Thursday 28th of March 2024

the miracle man boils a frog...

resetreset

Man does job. That’s the review Scott Morrison should have been given for his underwhelming speech paraded as a launch of the political year.


If that was a launch, Elon Musk’s twice-failed SpaceX Flagship deserves to be called a resounding success.

It might be popular to underpromise and overdeliver but Morrison’s “to do” list outlined at the National Press Club this week was the most immodest example of modesty imaginable.

Just to recap for those who might have nodded off, here are the “priority areas” for Prime Minister Morrison: “suppress the virus and deliver the vaccine; cement our economic recovery to create jobs and more jobs; to continue to guarantee the essential services that Australians rely on; protect and secure Australians’ interests in a challenging world; and, care for our country”.

If this was a Miss World pageant, he would have probably added world peace.

These speeches have been something of a tradition in Australian politics stretching back about two decades – starting with John Howard, who first used the end of January as a time to change the conversation and seek to control the agenda.

Usually, these have worked well as political tactics, but occasionally they’ve gone very wrong – as happened when Julia Gillard announced a September election date on January 30.

Morrison has clearly decided on a “no drama/no surprises” approach to 2021 – part of his election-late -this-year calculus – and his small horizon, small ambition speech filled the bill.

Some columnists thought it was a “governing with the consent of the governed” moment in the spirit of 18th century British political philosopher John Locke, but that’s seeing gold in cheap glitter. It was the speech of someone who doesn’t think deeply and whose vision extends only to the bathroom mirror.

 

There was, as you’d expect, some old style Detroit-grade marketing. The deployment of the word “preferably” recalled those heady days of the 1950s when car makers at General Motors slapped on tail fins on the previous year’s Cadillac  and called it a new vehicle.

 

By sliding the word ‘preferably’ onto a vague ambition to have net zero emissions by 2050, Morrison was able to make nothing look like something.

It wasn’t even a new “something” – the Prime Minister had used a ‘quickly as possible’ qualifier before Christmas in an address to the UK Policy Exchange.

 

We were told by one journalist, and then the next, that this incremental process Morrison was playing out before us was akin to boiling a frog – we all know that version of the slippery slope or grain of sand thesis.

 

What the journalists didn’t let on was that the person peddling the boiling frog story was the Prime Minister himself – the spinner in chief.

He loves this part of his job, and those tail fins were soon flying off the production line.

 

The other notable sharp notes struck were examples of a favourite political tactic by the Prime Minister. Setting up straw men, when no one within the far horizons has seen them, and then knocking them down. Morrison executes this manoeuvre with the inelegance it deserves but is given a round of applause from the cheap seats.

 

First, he said he wasn’t into “the politics of envy” when asked if companies should repay JobKeeper cash they’d had pocketed despite profitability, generous executive bonuses and other signs of not needing assistance.

 

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2021/02/06/morrison-spin-election-2021/

keen as matt kean...

NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean has criticised Scott Morrison's refusal to commit to net zero carbon emission by 2050, describing the Prime Minister's stance as "ridiculous".

Key points:

  • NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean says Australia should commit to net zero emissions by 2050
  • He says it should be done even if there's no "roadmap" yet to how it can be achieved
  • Scott Morrison says zero emissions is "our goal" but won't commit to the target

Speaking last night at a community meeting at Berowra, in Sydney's north, Mr Kean urged his Liberal colleague to follow NSW's example and sign up to the target, even if he didn't have a plan to achieve it.

"People say you shouldn't commit to net zero emissions unless you know how to get there, well I say that's ridiculous," Mr Kean said.

"The roadmap is all about putting the policy settings in place to encourage the private sector to build infrastructure that we need to replace the existing infrastructure."

To illustrate his message, Mr Kean used former US President John F. Kennedy's ambitious goal in 1962 to get American astronauts to the moon.

"Kennedy didn't know how to get to the moon when he set the target of how to get there," Mr Kean told the crowd.

"And I say the same thing to our Prime Minister and those standing in the way of ensuring our country is able to win in this low-carbon global economy.

