Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Now an agreement has been struck between China and the US on carbon emissions, we can be optimistic about the coming year
We can expect ‘Churchillian language’ on climate change in the run up to
the 2015 Paris climate talks. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images
2014 was the year when climate diplomacy got back on track. It’s a
steep track, and we’re moving way too slowly, but as it’s the season of
goodwill let’s accentuate the positive.
The biggest news of the year was the bilateral agreement
between China and the USA, in which the US committed to reducing its
greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% below its 2005 levels by 2025, and in
return China agreed to peak its own CO2 emissions by 2030 and increase
the proportion of its non-fossil energy to 20%. The details merit a lot
of careful consideration. Has the US really made a significant new
offer, or just recycled their existing direction of travel into a vague
commitment? Should we praise China for committing to build more clean
energy than any other nation, or condemn it for allowing emissions to
keep rising for another decade?
The most important part of this agreement is its symbolism. The
over-simplified explanation for the failure of the international process
has always been a clash between these two giants. If they can present a
united front then that deadlock is broken and smaller players trying to
block an agreement will no longer be able to hide.
The week after that agreement was announced, we had a theatrical display of political symbolism at the G20 summit in Australia
as world leaders lined up to give Australian prime minister Tony
Abbott’s government a slap on the wrist for its anti-science
obstructionism. Meanwhile Europe, despite its own troubles, has managed
to maintain a climate leadership role with new 2030 targets which,
though flawed, keep the continent just ahead of the game on cutting
carbon.
As we head into 2015 things are finally starting to move forward. The
contribution made by ongoing advances in solar photovoltaics and other
clean technologies, heavily backed by China and Germany, should not be
overlooked. At the time of writing, 2014 was the hottest year on record.
Though this is of only minor significance to climate science, it
provides the right sort of backdrop to give politicians a little extra
confidence to act.
Aligned
with this are progressive moves from some major figures in the worlds
of business and local and regional government, who are making
commitments to 100% renewable energy. They are making the slow pace of
international negotiations look more and more out of step with what’s
happening on the ground. The increasing troubles of the oil industry –
even if oil is getting cheaper – do little to enhance their reputation
as guardians of the future.
The main reason for all this climate related activity is, of course,
Paris 2015. The meeting in Paris next December could be the next
Copenhagen: a bitter disappointment which costs us dearly in both money
and morale. But you don’t get the opportunity to be that big a
disappointment without some fairly serious optimism too, and Paris is
managing to generate a lot more hope than cynicism so far.
Is it possible that by this time next year climate change will
finally have been addressed with the sort of urgency and seriousness it
deserves? Probably not, but it might at last be time for some
Churchillian language about ends and beginnings as our leaders start to
actually lead on this fundamental issue.
The climate denial lobby and its fossil fuel funders will be even
more focused in the coming months. For us this might just be the end of
the beginning. For them it’s the beginning of the end.
Once the world starts setting hard limits on emissions, all the
business plans of all the oil majors in the world become obsolete,
wishful thinking and the global economy starts adjusting to a low-carbon
future in earnest. From that day forward fossil fuels go into permanent
retreat. So expect to see a frenzied last-ditch defence of the fossil
fuel economy, with climate science under greater attack than ever
before. With trillions of dollars at stake, don’t expect a clean fight.
Happy new year. John Sauven is executive director of Greenpeace UK Read more stories like this:
Peak organisations told on Monday they would no longer receive
funding, raising questions over whether voice of homeless people and
sector will be lost
Greens Senator Rachel Siewert is calling for a Senate inquiry into the cuts. Photograph: Katherine Griffiths/AAP
Homelessness
groups are facing an uncertain Christmas after the federal government
reportedly pulled funding from a number of advocacy organisations.
Several peak organisations that provide policy advice and research
into homelessness and housing services received word from the Department
of Social Services on Monday that they would no longer receive funding.
“We were deeply disappointed,” Glenda Stevens, CEO of Homelessness
Australia, told Guardian Australia. The group’s funding expired at the
end of the last financial year, and it was on a short-term contract
until the government decided whether or not to renew it.
Grants from the government make up nearly 100% of Homelessness Australia’s annual budget.
“As an organisation it’s going to be extremely difficult, a challenge,” Stevens said.
She said the government is removing a round of funding for
homelessness and housing services altogether, saving $21m over four
years.
Guardian Australia has contacted new social services minister Scott Morrison
to confirm the funding cuts, but has received no response. Outgoing
minister Kevin Andrews would not comment, instead referring the matter
to Morrison’s office.
“It’s a really callous act to cut the voice of the homeless a couple
of days before Christmas,” the chief executive of National Shelter,
Adrian Pisarski, told ABC TV.
“We would also like to think that there’s a chance that we could
argue our case to the federal government although that doesn’t seem
likely, given that they have axed the whole housing and homelessness
section from their program,” Pisarski said.
National Shelter will lose $150,000 a year in funding, which Pisarski said is the organisation’s whole secretariat budget.
The Community Housing
Federation of Australia has lost over three-quarters of its annual
budget in government funding cuts. The Department of Social Services had
pledged to continue funding the group until June 2016 but reneged
following the mid-year economic and financial outlook (Myefo).
