Australian Prime Minister Morrison gives full amnesty to employers who have stolen all or part of their employees superannuation

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), media release, 24 February 2020: 

With daily revelations of wage theft dominating the start of the new parliamentary year, the Morrison Government has today passed a bill which will waive penalties for employers who have stolen superannuation from workers. 

The bill protects employers from prosecution by the ATO for any theft of superannuation back to the birth of the system, regardless of the size of the theft or the intent of the employer. 

This is an unprecedented move by a federal government – blanket pardoning of a serious contravention of federal law, with no caveats or limits. 

The Government has said publicly that if employers cannot determine the extent of their theft before the end of the amnesty, it will be extended.

Quotes attributable to ACTU President Michele O’Neil: “We are living through a national crisis of wage theft and superannuation forms a significant part of this issue. Instead of punishing the employers who have been stealing money from their employees, potentially for decades, the Morrison Government has waved them through without any penalty whatsoever. 

“This law will recover a tiny fraction of the billions in super estimated stolen since the beginning of the system and will do nothing to change behaviour in the business community. 

“The Government has had seven years and has done nothing to help workers with unpaid super. Workers need their right to Super included in the National Employment Standards so that repayment can be easily pursued and have super paid at the same time as wages. 

“The best way to stop wage and super theft is to allow unions to once again conduct compliance checks in workplaces to end this epidemic of ripping off workers. 

“This is a shameful act by a Government which it seems will stop at nothing to cater to employers at the expense of working people. 

“The ACTU will continue to explore all available legal avenues to ensure that working people get the money they are owed and that thieves are held accountable for their actions.”

The amount of unpaid super owed to workers in Australia was estimated in 2018 to be at least $5.9 billion and wages theft by employers was thought to total $12.8 billion.

‘Grant from Auditing’ dropped ‘Scotty from Marketing’ right in it and the net result is a strong stench of corruption emanating from the Morrison government

New Matilda, 14 February 2020:

Summer rains finally fell on large parts of New South Wales this week. They didn’t fall everywhere, and much of inland Australia is still in drought, but enough rain fell where it was needed to allow weary fire authorities to announce that the New South Wales bushfires were finally contained.

For different reasons, Scott Morrison has also had a difficult summer, so the Prime Minister would no doubt have been pleased the bushfire emergency he so badly mishandled is now receding. With Parliament back and the serious matter of COVID-19 Coronavirus to attend to, Morrison could be forgiven for thinking that February would be the month where the government could regain the political initiative.

But that’s not happening, because the government finds itself mired in a series of corruption scandals.

The key issue, as it has been for weeks now, is the sports rorts affair. As we now know, roughly $100 million in sports grants were distributed in a completely corrupt manner by former Sports Minister Bridget McKenzie before the 2019 federal election.

The scandal blew up after the National Audit Office released a devastating report into the orgy of pork barrelling.

The government’s initial response to the Audit was to try and downplay it: a variation of the classic “nothing to see here, folks” line. Morrison himself argued many times that no rules had been broken and that all the projects funded in McKenzie’s dodgy process were eligible.

That approach proved unsustainable, as the media turned its attention to the grants program and uncovered multiple instances of highly dubious decision-making. Huge grants to fancy rowing clubs in Mosman, grants for female change rooms to clubs with no female players, grants to a shooting club that McKenzie herself was a member of, grants that sporting clubs boasted about before even receiving them – the more journalists dug, the worse things seemed.

The Audit report was always going to be difficult to wriggle away from. The report set down, in black and white, a devastating series of findings about the sports grants program.

An established funding program was subverted by a “parallel process” of political decision making inside McKenzie’s office, quite transparently driven by political interest. Questions were raised about the program’s probity by senior bureaucrats, only to be batted away by McKenzie and her staff. A colour-coded spreadsheet was even drawn up, one that had nothing to do with the merits of the funding applications, and everything to do with the Coalition’s re-election strategy.

As former senior New South Wales judge Stephen Charles QC argued, this was not just ministerial misconduct; it was corruption.

So, after weeks of defending her, Morrison bowed to the inevitable and sacked McKenzie. After a hastily convened investigation by Morrison’s hand-picked Secretary of the Department of Prime Minster and Cabinet, Phil Gaetjens, McKenzie was sent on her way.

On the day he sacked McKenzie, Morrison announced that Gaetjens’ report found that McKenzie had erred, but that the program itself was sound. Exactly how Gaetjens managed to come to that conclusion is something that has puzzled journalists and onlookers. If the program was sound, why was McKenzie sacked for rorting it? And if McKenzie rorted it, how could the program be sound?