"Let's set the goal — and I have every confidence in the Australian people, our industry and their enterprising nature to be able to hit that goal — and ensure Australia remains not only a great place to live but becomes an energy and economic superpower."

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-05/matt-kean-tells-pm-to-commit-to-2050-net-zero-emissions-target/13126220

meanwhile, should you be a chinese australian...

China has formally arrested Australian journalist Cheng Lei after six months in detention.

Cheng stands accused of illegally supplying state secrets overseas.

She has been detained since August 2020.

The Australian government had raised its serious concerns about Ms Cheng’s detention regularly at senior levels, including about her welfare and conditions of detention, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said on Monday.

“We expect basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms,” she said.

Australian embassy officials have visited Ms Cheng six times since her detention, most recently on January 27.

“Our thoughts are with Ms Cheng and her family during this difficult period,” Senator Payne said.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/people/2021/02/08/cheng-lei-arrested/

 

Now, forgive me to ask: did we see the same concern by Ms Payne and by Scomo the frog-boiler, in regard to JULIAN ASSANGE?????

 

See also: free assange, president biden...

meanwhile at the dutton potato farm...

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton personally slashed millions in grant funding from organisations that were strongly recommended by his department to improve community safety, and used the funds to support his own handpicked list that did not follow his department's recommendations.

Key points:

  • The Home Affairs Department recommended funding a list of 70 community safety projects using a merit-based assessment
  • Peter Dutton reduced the funding for 19 of the highest-scoring applications and redirected the funding to projects of his choice
  • The funding guidelines state the minister can override the department's merit-based assessments

Mr Dutton also used the funds to support grants for two councils — in the lead up to a by-election in a highly marginal seat — that his department recommended should not be funded at all.

An investigation by 7.30 reveals the extraordinary influence that Mr Dutton wields over a multi-million dollar fund, drawn from the seized proceeds of criminal enterprises, for the Safer Communities program.

Under the grant guidelines for round three of the Safer Communities program, the home affairs minister must take into account the assessment of each project, but he can effectively overrule his department's own merit-based assessments.

7.30 can also reveal that Mr Dutton was warned by the department, in a previously confidential ministerial briefing, that overruling the merit system could draw scrutiny from the Australian National Audit Office or from news organisations.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-10/peter-dutton-cut-funding-safety-projects-selected-his-own-list/13126834

 

 

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access to the press...

The National Press Club sells access to influential journalists to organisations with vested interests in shaping government policy and self-promotion.

 

By Marcus Reubenstein

 

Industry bodies and lobbyists aside, of the 62 sponsors and corporate members of the National Press Club (NPC) fewer than one in five are wholly Australian-owned companies that produce goods and services.

Those dozen Australian-owned businesses are mostly directly, or indirectly, engaged in business with the Australian government. In the past year eight of those companies collected more than $920 million from federal government contracts. Of the remainder, three are businesses directly impacted by government policies while the fourth, Transurban, collects $2.2 billion from motorists running toll roads in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Corporate supporters and advertisers have traditionally been the bane of journalists and editors. There used to be nothing more infuriating than a call from management telling you to back off from a story for fear of upsetting an advertiser or one of your media proprietor’s mates at the big end of town. Now Australia’s mainstream media has become so tame it is hardly imaginable that any hack would go off on their own in search of an actual piece of news.

Today news drops in the laps of journalists and, for the Canberra press gallery, the “drop” usually comes from spin merchants in government, landing in every hack’s inbox.

The once mighty fourth estate has been well and truly tamed by the spin merchants in government, and now it appears the big end of town, so adept at taming politicians, is going to work directly on the journalists charged with holding politicians to account.

A seat at the table

From the perspective of the Canberra bubble, the NPC is hardly conducting itself differently from most other representative groups and associations in the nation’s capital. Canberra is a town of influence peddling and of lobbyists. But how healthy is this influence peddling for our nation’s democracy?