“We were not prepared for that at all,” CEO Carol Croce told Guardian
Australia. “It’s a big shock for staff, a few days before Christmas.”
“I don’t think this is a reflection on our work at all,” she said. “This is a budget repair exercise.”
“Who are the people who are going to be the voice for the sector? That’s what’s going to be missing.”
Labor is calling on the government to rethink the cuts.
“I think that it’s an absolute disgrace that this government, on the
eve of Christmas no less, has chosen to cut homeless services,” Labor’s
employment spokesman, Brendan O’Connor, told reporters on Tuesday.
“We’ve seen this government cut and slash and burn services to the
most vulnerable Australians, and for that reason they should be
condemned.”
The Christmas period traditionally sees an upsurge in the number of people seeking help from welfare and homelessness groups.
Pisarski said: “There’s over 105,000 people homeless on any given
night and hundreds of thousands of people on public housing waiting
lists.”
Stevens said every night 423 homeless people are turned away from under pressure frontline service providers.
She warned that number is likely to increase once the tightening of
welfare measures for under-30s is implemented, saying that up to 100,000
young people could seek homelessness services once they are barred from
receiving welfare for the first six months they are looking for a job.
Pisarski said the funding cuts raise questions about the government’s intent.
“We are some of the few voices that provide consistent long-term
advice to governments about how bad the situation is and what they can
do about it. They clearly don’t want to hear what we have to say or what
people who are struggling have to say,” Pisarski said.
The Greens are calling for an investigation into the handling of the sector’s funding cuts.
“I will move for a Senate inquiry into the grants process undertaken
by the Department of Social Security when the Senate resumes,” Greens
senator Rachel Siewert said.
“An inquiry is needed to thoroughly examine the government’s decision
making process and the way they have gone about delivering these
significant and harmful cuts.”
Advisory body also finds renewable energy target should remain at
existing level but deadline could be pushed back to allow for investment
uncertainty
The renewable energy target has been of ‘modest’ cost to industry and
energy consumers, said the Climate Change Authority. Photograph: Julian
Smith/AAP
The government’s climate advisory body has delivered a stark
assessment of the Coalition’s policies, stating it was unlikely that its
Direct Action policy would meet Australia’s 5% emissions reduction
target and calling for the renewable energy target (RET) to remain
intact.
The Climate Change Authority,
which the Coalition unsuccessfully attempted to abolish, has conducted
two statutory reviews for the government: one on the RET and one on the
carbon farming initiative (CFI).
The existing CFI is being expanded into the $2.55bn Emissions
Reduction Fund (ERF), which is the centrepiece of the Coalition’s Direct
Action climate plan. The fund will provide voluntary grants to
businesses that wish to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The review by the Climate Change Authority (CCA) said the evidence
showed the ERF, in its current form, would “fall well short of achieving
the reductions required to meet Australia’s minimum 2020 target”, which
is a 5% emissions reduction based on 2000 levels.
This damning assessment adds to previous independent modelling
showing the policy would be insufficient. The government has conducted
no modelling of its own on whether the policy would work, but has
repeatedly expressed its confidence the target would be reached, partly
because emissions from areas such as manufacturing have been declining
due to other factors.
The UN has cast doubt on whether Direct Action would meet the emissions target, stating in November that Australia was one of just four countries on course to miss 2020 emissions reduction goals.
But the CCA said it was too early to completely write off the ERF,
given that it had yet to start purchasing carbon abatement and that the
“safeguards” mechanism – which would ensure emissions did not rise
elsewhere in the economy – had yet to be finalised.
Complementary
action, such as the purchasing of international carbon permits and a
“robust” RET, could also help Australia meet its 5% goal, although the
target itself was “inadequate” and should be increased, according to a previous CCA review.
The CCA’s report raised the concern that emissions abatement
purchased through the fund would occur anyway and recommended the
government consider an “additionality” test that would ensure emissions
were cut beyond business-as-usual levels.
The authority’s RET review recommended the target not be altered,
although the timescale to achieve it should be deferred by “up to three
years”.
The government held a review of the RET earlier this year, headed by
the businessman Dick Warburton, rather than rely on the CCA’s advice.
The Warburton review recommended the RET be either scaled back or
abolished.
Under the existing RET, 41,000 gigawatt hours of Australia’s
electricity must come from clean sources, such as solar and wind, by
2020. The government is attempting to cap this target at a “real 20%”,
which the renewables industry has said would involve a substantial cut
to jobs and investment in the sector.
Labor, which has previously walked away from talks with the Coalition
on the future of the RET, is seeking to re-establish contact on the
issue. Labor and the Greens oppose any major cut to the RET.
The CCA’s report said that while the level of the large-scale RET
target, which covers large solar and wind farms, should remain, pushing
the timeframe beyond 2020 would help the target be reached due to the
huge uncertainty in the sector that has seen investment drop 70% in just the past year.
The RET is projected to reduce Australia’s emissions by 58m tonnes
between 2015 and 2020, and “by much larger amounts in later periods”,
the CCA report stated. It has been of “modest” cost to industry and
energy consumers, it added.
“The RET arrangements are not perfect but, in the authority’s view,
they are effective in reducing emissions (at reasonable cost) in the
centrally important electricity sector,” the report said. “Given the
absence of effective alternative measures bearing upon this sector, the
authority does not favour any significant scaling back of the 2020 LRET
target of 41,000 GWh.”
