Crispin Hull

The Senate numbers game

This week the Government aims to get its new environment laws passed. But it does not have a majority in the Senate. The Greens or the Coalition could block the changes – for different reasons.

The Greens say the changes do not go far enough to protect the environment. The Coalition says they go too far. It could result in nothing happening at all.

Renewable race against time

“The essential ingredient of politics is timing,” according to the former very successful Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

The dog-wagging Nationals got in first and forced the more numerous Liberal MPs of their coalition into the abandonment of policies to reduce carbon emissions in Australia to net zero by 2050. It was great timing in the short term for the Nationals, but electorally catastrophic for the Coalition in the medium and long term.

And most likely, excellent timing for Labor.

The survival of the unfittest

The Liberal Party’s plummeting fortunes (down to 24 per cent of the primary vote in recent polls) indicate it has a problem of Darwinian proportions. It can be explained by several factors including an unusual combination of moral idealism and pragmatic self-interest.

That, of course, is not due to the idealism and self-interest on the part of its supporters, rather it is on the part of the people who are not supporting it – youth and women.

Inaction for far too long

Have you noticed the surge in teal, voices of, and independent advertisements recently? They were massive in the football finals season and have surged again in the lead up to today’s Melbourne Cup.

The ads are all over social media and TV, especially streaming services.

I might get the precise wording wrong, but they go something like this:

Senate unfixed 50 years on

In a couple of weeks it will be the 50 th anniversary of the dismissal of the elected Labor Government of Prime Minister Whitlam Gough by the unelected representative of the hereditary monarchy Governor-General John Kerr.

In those years, nothing has been done to rectify the Constitution to ensure there is no repetition and nothing has been done to rectify the anomalous position the Senate has in our democracy.

Super backflipping media

“Backflip” is a lazy journalistic cliché. Looking at every policy decision through the lens of imagined leadership tensions is equally unhelpful to the media-consuming public. Both are news of little consequence.

The news of consequence about last week’s superannuation announcement, on the other hand, was: what was done; how was it done; why it needed doing; and what was not done.

Appeasing authoritarians

You can do what you like unless there is a law to stop you. This might sound like a radical, right-wing, libertarian catch cry. But it is, in fact, the bedrock of a rule-of-law democratic society. It is the bedrock of freedom.

In a rule-of-law democracy, laws are made by elected representatives of the people. They are administered by a directly or indirectly elected executive which also has to obey the law. Any disputes about how the law is to be applied to individuals or circumstances are resolved by an independent judiciary.

Truth goes, but science stays

It makes sense, in a way. Since the re-election of Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the fossil fuel industry; its News Ltd backers; the National Party; and the right fringe of the Liberal Party (the fossil quartet) have become maniacally more active.

It makes sense, because, if a hitherto very profitable industry is facing extinction, it fights back as vigorously as it can.

Causes of world ‘going mad’

“Has the world gone mad?” No doubt, you, like me, have heard this expression a lot more often in the past couple of weeks. This is because of President Donald Trump’s baseless connection between autism and paracetamol; his imposition on five days’ notice of tariffs against drug companies that do not build plants in America; and Optus’s failure on the emergency network causing death; among other things.

Govt’s climate target too costly

The Coalition is right. Last week’s carbon-emissions target will be costly for the economy. That is because it is far too low, not because it is too high.

The Government is not spending anywhere near enough to transition to renewables. There is money in this for Australia. And the quicker the transition the less vulnerable our economy will be.

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