Just to make matters more opaque, Gaetjens’ report was never released, with Morrison claiming that it was a cabinet document. He therefore kept it secret. It’s marvellous stuff, this open government business…..

In scathing testimony, Auditor-General Grant Hehir and senior auditor Brian Boyd demolished the government’s position with a few well-chosen lines.

Were all the grants eligible, Senator Eric Abetz asked Boyd? No, answered Boyd.

In fact, as many as 43 per cent were not eligible. Boyd went on to explain why. Some applications were late. Some projects had started their work before they signed the funding agreement. Some had actually finished the work.

As Boyd told the Committee, “If you’ve completed your work, or in some cases — as in this one — you’ve even started your work before a funding agreement is signed, you’re not eligible to receive funding.” Oops.

It got worse. We also found out that the Prime Minister’s office was intimately involved with McKenzie’s office in drawing up the dodgy list of grant recipients. Auditor-General Hehir told Senators there were “direct” communications between Morrison’s office and McKenzie’s, including at least 28 versions of the now-notorious colour-coded spreadsheet that laid out the various sports grants by marginal seat.

The Auditor-General described a process where key advisors from Morrison and McKenzie’s offices haggled over which projects to fund, using the spreadsheet as the basis for their decisions.

To say this looks bad for the Prime Minister is an understatement. He has been caught out in a particularly ham-fisted cover up, one that looks all the more ill-judged now the facts have come to light. Given the level and detail of communication between his office and Bridget McKenzie’s, it’s hard to see how he can plausibly argue he wasn’t privy to the rorts…..

Read the full article here.

Quotes of the Week

"The big issues for anyone interested in a future on this continent – energy, water and climate – remained unaddressed. Mining and Murdoch maintained their vice-like grip on Australian politics and the minds of the masses. The rich got richer, and the poor got homeless.”  [Journalist David Lowe writing in Echo NetDaily, 17 January 2020]

"Right now the government is indulging in the equivalent of responding to polio by promising to invest in more iron lungs. And bizarrely, it is getting credit for it. Adaptation is not mitigation." [Journalist Greg Jericho writing in The Guardian, 19 January 2020]

FIGHTING BACK AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE DENIALISM: a hit, a palpable hit!

Putting the fallacious argument against lowering Australia's greenhouse gas emissions into perspective.......

The Age, letter to the editor,17 December 2019, p.20:

State of the Australian economy as it enters 2020

On 16 December 2019 Australian Treasurer and Liberal MP for Kooyong, Josh Frydenberg, put out a glowing media release concerning the health of the national economy which bears little resemblance to data his own department released on that same day.

Treasury on behalf of the Morrison Coalition Government informed Australia that it now has less income than was anticipated just prior to the 2019 federal election and, that economic growth is now slower.

Total receipts have been revised down by about $3.0 billion in 2019-20 and $32.6 billion over the four years to 2022-23.

These falls are due to less money coming into Treasury from individuals taxes, company tax and superannuation tax, as well as less dollars being collected through the tax on goods & services (GST) and lower non-tax income.

Federal government net debt is expected to be $392.3 billion in 2019-20 (19.5 per cent of GDP). Gross debt now stands at over $560.8 billion.

Slower economic growth is explained as due in part to decreased production and lower export levels in the farming sector, a decline in iron ore prices, softer wages growth, diminished business confidence & investment uncertainty.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) nominal growth is 3.25 per cent but is expected to fall to 2.25 per cent in the coming financial year.

Wages growth is still under performing at 2.5 per cent and, there is no guarantee that the revised projection of 3 per cent wage growth by 2022-23 is achievable.

Unemployment is beginning to rise.

The number of people who had jobs fell by 19,700 individuals between the May federal election and October 2019. Employment numbers are projected to fall over the next 5 years in Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, Manufacturing and Information, Media & Technology.

Cost of living (CPI) is not coming down. CPI rose 1.7 per cent through the year to the September 2019 quarter. This followed a through the year rise of 1.6 per cent to the June 2019 quarter. Retail prices, particularly for clothing, footwear, meat, dairy, bread and cereal products, have risen.

As for the much lauded budget surplus for 2019-20, it has shrunk from $7.1 billion to $5 billion. While the rubbery figures in forward estimates see the expected surplus for 2020-2021 reduced from $11 billion to $6.1 billion, then from $17.8 billion down to $8.2 billion in 2021-22, with the fiscal year after that supposed to bring in a surplus of only $4 billion instead of the projected $9.2 billion.