The chief executive of the Climate Institute, John Connor, said: “The
CCA report notes that the emissions intensity of Australia’s
electricity sector is higher than that of China and the rest of the OECD
and that renewable energy will play a major role in cleaning up our
power sector.
“The Climate Institute calls on the government to step back from
plans to dramatically reduce the RET and for both the government and the
ALP to provide bipartisan support for renewable energy in Australia in
recognition of the need to urgently decarbonise our energy sector.”
The chairman of the CCA, Bernie Fraser, said there was neither a
broad community consensus on the risk of climate change nor a
“well-stocked toolbox” to reduce emissions.
“The earlier broad political consensus has ruptured in recent years,
and no early repair is in prospect,” he said. “And the toolbox is
feeling less weighty, with the removal of the carbon pricing mechanism,
an unproven ERF, and an uncertain outlook for the RET.”
The Coalition attempted to scrap the CCA but a deal struck with the
Palmer United party meant its survival until 2016, in return for PUP
Senate votes to implement the ERF.
The CCA will now review
the effectiveness of emissions trading, as well as what Australia’s
emissions reductions target should be beyond 2020. Countries’ post-2020
goals will be submitted early next year ahead of crunch climate talks in
Paris.
The chief executive of the CCA, Anthea Harris, told Guardian Australia it had been a “strange year” for the government agency.
“We have got a job to do now and we will be making recommendations in
the broader public interest,” she said. Asked if she expected the
government to take on board the CCA’s work, she said: “We’ll wait and
see.”
Harris said there was “huge uncertainty” over the future of the RET and the effectiveness of the ERF.
Mark Butler, Labor’s environment spokesman, said: “All of the experts
agree that Tony Abbott’s relentless reversal on action to tackle
climate change is ideology that flies in the face of facts, logic and
economic responsibility.”
A spokeswoman for Greg Hunt, the environment minister, said the
government would carefully consider the reports and will respond in due
course.
“We are committed to reforming the RET and will continue to seek
bipartisan support for a RET that achieves a real 20% share of renewable
in Australia’s energy mix by 2020,” she said. “The door remains open to
Labor to recommence negotiations.
“The government welcomes the authority’s assessment that the
Emissions Reduction Fund streamlines existing arrangements and expands
coverage to allow crediting of emissions reductions across the economy.
“The government is making strong progress implementing its ERF, with
preparations for the first auction well underway, and nearly 20 new
draft ERF methods released to expand emissions reduction opportunities
for business across the economy.”
A new book offers a damning insight into conditions for low-paid,
non-union, immigrant workers helping to feed our huge appetite for cheap
meat
On the line: inside the Hormel pork processing plant in Fremont, Nebraska. Photograph: Nati Harnik/AP
Ted Genoways
Maria
Lopez will never forget that day. It was 2004, the middle of an
ordinary shift on the line at Hormel Foods – a sprawling
brick-and-concrete complex on the southern edge of Fremont, Nebraska.
The worker beside her fed pork shoulders one after another into a
spinning saw, just as he did every other day of the week, while Lopez
gathered and bagged the trimmed fat to go into Spam. The pace of work
had always been steady, but the speed of the line had jumped recently –
from 1,000 pigs per hour to more than 1,100 – and Lopez was having
trouble keeping up.
As her co-worker reached for another shoulder, Lopez rushed to clear
the cutting area, and her fingers slipped toward the saw blade. She
snatched her hand back but too late. Her index finger dangled by a flap
of skin, the bone cut clean through. She screamed as blood spurted and
covered her workstation.
When Lopez returned to Hormel two months later, her finger surgically
reattached but still splinted, she claims to have discovered a
stomach-turning truth: that while she sprinted to the nurse’s station
and was taken to the local hospital, while she waited, finger wrapped,
in the emergency room for the surgeon to drive in from Omaha, the cut
line at Hormel continued to run.
She says that that hour, like every hour, without interruption, the
plant processed 1,100 pigs – their carcasses butchered into parts and
marketed as Cure 81 hams or Black Label bacon, the scraps collected and
ground up to make Spam and Little Sizzlers breakfast sausages. Her
co-workers were instructed to wash the station of her blood, but the
line never stopped, never even slowed.
In the last 15 years, a food movement led by the publication of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma
has emerged in the US. Turning away from low-cost, low-quality fast
food, proponents have sparked a consumer revolution that favours local,
natural, free-range, humanely raised, sustainable and ethically
harvested food.
Eric Schlosser, whose book Fast Food Nation examined food production standards in the US.Photograph: REX/c.FoxSearch/Everett/REX/c.FoxSearch/Everett
The movement has been so successful that it has moved from small
co-ops and farmers’ markets to large commercial chains such as Trader
Joe’s and Whole Foods Market. But converts have tended to focus either
on organic and non-genetically modified growing methods as a way of
reducing the environmental impact of industrial agriculture, or on
writer Temple Grandin’s cruelty-free and humane slaughter standards as a
way of mitigating the inherent brutality of meat. Until now, little
attention has been paid to the workers who plant and harvest produce in
the American south or who work in the high-speed packing houses in the
midwest.
