Where have I gone?

I had promised to put up some of my usual cutting, incisive political commentary some time in the new year.

But I am travelling, which calls for a blog of a different kind. So visit here if you'd like to see where I am and what I am doing.

You can't eat trees.

That line came from the mouth of Nationals Senator Fiona Nash yesterday.

She was arguing for the notion that existing vegetation on farmland should be protected, preferring instead a regime which permits farmers to clear vegetation on their land for crops or grazing.

Carbon sinks appear to me to be a good idea. Individuals and businesses would be able to invest in such carbon sinks to offset their carbon emissions, the more they emit, the more trees planted on their behalf to suck the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.

The Nationals, as evidenced by the comments of Senator Nash and others, don’t like this. They seem to believe that farmers should be allowed to clear their land at whim for cows and sheep and wheat. Barnaby Joyce is travelling today to country New South Wales to visit a farmer who is hunger-striking until such time as he is permitted to clear his land. Food security is, according to Fiona, the most pressing issue facing Australia.

Perhaps, Senator Nash. But part of the reason your farmer constituents find it so difficult to maintain the same levels of food production these days is because it doesn’t rain as much.

It doesn’t rain as much because of el Niño’s increased ferocity and frequency due to global warming.

And a big part of the global warming problem is that we’ve felled far too many trees, compounding the carbon dioxide problem. We’re pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere than ever before, while at the same time removing the gas’ most reliable filter.

I grant you Senator, that trees cannot be eaten.

But neither, Senator, can we ‘breathe’ this much carbon dioxide.

Charlie and the Bonnie Planet

I will always be a staunch republican - but Charles' speech to the Copenhagen conference was inspiring, and is testament to the fact that while the notion of a monarchy is morally bankrupt, those who occupy its offices aren't all bad.

Read the full text here.

It is difficult not to have respect for the man's long-standing commitment to the environment, and the world is going to need many more leaders like him if this empassioned plea, and many others, continue to be ignored by delegates to Cop15.

What a load of [CENSORED]

Trekkie Monster of Avenue Q loves the internet. Specifcally internet porn. Pursuing his passion could be a little less straightforward after today’s announcement from Senator Conroy that the federal government will proceed with the establishment of a mandatory internet censorship regime in Australia.

I have no qualm with government agencies taking the fight to the denizens of cyberland, to would-be terrorists and kiddy fiddlers. Fair enough, the planning or incitement of such acts is and should be a crime.

But such a system is simply far too powerful a tool to rest with bureaucrats in fluorescent-lit basements, glued to their monitors, trawling the internet for content that might infringe any one point on a hastily cobbled-together, subjectively-determined register of possible moral, ethical and legal violations. Aside from that, I'm going to leave aside philosophical discussion on free speech, since in the absence of a constitutional guarantee for it, free speech means little in the Australian context.

Additionally, we have to wonder: would such a system be open to abuse? What safeguards against abuse would exist?

I am certainly not suggesting that a pernicious, incumbent government in Australia would be so brazen or so bold to ban the websites of its main political rivals. But what of smaller, fringe parties like, for example, One Nation? The government of the day seemed pretty insistent that the wider public simply stop listening to Pauline. What if in 1996 John Howard had decided that we oughtn’t to listen to red-headed xenophobes with whom, however rightly or wrongly, a significant proportion of the electorate identified. It is a slippery slope.

Already this government has blacklisted a site that displayed a list of the sites it intended to ban… doesn’t sound like a government that tolerates dissent.

What of governments with hardline moral agenda? An Abbott-led Coalition government would not, I imagine, be too keen on gay rights. Indeed many in the Coalition have expressed the view that the issue of homosexuality should not be discussed in the classroom. And while we’re doing that in the classroom, they might argue, then why not ‘protect’ children in the virtual world too?

What of desperate governments? Administrations of both a Labor and Liberal persuasion that have found themselves dependent on the votes of lunatic religious senators have demonstrated themselves capable of playing with all sorts of unanticipated bargaining chips. Might a resurrected Harradine request a ban on Islamic websites?

What about cloudy moral issues? Euthanasia has widespread support in the community, but is illegal. Will campaigners be unable to further their cause on the World Wide Web?

But most importantly of all: the filtering software Conroy intends to employ simply doesn’t work. It’s been found to inadvertently ban certain Wikipedia articles, perfectly legal gambling sites, perfectly legal pornographic material, a substantial swathe of YouTube clips and, most oddly, the site of a Queensland dentist.

Surely it would make more sense to pour the resources from this scheme into tracking down paedophiles and terrorists rather than destroying Queenslanders' hopes for better dentition.

The wowserism’s gone far enough. [CENSORED] off Conroy, and [CENSORED] off, Rudd. As Trekkie Monster would doubtless say the internet is for porn.

And Wikipedia, gambling, YouTube and dentists.

