Antinuclear

Australia now a plutocracy – don’t let fossil fuel lobby run this election!

To win on the climate we have to take our democracy back from the corporates who have bought it. That means making the urgency of the climate emergency, the need to keep coal, gas and oil in the ground, political donations reform, fossil fuel subsidies and a national Icac, red hot issues in this election.

Our democracy has been bought. To win on climate, we have to take it back, Guardian, 26 May 16  Christine Milne A majority of voters are in support of more government action on climate change – and yet somehow it’s not an election issue. Let’s make it one The current dissonance between election campaign rhetoric and the facts of climate change is unfathomable, that is, until you dig a little deeper.

This month, the world passed a disastrous tipping point from which there will be no return: the Cape Grim Air Quality Monitoring Station registered a count of 400 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. Climate scientists have acknowledged that there is basically no going back from this point. We are in a climate emergency.

At the same time, 93% of the Great Barrier Reef is experiencing devastating bleaching; the biggest ever anti-coal protest at Newcastle – the world’s largest coal port – stopped exports for a day, and yet at the federal election leaders’ debate not one question was asked on what the parties would do about global warming or fossil fuel subsidies, coal or coal seam gas.

What is going on? A lack of interest or a debate with parameters and audience selection overseen by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News and Daily Telegraph? It is not credible that a representative selection of voters would not have raised global warming or asylum seekers as issues at all. Especially when a poll released this week showed that an overwhelming majority of voters are in favour of more government action on climate change.

But then we no longer live in a democracy. We have morphed into a plutocracy: government by the wealthy for the wealthy greased by political donations. You don’t need to be in parliament to secure your interests, you only need to buy or exert enough influence through cash or concentrated media ownership to make sure things don’t change regardless of whether the LNP or Labor is in government.

Big corporations call these donations “diversifying their investment”, and when you look at the donation records of fossil fuel companies, they donate to both major parties, capturing them both within their destructive and pervasive web of influence.

To make sense of this election and to understand why certain issues are buried and others promoted as open to debate, it is necessary to follow the money, and the electoral objectives of those who have it.

Australia is a disproportionately resource-based economy dependent on subsidised digging up and shipping away. The vested interests who have made their fortunes out of coal, oil and gas will fight to keep it that way. This is despite crystal clear evidence that the demand for our coal, oil and gas on the global stage is declining.

Rather than work to transition our economy to a more diverse and clean one, they will instead fight to keep every grant, subsidy, tax break and overseas tax haven they currently enjoy. They will tear down every job, research project or grants scheme that supports a renewable energy future, such as they have done by gutting of the CSIRO, the renewable energy target and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena)……..

To win on the climate we have to take our democracy back from the corporates who have bought it. That means making the urgency of the climate emergency, the need to keep coal, gas and oil in the ground, political donations reform, fossil fuel subsidies and a national Icac, red hot issues in this election. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/26/our-democracy-has-been-bought-to-win-on-climate-we-have-to-take-it-back

May 27, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News