The produce industry has always relied on seasonal, low-paid workers,
but the undercutting of union labour in meat packing is a relatively
new development. Ironically, at the very moment that enlightened eaters
were growing obsessed by the idea of “slow food,” the meat industry was
becoming overwhelmingly staffed by recent immigrants – many without
legal employment status – as a way of pushing production lines to go
faster and faster.
Undocumented workers, many from Mexico and other parts of Latin
America, formed a perfect corporate workforce: thankful for their pay
cheques, willing to endure harsh working conditions, unlikely to
unionise or even complain. “They don’t ask for breaks. They don’t ask
for raises,” one worker at the Hormel plant in Fremont told me. “They
just work harder and harder, because they need to work.” “I feel thrown away,” one
worker told me. “Like a piece of trash.” This comment came at the end
of one particularly grim case of worker injury and discrimination at
Quality Pork Processors – the exclusive co-packer for Hormel’s flagship
plant in Austin, Minnesota – at a part of the kill floor called the
“head table”. Every hour, more than 1,300 severed pork heads would go
sliding along the belt. Workers sliced off the ears, clipped the snouts,
chiselled the cheek meat. They scooped out the eyes, carved out the
tongues, and scraped the palate meat from the roofs of mouths.
The last worker harvested the brains by inserting the metal nozzle of
a 90lb-per-square-inch compressed-air hose into the opening at the back
of each skull, tripping a trigger that blasted the pig’s brains into a
pink slurry. (The brains were sold in Asia as a thickener for stir-fry.)
But each burst of air was also aerosolising small amounts of porcine
brain tissue, which workers were unknowingly inhaling.
The workers’ immune systems produced antibodies to destroy the
foreign cells, but because porcine and human neurological cells are so
similar, the antibodies didn’t recognise when the foreign cells had been
eliminated – and began destroying the healthy human neural tissue of
the workers.
In the end, the plant experienced what the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
classified as an “epidemic of neuropathy”, involving about two dozen
employees, nearly all of them Hispanic, including several who sustained
permanent brain, spine and nerve damage. Once the cause was clear, the
machines were shut off. But after they filed workers’ compensation
claims, many say they were fired for not having legal immigration
status; some received compensation.
In modern meat-packing plants, the rate of production is set by a
chain conveyor system. The chain determines everything about how a day
in the plant goes, and workers often talk about it as if it were a
living thing, something to be feared.
In 2006 and 2007, when the American mortgage crisis began to peak and
then stock markets crashed worldwide, the freedom to run faster
production lines positioned Hormel to capitalise on demand the economic
downturn created for budget-friendly meat like Spam without
significantly increasing its workforce or raising wages to match the
elevated output. The industry has been stretched to the breaking point
by the drive for cheaper and cheaper meat. And Hormel, in particular,
with its runaway demand for Spam and no government regulation to slow
things down, has pushed its lines to breakneck speeds.
Consider this: in 2002, Hormel’s production lines were running at
900 pigs per hour; by 2007, they were running 1,350 pigs per hour.
That’s a 50% increase in five years, but the number of workers on the
line increased by only about 15%. So, obviously, everyone is working
harder, working faster, and mistakes occur, like the incident involving
Maria Lopez.
Statistically, people who work at any meat-packing plant for five
years have a nearly 50-50 chance of suffering a serious injury. And an
extensive study of packing-house workers conducted by the University of
Iowa in 2008 suggested that the number of injuries may be significantly
under-reported. The study found that the large numbers of undocumented
workers from Mexico and other parts of Latin America are almost half as
likely to report an injury or job-related illness as their white
counterparts.
Ten
acres of land is considered a large farm in Japan.
THE
latest rendering of an old motto; “Do others and see that they
don't do you.”
“A
STARVING man has a natural right to his neighbour's bread.” -
CARDINAL MANNING.
Peter
White, A.W.U. delegate, was from latest advices, in the hospital at
Hughenden, and not at all well.
THE
director of the Sydney Benevolent Asylum makes a special appeal for
charity so as to save 1000 children from starvation!
MORETON
Frewen, the bimetallism lecturer, now in Melbourne, has such faith in
the prospect of an increase in silver values that he has purchased
the Central Broken Hill Co. for an American syndicate at £1
per share, or £150,000.
THE
Rev. A. C. Hoggins (of St. Barnabas', Ithaca) will deliver another
lecture in the Trades Hall on Saturday evening, the 20th
April, entitled “The Dismal Science and its Transformation.” The
lecturer deserves a large audience.
SINCE
the A.W.U. started a co-operative store at Hughenden, rations are
quite 25 percent, cheaper than before the store was established. If
small co-operative efforts can do this, what might be done by
municipal and State co-operation, in other words by Socialism?
AT
a conference of the Independent Parliamentary labour party of Great
Britain it was decided that a tax on all unearned incomes should be
advocated with a view of providing a State pension for all persons
over 50 years of age, also for disabled workers and widows.
Mr.
George Black, M.P., in a lecture on “Individualism” at Leigh
House, Sydney, quoted the following: “Communism means to every man
according to his need; Socialism means to every man according to his
deed; Individualism means to every man according to his greed.”
W.C.
