A personal view of Australian and International Politics : August 2017

Thursday, 31 August 2017

Abbott singles out Turnbull's Snowy Hydro 2.0 plan in call for new coal plant

Tony Abbott fires opening salvo in looming party debate over clean energy, insisting PM must ‘go ahead with new coal-fired power’ because he backs hydro

Tony Abbott talks to the media before leaving the NSW Liberal convention at Rosehill Gardens Racecourse in Sydney 23 July 2017.

Katharine Murphy Political editor

Tony Abbott has thrown down the gauntlet to Malcolm Turnbull in the lead-up to the Coalition’s renewed deliberations over the Finkel review, declaring if the prime minister is prepared to back pumped hydro, he also needs to support a new coal-fired power station.
The former prime minister used his regular spot on 2GB on Wednesday to argue the government needed to walk the walk on technology neutrality, and also use its looming response to the Finkel review to create a regulatory environment where coal-fired power generation was not subject to “political risk”.
While endorsing a suggestion from Turnbull on Wednesday that he would welcome a next-generation coal-fired power station, Abbott also singled out Turnbull’s pet project, the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme, as an explicit point of comparison.
“If we are prepared to go ahead with pumped hydro, and we are neutral on technology, we should certainly be prepared to go ahead with a new coal-fired power station,” Abbott said.
Abbott’s intervention comes as the government is due to receive a report it has commissioned from the Australian Energy Market Operator about the dispatchable power requirements of the electricity grid after the closure of two ageing coal-fired power stations.

The government hit pause on the contested internal deliberations about the central recommendation of the Finkel review – a new clean energy target – while it sought advice from Aemo about Australia’s base-load power requirements during the upcoming period of transition.
That advice is due late this week.
The government has been coy about when it will determine its final position on the clean energy target – a position that would need to be considered not only by the cabinet, but by the Coalition party room, which will bring vocal critics, like Abbott, back into play.
Turnbull on Wednesday suggested the government would proceed with its decision on the clean energy target “shortly”.
Abbott has been pushing coal’s case internally throughout the entire internal debate over the Finkel review, and the Nationals have also made support for coal a price of their support for the clean energy target.
The Nationals have been pursuing new builds, possibly funded by the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, or the retrofitting of existing plants.
While the Turnbull government could look to prolong the life of the plants due to exit the system – including the Liddell plant, which is due to close in 2022 – recent meetings with energy retailers have featured senior executives giving a clear message to the government that they are not interested in prolonging the life of their coal assets.
The prime minister said on Wednesday the work the government was doing with Aemo was centred on “what can be done to maintain base-load generation in Australia by ensuring some of the power stations are able to continue for longer, rather than having, you know, sudden closures, like with Hazlewood, which had costly consequences for the electricity market”.
He noted the cheapest form of coal fired energy “is that which comes from existing power stations”.
Turnbull on Wednesday said there was no proposal before the government to build a new “clean” coal power station, but “if there was a proposal to build a new coal-fired power station, then there are various, you know, avenues”.
He said a proposal for north Queensland “could well qualify for the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund”.

States powering ahead on climate targets despite federal inaction, report shows

Climate change

After being criticised by Canberra, South Australia is leading the race, with ACT and Tasmania close behind, says Climate Council

Mount Millar windfarm, South Australia. The state is performing better than any other state or territory in helping Australia to meet greenhouse gas targets.

Michael Slezak

Australian states and territories are powering ahead, developing policies that will meet the federal government’s internationally agreed greenhouse gas emission targets, with South Australia, the ACT and Tasmania leading the race.
Despite being chastised by the federal government for unilateral action, South Australia is leading the race, with the ACT and Tasmania not far behind, according to a report by the Climate Council.
Compared on a series of measures including penetration of renewable energy, the percentage of households with solar, as well as emissions and renewable energy targets, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and New South Wales are at the back of the pack, with Victoria and Queensland in the middle.

