Why anti-racism, pro-Biosphere, pro-Humanity Australians must vote Number 1 Green and Put Labor Last

In Australia’s compulsory preferential voting system decent Australians are compelled to vote number 1 for the Greens and to Put Labor Last, the key arguments being that (1) the correct strategy is to punish the incompetent incumbent that has utterly failed to deliver on man-made climate change and (2) it is pointless voting for a Labor Party that has comprehensively betrayed its own supporters as well as their children, grandchildren, Humanity and the Biosphere through its pro-coal, pro-pollution, pro-war and pro-racism policies.

Australia has a compulsory preferential voting system in Federal elections for the democratic House of Representatives (150 members with each member representing a an electoral division or “seat” that has roughly the same number of voters as any other ) and the undemocratic Senate (consisting of 76 senators, twelve from each of the six states and two from each of the mainland territories – thus the island state of Tasmania with a population of 0.5 million has as many Senators as New South Wales with a population of 7.1 million). In voting one has to list one’s preferences for all candidates (these preferences being systematically distributed when no candidate achieves over 50% of the vote).

However the undemocratic nature of Australia is not simply confined to the undemocratic Senate. Most of the commercial Mainstream media are owned by just 2 major media groups, the conservative Fairfax organization (that owns the 2 major quality newspapers, The Age, Melbourne, and the Sydney Morning Herald) and the appalling Murdoch-owned News Limited (which owns about 70% of major city dailies plus the extreme right wing national newspaper, The Australian). The commercial radio and TV networks also deliver right wing pap just like the Murdoch media.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Australian equivalent of the British BBC and the best of Australia’s awful Mainstream media, maintains a position of “balance” between the extreme right wing, pro-war, pro-coal, pro-US, pro-Zionist Labor Government and the extreme right wing, pro-war, pro-coal, pro-US, pro-Zionist Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Opposition (the almost indistinguishable Labor and Liberal Coalition being collectively described as the Lib-Labs).

The Lib-Labs account for about 90% of votes with the pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-human rights Australian Greens obtaining circa 10% support at the last Federal election (2007).

The Australian Democracy has become what outstanding, expatriate Australian writer John Pilger has described as a Murdochracy in which king-maker Rupert Murdoch has enormous impact on a generally ignorant and politically correct racist (PC racist) electorate who absurdly believe that we are making war in Iraq and Afghanistan to preserve our “freedom” and to preserve “freedom” for the Iraqi and Afghan people.

However it is even worse. Most institutional scientists are too intimidated to state the truth and there is any number of right wing non-scientist academics and commentators willing to declare themselves for the cause of fossil fuel burning and psychopathic US and Zionist imperialism and genocide.

Australia, like the USA, is a Lobbyocracy in which money talks and the corporate lobbyists can simply override reality with false, money-dictated perception.

An egregious example of Lobbyocracy at work is in the area of man-made climate change. There is an overwhelming international scientific consensus that man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution has caused major global warming that threatens Humanity and the Biosphere and that it has already caused massive climatic disruption.

However the Murdoch media maintain a position of extraordinary climate change denialism and the other media feel obliged to maintain a “balanced “ position between that of top climate scientists and non-scientist.climate change denialist polemicists. Coincidentally, Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter, a major Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) exporter and its world–leading annual per capita Domestic and Exported GHG pollution is 60 times greater than that of global warming-threatened Bangladesh (see “Australia’s Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution has increased under Labor”: http://sites.google.com/site/yarrav... ).

An extraordinary example is provided by the ABC whose non-scientist boss recently instructed his journalists to provide a “balance” between the climate scientists (quote: “the lack of moral and scientific integrity shown by the IPCC”) and their critics (see Maurice Newman, “Text of the speech by ABC chairman Maurice Newman to ABC journalists, program-makers and managers on Wednesday 10th March 2010:”: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/tr... ) .

However the actual “balance” is far from balanced. Thus top Australian electrical engineer and key player in the invention of the extraordinary bionic ear, Professor Peter Seligman of the University of Melbourne, has made another key contribution to Australia and the world in writing a book entitled “Australian Sustainable Energy – by the numbers” in which he sets out how you could provide 100% renewable and geothermal base-load electrical energy for Australia for a mere $253 billion dollars (see Peter Seligman, “Australian Sustainable Energy – by the numbers”: http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/upload... ).

However if we do a search of “the entire ABC site” for outstanding bionic ear and Sustainable Australia electrical engineer “Peter Seligman” we find zero (0) results whereas a search for the non-scientist climate change denialist “Lord Monckton” (who visited Australia recently) yielded 192 results (as of Friday 16 April 2010) (see: http://search.abc.net.au/search/sea...).

The Rudd Labor Government was elected in 2007 on the major promise to “tackle climate change”. However pro-coal Labor has utterly betrayed Labor voters by its resolute inaction over man-made climate change and its blind commitment to massive increases in Australia’s coal and LNG exports.

1. Australia’s Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution has increased under Labor (see “Australia’s Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution has increased under Labor”: http://sites.google.com/site/yarrav... ).