CURTIS, Secretary A.W.U., says he will be satisfied when the drapery
department of the co-operative store is in full swing – that is, as
near satisfied as he ever intends to be. He bars a man who is
satisfied, as he appears to be only a little removed from a fat
bullock running in a good paddock.
Jack
Hoolan's Mundic Miner
referring
to the Townsville Herald
says;
“During good times it cracked up anything and everything, and when
hard times arrives it sits in the ashes and utters barren curses on
the Labour Party. Well, this portion of the labour party curses back
at it heartily and unmistakably.”
BISHOP Thornton
objected to the performance of a skirt dance at a church bazaar, and
the “dander of the ladies is riz.” The ladies' committee has
forwarded a letter to the Bishop calling attention to his utterances,
and asking him to state definitely wherein they have sinned. Skirts
will be a lot of trouble to that Bishop yet.
A
RAID has been made by the municipal authorities in Brisbane on the
shops of several respectable grocers, and sundry weights and scales
have been seized for not being up to the standard of avoirdupois.
Cheating customers by light weights is not considered robbery in the
ordinary sense by some of the unco
guid. “It
is merely a matter of trade.”
DURING the
festivities held in Longreach on the occasion of Governor Norman's
visit it was remarked that all the eatables and drinkables required
for the various gorges (with the exception of ginger beer and
lemonade – which were not in great demand) were fetched up from the
coast. Even the ladies required as partners at the squatters' ball
were imported for the occasion.
GRANT
Allen's new book entitled “The Women Who Did” is likely to
produce a great sensation in the reading world. It is the story of a
woman who, though pure and spotless, refuses to bind herself by any
marriage ceremony, religious or secular. Stead, in the Review
of Reviews, severely
condemns it, and even hints that it will be the death of Mr. Allen's
literary reputation.
CHAS. R. Wilde was
brought before a St. Kilda (Vic) court for not paying a fine of 17s.
for keeping an unregistered dog. He said that he was only earning 8s.
a week at Gippsland, and his wife hawked goods from door to door. He
had now no worldly possessions, having recently been sold out. A few
years ago, as their worships knew, he was worth £20,000, but the
banks had ruined him completely.
Sir Chas. Lilley and
Sir Bruce Burnside, arbitrators in the great dispute between the New
Zealand Government and the Midland Railway Company, have adjourned
the case owing to the difficulty of finding a suitable umpire of
equal rank with themselves. What is wrong with the women of New
Zealand ? Cannot one of them be selected as umpire? This would get
over the difficulty of rank and establish a precedent as well.
THE fat man
Socialism in our time recently met in combat in the Melbourne City
Council. It was over the question whether the council should
undertake the lighting of private premises with electricity. The fat
persons, with tears in their voices, trotted out all their stale
arguments about private enterprise and competition, but with no
avail. So far as electric lighting in Melbourne is concerned
Socialism in our time has come to stay.
THE attempt on the
part of the Courier to make the Labour party responsible for
the failure (if failure it be) of New Australia is mean and cowardly.
Communism and Socialism have no real connection with each other.
Socialism is already to some extent an established fact, as witness
the post office and other State departments; Communism is a lofty
ideal which can only be realised by perfect men and women. The fact
that men can not fly is not exactly evidence that they cannot walk.
AT a meeting of the
Hughenden Town Council and some of the towns people an effort was
made to get some of the ratepayers' money for drinking purposes for
the Ministerialists visiting town. The mayor and Alderman Curtis
objected, so admirers had to feed the Government party. It was argued
by one alderman that if ratepayers' money were spent in shouting for
the Premier and party, the money would come back threefold. What an
exalted opinion these men must have of the Government when they
declare they could be bought with food and drink?
AT the meeting of
the Wellington (N.Z.) Eight Hours' Demonstration Committee it was
proposed to elect Mr. D. P. Fisher a life member of the committee,
but there being no provision in the rules to meet the case, the
by-law committee was instructed to draft an amendment in the
direction required. This honour is well deserved, for no one has
worked harder in this and other causes pertaining to the betterment
of the condition of workers, organised or unorganised, than Dave, who
has served us well in every office from the lowest to the very
highest. Dave Fisher, of the Typo. Society! Why, it is easily
remembered that he was president of the Maritime Council, of the
Trades Council, the Typo. Society, the Seaman's Union, and other
bodies at one and the same time. A first-class organiser, too. Yes,
this is the least honour that can be paid you, Dave. D.P.F. Holds a
frame in the time-room of the Government Printing Office. His many
friends and acquaintances 'neath the Southern Cross will be
interested in this par.
This year Tony Abbott was punished for his reliance on mantras and
oversimplifications instead of real policy solutions. The question for
Australia in 2015 is who will grasp the nettle of a detailed debate
Tony Abbott has presided over a government that has lost the faith of the electorate. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Fifteen months after his supremely confident election night pledge to give Australia a competent and trustworthy government, Tony Abbott
did a long and purging media conference to try to “reboot” his
relationship with an electorate that doesn’t think his administration is
either of those things.
Backed by a merrily twinkling Christmas tree, a sombre prime minister
insisted he was listening and conceded things had been a bit “ragged”
of late. But he also said he was sticking to his existing policies, with
a few minor tweaks. The tone was conciliatory and just a little bit
humble, but the substance was, in essence, the same old slogans.
