Lessons learned Yesterday, Bernard Keane put it starkly: “Evil never sleeps, and evil is patient. Fossil fuel companies know that electoral spikes in demand for climate action can be resisted and seen off.” The Coalition, after the climate change election scooped its core vote as efficiently as a grapefruit spoon, appears to be counting on that. How else to explain the major talking points from Coalition figures this week? Such as Senator Hollie Hughes responding to the calamitous environmental report that her government had kept under wraps by expressing worry about what the future would bring… for the mining industry. As she told the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, she was worried about “what sort of legislation they are going to want to introduce that could … impact our ability to continue to mine, to also look for these coal and gas reserves … Climate change is not Australia’s problem, it is not a regional problem.”
Meanwhile, opposition environment spokesman Jonathon Duniam broke his long silence to accuse minister Tanya Plibersek of engaging in “partisan finger-pointing and game-playing”.
Of course, as it turns out, the difference of opinion appears to be largely a question of emphasis — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appears to believe very similar things to Hughes and Duniam. Turns out Australia’s mining industry doesn’t make any real impact on world emissions, and asking for more action is playing politics! Or so Albo told The Australian:
Policies that would just result in a replacement of Australian resources with resources that are less clean from other countries would lead to an increase in global emissions, not a decrease. The Greens’ position is aimed at politics rather than what’s necessary…
Content creators As the dust settles on the election, we in the bunker were struck by a sudden melancholy realisation: almost all of the content generators of the past Parliament are gone. Gone is George Christensen, whose on-again-off-again love affair with free speech and sinister allusions gave us so much; fare thee well to Tony Abbott’s sleep paralysis demon Craig Kelly and mischievous crypt keeper Eric Abetz. Sure we’ve still got pantomime artist and recovering Marxist Matt Canavan, and Pauline Hanson survived (to some people’s disgust) her challengers in Queensland to pick up the fifth Senate spot. But Canavan’s desperate and needy provocations are increasingly dull and predictable, and Hanson and her one-time sovereign citizen colleague Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts, the living soul haven’t been churning out topical outrages for a while. But we’re not giving up — we simply have to find new options in the 47th Parliament.
An early favourite must surely be former councillor and new Coalition senator for the Northern Territory, Warlpiri/Celtic woman Jacinta Price. The firebrand conservative takes a strong right-wing view, particularly on Indigenous issues, and thus represents gold for the conservative media, who can rely on her to campaign to keep Australia Day where it is, or wonder aloud whether a fellow Indigenous woman ought to be booted from Parliament for disrespecting the flag.
Who else in the new Parliament will fill the Crikey bunker with all manner of content? Let us know.
Neat fit, Lyle! There’s movement at Binary, the anti-trans group who continued the record-damaging rhetoric leading to relentless failure that characterised Marriage Alliance, the anti-marriage equality campaigners they are descended from. As if leaning into this dynamic, they have added Lyle Shelton, who used his unfettered access to the nation’s media to complain of being “silenced” and made interesting friends all the way up to watching the majority of Australians bring marriage equality into existence. We hope Shelton’s record remains unblemished by success in his new role.
Vale Steve Gibbons Finally, in some sad news, Crikey understands that longtime Bendigo MP Steve Gibbons passed away yesterday. “Gibbo” won back Bendigo for Labor in 1998 and over five elections turned the regional seat into safe Labor territory. A car mechanic in his youth, Gibbo was successively a trade union official, small businessman, John Brumby adviser and then MP — and never lost his passion for cars, of which he amassed an impressive number. Down to earth, self-deprecating, straight-talking (for better and for worse) and with friends on all sides, Gibbo was old-school Labor, and old-school politics — the kind we don’t have enough of anymore on either side. Our sympathies to his family, friends and former colleagues.