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have been rising ever since the Coalition government repealed the carbon tax in 2014. The federal government’s own projections show their policies will cause emissions to continue to rise for decades to come.
But in the midst of the ongoing federal policy vacuum, every state and territory besides Western Australia has “gone it alone” and developed strong renewable energy and emissions reduction policies.
South Australia leads the country with 47% of its electricity sourced from renewable sources, followed by the ACT at 22%. Tasmania sourced 92% of its electricity from renewable sources, but that was dominated by large-scale hydro electricity.
The Northern Territory sourced just 2% of its electricity from renewable sources, sitting behind Western Australia and Queensland at 7%. Victoria sourced 12% from renewables while NSW sat at 17%.
Queensland led the country when it comes to solar households, with 32% of homes having solar panels. That just pipped South Australia, which had 31%.
While both Western Australia and the Northern Territory scored poorly on most measures, there appeared to be grassroots momentum there for solar rooftops, with the biggest increases in solar penetration over the past year happening in those states. Western Australia jumped almost three percentage points to more than 25% penetration, and the Northern Territory jumped 2.7 percentage points to 11.4% – a figure that was still the lowest in the country.

The ACT and Tasmania had the strongest renewable energy targets, with the former aiming to implement a 100% target by 2020 and the latter by 2022. The ACT’s aggressive and bipartisan renewable energy policies delivered the lowest energy costs in the country for consumers.
Every state except Western Australia and the Northern Territory had targets to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.
Those policies, combined with a surge in grassroots activity and market-driven closure of coal power plants, look set to easily cut Australia’s emissions by more 28% below 2005 levels, as Australia committed to following the Paris Agreement in 2015. That was the conclusion of a report by Frontier Economics earlier in the year, which concluded: “The commonwealth government will receive credit for state renewable policies that contribute to meeting the 2030 emissions target, while admonishing them for any energy security issues that may result.
“Every state and territory, with the exception of Western Australia, is taking energy and climate policy into their own hands, with strong renewable energy targets or net zero emissions targets in place,” said Climate Council councillor and energy expert Andrew Stock.
“States and territories previously lagging (NT, NSW and WA), are now stepping up the pace, joining the enormous progress we’re seeing across the nation,” he said.
Climate Council member and former president of BP Australasia, Greg Bourne, said Australians are embracing solar energy in droves, with more than 5.6GW generated on the rooftops of 1.7 million homes.
“Australia is one of the sunniest countries in the world, so it’s no surprise we’ve already rolled out enough solar to power the lights at the MCG every day for 20,000 years,” he said.
States leading the way without federal coordination was described as a “a messy dog’s breakfast” by the Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood, who went on to say the unilateral state action was “understandable with federal climate change inaction”.

Koala cull: Queensland marks 90 years since open season declared on state's marsupials

Extract from ABC News

By Isobel Roe

Updated yesterday at 9:45am

Men stand in front of koala pelts stuck on a wall in August 1927.

Photo: Rural jobseekers were given licences to kill as many koalas they could in the month of August 1927. (Supplied: Australian Koala Foundation)

Koalas were almost driven to extinction when the Queensland Government declared open season on the marsupials 90 years ago this month.

The licensed killing of koalas for their skins, or pelts, started a couple of decades earlier.
German biologist Richard Semon documented the practice during a visit to Australia in 1899.

"My shot wounded the creature — it hung for some time suspended by its paws trying in vain to draw up its hind paws and swing itself onto the branch," Mr Semon said in 1899.

"I aimed once more and struck its head.
"Still it clung to the tree for a while with its right forepaw, then fell down heavily and died a few minutes later.
"It was a strong, fully developed female, carrying a half-grown young one on its back.

"The poor little thing clung to its dead mother with its sharp paws, and would not be torn away.

"I thought of taking it into my camp and rearing it, but the next morning it had left its mother's cold body and disappeared."

Koala pelts loaded on a truck during 1927 cull in Queensland.

Photo: Koala pelts were loaded onto trucks and exported by ship to America. (Supplied: Australian Koala Foundation)

The practice was banned in the early 1900s in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria.
But in Queensland it continued until 1927 when the Australian icon was almost driven to extinction following a Queensland Government-endorsed "open season".
The mass killings were etched in history as Black August.

Koala hunters killed 600,000 koalas for pelts

In the weeks leading up to August 1927, the Queensland Government collected licence fees from 10,000 hopeful koala hunters to boost rural employment and in response to reports of uncontrollable koala populations.
The furs were popular in the coat, glove and hat industries in the United States.

1927 photo of koala hunters at a campsite.

Photo: The killing of koalas for their skins continued in Queensland until 1927. (ABC TV: Four Corners)

Restrictions were lifted and the acting Queensland premier of the time, William Forgan Smith, declared an "open season" on August 1, 1927.