Yet 2014 has been, above all else, the year the slogans stopped
working. It was the year when it became painfully clear actual solutions
were much more complicated than election jingles and pamphlets
promising a “plan for real action” but containing no such plan.
It was the year when the Coalition’s broken promises – after all
those attacks on Julia Gillard’s “lies” – meant the breach of trust
between government and the governed became bipartisan. It was the year
when the budget not only broke promises, but also introduced new
“reforms” never mentioned before the election: big changes to
everyday-life policies on health, education and welfare. It took the
electorate’s breath away, and then its faith in the government.
It was the year when Gough Whitlam’s death juxtaposed his enduring reforms against the current myopic agenda and unleashed a deep yearning for brave politicians who fight and win a public battle of ideas to enact changes that transform. Gough Whitlam and Tony Abbott presided over very different political battlegrounds.Photograph: Corbis/AFP
It was always clear that Abbott’s small-target campaign from opposition was strong on rhetoric and light on detail, and that important policy questions were being fudged. But, with Labor having rendered itself unelectable, a strong majority of voters chose to hope for something better.
By year’s end an equally strong majority appeared resolute in their rejection of the Abbott government, consistently telling pollsters they were inclined to boot out the Coalition.
The prime minister seemed stunned by this rapid reversal of fortune –
the endlessly repeated soundbites had served him so well for so long.
But concessions aren’t really part of his crash-through style.
A few weeks later he gave another soul-searching interview
about why things had gone so wrong, this time to 2GB’s Ray Hadley as a
conduit to all the Coalition’s frustrated “fans in the stands”.
Again he insisted the problem was one of communication, not substance.
“Maybe our communications could have been more effective; maybe at
times when we were preparing the budget we should have been also
communicating the strategy as well,” he said.
“I guess my appeal to people is try to ignore the critical chatter
and look as objectively as you can at what this government is trying to
do and ask yourself what is the alternative, because believe me, Ray, I
am absolutely convinced in my deepest heart this is the right path
forward for Australia.”
And again he insisted that, despite everything, it had been a “year
rich in achievement”. He nominated the election slogans he could mark
with a tick. But the electorate appears to have moved on from the
mind-numbing, oversimplified world where asserting you have made good on
a mantra is the same as proving you have done something that makes
sense. They can see this isn’t always true, as is clear from examining
Abbott’s nominated “successes” without the spin.
Treasurer Joe Hockey and finance minister Mathias Corrman prepare to deliver the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook.Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
‘The budget is coming into better shape’
Except it’s not. Deficits – which were synonymous with “disasters” in the Coalition’s hyperbolic pre-election lexicon – will over the next two years total almost $72bn,
compared with the $28.7bn calculated by the Treasury and finance during
last year’s election campaign. A forecast surplus is now six, rather
than two, years away. And that’s when the government is still counting
billions in savings that are stalled in the Senate. Given this
deterioration has been caused primarily by declining revenues, and the
economy remained weak, Joe Hockey wisely decided not to slash spending.
But he still insisted his May budget was the only possible way to
make long-term budget improvements. This was despite its education,
health and welfare measures being resoundingly and unequivocally
rejected as unfair by the voters and the Senate, and despite there being
other policy alternatives to achieve long-term budget repair. His plan
to boost growth was also underwhelming: its centrepiece was spending
money on roads. Infrastructure spending is far from consistent in coming years, despite the Coalition’s messages.Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
‘The roads are building’
This weirdly passive claim referred to the $50bn infrastructure spend
which was a “key component” of the government’s “economic action
strategy”, and also the basis of Abbott’s aspiration to be known as the
“infrastructure prime minister” who will preside over “cranes across our
cities”. A vision of how the East West Link might look one day.Photograph: vic.gov.au
Except total transport investment is falling, then rising, and then
falling again. According to an analysis by the Grattan Institute,
commonwealth transport investment totals $7.5bn in 2014, $6.3bn in 2015,
$8.8bn in 2016, $10bn in 2017 and then $6.6bn in 2018, unless new
spending promises are made in the meantime. Mostly the government is
switching all commonwealth funding from public transport to help finance
new roads.
And despite promising that all infrastructure projects would be
subject to rigorous cost-benefit analyses before federal money was
promised, they weren’t, and if they were, the results didn’t seem to
matter. The commonwealth still wants to give $3bn to Melbourne’s East
West Link road despite the fact the new state government doesn’t want to
build it, and that it turns out to give a return of only 45 cents for every dollar spent.
‘The carbon tax is gone’
More than any other promise, this slogan was central to the
Coalition’s success, and the government did indeed deliver on the slogan
(with the votes of the Palmer United party, owned by a would-be
coalminer who claimed to be motivated by saving the environment – go
figure). The rationale for the repeal was to remove an “almost
unimaginable” impost from our cost of living, while the alternative
Direct Action plan could achieve the same environmental outcomes without
the pain. Abbott said the opening of the $4.2bn Caval Ridge coalmine in Queensland was ‘a great day for the world’. Photograph: AAP Image
So here is the impact of the carbon tax repeal on household power
prices. Prices fall with the abolition of the tax, then gradually inch
up again. In New South Wales and Western Australia they will be higher
in two years’ time than they were at the time of the carbon tax
abolition. In other states they remain only slightly lower.