Corporations, industry groups and lobbyists set up shop in the national capital to advance their interests. Journalists are supposed to question whether those interests align with the public interest. That some of these groups should find themselves rubbing shoulders with senior correspondents from mainstream media outlets is not, in and of itself, cause for alarm. However, should the NPC be facilitating these shoulder-rubbing events?

NPC chief executive Maurice Reilly says: “Each of those industries are highly regulated and are subject to the laws of Australia. We can’t and don’t assist with their representations to the federal or state governments or the media.”

However, Reilly’s assertion seems to be at odds with the NPC’s own website. The member benefits page states corporates are given “a literal seat at the tables of influence, with tickets to our esteemed National Press Club addresses throughout the year, plus table signage”. Included in member benefits is participation in “the annual Corporate Gold Day alongside key political figures and senior journalists from the Canberra press gallery”.

Whilst the NPC is hardly operating as a lobbying firm, the fact remains that dozens of organisations with a clear vested interest in both shaping government policy and promoting their public image have weekly access to a room full of influential journalists. And they pay the NPC for the right to be in that room.

As journalists used to say about politicians who do nothing wrong but still attend events financially supported by industries they regulate, “the optics are not good”. According to the NPC website:

“You [corporate members] will enjoy unique access to the media and political spheres complementing your particular policy and advocacy priorities.”

It goes on: “Aligning your brand with the National Press Club is an opportunity for unparalleled engagement in the Australian political debate and announces that your organisation is part of the business culture in Canberra.” It is alarming to say the least that the NPC would promote itself as a key player in the sphere of business — aren’t journalists supposed to be in the business of accountability?

Ethics not obligatory

A handful of NPC sponsors are engaged in business activities that most reasonable people would consider ethically problematic.

Sportsbet, owned by Irish gaming giant Flutter Entertainment, is a corporate member. Australians lose a staggering $25 billion a year gambling; the social problems caused by gambling are massive, with research suggesting up to 400 gambling-linked suicides in Australia each year; and as many as three-quarters of regular gamblers have drinking problems.

The alcohol industry also gets a seat at the NPC table, with Japanese-owned Lion Group (whose brands include XXXX, Toohey’s, James Squire, Hahn and James Boag) a listed member. So too are industry representatives the National Wine Show and Spirits and Cocktails Australia.

The innocuously named Imperial Brands is also a corporate supporter. It is one of the biggest of the big tobacco companies, producing more than 300 billion cigarettes a year worldwide.

Death merchants on board

While Imperial Brands kills slowly, other NPC sponsors prefer a quick death. Foreign weapons makers BAE Systems (UK), Saab (Sweden), Lockheed Martin (US) and Thales (France) all get a seat at the table.

Last week when Defence Minister Peter Dutton was beating the drums of war at the press club, the BAE Systems table was conveniently located behind the microphone that journalists step up to when asking questions. In the past 12 months, Dutton’s department has paid BAE Systems almost $1.8 billion for its weapons systems, and BAE just happens to be in the running for Scott Morrison and Dutton’s promised nuclear submarines.

Whether deliberate or accidental, the BAE Systems logo appeared on screen across the ABC on a dozen occasions, which is notionally in contravention of the ABC charter in relation to the identification of commercial brands.

Agents of Influence

More than one in three NPC sponsors are entities owned by foreign corporations or foreign governments — that’s twice as many foreign-controlled members as Australian-owned companies (excluding industry groups and lobbyists).

Apparently sitting all alone is Chinese-owned tech giant Huawei. The mainstream media has been an enthusiastic supporter of the ban on Huawei supplying 5G infrastructure in Australia. It seems, however, that as long as it pays its fees Huawei can still get a table at the weekly NPC address.

The Big Four accounting firms — PWC, EY, Deloitte and KPMG — which pick up hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, while advising multinationals on how to minimise their tax obligations to the Australian government, are all corporate members.

Canberra lobbyists are well represented with no fewer than seven firms — Barton Deakin, Bush Consulting, CMAX Advisory, CT Group (formerly Crosby Textor), Newgate, Nexus, and Precision Public Affairs — enjoying member benefits.