The impact of the slaughter:

600,000 koala pelts were collected in Black August alone
The death toll may have been as high as 800,000 koalas
The pelts were sold at an average price of 56 shillings and 9 pence per dozen
38 Queensland companies were involved in the fur trade
The backlash that followed helped topple the Labor government in elections in May 1929
The current koala population represents 1 per cent of the population shot before the fur trade
Source: Australian National University

The killing was finally banned after a massive public backlash in what was thought to be Australia's first large movement of citizens for a conservation issue.
Australian Koala Foundation spokeswoman Deborah Tabart has been fighting for a Koala Protection Act for almost 30 years.
She said Black August was an unbelievable legacy.

"They used to skin them alive and put them back up the tree with no fur," Ms Tabart said.

"I believe that all of the problems today are as a result of the shootings from that time.
"We have got a shocking history and I do not believe there is one government in this country that is interested in protecting them."

Koalas: Where are they now?

Despite the 1927 culling, the koala was only listed as vulnerable to extinction across the whole of Queensland in 2012.

A koala looks at a camera on a road at Sheepskin Creek in central Queensland.

Photo: Koala population decline is also related to ongoing habitat loss resulting from increasing urbanisation. (Supplied: WWF)

Earlier this year, the Queensland Government's Koala Expert Panel found the population decline showed no sign of stopping.
"This decline is related to ongoing habitat loss in south-east Queensland resulting from increasing urbanisation, other threats such as dog attacks and road mortality associated with development, and disease," the panel wrote in its interim report.
Ms Tabart said the major threat to koalas today was habitat loss.
"We've turned back our land clearing laws, the developers can get what they want," she said.

Queensland still behind on conservation

Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles said it was "disturbing" to think about a government minister issuing an open season on one of Australia's most famous animals.
"It just gives you some sense of how many koalas must have been here when the Europeans settled, for them to hunt maybe 8 million koalas nationwide and maybe 2 million here in Queensland," he said.
Mr Miles admitted the state was still way behind others in terms of conservation.
In 2012, scientists moved about 200 koalas out of East Coomera on the Gold Coast as a major housing development got underway.
At the same time, it was estimated another 200 were being taken to the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital each year.
Many injured koalas had to be euthanased.

Photo: Five koalas lay on an steel bench at a clinic after being euthanased. (ABC TV: Four Corners)

"It's true we've seen a continued decline since then while in some other states when hunting stopped the population recovered," Mr Miles said.

"In fact there are some places in South Australia and Victoria where populations are excessive and those governments there have a very different management challenge."

Mr Miles said he expected to be handed a report from the Koala Expert Panel in the next few weeks, which would dictate how the government could change its town planning rules in south-east Queensland to manage rapid population declines.
"We can't make a choice here between more houses for people to live in and our koala populations," he said.
"We need to find a way to do both and that's what I'm hoping the expert panel will provide us some guidance on."

Wednesday, 30 August 2017

Finkel clean energy target too weak for Paris climate goal, analysis shows

Finkel review

Target will transfer pressure to other sectors of the economy to reduce their emissions, research shows

Katharine Murphy Political editor

The clean energy target recommended by Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, won’t deliver Australia’s obligations under the Paris agreement and will only transfer pressure to other sectors of the economy to reduce their emissions, according to new analysis.
The new research comes as the Coalition’s difficult internal deliberations over the Finkel review are set to resume, with a report due from the Australian Energy Market Operator about the dispatchable power requirements of the electricity grid after the closure of two ageing coal-fired power stations.
And it comes as the prime minister will on Wednesday hold a second meeting with Australia’s major energy retailers in an attempt to make it easier for consumers to switch their power provider – a response to acute political pressure over rising electricity bills.
Discussions between the government and the companies in the lead up to Wednesday’s talks have centred on whether energy companies can offer monthly billing to try and prevent bill shock, and whether more can be done to communicate with hardship customers to ensure they aren’t locked in to inflated power contracts.
The new research on the clean energy target has been commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation.