Power prices by state
And here is the impact of the abolition of the tax on emissions when
it comes to electricity production – which represents about a third of
Australia’s greenhouse emissions. Emissions are tracking steadily
upwards because power from brown coal has become much cheaper relative
to other sources, and is making up more of the electricity market. National electricty market – annualised carbon emissions. The red line marks when the carbon tax was repealed.Photograph: Australian Energy Market Operator
Turns out to be very easy to imagine the power price reductions
(minor and temporary) and very difficult to imagine what we will do now
about our actual greenhouse emissions problem. Guardian Australia revealed in March
that Bill Shorten intended to go to the next election with a carbon
price at the heart of his climate policy, a position the government
considers to be close to suicidal. But by year’s end 57% of voters told a
Fairfax Ipsos poll they believed the government was not doing enough on
climate, the prime minister had been embarrassed by being so obviously
out of step with world opinion at the G20 meeting and the government had
been forced by public opinion, the Senate and its own backbench to tone
down attempts to dismantle the renewable energy target.
And while Australia might just reach its 2020 target to reduce
emissions by 5% compared with 2000 levels – largely because it clinched
special deals in previous climate agreements – it is now being forced to
consider what it will pledge to do after 2020. That promise will
necessarily involve cuts to industrial and electricity emissions that we
have never made before, and which Direct Action in its current form is
entirely ill-equipped to deliver. Unsinkable orange lifeboats were bought by the Australian government as part of Operation Sovereign Borders.Photograph: HKV / Barcroft Media
‘The boats have stopped’
And they have. But stopping the boats was a slogan, not a policy. The
objective was pretty much achieved when the former government – at its
death knell – decided that every asylum seeker arriving by boat would be
sent offshore for processing and none would be resettled in Australia.
It was clinched when the new government started sending those asylum
seekers still making the journey back to Indonesia on bright orange life
boats. Asylum seekers in front of their housing units on Manus Island.Photograph: Panos Pictures/Vlad Sokhin
The collateral damage is human – more than 2,000 people still in
offshore detention with no idea what will become of their lives, and
more than 30,000 in Australia now facing the lifelong uncertainty of a
temporary protection visa. The horrible consequences of that scenario
eventually persuaded the Howard government to allow temporary protection
visa holders to remain in Australia. A repeat of that long, sad process
appears to be before us.
And now the policy has been extended to include things the Howard
government never considered: removing legal rights of repeal and all
references to international refugee law, and opening the possibility
that refugees could be returned to persecution. None of this was needed
to stop the boats, it was effectively an ideological victory lap by
Scott Morrison after he stared down a Senate that could not bear the
prospect of children spending another Christmas in detention.
‘The government removed 57,000 pages of regulation and legislation and cut $2bn of red tape’
Seriously, this routine spring-cleaning of archaic rules and outdated
regulations is regularly trotted out as some kind of significant
“productivity” measure, with quite extraordinary savings claims
attached. One example given by Labor during the debate on “red tape
repeal” day was the claim that repealing an obsolete law called the the
Poultry Industry Assistance Amendment Act 1979 – clearly obsolete, since
the law it amended had been repealed decades ago – was calculated to
generate $100,000 in deregulatory savings. Another “red tape repeal”
bill was mostly about punctuation. But it did have a lot of pages. Red tape repeal days have always been an opportunity for grand claims by both major parties.Photograph: LUKAS COCH/AAPIMAGE
So when we scratch the slogans – even the ones over which the
government is crowing “mission accomplished” – there aren’t always
long-term answers. And when voters looked for some reassurance or some
kind of plan for creating new jobs to replace those being lost in mining
or manufacturing, the responses seemed flimsy.
So cocky was the government when it came to power that its strategy
would last two parliamentary terms, with reforms to taxation, federation
and industrial relations debated during this term and then taken to the
next election.
But electoral contests over the past year have made the task
progressively harder. The West Australian Senate rerun entrenched the
extremely difficult situation in the upper house, and Labor victories in
South Australia and Victoria squashed the dream of coast-to-coast
Liberal governments that might have eased the path of big reforms
requiring agreement from the states.
The government was more sure-footed on the international stage,
particularly in its response to the aviation disasters of Malaysia
Airlines flights MH17 and MH370. It also clinched three free trade
agreements. The prime minister was calm and measured in his reactions to
the Lindt cafe siege in Sydney.
But at the end of the first year, the voters’ verdict remains brutal and apparently entrenched. Poll of polls showing voting intention.Photograph: supplied
It all left Labor wearing a permanent expression of disbelief, not
dissimilar to the way the Coalition used to look when Labor’s internal
“game of thrones” was propelling the Coalition
back to office without having to do very much. After making such a
comprehensive mess of its six years in government, Labor could not
believe its luck. Still, Shorten didn’t risk anything in 2014 by
venturing forth with many actual policy alternatives, instead sticking
to the safe early-term opposition script of maximum attack.
Some commentators blamed the void in the political debate on “the
system”, declaring it “broken”. Some pointed to the relentless nature of
the 24-hour news cycle and the splintering of information sources,
which certainly does make it harder to sell a complicated or nuanced
message.