Pharmaceutical company MSD (Merck Sharp & Dohm) is another member and, according to the company, is on track to post $69 billion in sales this year. Pharmaceutical companies in the United States spend more money on political lobbying than any other industry. Two months ago the prime minister announced the government had signed a deal with the US drug company for the supply of its COVID-19 treatment drug Molnupiravir, subject to TGA approval.

Ten members are peak industry groups, representing the interests of members with billions of dollars in annual revenue. The Pharmacy Guild of Australia is an NPC member yet a simple Google search reveals virtually no mainstream media outlet reported that it collected JobKeeper payments at a time when the industry was reporting “staggering” sales throughout the pandemic.

It’s almost as if the best way of avoiding Canberra media scrutiny is to show up in a room full of journalists.

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/the-national-press-club-exemplifies-the-erosion-of-journalism/

 

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charitable activism...

Blocking charities from lobbying on “political” issues such as climate change is a blow to a liberal democracy and to our children’s futures.

 

By Lucy Hamilton

 

It is increasingly clear that the greatest threat facing humanity is the firestorm of crises that make up the climate emergency. As vested interests move to block or delay crucial changes, people fighting to speed up the transition are under threat. Australia is following the petrostates into suppression of protest.

It is uncertain whether storms or pandemics, droughts or famines will be the worst we face in the decades ahead. For every degree warmer the planet edges, the more besieged our future looks; every year that dramatic action is delayed, the higher the looming toll. Intolerable heat in the tropics alone is predicted to be a primary driver of mass displacement. War over access to water looks likely. It is hardly surprising that people who understand the scope of the threat are not content to remain calmly on the sidelines.

Australia’s Coalition government is becoming a global villain for its refusal even to feign a willingness to act on climate in any plausible fashion, let alone commit to action. The fact that these politicians see the nation inescapably shackled to fossil fuel plays a sizeable role in the our decaying into a competitive authoritarian regime. It is not, however, only the Coalition government acting to crush protest in Australia.

Last week, the combined forces of opposition prevented the Coalition government handing a single appointee — the charities commissioner — the ability to investigate and deregister charities for even the most trivial of offences such as blocking a road.

This week Labor allowed the Coalition to pass a somewhat mitigated bill to cripple the ability of charities to speak on “political” issues about which they are expert. What is “political” is often dictated by the right as a way to cast a crucial issue outside the realm of the quiet Australian’s concern. Our wicked abuse of refugees, for example, is defined as “political” rather than a matter of human decency. Speaking about one’s non-straight, white, male experience is dismissed as “identity politics”. From being purely a fact for George HW Bush and Margaret Thatcher, climate science became “political” in the 1980s when the fossil fuel sector decided to destroy the discussion instead of diversify into new energy sources.

This blow against charities’ ability to lobby for their cause is a blow to a liberal democracy. As Reverend Tim Costello pointed out, silencing charities is the action that the authoritarian petrostate Russia took to suppress opposition.

Costello says he told Putin, “Look, you only have one word in Russian for two words in English: politics and policy. Civil society will always advocate and speak out on policy. That’s what civil society does. It doesn’t make them a political danger.”

Given the distinction between the two parties, the limits on “partisan” activity by charities is concerning. The Coalition in particular has a number of deeply unpopular — and harmful — policies that demand charities join the community in objecting strenuously. There is no doubt that the Coalition will continue to label that speech “partisan” and work to silence it.

Australia is one of 158 countries that restricted collective protest during the pandemic. Disturbing imagery of police crackdowns were countered by disturbing imagery of white supremacist thugs and conspiracists aiming to hurt police. It will be important to watch what militarised strategies our state forces continue to import from America in the aftermath of lockdowns.

The states in Australia, have, however been implementing limits on protest before we had heard of Covid. The UN expressed “serious concerns” about the anti-protest laws Queensland’s Labor government implemented in 2019. They described the laws as “inherently disproportionate”, working to criminalise peaceful demonstrations and at odds with International obligations. Western Australia has a 2015 bill that readily makes protests “unlawful activity”.