While some government MPs oppose the central recommendation of the Finkel review – a 28% clean energy target – on the basis it is too ambitious, and will lock too much renewable energy into the system, the new modelling from the firm Reputex says the central problem is the emissions reduction trajectory is too weak.
The modelling says the Finkel trajectory would see Australia’s electricity emissions being phased out between 2095-2101 – a timeframe that is inconsistent with the Paris goal of limiting warming to two degrees, and of reaching carbon neutrality by mid-century.
It also points out that if the electricity sector does comparatively less of the heavy lifting on emissions reductions, the burden will fall more heavily on other sectors, with the largest reductions then falling on high emissions growth sectors, rather than the sectors with the largest share of total national emissions.
The Reputex report says that, under a uniform 28% reduction trajectory, the oil, gas and transport sectors would be accountable for reductions of 51m to 52m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or 31-32% of the national abatement task, despite making up between 17% and 18% of total emissions in the economy.
Electricity, by contrast, would deliver a 44m tonnes of CO₂ equivalent reduction, contributing only 20% of the national abatement task, despite being the largest emitting sector.
The report says a 45% clean energy target would deliver zero emissions from electricity by 2045, which is similar to the Paris timetable.
It says a more ambitious target of 63% would phase out emissions by around 2035 and also assist in broader economic transformation, by offering other sectors, like transport and manufacturing, electrification with clean energy.
The modelling says a 45% clean energy target would place “downward pressure” on wholesale electricity prices by bringing new competition, in the form of clean energy into the market – although the work does not take into account the costs of new energy security obligations imposed on renewable generators under the Finkel model.
The ACF’s chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, says the Turnbull government needs to avoid locking Australia in to a “weak and dirty target” for electricity and notes that whatever solution is landed for electricity “must be part of an overall strategy to tackle pollution from industry, transport and the land so that we reach a pollution-free future as swiftly as possible for the sake of our planet”.
The government is expected to use Wednesday’s meeting with the major electricity companies to insist that retailers write to all households currently on standing offers to advise them of better deals they can access.
In the discussions leading up to the Sydney meeting, the companies have told the government it is not easy to issue monthly bills to customers if their homes don’t have smart meters, and it is difficult to contact hardship customers if they are inclined to be disengaged.
During their last meeting with the government three weeks ago, the companies agreed to a change to the national energy market rules requiring them to inform customers when their discounted power deal ends, and to set out the dollar impact of doing nothing.
The companies also took the opportunity of their last meeting to send a signal to the government that they needed a prompt resolution on the clean energy target. The message the executives delivered to the top echelons of the government three weeks ago was that the country needed policy action that would lower or stabilise wholesale electricity prices, not just a focus on retail prices.

Second Sydney homeless camp cleared out by NSW government

Sydney

Homelessness services express concerns about lack of long-term support for 58 Belmore Park residents who were offered temporary or permanent housing

