My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 1 December 2020

Remember that all war is an atrocity

Not long after the release of the report confirming that Australian special forces had murdered civilians in Afghanistan came some much appreciated good news: Mark Willacy and the ABC Four Corners Team had won Australian journalism’s highest honour, the Gold Walkley, for their six-month long investigation titled ’Killing Field’.

This took me straight to having a fresh look at the report. In doing so I am not in any way intending to dishonour the many servicemen and women who have honourably served their country in Afghanistan.

It was reported that commanders were told about possible war crimes being committed by Australian soldiers but dismissed the warnings as ‘Taliban propaganda’. This was reported  by Karen Middleton in The Saturday Paper in a story headlined ‘’How ‘prestige, status and power’ led to Australia’s war crimes”.

As the Guardian Australia also reported, “Australian special forces soldiers incensed at war crimes inquiry clearing commanders of blame”, the cover up is worth examining.

As part of the inquiry, Professor David Whetham of King’s College London found that complaints of substance were lodged by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, and local Afghan elders, but were brushed off as “Taliban propaganda or motivated by a desire for compensation”.

The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) has recommended compensation be paid to the families of Afghan victims without waiting for criminal prosecutions. “It is simply the right thing to do,” it says. To date PM Morrison has resisted this.

The IGADF inquiry’s main report, written by Justice Paul Brereton, details an appalling litany of offences committed by some in Australia’s name.

Brereton found credible evidence that 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners were murdered and two more were subject to cruel treatment. His report recommended that 36 alleged war crimes be referred to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.

The chief of the Australian Defence Force, General Angus Campbell, has apologised to the people of Afghanistan.

The report describes a self-centred “warrior” culture in the special forces.

Professor Whetham’s review examined why some military personnel committed “clear and unambiguous acts of murder”, which were “apparently reported by no-one” and whether senior commanders could, and should, have known.

“It got to the point where the end justified the means.”

Whetham cites two particular killings as having clearly been designed to take a kill tally from 18 to 20. He quotes a witness to similar incidents as saying: “Guys just had this bloodlust. Psychos. Absolute psychos. And we bred them.”

Retired Admiral Chris Barrie, a former ADF chief, says there may still be a case for a more formal, open inquiry. “To go to some of the systemic issues that might have allowed this screwed-up culture, we might need a royal commission,” Barrie says.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has called for the special forces soldiers responsible for these war crimes, and anyone who tried to conceal them, to be “brought to justice”.

Other former prime ministers during the period of the Afghanistan conflict, John Howard, Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull, declined to comment. It was of course John Howard who  took us into Afghanistan and Iraq, at the request of US President George W Bush, who accurately but undiplomatically referred to him as “The patsy from Down Under”.  

Tony Abbott did not respond.

Labor’s defence spokesman, Richard Marles, said his thoughts were with the victims and with the majority of ADF members who had provided distinguished service.

Australian Greens Peace and Disarmament spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John hit the nail on the head when he said “For their role in these crimes, the perpetrators and their direct chain of command – the officers who sanctioned, and often ordered these unlawful killings – must be held to account.

“So too must the higher levels of command within the armed forces who served during the Afghanistan War who either failed to act when they should have, or turned a blind eye and allowed the sanitisation of reporting”, he said.

Of course, all war is an atrocity. It is high time we moved away from violence, lethal and otherwise, as a means of solving problems. We need to adopt a multilateral version of the Greens ‘safe meeting practice’.

Radically trimming defence budgets would be a good start.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 24 November 2020

It’s time to exorcise the ghost of Tony Abbott

Scott Morrison is aware that under President elect Joe Biden the US will move to net zero emissions by 2050. His dismissive response is to be regretted. It will also leave us very isolated.

In a jingoistic fashion Morrison went on to say “I’m very aware of the many views that are held around the world, but I tell you what – our policies will be set here in Australia” (Guardian Weekly) .

Others though are moving in the same direction as Biden’s plan. This is the biggest shift in international climate politics since the Paris agreement five years ago.

The immediate economic impact on Australia as others move away from coal is enormous. We will lose $80 billion of fossil fuel exports to China, Japan and South Korea.

Scotty from Marketing’s response was to simply say “I am not concerned about our future exports”. That is a typical ScoMo response to problematic questions.

It should also be noted that Britain, Germany, France, Canada, NZ are also aiming for zero emissions by 2050.

Why is our federal government so resolutely sticking its head firmly in the sand?