One can almost hear Morrison ordering a funding red pen through even more health, disability and welfare services/programs in a vain attempt to avoid intensifying the economic squeeze his flawed political ideology is imposing on the nation.

Notes:

* Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg 16 December 2019 media release at 

http://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/josh-frydenberg-2018/media-releases/2019-20-mid-year-economic-and-fiscal-outlook

* Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) December 2019 at https://budget.gov.au/2019-20/content/myefo/download/MYEFO_2019-20.pdf

* Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) April 2019 at https://treasury.gov.au/publication/2019-pefo

* Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) federal government debt updates at https://www.aofm.gov.au/

* Cost of Living data at https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/6401.0Media%20Release1Sep%202019?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=6401.0&issue=Sep%202019&num=&view=

* Labour Market Information Portal, “Industry Projections – 5 years to 2024” (Excel) at http://lmip.gov.au/PortalFile.axd?FieldID=2787734&.xlsx

Few Liberal-Nationals politicians have ever understood the strength of community in the NSW Northern River region

Few Liberal-Nationals politicians have ever understood the strength of community in the NSW Northern Rivers region or the passion of locals to protect their families, neighbours, the land, rivers, forests and native animals from those who threaten all six. Including those who threaten by refusing to take meaningful action to mitigate climate change.

Here is yet another Northern Rivers resident speaking up.....

The Guardian, 2 December 2019:

Melinda Plesman stands with the remains of her burnt-out house, destroyed in the NSW bushfires, outside Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Melinda Plesman and her partner, Dean Kennedy, lost their family home of 35 years after bushfires tore through Nymboida, south of Grafton in NSW, last month.

Plesman said she wanted to show Scott Morrison the direct result of climate change.

“It’s happening now and this is what climate change looks like,” Plesman said.

“I’m losing my home, whole communities are losing their homes ... and the prime minister said we’re not allowed to talk about it.

“He said he was going to pray for us. And that was the last straw.”.....

Morrison Government's union busting 'Ensuring Integrity Bill' defeated in the Senate

Prime Minister Scott Morrison's pride and joy, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, intended to weaken and perhaps even destroy registered unions in Australia was negatived in Committee of the Whole by the Senate.

The vote was tied at 34-all, with One Nation's two senators along with Senator Jacqui Lambie voting with the Greens and Labor.

It took 147 days for political commonsense to prevail but on 28 November 2019 the Senate politely told the prime minister and his hard right cronies where to go.

Another bill Morrison is reportedly hoping to pass before the parliamentary Christmas break is the Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019 which removes provisions for asylum seeker detainee medical transfers to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru ('medevac').

BACKGROUND

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), media release, 26 November 2019:

In a blow to the Morrison Government’s arguments for the Ensuring Integrity Bill currently before the senate the Federal Court has ruled the union regulator, the Register Organisations Commission (ROC) investigation into the AWU was invalid. 

Justice Bromberg has ruled that the ROC did not have grounds to order an AFP raid on the offices of the AWU and has ordered the return of the documents that were seized on behalf of the regulator in their first act after being established by the Liberal Government in 2017. 

The decision comes as the Morrison Government attempts to pass the Ensuring Integrity Bill in the Senate which would give the ROC the extreme power to determine which unions are deregistered and which officials are disqualified under the dangerous and hypocritical new union-busting law. 

Under the EI Bill the ROC would have the power to begin deregistration proceedings against a union which had made a handful of paperwork mistakes over a period of 10 years. 

Quotes attributable to ACTU President Michele O’Neil: 

“The Morrison government has been telling Senators that the ROC is an impartial body which can administer the extraordinary powers granted under EI. The Federal Court has just found it conducted an illegal raid on a union office. 

“Giving union busters more power to drag unions into courts over minor paperwork breaches, some that would only cost a company an $80 fine, Will cost members and the taxpayer millions in legal fees. This is before accounting for the cost of not being able to campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and safer workplaces. 

“To defend themselves from the ROC’s harrassment the AWU was forced to expending significant resources over two years to get justice. If the Ensuring Integrity Bill passes, all unions could face this harrassment over paperwork breaches. 

“Questions also need to be asked of the ROC who is continuing to waste tax payer’s money to challenge this finding. “This ruling gives the crossbench senators a stark example of how the Morrison government targets unions and will stop at nothing to try and bust unions. Ensuring Integrity will become another tool for union busters and should be rejected. 