Christopher Knaus

The New South Wales government has cleared out a second homeless camp in inner-city Sydney.
The camp in Belmore Park near Central station was dismantled after its residents left the site over the past week.
NSW’s family and community services department (Facs) ran an outreach service over a number of days – accompanied by police – which offered 58 residents temporary or permanent housing.
Thirty-two accepted offers of temporary accommodation, which would “turn into offers of permanent accommodation for those eligible”.
“Because of this effort, there are no longer any people sleeping rough in tents in Belmore Park,” a spokesman said.
It is unclear where the other 26 residents have gone.
The clearing of the camp escaped the kind of public attention given to Martin Place earlier this month. It’s understood a significant police presence was used in Belmore Park – although Facs said that was standard practice for its outreach services.
The tough new move-on powers, introduced as a solution to the Martin Place camp, were again not used.
The state’s homelessness services welcomed the offers of housing to Belmont Park residents.
But both Homelessness NSW and the St Vincent de Paul Society have expressed concerns about a lack of long-term support services, which are needed to keep the residents in housing. There are also concerns that residents are being sent to homes without furniture.
The Homelessness NSW chief executive, Katherine McKernan, said it was crucial those experiencing homelessness were simultaneously given both housing and wraparound psychosocial and case management support services.
Without adequately funded support services, McKernan warned people would end up back on the street, continuing the cycle of homelessness.
The approach championed by McKernan, known as Housing First, has been employed in the United States with some success.
“The concern is that without the ongoing support, that people will be unable to maintain their housing and will end up homeless again and will have difficulty getting back on the housing register, as the policy states that you need to demonstrate six months of private rental history in order to be reconsidered following an exit from public housing,” she said.
A Facs spokesman said the government did offer “supportive services and connections to community-based supports”, with the intent to help people stay in their homes and avoid returning to homelessness.
But St Vincent de Paul Society NSW chief executive, Jack de Groot, echoed the concerns of Homelessness NSW about the sustainability of the housing being offered.
“Our people are saying to us that there’s some very temporary and non-sustainable options being given to people – a bit of emergency housing, but it doesn’t have any support around it,” he said.
“People are not going to stay in that sort of housing. It needs to be much more planned, coordinated, linked in to other support services that they need.”
McKernan said about 100 people from Martin Place and Belmore Park have been housed, while a similar number were currently in hotels or motels.
“Facs are to be commended in identifying properties and accommodation options for people, however, people who have been rough sleeping require long-term support to maintain housing,” she said.
“Our understanding is that of the 100 people housed only 25 people have been provided with furniture.”
Homelessness NSW wants to see targets to reduce and end homelessness in inner-city suburbs in Sydney, a dedicated supply of housing to the Housing First approach, properly funded psychosocial and case management services, coordinated outreach for those sleeping rough, and a cross-government and nongovernment taskforce, as well as a broader strategy to achieve housing affordability in Sydney.
McKernan said the City of Sydney’s last street count showed 1,020 people were homeless in the council area.
“Band-Aid responses will not address this issue and without action on affordable housing and a coordinated Housing First response this figure will either remain static or increase as more people will become homeless,” she said.
De Groot warned those sleeping rough were the “pointy end” of a much larger problem and most forms of homelessness were invisible to the public.
“[It’s] the pointiest end of a very big wound that we’ve got in the community about unaffordable rents, spikes in utility prices and the lack of support services,” he said.
The Greens’ housing spokeswoman, Jenny Leong, said the government was attempting to “hide the problem rather than find real solutions”.
“Rounding up vulnerable people and moving them out of the city into homes with no furniture and away from their support services and even from access to meals, is appalling,” Leong said.
“The premier must take responsibility and find real solutions to the growing homelessness crisis in this city – it’s not enough to just try to push the problem out of sight,” she said”

Abbott's opposition to marriage equality will cost the Liberals for years to come

Marriage equality

Opinion

Jeff Sparrow

Tony Abbott and other Liberal conservatives still imagine they can build a winning constituency from the no side. Instead, he has wrapped the party in impossible tangles

Tony Abbott leaves the chamber during question time

Contact author

Though he devised his plebiscite scheme to trap equal marriage advocates, Tony Abbott unwittingly created a snare for the Liberal party, one that’s wrapped them in impossible tangles.
With every poll showing public support for reform, a cannier conservative might have quietly passed the necessary legislation, thus taking the subject off the table.
Instead, as I argued back in 2016, by committing the Liberals to a popular vote, Abbott placed his disagreement with the majority of Australians right in the centre of public debate.
He linked support for marriage equality – something that conservative parties elsewhere have accepted without much fuss – to opposition to the Liberal party, and he forced those who want change (namely, most of the population) to become politically active so as to get it.
Already, Malcolm Turnbull’s version of the plebiscite has unleashed an extraordinary tide of sentiment.

A few random examples:

Triple M – a station you might once have associated with “Tony’s tradies” – has updated its logo to incorporate a rainbow flag.
Pubs and music venues across Sydney have staged an Equality Weekender to encourage people to enrol to vote.
Singer Meghan Trainor reacted to the use of her image by no campaigners by joining Miley Cyrus, Ellen DeGeneres, Stephen Fry and other stars in urging Australians to support reform.
The Officeworks chain has declared it won’t allow the printing of hate speech at its facilities.
In Sydney and Melbourne and elsewhere, town halls have been illuminated to urge a yes vote.
Some 20 000 people rallied in Melbourne.