“The ghost of Tony Abbott paralyses Canberra on climate action” suggested Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald.

This scares the government. And as Joel Fitzgibbon’s resignation shows, it also scares the opposition.

It was Abbott who broke Australia’s national approach to climate and energy policy.

John Howard and Kevin Rudd reached a broad bipartisan agreement in 2007, strange though that now looks.

They agreed on the idea of an emissions trading scheme. This remained the consensus under Liberal leaders Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. Until Abbott decided to demonise the policy and lead a conservative insurrection against Turnbull.

And a decade on both sides of Parliament remain traumatised. They struggle to move on.

It was pathetically obvious this week. In both the Morrison government and the Albanese opposition.

In the government’s case, it was when the Prime Minister made his congratulatory phone call to the US President-elect. They discussed shared priorities including climate change.

However, Morrison dared not endorse Biden’s commitment to a policy of zero net-carbon emissions by 2050. So instead he emphasised the oft repeated mantra about new energy technologies.

He was and remains stubbornly mute when it comes to targets and deadlines, on which the fate of his country depends.

It’s not that Morrison is hostile to the concept of going carbon neutral. He just won’t put a date to it.

This runs contrary to two iron rules of politics. One is that the more distant the date, the more likely the commitment, and 2050 is politically very distant.

The other iron rule is to emphasise the benefits of a policy you support but dissemble on the costs.  

Morrison’s obduracy is even more bizarre when you realise that every Australian state and territory has pledged to achieve net zero by 2050. It is due to two words: Tony Abbott.

Under the Abbott rule, it is forbidden for politicians to commit to a carbon-cutting target. As prime minister Abbott committed Australia to its Paris target. But once he’d been unseated by Turnbull, he started campaigning against his own target.

That approach enabled him to not only  bring down Turnbull, but also Julia Gillard.

But Abbott’s opportunistic wrecking was also instrumental in other national failures. Today we have the highest electricity prices in the world, and an electricity grid groaning under the strain. And of course, our contribution to the oncoming collapse of a habitable planet.

Regardless of the need or the urgency, Morrison knows that to campaign openly is to risk another conservative insurrection from his own Coalition. He’s very aware of the coal loving climate change deniers in the Liberal/Nationals parties. So instead Scotty from Marketing sticks to the safe ground of talking up new technology.

NSW announced a new $32 billion renewable energy investment plan last week. Woolworths committed to powering all its stores with solar. And Australia’s richest entrepreneur, Andrew Forrest, hatched a plan to make his company the world’s biggest renewable energy supplier.  

Meanwhile in Canberra, government and opposition remain in fear of the ghost of Tony Abbott. It’s high time to exorcise that ghost, for the sake of the people and the planet.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 17 November 2020

Lessons from the US election

Though some Australians like the USA, most of us are grateful that we are markedly different in a few vital ways.

Our gun laws do something to discourage mass ownership of deadly weapons. However imperfect, we have a universal health care system. We have a welfare safety net, even though it hardly prevents millions from abject poverty.

We have a uniform set of electoral laws, in sharp contrast to the confusion of US state and county-based voting rules.

Also, contrast the US first past the post winner takes all voting system with our preferencing system and compulsory voting that to a degree provide for a fairer outcome.   

Another issue is the role of the judiciary in the American political system. There judges are political appointments. Donald Trump stacked the Supreme Court with 6 conservative judges to 3 liberals, who will vote his way. 

He also appointed a quarter of all federal judges, who will be enacting his agenda for decades to come (Guardian Australia). In the US, courts make many decisions that we would regard as the preserve of politics.

Here of course we have had our own political upsets, most recently in the form of six recent changes of prime minister, with only one of those transfers happening at the ballot box. Some were distressing for many of us, but they happened without civil unrest.

Contrast this with the extremely partisan US campaign, during which Donald Trump trashed the integrity of the voting system. The resulting civil unrest was encouraged by the President and his zealots on the Republican side.

We shouldn’t though get too cosy while watching the US election. “To keep our democracy in good shape, we must nurture and increase trust, ensure the economy works for the population generally, and maintain a strong social safety net,” (Michelle Grattan, Guardian Australia).

We also shouldn’t be blind to the creeping influence of some less savoury American tendencies that are happening here.

The most obvious of these trends is that “Scott Morrison is the most Trumpian political figure Australia has seen” (Dennis Atkins, Crikey.com).

