Aussies: NSW Politicians, keeping ICAC in business

[HexMachina]

10 hours ago, Jeor said:

ScoMo has now come out with some comments on the link with climate change and the bushfire seasons and some vague promises to look at strategies to mitigate future seasons. No budging on climate policy though, which he amazingly thinks is adequate and that we're doing our job (which we aren't).

Like Howard with Port Arthur and gun control, I really wish that ScoMo would do the same with this bushfire season and environmental initiatives. This season is by no means done (and probably still has another awful couple of months to roll while summer is in) so I hope the government is working on some comprehensive response plan once this is done and dusted, but I don't hold high hopes.

To all those out there who are affected, I hope you're all safe and sound and getting the help that you need.

My brother's family dodged a bullet; they ordinarily would have been holidaying down at the NSW south coast right now (where things have been at their worst) with their three young children, as they customarily go for the week between Christmas and New Years. But for some reason this year they decided to go a week later than usual (and now obviously have not gone at all).

Knowing their usual situation I can only imagine how many other people would have made the same plans, between Christmas and New Year being a rare time when both parents are on leave and a family can have a good holiday. Simply devastating, and especially also for all those small towns and businesses that rely on the tourism.

Damn. Glad your brother had the luck to change his plans. I’ve been following the news over here and its frightening. I have no concept of where any of the Australian boarders here live but i have been thinking and worrying for you all in recent days. For all the good that does.

[Paxter]

I don’t know of any boarders who live around the south coast of NSW. But yeah, following the news too and hope everyone is safe.

[Jeor]

5 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Damn. Glad your brother had the luck to change his plans. I’ve been following the news over here and its frightening. I have no concept of where any of the Australian boarders here live but i have been thinking and worrying for you all in recent days. For all the good that does.

Yes, the bushfires are of apocalyptic proportions here. An article from a few days ago (so out of date now) said that 12 million acres have now been burnt. In perspective, the 2018 Californian wildfires that were pretty bad, "only" burned 1.9 million acres.

I don't know of any boarders who live right in the danger areas, but the NSW south coast is a holidaying area where numbers traditionally swell during the summer like now. It's the worst time for fires to hit and there are road closures and hellish traffic conditions, when most of the people down there would be young families like my brother's would have been. Reports of supermarkets and fuel running out, traffic for the whole day, and knowing fires are behind you is pretty horrendous.

And it's only one month into the summer. January and February are still yet to come when conditions will be arguably worse. We desperately need rain to bring some immediate relief but also consistent rain to break the drought. These dry conditions have gone on for years and have made this situation so much worse.

I also feel desperately sorry for all the towns that rely on tourism. The fires have appeared to hit all the places where tourists would traditionally go for the summer - Nowra and the NSW south coast towns, the southern highlands (Bowral) and the line of towns along the Blue Mountains. I know people in Bowral and Katoomba and these places desperately rely on tourism and the holidays - one friend in the Blue Mountains says that his cafe has been virtually empty for over a month and he's had to cut back on all his staff. Quite apart from the sheer fear factor of the fires, the economic impact is really going to affect a lot of peoples' livelihoods in those holidaying towns and potentially for a lot longer than the fires.

We need a comprehensive national fire mitigation policy. Get all the experts and political decision-makers in one room, provide as much funding as they need (after these fires, not a single taxpayer is going to complain about spending billions on fire mitigation, so if the government doesn't do it now, when would they?). Hire more firefighters, get more trucks/planes/equipment, institute comprehensive backburning and land management strategies, environmental - all that stuff. I'm not an expert so I don't really know, but I'm sure there are people who do and who would do a good job of it.

[Impmk2]

It seems to have gotten to the point where acknowledging how bad the fires are is seen as a capitulation to the reality of climate change on the right side of politics. The Australian ran the bushfires on page 4. Fucking disguisting.

And sure, we can't single handedly roll back climate change. But the very least we could do is stop actively trying to sabotage the Paris agreement.

We're in the lowest cabin on a sinking ship and we're bailing the water back in.

[Paxter]

Yeah I’ve noticed The Australian’s coverage has been way off the mark. The Tele has been comprehensive by Murdoch tabloid standards but has of course stopped short of criticising the PM. 