“The Federal Court decision is a vindication for the AWU but also a warning for the Senate crossbench who weighing amendments which would give this discredited body even more power.”

BACKGROUND

On 20 October 2017, Mr Chris Enright, the Executive Director of the Registered Organisation Commission (ROC) and a delegate of the Commissioner decided to conduct an investigation.

Judgment in Australian Workers’ Union v Registered Organisations Commissioner (No 9) [2019] FCA 1671 was delivered on 11 October 2019. The judgment concluded that; "the decision to conduct an investigation as to whether ss 285(1), 286(1) and 287(1) of the RO Act had been contravened was affected by jurisdictional error and is invalid."

Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 was introduced by the Morrison Coaltion Government in July 2019 and was currently before the Senate for the second reading debate when the ACTU penned the aforementioned media release.

*Images of ROC document come from the published Federal Court judgment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Migration Amendment (Repairing Medical Transfers) Bill 2019  is apparently scheduled for a second reading before 5 December 2019.

This bill removes provisions in Schedule 6 of the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Act 2019. These provisions (commonly referred to as the medical transfer, or medevac, provisions) established a framework for the transfer of transitory persons from regional processing countries to Australia for the purpose of medical treatment or assessment. The Bill also amends the Migration Act to allow for the removal of people brought to Australia under the medical transfer provisions back to a regional processing country once they no longer need to be in Australia.

On 27 November 2019 a nonconforming petition was tabled in the Senate asking for medevac provisions to be saved. It contains 51,299 signatures.

On the same day Professor David Isaacs, Clinical Professor, Paediatrics & Child Health, Fellow, Royal Australasian College of Physicians was joined by doctors in Canberra urging senators to reject the medevac repeal bill. Professor Isaacs carried an open letter signed by 5,040 doctors urging Senator Jacqui Lambie to save medevac.

ROBODEBT: it's wonderful how the threat of legal action can energize the Morrison Government

Faced with three court cases which will inevitably expose the shaky ground on which the Centrelink income compliance program - aka robodebt - was built in July 2016, the Morrison Government now makes a limited, tactical response ahead of court hearings.

ABC News, 19 November 2019:

The Federal Government is immediately halting a key part of the controversial robodebt scheme to recover debts from welfare recipients and will freeze some existing debts, in what appears to be a major backdown in the operation of the scheme.

In an urgent email circulated to all Department of Human Services compliance staff today, seen by 7.30, the general manager of the debt appeal division wrote:

"The department has made the decision to require additional proof when using income averaging to identity over payments.

"This means the department will no longer raise a debt where the only information we are relying on is our own averaging of Australia Taxation Office income data."

The averaging process has long been one of the most controversial parts of the scheme.

Legal groups have said that it causes inaccuracies in the debt amounts, and wrongly shifts the burden of proof onto alleged debtors.

The email also sets out that the department would undertake a sweeping review of all debts where averaging was used.

"Customer compliance division will methodically work through previous debts identified as part of the online compliance program and respond to their requests for clarification," it said.

The department will also be writing to affected customers.

"For customers who are affected, the department will freeze debt recovery action as CCD identifies them and looks at each debt. The department will also write to affected customers to let them know," the email said.

7.30 has contacted the Minister for Government Services and the Department of Human Services for a response.

The Australian Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert was very careful in his wording of the change in approach to 'debt' collection as was wording on the Department of Human Services website.

It appears that little is altered with regard to robotdebt unless individual welfare recipients fall into the category of a) never having engaged with DHS/Centrelink after having received an initial notice informing them of an "income discrepancy"; b) also ignored any followup letters/emails
/texts/phone calls and c) whose alleged debt did not occur in a time period for which Centrelink still retains all documents concerning cash transfers made to the individual recipient.

It is only this category of welfare recipients who has never offered verbal or written information concerning the alleged debt, therefore they are the only persons who by Mr. Robert's reckoning may have had their alleged debt solely calculated by flawed data matching with the Australian Taxation Office.

The number of people who remain in this category after DHS/Centrelink's debt recovery program has been running for more than three years is not known - it could be as little as est. 6,500 or as many as est. 600,000 individuals.

Make no mistake, the Morrison Government will not easily abandon this lucrative stitch up of the poor and vulnerable.

In the 2018-19 financial year alone the total debt from income compliance activity was valued at $885.8 million and the value since the program began now totals $1.86 billion.

