If this Australian federal election is the election where the Liberals lost their mind, it’s also the election where the Labor Party lost its soul.
The ALP last election stood for an evidence-based approach on climate change. Ross Garnaut was tasked with summarising the best science, and producing an economic response. The plan was that the government would go with what he recommended. If anyone spotted the flaw in the plan – the then opposition was committing to a course of action where they had not sold the detail politically – this was lost in the “it’s time” mood that swept John Howard into the dustbin of history.
Now that we know the best science, and have an economic basis on which to proceed, what’s Labor’s position? The logical progression from the Rudd campaign would be to win political support in the form of a renewed mandate to implement the Garnaut recommendations. Instead, Julia Gillard plans to set up something that is an odd mixture of focus group and jury, a Citizen’s Assembly to decide where to go next. This is rank cowardice. It only puts off the hard decisions, and leave us exactly where we were before the Garnaut Report, except this time we are allowing public opinion to shape policy, instead of expert advice.
In a situation where expert advice points in a direction that will require some hard adjustments, you do not need some sort of populist leading from behind strategy that procrastinates decision-making. Political leaders need to do the hard yards of selling the tough steps that we have to take. They also need to cut through the dishonest propaganda of lobbyists who see their agenda as more important than the overall welfare of humanity.
Add to this Labor’s abject surrender on defending refugees against unfair attack (including straight-out lies), and Labor’s craven cave-in to the big mining houses over the mining tax, and you have to wonder what Labor stands for.
And the Liberals? They elected Tony Abbott as their leader. If you don’t get why this is crazy, read this. No wonder all the polls are showing a big swing to the Greens.
Friday, 23 July 2010
Thursday, 8 July 2010
The Refugees World Cup
Talk about treating a vulnerable group as political football... there’s a World Cup on for the real thing. Is that not enough?
The announcement by the new Australian prime minister Julia Gillard that she is going to be “tough” (in politics, a synonym for stupid) on refugees and it’s unfair to call harsh attitudes to refugees “redneck politics” has to be challenged. Harsh attitudes to refugees are almost always based on racism, and are generally not factually based.
One example is the claim that refugees receive more benefits than pensioners. I haven’t seen a detailed version of this claim recently, but it appears to be based on a Canadian email hoax that has been translated to Australian circumstances. The Canadian version was full of errors, and the Australian version is no better. In fact, refugees in Australia do not receive the same entitlement to benefits as permanent residents, and become net contributors to the economy once they have adapted to their new home.
Another claim is that we get a disproportionate number of Islamic refugees, as if Islamic countries are not doing their share. Let’s let the numbers speak for themselves.
There are 2.9-million refugees from Afghanistan alone, and 96% of these are in Pakistan and Iran. There are over 1.7 million refugees in Pakistan, and the top three countries hosting refugees, Pakistan, Iran and Syria, host 3.8-million refugees between them. These numbers don’t include Palestinians, who are accounted for under a different system, totalling 4.8-million. So the total refugees arising out of Middle East and Afghan conflicts add up to nearly 9-million. We are quibbling in Australia over a few thousand. In the graph on the left of the page, I illustrate the scale of Australia’s annual refugee intake (about 13,000 per year currently) against Afghan refugees alone. If I were to compare our annual intake with all refugees worldwide, it would be too small to show on the scale of a graph like this.
What I find particularly ironic is that the people most keen on wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are at the forefront of demonising the tiny trickle of the consequential refugees that arrive on our shores. Have you ever wondered why people from these parts of the world hate us?
Back to the main point: is it fair to call these factually inaccurate attacks on refugees redneck politics? Julia Gillard’s claim is that this is an insulting attack on those holding these views. The facts I’ve quoted are very easy to find. Discovering the email hoax took me seconds. Finding the UNHCR’s 2009 Global Trends report, from which I quote statistics showing how tiny a fraction of refugees we see in Australia, was just as easy.
