal to what he said was deep voter concerns about Muslim immigration.

As category five tropical cyclone Yasi approached the north Queensland coast on February 3, a political cyclone was already sweeping Egypt. For days, Australian TV news was dominated by these two stories. Incredibly, in Egypt the main government TV station news failed to report the fact that millions of Egyptians had taken to the streets in a huge February 1 protest against the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship. Hiding the truth is what you’d expect from an iron-fisted dictatorship that has long sub-contracted its services to the CIA to torture victims of the “war on terror”.

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