BACKGROUND

The Monthly, 19 November 2019:

Asher Wolf, one of the original grassroots campaigners against the robodebt program, says the government’s move is tactical. “Don’t trust DHS to act in good faith not to ramp up robodebt again. If you back off from challenging the government – for even a minute – on mendacious data-matching schemes, they’ll slide right back into old patterns of cruelty.”

Today’s move could even endanger the government’s projected return to surplus, which relies on some $2.1 billion in prospective debt recoveries under the robodebt program over the 2019–20 to 2021–22 period. “The Coalition’s AAA credit rating is balanced off raising preposterous, erroneous, illegal debts,” says Wolf. “I have no doubt the Coalition will come after the same people they always attempt to hurt: the poor and the vulnerable.”

Gordon Legal, website, 19 November 2019:

You may be aware that the so-called Robodebt issue has been widely reported in the media and has been the subject of both a Parliamentary Inquiry and a report from the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth Government does not appear to accept that the Debt Notices, issued by Centrelink on its behalf are invalid and that it has an obligation to repay the money it has already collected under the Robodebt Scheme.

Unless the Commonwealth agrees to change its position then our current view is that people with a claim of the kind broadly described above should pursue their rights by commencing a Group or Class Action.

ABC News, 17 September 2019:

A class action will be launched against the Government over the so-called robodebt scandal, arguing the Government's automated debt system is unlawful.

Key points:

• Lawyers will argue the Government could not rely on the robodebt algorithm to collect money
• The action will seek both repayment of falsely claimed debts and compensation for affected people, lawyers say
• The Opposition says the robodebt billing practices are "verging on extortion"

Opposition government services spokesman Bill Shorten announced the action, which will be brought by Gordon Legal, and comes after sustained pressure on the Government over the system.

Peter Gordon, a senior partner at the law firm, said the collection of money based solely on a computer algorithm was unlawful.

"The Commonwealth has used a single, inadequate piece of data — the robodebt algorithm — and used it to seize money and penalise hundreds of thousands of people," he said

Read the full article here.

Victoria Legal Aid, 8 September 2019:

The Federal Court has been told that Centrelink has wiped the debt at the centre of a second test case against its robo-debt scheme. The case will go to a hearing in early December.

Our client, Deanna Amato has been told her robo-debt of $2754 had been wiped, after a recalculation process found the true overpayment to be just $1.48.

‘I'm happy that I don't have a big debt looming over me anymore, but on the other hand, I'm stunned that it was recalculated so easily after I took legal action’, said Deanna. 

‘Centrelink will make you jump through hoops to prove your innocence, but it turns out they were capable of finding out if my reporting was correct and that I didn't owe them anything like what the robo-debt claimed I owed. It makes me question the system even more’, she said.

The 33-year-old local government employee says Centrelink has refunded her over $1700, after they took her full tax return earlier this year. At the time, she had never spoken to anyone from Centrelink about the supposed debt.

‘It was scary when Centrelink took my tax return out of the blue. I had no idea what my rights were, or if Centrelink even had this kind of power over my money, so I turned to legal aid for advice.

‘Now that they have wiped the debts of both Victoria Legal Aid cases, it makes me wonder how many people have paid supposed debts that were completely inaccurate.  I hate to think of more people suffering because of incorrect calculations.

People may be handing over money they don't even owe, because they're too afraid, or don't have the means, to challenge them. That's why I think the system needs to change’ said Deanna.

Rowan McRae, Executive Director of Civil Justice Access and Equity at Victoria Legal Aid said our legal challenges to the scheme continued – ‘We cannot accept a system that is so clearly flawed and causing overwhelming hardship to the most disadvantaged people in our community.’

‘We are contacted every day by people who are feeling overwhelmed by this system that puts the onus on them to disprove debts. It is important that a court looks at the lawfulness of the process Centrelink relies on to decide that people owe them money’. said Rowan.

Deanna says she is keen to have the court look at the decisions that led to the debt being raised. ‘It turns out, when I was receiving Centrelink assistance, I reported my income, yet they still were able to raise a debt of almost $3000 and take my tax return. The fact that Centrelink wiped my robo-debt, does not change my feelings about this court case going ahead. The robo-debt process needs to be seriously examined,’ she said.

‘If I hadn't taken this legal action, I don't think Centrelink would have ever realised the problem with my so called ‘debt’, Deanna said.

