Antinuclear

What a week in Australia’s climate/nuclear news!

Election results show that, in fact, climate change and the carbon tax were not a major issue.  The ABC’s opinion poll showed that Australians in general wanted action on climate change. However, election results suggest that this did not translate into support for carbon pricing. Nuclear/uranium issues were just not on the radar.

What Australia’s election results did show, is that a sustained barrage of attack against climate action policies, run over the past 3 years by the Murdoch media, in tandem with its attacks on the Labor government, had its effect.

Disinformation about climate change surely contributed to the confusion in the electorate, resulting in the extraordinary proliferation of silly little mini parties. Most of these new single issue new Senators are quite ignorant of general political issues, and can be relied on to vote mindlessly with the Abbott Government, when these Senators take up their seats in July.

For this reason, Abbott may well say that he will act quickly, but his best bet is to hang off on his most extreme, and anti climate action policies, until July.

However, Abbott is doing what groundwork that he can.  Only yesterday, he’s been talking with President Obama, about the Trans Pacific Partnership, (TPP).  You may well wonder about this – it’s  a secretive pact designed to give American corporations a lot of power, for example, ability to sue Australian State governments – in effect, to override environmental laws. The Labor Government was being very careful about this. But does Tony even understand it?

Labor re-groups.  No, Tony, they’re not going to “man up” and dump carbon pricing and climate change action. On the contrary, both Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese see action on climate change as a central issue

September 14, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina reviews