But surely it is too early to concede defeat, when the electorate can
barely remember a political leader who tried to level with them, to
conduct a bigger public conversation, an actual discussion of detailed
policies and their consequences. The question for 2015 is, will either
of the present major party leaders dare to try? Tony Abbott has often relied on slogans to transmit his message.Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Labor welcomes the Clean Energy Council’s endorsement of Labor’s
position on the Renewable Energy Target, which will secure certainty for
the sector and protect thousands of jobs.
Labor’s position, now supported by the CEC, is that there is a
pathway that secures a growing renewable energy sector and supports jobs
in the aluminium and other emissions intensive, trade exposed sectors.
Labor will do everything possible to protect jobs today and secure new
jobs for the future.
Labor believes there is a way forward within our stated parameters:
No changes to the Small-Scale Renewable Energy Scheme;
Consider providing full exemption to EITE sectors from the LRET;
Minimal changes to the LRET in the interest of restoring bipartisanship;
Any changes must ensure sustainable investment; and
Any agreement must be endorsed by both leaders of both major parties
in the interest of ensuring long term certainty for the renewable
energy industry.
Before the election, Tony Abbott promised not to touch the Renewable
Energy Target. After the election, he destroyed bipartisan support for
the RET.
Investor confidence has been smashed by Tony Abbott’s decision to
walk away from his previous support for renewable energy – investment in
renewables has plummeted by 70 per cent since he became Prime Minister.
Labor has always been prepared to work with the Government to return certainty to the sector and protect jobs.
However, like the Clean Energy Council, Labor completely rejects the
Abbott Government’s position of a 40 per cent cut to the RET, which
would decimate jobs and put our secure economic future at risk.
Greg Hunt’s statement that negotiations on the RET will involve “no
preconditions”, and Julie Bishop’s support for the existing scheme in
Lima last week, demonstrates a considerable back down from the
Government’s previous stated position of a 40 per cent cut.
The Clean Energy Council’s position on the RET shows the Abbott
Government is all alone with its ideological and backward views on
renewable energy.
Labor remains committed to a strong and sustainable renewable energy
sector, and we remain open to further discussions with the Government.
But we will not be party to any policy that cripples the renewable
energy industry. The onus is on the Government to show its willing to
support this industry and the 24,000 people it employs.
The ball is in Tony Abbott’s court. He can take this seriously, or he
can keep putting billions of dollars of investment and thousands of
jobs in the renewable energy sector at risk.
The biggest news of the year was the bilateral agreement between China and the USA, in which the US committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% below its 2005 levels by 2025, and in return China agreed to peak its own CO2 emissions by 2030 and increase the proportion of its non-fossil energy to 20%. The details merit a lot of careful consideration. Has the US really made a significant new offer, or just recycled their existing direction of travel into a vague commitment? Should we praise China for committing to build more clean energy than any other nation, or condemn it for allowing emissions to keep rising for another decade?
The most important part of this agreement is its symbolism. The over-simplified explanation for the failure of the international process has always been a clash between these two giants. If they can present a united front then that deadlock is broken and smaller players trying to block an agreement will no longer be able to hide.
The week after that agreement was announced, we had a theatrical display of political symbolism at the G20 summit in Australia as world leaders lined up to give Australian prime minister Tony Abbott’s government a slap on the wrist for its anti-science obstructionism. Meanwhile Europe, despite its own troubles, has managed to maintain a climate leadership role with new 2030 targets which, though flawed, keep the continent just ahead of the game on cutting carbon.
As we head into 2015 things are finally starting to move forward. The contribution made by ongoing advances in solar photovoltaics and other clean technologies, heavily backed by China and Germany, should not be overlooked. At the time of writing, 2014 was the hottest year on record. Though this is of only minor significance to climate science, it provides the right sort of backdrop to give politicians a little extra confidence to act.
Aligned with this are progressive moves from some major figures in the worlds of business and local and regional government, who are making commitments to 100% renewable energy. They are making the slow pace of international negotiations look more and more out of step with what’s happening on the ground. The increasing troubles of the oil industry – even if oil is getting cheaper – do little to enhance their reputation as guardians of the future.
The main reason for all this climate related activity is, of course, Paris 2015. The meeting in Paris next December could be the next Copenhagen: a bitter disappointment which costs us dearly in both money and morale. But you don’t get the opportunity to be that big a disappointment without some fairly serious optimism too, and Paris is managing to generate a lot more hope than cynicism so far.
Is it possible that by this time next year climate change will finally have been addressed with the sort of urgency and seriousness it deserves? Probably not, but it might at last be time for some Churchillian language about ends and beginnings as our leaders start to actually lead on this fundamental issue.
The climate denial lobby and its fossil fuel funders will be even more focused in the coming months. For us this might just be the end of the beginning. For them it’s the beginning of the end.
Once the world starts setting hard limits on emissions, all the business plans of all the oil majors in the world become obsolete, wishful thinking and the global economy starts adjusting to a low-carbon future in earnest. From that day forward fossil fuels go into permanent retreat. So expect to see a frenzied last-ditch defence of the fossil fuel economy, with climate science under greater attack than ever before. With trillions of dollars at stake, don’t expect a clean fight. Happy new year.
John Sauven is executive director of Greenpeace UK
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