[dornishpen]

I don't know how reliable this source is, an Australian friend was posting screencaps of tweets about this on FB and I looked for an article, but if your PM was really using misleading ads about the fires to fundraise for his political party that's quite reprehensible, and I've not heard much good of him.

[Paxter]

I don’t really care about the ads. The real story here is that the Federal Government’s crisis response has been woefully inadequate. There is evidence, for example, that the military’s involvement has not been well coordinated with the states’ emergency services. 

[karaddin]

I care about the ads. If you've had the country begging you to help for over a month and the first thing you do when you finally take action is to use the prime ministers office to create a partisan ad (done to look like a non partisan government ad) with a link soliciting donations to your parties campaign finances (in a location that looks like it's donating to fire fighting or victims) then you're an absolute vulture.

And yes the rest is also terrible, he's failed on every level at even the most basic components of being PM. And has a glass jaw so he gets pissed at being called out on it.

The new surprise fire that started last night is threatening my childhood home town area. I think the farm that was my first house was just missed last night, as was the beautiful national park I used to go walking in regularly but they're not even close to out of the woods. My Dad still lives down there and the Hume is cut off in almost a dozen locations not forecast to reopen until the 8th and the only other major route out of the area is down to the South coast which is also not good, do evacuations wouldn't be easy.

 

[Jeor]

I don't know whether Morrison is getting bad advice or he's just personally got an absolute tin ear, but there are a thousand things that he could have done better even without the benefit of hindsight.

Hawaii - just be upfront and say you're going on holiday and McCormack is Acting PM. Don't go secretly and then try and cover it up afterwards.

Shaking hands - obviously if someone doesn't want to shake hands, don't force them! What a terrible move.

Initially not acknowledging climate change or giving tacit approval to the deniers like McCormack. ScoMo has acknowledge it now but too little too late.

Ads - absolute tin ear. If he honestly wanted to get word out to the Australian people about the government response, just do it in a press conference. All the major channels and news networks would carry it in their coverage. And he wouldn't look like a spin doctoring idiot.

Apart from saying sorry for the holiday, he also hasn't shown much (if any) contrition. I think most people admire it when you fess up to mistakes and they appreciate honesty rather than either ignoring criticism or trying to paper it over.

[The Drunkard]

He was carried in the election by a bootlicking media that allowed him to do and contribute nothing other than fire off a few slogans and repeat lies over and over for 6 months, and I'm sure he thought he could do the same to coast his way through the bushfires. His whole attitude re: Hawaii, climate change and the federal response is him thinking he doesn't actually need to do anything, just stay on-message in a few press releases and have his handlers do the rest.

[Paxter]

Yeah sure, ScoMo is a dog - but we knew that already. I’m more concerned about the inadequate service response and the actual human suffering involved, together with the long-term strategy for dealing with climate change. 

[Raja]

12 hours ago, Paxter said:

The real story here is that the Federal Government’s crisis response has been woefully inadequate.

Is there a place/website I can read about why this is the case? All the stuff I've read is BBC/ Reuters, but they seem fairly surface level. I'm looking myself, obviously, but I thought I'd ask!

[Impmk2]

8 hours ago, Raja said:

Is there a place/website I can read about why this is the case? All the stuff I've read is BBC/ Reuters, but they seem fairly surface level. I'm looking myself, obviously, but I thought I'd ask!

In my view it's mainly climate change politics.

The current government won a single seat majority the last election thanks to a handful of seats in coal mining country in the far north east. The current PM is very much in bed with the mining industry and when he was in his previous role as treasurer actually brought a lump of coal into parliment as a prop and waved it around. The previous PM was deposed by his own party for trying to do something about emissions and costs in the electricity sector - a move which was backed by all the major industry groups, but angered the far right in those northern coal mining seats.

So when some of the worst fires we've seen started in November(!!) it was pointed out (most prominently by fire chiefs, mayors in effected areas) that longer, more intense fire seasons were what had been predicted by the scientists for years, and holy shit we need more funding (and we might even want to think about climate policy). This was met by a response of go away, we've always had fires. Because this has been the overwhelming attitude of the far right, the crisis response was at first predictably muted, and then when it became clear that holy shit this is actually a disaster we've never seen the likes of before they were playing catch up.