Deanna Amato’s case will go to a hearing in December with our first client Madeleine Masterton’s to be scheduled for hearing after that case is determined. [my yellow highlighting]

With 6 people burnt to death to date during the current NSW 2019 fire season, one reputable Australian journalist pointed the finger squarely at who and what is to blame

TheGuardian, 16 November 2019:

The history of climate policy in Australia is a history of self-interest, posturing and shameful inaction. Photograph: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

In a dispiriting political week like the one we’ve just had, it helps to keep things simple. Let’s begin with the organising idea of the week, where various politicians asserted, both in measured ways and unhinged ways, that it was inappropriate to talk about climate change while bushfires ravaged the country.

Let’s be clear about what this line of argument is.

It’s self-serving crap.

It is entirely possible to have a sensible discussion about climate change and the risks it poses, including the risks of longer and more intense fire seasons, and still do all the things that need to be done to protect lives and property.

We have that bandwidth. In fact Australia demonstrated amply over the course of the past few days our collective capacity to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Despite all the finger waggling from politicians, or perhaps because of it, the climate conversation happened in tandem with heroic efforts by emergency services workers to save lives and contain the damage. In fact, the most compelling part of the conversation about bushfires being a symptom of climate change was led by emergency service workers: a coalition of former fire chiefs, who point blank refused various invitations from politicians to shut up.

Given there is no law that says bushfires preclude sensible, evidence-based policy conversations, it’s reasonable to ask why this particular prohibition was asserted.

The answer to that is simple. The Coalition does not want its record raked over at a time when Australians are deeply anxious, because it’s hard to control the narrative in those conditions. The government does not want people who are not particularly engaged in politics, and who make a point of not following Canberra’s periodically rancid policy debates (and climate is the most toxic of the lot), switching on to this issue at a time where they have a personal stake in the conversation.

While Scott Morrison has acknowledged there is a link between climate change and natural disasters, and in attitudinal terms that acknowledgement is a positive development, it’s not really in the prime minister’s interests for anyone to press very assertively on that pressure point, particularly not at a time when the prolonged drought (another symptom of climate change) is already making the Coalition’s supporters restive.

Morrison doesn’t invite the climate action interrogation, because the government’s record is abysmal, and I don’t invoke that word lightly. The Liberal and National parties have done everything within their collective power to frustrate climate action in Australia for more than a decade. The Coalition repealed the carbon price. They attempted to gut the renewable energy target. They imposed fig-leaf policies costing taxpayers billions that have failed to stop emissions rising every quarter.

Lest this wrecking, self-interested, destructive behaviour seem a quirk of history – a quaint vestige of the Abbott era curtailed by the sensible man in the Lodge – be reminded that the Liberals blasted Malcolm Turnbull out of the prime ministership only last August in part for the thought crime of trying to impose a policy mechanism that would have reduced emissions in the electricity sector.

Reflections on a catastrophic week of bushfires

Not content with that, the Coalition, Morrison and his ministers, also claimed during the May election that an emissions reduction target broadly consistent with climate science would be a wrecking ball in the Australian economy. Not content with that, Morrison and his ministers characterised a sensible policy by Labor to try and encourage the electrification of the car fleet to reduce emissions in transport as a “war on the weekend”.

What Australian voters needed after the election in May was a government of whatever stripe prepared to put the country on an orderly path towards decarbonisation.

But what the Coalition needed was different. It wanted to remain in power, and one of the principle means to power it deemed necessary proved to be convincing voters in the outer suburbs and regions that Bill Shorten was crazy and shifty about climate change and would confiscate your ute.

To put this point very starkly, there was a climate election in May, and the climate lost.

I hope it’s clear by now, as a consequence of this heart-warming romp through recent political history, that the arbitrary prohibition of the week – we can’t talk about climate because the country is burning – is about politics, and about self-interest, and not about anything else.

And rather than applying false balance and blaming everyone and declaring the whole business of politics and democracy a debacle, let’s also acknowledge that everyone has certainly stuffed up at one point or another, but one political movement more than any other bears the responsibility for Australia’s failure to get on with the necessary transition to low emissions.

That’s the Liberal and National parties.

Read the full article here.

The dead to date in the 2019 NSW bushfire season

77 year-old man & 68 year-old woman burnt inside their home on Deadman Creek Road in Coongbar, Upper Clarence Valley in October

53 year-old woman burnt in her home at Johns River, north of Taree in November

elderly man found in a burnt out car at Wytaliba, east of Glen Innes in November

68 year-old woman burnt on her property at Wytaliba in November

58 year-old man burnt at the southern end of the Kyuna Track at Willawarrin, 34km west of Kempsey in November