Morrison has never seen a cultural war he doesn’t want to wage, fights total political war on as many fronts as he can manage, and has swallowed the Marshall McLuhan thesis that the ‘medium is the message’. No wonder he is known as Scotty from Marketing.

Morrison echoes Trump in deploying rhetorically-charged immigration policies that imprison thousands of asylum seekers and recognised refugees.

The Prime Minister thinks nothing of bald-face denial of reality, such as cutting $1.2 billion from aged care funding in his first budget as Treasurer. Or a small matter such as his office dodging questions about a Christmas holiday in Hawaii, as bushfires raged at home.

Morrison’s Trump-like lies are frequent and outrageous. For example, the fake news story about a Labor death tax did much to secure the Morrison victory during the last federal election.

Morrison has created a carefully fashioned persona with every prop available, from the Cronulla Sharks scarf to the daggy dad caps and his Bunnings DIY backyard escapades.

It is from the same political playbook as the over-the-top character in the White House. And as equally dangerous.

While Morrison happily enjoys his mini Trump like reputation, his mainstream opponents, i.e. Labor, are prone to the kind of problem that has beset Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Here I’m referring to policies that unjustifiably raised fears in working families, especially the non-college educated residents of the rust belt states in the USA, and in the mining and manufacturing sectors here.

During the American presidential election this problem almost cost the Democrats the rust-belt states. At our last federal election it was most notable in places such as Central Queensland, where the voters favoured the coal loving Nationals and Liberals.

Federal Labor can’t bridge the divide between inner city environmentalists and those dependent on mining and manufacturing for their livelihood, as Joel Fitzgibbon’s front bench resignations demonstrates.

A solution to the problem of fearful workers is a political platform that genuinely addressed their concerns. Yet only the Greens have such a platform. It’s the Green New Deal, which will provide training and support as we transition to a jobs rich carbon neutral economy.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 10 November 2020

Massive economic losses if we ignore climate change

Australia will lose more than $3 trillion and 880,000 jobs over 50 years if climate change is not addressed, a new report from Deloitte says. Our economy would shrink by 6 per cent.

Australia would experience “economic losses on par with COVID, getting worse every single year due to unchecked climate change” by 2055.

In contrast, a new COVID-19 recovery based on a net zero 2050 target could grow the economy by $680 billion. This is something even the climate change deniers calling the shots in our Lib/Nats coalition federal government should take notice of. But sadly their denialism remains absolute.

As the ABC and even Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian reported, the modelling finds that Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia would feel the worst economic impacts under the “do nothing” scenario, with trade, tourism and mining some of the most-exposed industries.

In this part of the country our landscape will become drier and drier, posing a real threat to agriculture. Will Michael McCormack wake up to this existential threat to his constituents?   

Sheep grazier and chair of Farmers for Climate Action Charlie Prell says the pressure is already being felt in his industry, but opportunities are available to help agriculture businesses get by if climate change is addressed.

Mr Prell said the Government needs a plan to get to a carbon neutral economy, “Most particularly in renewable energy infrastructure but also the opportunity to be paid for sequestering carbon in trees and in soil,” he said.

“During the last drought, the last two years, 2018-19, I reduced my stocking rate by about nearly 60 per cent … and the only reason I could do that and remain viable was because I was receiving income from the company I’m in partnership with for the wind turbines (that are on my land).”

The Deloitte report comes after last week’s National Bushfire Royal Commissions’ final report emphasised that Australian governments must prepare for worsening, climate change-driven natural disasters by, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports, creating stronger peak agencies, better warning systems, and faster military deployments.

To put all tis in context, the November 2019 UN emissions report found the world is on track for a 3.2 degree increase even if countries meet their 2030 Paris commitments.

As the Academy of Technology and Engineering found last June that Australia is on track to miss the Paris target.

The Deloitte report author Pradeep Philip, who was a policy director for former prime minister Kevin Rudd, said there is also a lot to be gained if warming is kept below 1.5 degrees and Australia achieves net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“If we do act over the next few years then in just 50 years there is a benefit to the economy of $680 billion,” he said.

“We’ll have an economy 2.6 per cent bigger, generating 250,000 jobs, so this tells us if you are pro-growth and pro-jobs then we need to act on climate change now.

“We know that there are new sectors around renewables, hydrogen, electric vehicles that can be created.”

Last week, the ANZ Bank announced its climate policy. It will stop lending money to new customers that earn more than 10 per cent of their revenue from thermal coal mining or generation.