Also tied in here is the governments bloody minded obsession with running a surplus, and so opening the coffers is something that must be avoided at all costs, disasters be damned.

Edit: My 6am reading comprehension is pretty terrible. You were looking for a website with analysis, not a run down. Not too sure if there's a good one exclusively covering Australian politics? I mostly look at the Australian ABC, and the conversation which has good opinion pieces from a variety of experts. 

[The Winged Shadow]

Lets not forget the budget cut for the fire services by State Gov. Looks downright criminal in hindsight.

[Jeor]

6 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

The previous PM was deposed by his own party for trying to do something about emissions and costs in the electricity sector - a move which was backed by all the major industry groups, but angered the far right in those northern coal mining seats.

Turnbull just tweeted that his National Energy Guarantee policy should be reinstated. Turnbull was my kind of Liberal Prime Minister (though obviously not the Liberal Party's...) - moderate and generally acceptable to the mainstream.

[Paxter]

But Turnbull never let that policy go to vote! He never even courted Shorten on it. Too cowed by Tony and co.

[Free Northman Reborn]

I like Dr Robert Zubrin’s suggestion that the a version of the Bradfield scheme or equivalent should be implemented. This long established proposal would divert vast quantities of water from the monsoon drenched parts of northern Australia southwards, irrigating large parts of the interior of Queensland and even South Australia, allowing vegetation to cover previous desert areas, absorbing CO2 on a large scale and even cooling down the local climate by absorbing more sunlight.

Mega engineering projects like this and even larger, are the future. There is no reason why much of Australia should be wasted desert. Desalination on a massive scale can irrigate the interior, cool the local climate and turn Australia into perhaps the largest agricultural producer on the planet.

We have the technology to do this, we just need the political will.

[maarsen]

6 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I like Dr Robert Zubrin’s suggestion that the a version of the Bradfield scheme or equivalent should be implemented. This long established proposal would divert vast quantities of water from the monsoon drenched parts of northern Australia southwards, irrigating large parts of the interior of Queensland and even South Australia, allowing vegetation to cover previous desert areas, absorbing CO2 on a large scale and even cooling down the local climate by absorbing more sunlight.

Mega engineering projects like this and even larger, are the future. There is no reason why much of Australia should be wasted desert. Desalination on a massive scale can irrigate the interior, cool the local climate and turn Australia into perhaps the largest agricultural producer on the planet.

We have the technology to do this, we just need the political will.

And the extra carbon emissions.

[The Anti-Targ]

Australia's interior doesn't just need water to grow stuff. Most of Australia has very low fertility soil, so if you want to grow useful stuff you also need to truck in a shitload of fertiliser, on a regular basis.

And of course a lot of Australia's interior doesn't burn, because there's nothing there to burn. Most of the wildfires are coastal, because those areas get rain and thus there's more lush vegetation there to build up a nice base of kindling on the ground.

Aussie has a lot of sunshine and cloudless days. If you want to do some big engineering project how about solar electricity? Aussie could probably be 100% weaned off fossil fuel electricity in 10 years with mega solar energy projects. Elon Musk thinks China could be 100% solar with a 50x bigger population and less sun (I think he's dreaming, but he might be right). So Aussie should be able to get there quicker and easier than China.

We have the technology to do this, we just need the political will.

I have family over there who are safe for now. The scale is mindblowing. This is the first time I recall large parts of New Zealand have been blanketed in smoke haze from Australian bushfires. But despite the devastation and suffering, somehow this does not appear to be a wake up call for those who need to wake the hell up.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

We have the technology to do this, we just need the political will.

You'd think having this disaster showing the cost of just a single year of +1.5C would spur some political will to start future proofing our economy, its not like there aren't massive economic benefits (completely separate from avoiding the costs of inaction) in being one of the first countries to have mass affordable renewable energy.

But our political class is so fucking bought by fossil fuel industries and fear of a few thousand miners that will lose their jobs when the super mines are entirely automated anyway.