2. Post-Copenhagen Australia will increase its per capita Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution. The base-line, bipartisan offer from Australia (5% off 2000 level by 2020) means that Australia’s 2020 Domestic per capita GHG pollution will be 21.7/3.8 = 4.5 times the Developing World’s 2020 BAU per capita and Australia’s Domestic plus Exported per capita GHG pollution will be 44.8/3.8 = 11.8 times the Developing World’s 2020 BAU per capita. The base-line, bipartisan offer from Australia (5% off 2000 level by 2020) means that Australia’s 2020 Domestic per capita GHG pollution will be 21.7/0.9 = 24.1 times Bangladesh’s current per capita and Australia’s 2020 Domestic plus Exported per capita GHG pollution will be 44.8/0.9 = 49.8 times Bangladesh’s current per capita (see “Post-Copenhagen Australia will INCREASE its per capita Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution”: http://sites.google.com/site/yarrav... ).

3. The Australian Labor Government ignores scientific advice and is committed to a particularly outrageous and defective ETS. In contrast, top climate scientists and economists slam the carbon trading-based emissions trading scheme (ETS) approach as empirically ineffective, counterproductive and indeed fraudulent (see “Experts: Carbon Tax needed and NOT Cap-and-Trade Emission Trading Scheme (ETS)”: http://sites.google.com/site/yarrav... ).

4. The Australian Labor Government ETS is called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) yet using the latest available data it can be estimated that this will increase Australia’s Domestic and Exported GHG pollution by 19% over the 2000 level by 2020 and by 73% over the 2000 value by 2050 (see “Climate Justice & Climate Injustice: Australia wants a 2020 per capita GHG pollution 15 times greater than Developing World’s ”: http://sites.google.com/site/yarrav... ).

5. The Australian Labor Government has passed Renewal Energy Trading (RET) legislation in which numerous non-renewable items are absurdly defined as renewable under the legislation (see “Australia Absurdly Declares Methane Burning Clean And Renewable”, Countercurrents: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly... ) .

6. The Australian Labor Government repeatedly, falsely and absurdly declares Liquid Natural Gas (methane, CH4) to be “clean energy” whereas on a weight basis LNG (CH4) generates twice the carbon dioxide (CO2) on combustion as brown coal (see: “Correcting the Australian Government - natural gas is NOT “clean energy”, Open Forum: http://www.openforum.com.au/natural... and “Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) is NOT "clean energy": Oz Labor contrary claims mean Voters must Put Labor Last”, Bellaciao: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?ar... ).

7. The pro-coal Australian Labor Government helped the US sabotage the Bali (2007), Potsdam (2008) and Copenhagen (2009) Climate Conferences and is clearly committed to world leading annual per capita GHG pollution. Thus as of 2008, “annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO2-equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is 0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), 3.2 (the Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 54 if Australia’s huge Exported CO2 pollution is included (see Wikipedia, “List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions per capita”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o... ; Dr Gideon Polya, “Pro-coal Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) devalues Australian lives, threatens Biosphere and ignores Science”, 2009: http://sites.google.com/site/yarrav... ).

8. The Australian Labor Government leads the world in the charge to worsening Climate Genocide Both Dr James Lovelock FRS (Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson ( Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) have recently estimated that fewer than 1 billion people will survive this century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming – noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (see “Climate Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/climat... ).

Decent pro-peace, pro-environment, anti-racist Australians would have typically voted number one Green with second preference to Labor or number one for Labor with second preference to the Greens because the pro-war, anti-environment and racist policies of the Liberal –National Party Coalition were simply utterly unacceptable.

However the “New” Australian Labor Party (ALP) has become Another Liberal Party and indeed an Apartheid Labor Party because of pro-war and pro-Zionist positions and its racist policies towards Indigenous Australians and refugees fleeing the Afghan Genocide and Tamil Genocide (see “Genocide-Complicit Apartheid Australia Jails Refugees Fleeing Afghan Genocide And Tamil Genocide”, Countercurrents: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly... ).

Having betrayed Labor voters by its pro-war and pro-racism policies, Labor has also utterly betrayed Labor voters over the Climate Emergency as outlined above. Indeed the environmental policies of the Apartheid Labor Party are actually worse than that of the Conservative Coalition. Currently, in relation to key, expert-advocated climate change policies of (1) No ETS; (2) Direct Action on renewables and like measures ASAP; and (3) Carbon Pollution Pricing (revenue-neutral Carbon Tax, Carbon Cost Recovery), the Australian Greens score 3/3; the Coalition Opposition scores 1.5/3; and the anti-science, pro-coal Australian Labor Government scores 0/3.

In Australia’s compulsory preferential voting system decent Australians are compelled to vote Number 1 for the Greens and to Put Labor Last, the key arguments being that (1) the correct strategy is to punish the incompetent incumbent that has failed to deliver and (2) it is pointless voting for a Labor Party that has comprehensively betrayed its own supporters as well as their children, grandchildren, Humanity and the Biosphere.

Silence kills and silence is complicity. Pro-Planet Australians should tell everyone they can to Vote #1 Green and Put Labor Last – perhaps the pro-pollution, pro-war, pro-racism, anti-Planet Apartheid Labor Party will recover its traditional values in opposition.