Everybody with even a limited intelligence knows Donald Trump lies, and that his lying is almost beyond comparison and that it is pathological1,2,3. Australia has had its political liars too,…
If Mr. Morrison’s government genuinely believed the science, it would immediately put a price on carbon, declare a moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects and transfer the fossil fuel subsidies to the renewables industries. It would go to the next round of global climate talks in Glasgow in November allied with other nations on the front line of this crisis and argue for quicker and deeper cuts to carbon emissions around the world. Anything less is to collaborate in the destruction of a country.
But the government is intent on doing nothing.
And to the names of those historic betrayers of their people — Vidkun Quisling, Benedict Arnold, Mir Jafar — perhaps one day will be added that of Scott Morrison, the prime minister of Australia who, when faced with the historic tragedy of his country’s destruction, dissembled, enabled, subsidised and oversaw omnicide, until all was ash and even the future was no more.
And being PM means taking responsibility for handling what befalls the nation. Our history is full of Prime Ministers who had events turn against them, whether it was James Scullin becoming PM two days before the 1929 stock market crash, or Robert Menzies turning up just in time to have WWII declared on his watch, or Gough Whitlam's optimistic new government colliding with the Energy Crisis, or John Howard facing the horror of the Port Arthur Massacre, or Kevin Rudd being in the chair for the GFC.
All stepped up and faced the challenges, and in several cases paid a terrible personal and political price.
But until now no PM had ever responded to a devastating national emergency by denying it, then saying it was a state issue, then blaming their wife for them taking a holiday, then systematically failing to take timely action before waging a propaganda war starting with "arsonists" and ending with an attempt to spin it such a way as to benefit mining companies.
That takes a very particular type of coward.
On Wednesday, January 15, the Science Minister, Karen Andrews, will convene a roundtable meeting of scientists to develop a response to the “devastating and surprising” bushfire catastrophe1. There are several…
Sometimes when I write these essays (or whatever they are), I find it difficult to not type with my fists as my rage is almost insuperable. This one hasn’t made…
With the Coalition’s decade of denialism finally coming home to roost by way of the catastrophic fires mostly in New South Wales and Victoria, they are attempting to lay blame…