ANZ will also abandon its thermal coal investments within 10 years. It now explicitly supports “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050.

ANZ’s commendable move provoked a dismissive response from our Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, who scornfully described it as “virtue signalling” that will hurt farmers.

In contrast to Mr McCormack’s response, Mr Prell said businesses will push ahead regardless of the Government’s approach.

“Businesses are moving despite the Government’s inability to take action on climate change, and have some kind of a plan to get to carbon neutral,” he said.

“The National Farmer’s Federation have a net zero emissions by 2050 policy to achieve that.

“A lot of them are not left-wing, looney, greenie organisations. The ANZ Bank is not a left-wing institution … so they’re looking to ameliorate and address risk,” Mr Prell concluded.

The best the Federal Government has promised to deliver net zero emissions in the second half of this century. But 2099 will be far too late to save the planet.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 3 November 2020

Yet another grants rort from the Lib/Nats

More than 95% of a $252m NSW community grant scheme went to councils in Coalition seats, the Greens have revealed.

Furthermore “Gladys Berejiklian gave her lover Daryl Maguire’s Wagga Wagga electorate six grants totalling $40,000 from her discretionary fund”, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

That same story went on to say that “an inquiry heard that one of her advisers shredded documents showing the Premier’s approval of projects under another scheme”.

That other scheme is the Stronger Communities Fund.  

It was Greens MP David Shoebridge who told the parliamentary committee inquiring into its allocation of grants totalling $252m that a handful of emails is the only documentation remaining of how the funds were allocated. Mr Shoebridge chairs the committee.

This is looking very much like the NSW equivalent of the federal sports rorts grants scandal.

This handful of emails from the office of the premier and that of her deputy, John Barilaro, are all that evidences how the $252m was allocated to councils in the months before the 2019 state election.

David Shoebridge says that’s all the government has produced, despite orders from the upper house.

“The evidence of the Premier’s own senior advisor this morning was that all of the briefing notes that went to the Premier to authorise $141.8 million of grants to local councils were shredded, then deleted.

“The Premier’s staffers’ evidence was that the office shredded briefing notes that had the Premier’s comments and approvals, the original electronic files were also deleted.

“The Government then comes into Parliament and tells us no documents exist. They don’t exist because they shredded them” Mr Shoebridge said.

There are no assessments, no guidelines and in one case a council, Hornsby shire council, was asked to apply after it was given the grant. It got $90m. More than 95% of the $252m went to councils in Liberal and National-held seats, Shoebridge said.

The matter was also referred to ICAC by Mr Shoebridge back in May.

The government insists there are no other documents. Premier Berejiklian defended the grants program in parliament, saying the funding initiative delivered “untold benefits to local communities”. She denied signing off on projects.

The massive grants program was originally established to help councils that had been amalgamated bear the cost of bringing their operations together and to placate unwilling councils by granting money for community projects.

The $252m was then repurposed as grants for all councils, but for what purpose and with what criteria remains a mystery.

So who was responsible?

The emails indicate that the premier’s staff approved lists of projects submitted by councils in the city via the Office of Local Government, while Barilaro’s staff approved regional councils’ projects.

One email to the Office of Local Government read: “Hi all. The premier has signed off further funding for metro councils. Outlined below is what is been approved.” There followed a table of projects in several council areas, mainly on Sydney’s north shore, a Liberal stronghold.

These “working advice notes” included advice that $90 million should be provided to Hornsby Council despite, as previously noted, it not having applied for the grant.

Emails about regional councils show Barilaro was just as involved in signing off projects for those councils, down to approving individual projects, such as a new administration building for the Deni festival at Deniliquin.

The emails show that both the premier’s and deputy premier’s offices issued directions to the Office of Local Government about how the grants should be publicised.

Barilaro’s deputy chief of staff, Laura Clarke, told the local government office not to worry about a press release for an announcement of funding for Cootamundra-Gundagai regional council. “Steph Cook (the state MP) will do it in house,” an email said.

The parliamentary committee, chaired by David Shoebridge, will follow up on the matter with a subsequent hearing scheduled for 27 November.

Did the Premier know her staff were routinely destroying these critical state records? Is it still happening? These are questions that immediately arise.

Tony Harris, a former NSW auditor-general warned the shredding of these documents was likely to be unlawful as it breached the State Records Act. “The role that the Premier’s office had in the shredding of documents is good reason for her departure, she should resign,” he said. Quite.