For young Australians in particular, opposition to marriage reform just seems bizarre, a weird legacy of a prejudice they’ve never endorsed.
And now they’re voting.
The Australian Electoral Commission has revealed that 90,000 new voters – most of them young – have registered since the poll was announced, a number it calls “extraordinary”.
Something like a million Australians have either updated their details or enrolled for the first time – and, once they’re on the roll, they’re legally obliged to participate in future elections.
Not surprisingly, some Liberal party insiders are already aghast about what their leaders have done.
“You’re motivating a group of people, the large portion of them young, who are naturally going to vote against you at the next election,” a worried strategist told Buzzfeed’s Mark Di Stefano. “It’s just not smart.”
You almost feel sorry for the hapless Turnbull (oh, wait – no you don’t).
Unlike, say, Labor’s Penny Wong (who voted to ban same-sex marriage and spoke against equality as late as 2010), Turnbull’s always publicly endorsed reform.
But after pushing through his weird postal plebiscite, he can’t campaign for a yes vote with any passion, not least because he couldn’t appear at rallies without being booed. While Bill Shorten’s team rushes to associate itself with the yes campaign, Turnbull must spend most of his time defending a shonky process that pleases no one.
Not surprisingly, the poll has widened the already deep divisions within the Coalition.
Turnbull is openly at odds with Abbott, who has gleefully positioned himself as the unofficial leader of the nos.
Abbott realises the plebiscite will damage a prime minister equally mistrusted by the left and the right. But he also imagines, quite bizarrely, that he and the other Liberal conservatives can build a winning electoral constituency from the no side.
The Herald Sun’s James Campbell recently reported that the Australian Christian Lobby, Marriage Alliance, the Catholic archdiocese of Sydney, the Anglican diocese of Sydney and other conservative groups have begun sharing databases as they campaign together as the Coalition for Marriage.
Campbell thinks the coalition could be the beginning of that mythical beast, a rightwing alternative to GetUp.
But there’s a big problem with that idea: namely, opposition to same-sex rights has become a fringe preoccupation.

Look at Tony Abbott’s own career

In the Quarterly Essay entitled Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott, David Marr describes the young Abbott launching himself into Sydney University politics by attacking gay students for “perversion”.
Publicly identifying himself “an infrequently practising heterosexual and drunkard” (truly!), Abbott opposed the legalisation of homosexuality. His friends remember the way he baited lesbians during political arguments.
But that, of course, was a different time, an era in which prejudice could be taken for granted.
If Abbott repeated today the language he used when he was promoting the Heterosexual Solidarity Society (yep, seriously), his parliamentary career would be over.
Years of struggle against prejudice have shifted the parameters of public discourse so that most Australians now see the kind of “jokes” in which Abbott once specialised as hateful.
On Thursday, radio host Kyle Sandilands labelled as a “homophobe” a talkback caller who said that same-sex couples shouldn’t raise children.
Now, the man’s rhetoric was far less offensive than that employed by the young Tony Abbott – but Sandilands (in a clip shared a million times) still denounced him as a “fuckwit”, “cockhead” and “wanker”.
With even shockjocks calling out homophobes, it’s not surprising that, as Abbott urged a no vote, he felt compelled to add, “I’m not saying that there is anything inferior about a relationship between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.”
His evolution (he was once opposing legalisation of homosexuality; he now acknowledges homosexual relationships as not “inferior”) hints at the fragility of the anti-reform alliance.
That’s why, contrary to Campbell’s claim, the Coalition for Marriage doesn’t provide any real foundation for a broader conservative movement.
Whatever the Catholic or the Anglican archdioceses say, the vast majority of religious believers (like the vast majority of Australians) support same-sex marriage – and have done so for a long time.

So here’s the paradox

The best outcome for the Liberals, given the pickle they’re in, would be for the high court to strike down the plebiscite process.
If that happens – if the postal vote’s derailed – the life will go out of the grassroots activism and marriage reform will stall until the next election.
Barring some huge upset, Labor will win power and then, presumably, amend the Marriage Act.
Under those circumstances, the Liberal right and the ACL will continue pretending they represent mainstream Australia. They’ll bluster about lawyers interfering with the democratic process; they’ll imply that the no campaign would have won.
Marriage will become the Lost Cause of the Australian Right: something that conservative politicians and pundits mutter darkly about, without any real hope of changing.
If, on the other hand, the postal survey goes ahead, the Liberals are cooked, whatever the result.
The campaign for the postal vote will initiate thousands of people into participatory politics. In schools, in universities and in workplaces, they’ll campaign for a yes vote – with almost every institution or organisation that matters to young people already urging reform.
They’ll march on the street; they’ll hand out leaflets; they’ll go to marriage equality events.
The campaign itself will highlight the difference between the pro- and anti-equality forces.
Does anyone really think that Lyle Shelton and his allies on the religious right could, for instance, have organised an event comparable to the rally in Melbourne on Saturday: a huge assembly, joyous and young and angry?
If the yes case wins, a generation will know they played a role in reshaping the country – and they did so in opposition to the Liberal party.
That’s not something you easily forget.
Even if the yes case loses, participants will (rightly) blame the trickiness of the postal vote for frustrating the majority sentiment identified in every reputable survey – and they’ll be more determined than ever to get the Liberals out.
Either way, we might well be on the cusp of a significant new anti-Liberal constituency, one that will affect Australian politics for years to come.

Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist

If Donald Trump won't tackle climate change, then Chicago will

Climate change

Opinion

Rahm Emanuel

Across the US, towns and metropolises like mine are united to meet the Paris climate agreement’s targets and protect our residents and businesses

Cyclists using the bike-sharing program pass the Balbo Monument, a gift from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to the city of Chicago in 1933.

While the Trump administration is dropping the mantle of leadership on climate change, American cities from coast to coast are picking it up. From small towns to metropolises and from the coasts to the heartland, Republican and Democratic mayors are united in common cause to curb emissions, shrink our carbon footprints and fight for a greener future.
Rather than accepting the White House’s wrongheaded withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, cities are redoubling our efforts to meeting the landmark accords’ benchmarks. We not only have the power to take action, but unlike Washington we have the will to get the job done.
Just days after Donald Trump’s shortsighted decision, I signed an executive order formalizing Chicago’s commitment to adopting the guidelines of the Paris agreement and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% by 2025 (compared with 2005 levels).
Chicago has a head start in this effort. We already cut carbon emissions by 7% from 2010-15, while our economy expanded by 12%.
How did we do it?
First, in 2012 we closed Chicago’s last two remaining coal plants.
Second, we retrofitted over 54m sq ft of buildings to make them more energy efficient, earning Chicago first place in the nation for green building adoption and the distinction as the only large American city to be granted the US Environmental Protection Agency energy tar partner of the year award.
Third, to encourage alternatives to driving, Chicago is in the middle of an unprecedented $8.5bn modernization of our mass transit system. We also created the largest bike-sharing program in North America, adding 108 miles of new protected bike lanes and 47 miles of off-street public bike paths, earning Chicago the accolade of the best city in the country for cyclists from Bicycling Magazine.
Fourth, our Drive Clean Chicago initiative has supported $37m in low and emission zero vehicles, the equivalent of taking 1,700 cars off the road a year. We are now in the process of procuring Chicago’s first fleet of electric buses, charging stations and hybrid police vehicles.
These steps are just a downpayment on the work ahead to meet the benchmarks of the Paris climate agreement. Looking over the horizon, by 2025 Chicago will be the largest city in the country where every public building is powered by 100% renewable energy. Outside our buildings, we are converting all of our city streetlights to LED by 2021.
American cities have the power and the will to take action collectively and in our own communities. We control the levers of planning, land use and development – and we can use these tools to turn promises and commitments into results.
This fall, Chicago will host the first North American Climate Summit, a new forum for leaders from across the US, Canada and Mexico to exchange innovative ideas and strengthen coordination and collaboration in our common fight for a sustainable future.
The summit will build on the strength of successful existing partnerships including the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group as well as Climate Mayors, a bipartisan coalition of more than 300 municipal leaders from across the US. We are also proud to partner with America’s Pledge, a coalition made up of 227 cities and counties, nine states and more than 1,600 businesses committed to upholding the Paris climate agreement.
In Chicago and cities across America, we are sending a clear signal: we will not be deterred and we will not let the truth about climate change be obscured. When the Trump Environmental Protection Agency took down information on climate science from their website, Chicago put it up on our city website. More than a dozen other American cities followed suit.
Something is wrong when a president will do anything to protect every Confederate statue in every city and town, but not one thing to protect those cities and towns from rising sea levels, severe storms and other climate change impacts that threaten municipalities’ very existence.
We hope that Washington finds the courage to lead, but in the meantime we are going to keep pushing forward by cutting emissions, reducing our reliance on coal and adopting the Paris climate agreement locally. Our residents and businesses demand nothing less.

Rahm Emanuel is the mayor of Chicago