Just when I thought he couldn't get any stupider

This gem comes from Senator Joyce, on AM this morning, on the subject of the likely (in his mind) scenario in which a cash-strapped US government defaults on its loans.

Well I suppose you have to look at what will be the fallout in Australia with a, you know, if that event was to occur. I mean why are they having a conference in Copenhagen on the contingencies of climate change yet there are other issues that are around such as, in the economic paradigm,* which are probably just as concerning which we're not really engaged in.

Dumbass.

That paragraph makes no sense. Pauline Hanson made more sense. Even Wilson Tuckey usually makes more sense.

But I’ll give Joycey the benefit of the doubt. I think what he’s trying to question is the need for nations to conference on the issue of climate change when there are pressing economic issues we should be addressing, but aren’t.

Why Copenhagen Barnaby? Because everybody but you, Minchin, a few crackpot Republicans, and those who believe in Super Jesus, thinks that preserving economic growth while the planet burns, isn’t a noble goal. They believe, and rightly so, that the health of our planet is fundamental to our existence, let alone our economic welfare. Having a wallet full of cash is not "just as concerning" to sane people as say, having food to eat. Or polar icecaps.

Regardless, Barnaby: if you picked up a newspaper once in a while, you’d’ve noticed that world leaders have spent considerable time this year and last discussing and dealing with issues in economics, finance and trade . And they will continue to do so. (Interestingly enough only you and the same crackpot Republicans are the only people entertaining the notion of a US loan default, by the way.)

You’re a shadow minister now Barnaby. You’re playing with the big boys now. And while you and your staffers might not be intelligent enough to grasp the concept of multitasking, governments are.



* Am I the only one who thinks he put the word paradigm in here to sound intelligent? It's so totally out of context here. Honestly, Fielding has better luck with big words.

Hire Monkeys, Get Bananas.

Unlike the media and whosoever happens to be in Opposition at the time, I don’t believe in the idea that there is an implicit social contract between the Government, the RBA and banks on the one hand, and those with mortgages to repay on the other, to keep rates low.

There are people (self-funded retirees, for example) in the economy whose lives and livelihoods depend on good economic management and, sometimes, good economic management means having higher interest rates. Hopefully, those who take out home loans are aware of the concept of the market, and are aware that their interest rates will not remain stagnant forever. If they’re not, they shouldn’t have loans. (I do have a few centre-right opinions!)

That said, I understand that changes in interest rates can result in big (though hopefully manageable) changes to the budget of an individual or family and consequently the issue should be treated with sensitivity and care.

Which is why this video, sent via email to Westpac customers, is so surprising.



I get Westpac’s point. I sympathise with them. And I understand their frustration at being the scapegoat for public and governmental vitriol every time interest rates rise.

But seriously, which bright spark in PR department thought a banana smoothie stand was a good analogy? The use of bananas cheapens their argument, and makes a mockery of any claim the bank might lay to being an understanding and caring institution.

The saying used to be “pay peanuts, get monkeys.” It seems that for the Western Pacific Banking Corporation, it should be “Hire monkeys, get bananas.”

Commies and Nazis

New Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott has likened the Copenhagen Conference to the Munich Agreement negotiated in the prelude to World War Two. Just in case you don’t remember that Agreement was marked, of course, by “weak leaders caving in to Adolf Hitler.” (Abbott’s words and interpretation)

According to this analogy (and clearly in Liberals’ minds) climate change activists are clandestine Nazis. I’m glad he’s cleared that up for me: when Copenhagen was but a twinkle in Ban Ki Moon’s eye I was already riven with angst; nervous that Hu, Obama and Merkel might cede their industrial Sudetenlands for rape and pillage by eco-Nazis, while polluting capitalists were herded together for ‘re-education’ in special camps. It’s good to see someone keeping on eye on things.

But wait a minute…

Two weeks ago, didn’t Abbott’s trusty lieutenant (puppeteer?) Senator Nick Minchin explicate that the global warming ‘myth’ was the invention of left wing radicals opining for the good ol’ days of the Soviet Union? Copenhagen, Kyoto, et. al. were patently, he told us, nought more than vehicles through which pinkos could and would further their insidious, internationalist goal of “de-industrialising the western world.”

I believed Senator Minchin, Tony, and now I want to believe you. But I’m obviously a bit confused, and I need some help to answer a few questions about global warming’s foes:

Is Obama actually a fascist? Where one might expect Hu Jintao to keep a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book is there actually a copy of Mein Kampf?

Or are the free-market champions like Merkel and Sarkozy actually minions of a resurgent, red preponderance to the east, led by a Medvedev who hums bars from Trotsky’s Lament sub rosa? Is Queen Elizabeth II going to head their New World Order?

And since you are a staunch Catholic Mr Abbott, I thought you might be able to ask Cardinal Pell for me: Benedict XVI, Commy or Nazi?