NSW Coalition governments have been mounding up ever more draconian anti-protest laws since 2016. In 2018, they removed the right to protest on Crown lands and bureaucrats gained the power to ban protests. In 2019, “hindering” a business while trespassing was made to attract huge penalties. Fines rose from $5000 to $22,000 with the prospect of a three-year jail sentence for peaceful protest.

As a result of these NSW laws, last month 22 year-old Eric Herbert was jailed for 12 months. His wrongdoing was the peaceful obstruction of a coal operation. NSW Police Minister David Elliott, described his act as “nothing short of economic vandalism”. It is worth keeping in mind that the Black Summer’s smoke impact on health alone cost almost $2 billion dollars. Is the coal mining corporation or the protester then the economic vandal?

Two Victorian women face charges that risk a 25-year sentence in the same peaceful protest.

This has an echo of India — one of the three nations that stopped a strong statement on phasing out coal at COP26 — where a young climate activist was jailed earlier this year for being part of writing a document to explain the farmers’ protests. Disha Ravi’s treatment is not uncommon in Modi’s authoritarian India. Any speech that criticises his Hindutva government is considered part of a global conspiracy to defame India.

India’s 2021 digital media law is ostensibly meant to protect the nation from the wild west of the cyber realm. Instead the tech giants are instructed to silence dissent on platforms like Twitter, while Hindutva trolls barrage the government’s targets with vile abuse. Simultaneously the tech companies are expected to invade users’ privacy to provide information to the government. Australia’s single individual in charge of eSafety and new regulations to be aimed at online trolls can be similarly misused.

In the countries and regions where the fossil fuel dollar carries the most sway, those on the frontline demanding a crucial rapid end to the dying energy model risk much. Global Witness has reported that in the past year at least 227 people have been murdered defending the ecosystem. The most vulnerable are First Nations people.

In the USA, counterinsurgency tactics from foreign wars were used against First Nations people and allies protesting pipelines crossing their lands. These tactics were instigated by private corporations using private mercenary operations.

A joint report from a group of Australian human rights and environment bodies released this week examines the “fever pitch” of repression on protest here. It is not just the anti-protest laws. It reveals that the government agency VicForests hired people to carry out a “campaign of surveillance” on opponents. Bail provisions are being used in a fashion usually reserved for organised crime figures.

The Human Rights Law Centre’s Yusur Al-Azzawi describes the private sector’s legal cases aiming to delay protests, tie up resources or bankrupt groups. He condemns the combining of governments’ actions with police tactics and private sector attacks as a “systemic and broad-ranging attack on climate defenders”.

Australia can continue on this trajectory towards fossil fuel vassal status. It will, however, take the continued decline into authoritarianism and suppression seen in so many nations dependent on fossil fuels. Brazil, Russia, India, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia are not places where one wishes to dissent. As the climate crisis becomes more apparent, community objection will become louder.

America alone had experienced 18 climate events costing more than $1 billion in 2021 by early October. Nearly one third of Americans experienced such an event. Climate scientists in the 1970s knew this was coming. It was only a matter of “how bad” and “how soon”. We are starting to learn the answers and they are mostly at the worse end of projections.

Bill McKibben, American environmentalist, believes that we have reached the limits of what governments will be able to achieve on climate at the moment and argues “money” is the lever we need to pull. For this reason, he has co-founded Third Act, for Americans over 60 to join the young in demanding action. Controlling 70 per cent of America’s resources, they have the power to make the money listen.

Australia’s adults need to band en masse with the students who are frightened by our government’s intransigence on this existential challenge. We need to add our money and our voices to their protests to make sure our states and our private sector do not jeopardise our children’s future by continuing to prevent change.

It is obscene to retire to peace after we have lived the most comfortable of lives. We must not allow our governments to work to silence protest. We cannot leave our children to endure the consequences of our inaction.

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/charities-muzzled-when-climate-action-advocacy-is-most-needed/

 

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