The people indulging in redneck politics are not ordinary people in the street who are misinformed about these issues, though a racist outlook helps them accept convenient myths without checking further. The people who do deserve the label of redneck politics are the people who know better and do nothing to correct the myths.
That means you, Julia.
The announcement by the new Australian prime minister Julia Gillard that she is going to be “tough” (in politics, a synonym for stupid) on refugees and it’s unfair to call harsh attitudes to refugees “redneck politics” has to be challenged. Harsh attitudes to refugees are almost always based on racism, and are generally not factually based.
One example is the claim that refugees receive more benefits than pensioners. I haven’t seen a detailed version of this claim recently, but it appears to be based on a Canadian email hoax that has been translated to Australian circumstances. The Canadian version was full of errors, and the Australian version is no better. In fact, refugees in Australia do not receive the same entitlement to benefits as permanent residents, and become net contributors to the economy once they have adapted to their new home.
Another claim is that we get a disproportionate number of Islamic refugees, as if Islamic countries are not doing their share. Let’s let the numbers speak for themselves.
What I find particularly ironic is that the people most keen on wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are at the forefront of demonising the tiny trickle of the consequential refugees that arrive on our shores. Have you ever wondered why people from these parts of the world hate us?
Back to the main point: is it fair to call these factually inaccurate attacks on refugees redneck politics? Julia Gillard’s claim is that this is an insulting attack on those holding these views. The facts I’ve quoted are very easy to find. Discovering the email hoax took me seconds. Finding the UNHCR’s 2009 Global Trends report, from which I quote statistics showing how tiny a fraction of refugees we see in Australia, was just as easy.
The people indulging in redneck politics are not ordinary people in the street who are misinformed about these issues, though a racist outlook helps them accept convenient myths without checking further. The people who do deserve the label of redneck politics are the people who know better and do nothing to correct the myths.
That means you, Julia.
Friday, 25 June 2010
It’s the environment, stupid
No matter how much The Australian may try to spin the palace coup against Kevin Rudd as arising from his mishandling of a proposed tax on mines, the big swing against Labor in the polls has consistently been towards the Greens.
I’m not sure in what universe The Australian lives, but in this one, people do not desert a ruling party for the Greens out of empathy with embattled miners, at risk of losing some of their massive profits to the public purse.
In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville hung a sign in his campaign headquarters:
Given that Labor campaigned in the 2007 election on taking climate change seriously and has achieved almost nothing, with an emissions trading scheme proposal weaker than the Howard administration’s, that has gone on the back burner, maybe they need a reminder:
I’m not sure in what universe The Australian lives, but in this one, people do not desert a ruling party for the Greens out of empathy with embattled miners, at risk of losing some of their massive profits to the public purse.
In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville hung a sign in his campaign headquarters:
The economy, stupid
Given that Labor campaigned in the 2007 election on taking climate change seriously and has achieved almost nothing, with an emissions trading scheme proposal weaker than the Howard administration’s, that has gone on the back burner, maybe they need a reminder:
The environment, stupid
Monday, 21 June 2010
The clean energy imperative
I’m increasingly convinced that the reason for so much opposition to climate change science is not because of some flaw in the science but because there’s fear of the collapse of industrial society if we stop using fossil fuels. This is not an irrational fear but it leads to irrational behaviour like attacking scientists personally, and pay good money to attend vaudeville shows where deniers reassure audiences with rubbish.
The best response is to study clean energy alternatives.
I recently gave a talk at a Transition Towns meeting in Kenmore, Qld. I’ve published a PDF of the slides at scribd, and will add commentary here as time permits. Meanwhile the Kenmore TT people have posted a TED talk on how to roll out the electric car. Interesting.
The best response is to study clean energy alternatives.
I recently gave a talk at a Transition Towns meeting in Kenmore, Qld. I’ve published a PDF of the slides at scribd, and will add commentary here as time permits. Meanwhile the Kenmore TT people have posted a TED talk on how to roll out the electric car. Interesting.
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