You may be wondering why I’m not linking to any of that material. The reason is that WikiLeaks is now on Australia’s internet blacklist. Last year they posted a copy of Denmark’s blacklist, revealing some unusual censorship choices (one of the blocked sites was a Dutch transport company), and this apparently meets the ACMA’s definition of prohibited online content. Australian websites linking to it could be fined $11,000 a day. The last thing censors can tolerate, it seems, is free and open discussion about censorship.

The Australian government is planning to turn its blacklist into a mandatory internet filter, similar to those used in such great democracies as Burma, Iran, and of course China. This provides an excellent reason why Australians should not let that happen.

Currently, the federal government intends to introduce the carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2010. Under the carbon pollution reduction scheme, the price of energy sources, such as petrol, electricity and gas may become more expensive. Do you think the federal government should delay or should not delay the introduction of the carbon pollution reduction scheme beyond 2010 because of the recent financial crisis?

Push poll much?

Climate Denialism is usually shorthand for someone who denies the truth of the basic science of global warming, but I think a more relevant redefinition is Climate Recalcitrant – someone who doesn’t believe that we can get organised to do something about the problem. What the Nationals and Dennis have in common are a desire to trash 15 years of global negotiations, bury their heads in the sand and yell ‘head for the hills (or the barracks)’!

I’ve written here before that ‘public opinion’ around climate change arises in direct response to media events and it’s vital that we have strong leadership committed to addressing the long term nature of the problem. Michael Grubb, who’s been following the international negotiations for over a decade, dealt with some of the more pernicious and parochially appealing myths around Kyoto after the US withdrawl in 2001. In particular, this one is worth repeating:

Myth 6. Kyoto could be ditched in favour of global target negotiations: The reality is that the most credible route towards global quantified commitments is through expansion over several rounds of commitment periods, as provided for under the Kyoto Protocol. Agreeing how to distribute emission commitments amongst 39 industrialised countries in Kyoto was hard enough. “Going global” at this stage would be immensely complex … as well as politically explosive… international efforts since the inception of the climate change negotiations have been founded on the principle that industrialised countries must lead. The best hope for global target negotiations is if they are founded on such leadership, and upon several years’ experience of operating an international targets-and-trading system. That is the intention behind Kyoto’s first period commitments. Abandoning the massive international efforts and painstakingly negotiated agreements developed over the past decade will not build the experience or foster the cooperation needed to solve the climate problem; quite the contrary. It is likely to throw the climate change regime into a lengthy wilderness of animosity, confusion and stalemate.

ref:Climate Policy 1 (2001):272

Elsewhere: Media Watch on the ‘W-R-O-N-G’ episode last week featuring ol’ goal-post-moving Dennis’

Update: I got my Crikey email after I’d published this. Sophie Black quotes Erwin Jackson from the Climate Institute:

“We polled on the weekend after Black Friday. The results that we were getting were only 22 per cent of the population thought the financial crisis was a reason to delay,” says Jackson.

“The bigger risks for the government is that based on our focus groups, rightly or wrongly, the community thinks the government are dithering and is looking for strong, credible targets from both major parties… Over seventy per cent of people agree that taking action on climate change will create opportunities for new jobs and new clean energy industries.”

As for the implications of delaying an ETS, Jackson says that based on The Climate Institute’s independent research, there is a real risk that “the community will [lose] patience.”

“There is already a growing concern within the community that the big polluters will be getting billions of dollars worth of free handouts and also to build momentum internationally, Australia needs to go to the next round of climate talks with credible and decisive plans to significantly reduce emissions,” says Jackson.

“In relation to the market turmoil the Prime Minister recently linked the current global financial turmoil to ‘the triumph of the short term over long term, sustainable growth’. The long-term risk and impacts of runaway Climate Change would dwarf that of current financial turmoil,” says Jackson.

“Global warming is not waiting and nor should we in implementing the necessary long-term plan to reap the benefits of the 21st clean-energy economy.”

A lot more than 10 questions on Man-Made Global Warming from US spinmeister and vowel pusher, Pat Sajak.

The link from the site’s home page says that Sajak’s piece answers “… all your burning questions.” That’s clearly an overstatement – what we now need to know is where does Alex Trebek stand on climate change?

Mr Howard says there is always a risk with changing Government.

And he warns voters flirting with the idea that a Labor election victory is not like an unwanted Christmas present, that can be returned on Boxing Day.

“It’s not like that. It’s much harder than that,” he said.

How insulting.

If you read Tony Abbott in today’s SMH, it’s more of the same – this utter disbelief that the voters could possibly have a mind at odds with the wishes of the current government, and that any voters who are thinking of voting the Coalition out of office have simply overlooked the bleeding obvious about how hopeless, scary and ruinacious a Rudd government will be. The title condescends from the start: The goods or a gamble?

Something unprecedented will happen on Saturday. A highly effective government will lose despite generally good economic circumstances or 12 months of opinion polls will turn out to be wrong. Australians are not reckless gamblers, at least not with the future of their country, so I think it’s much more likely voters will prove the polls wrong than change the government.

Patronising shite.

Hugh Mackay, talking on ABC Radio with Virginia Trioli this morning, made some excellent points which I found largely persuasive. He argues that until this year, the Australian electorate has been largely disengaged from politics for a decade, and that this is a situation which has suited the Coalition better, because disengaged voters tend to largely follow only their hip pocket nerve for short-term gains, don’t examine scaremongering skeptically, and have been willing to stick with the Coalition along “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” lines. But once voters do become more generally engaged with politics, they doubt the fear campaigns, they look beyond just the economy and beyond the short term, and that’s where the progressive parties have their strength (noting that Labor is not always a progressive party).

Workchoices has brought consideration to everyone of the way that industrial regulation legislation affects the balance of negotiating power between employees and employers, and the majority seem to find that the Coalition’s ideology in this area makes them apprehensive for the future of themselves, their families and their communities, even if right now it may not have harmed them (or may even have slightly benefited them) financially. Many voters seem particularly keen to end the Liberal majority in the Senate above all else, so that more IR bills cannot just be driven through to legislation without proper review.

The issue of climate change has made a lot of voters take a more long-term look at the likely consequences of continuing with “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” don’t-change-the-government scaremongering, and although it has been relegated largely to the background of this campaign this issue appears to be a major instigator of swings away from the Coalition – they are not trusted to put long-term environmental issues over the short-term profit margins of their mates in big business.

Then there’s the war: it hasn’t loomed large this campaign, and Howard seized the chance yesterday to present that datum as an implicit endorsement of the Coalition’s policy with respect to the Coalition of the Willing.

Defence and national security have not been high profile issues during the campaign and Mr Howard says that is partly because Labor has not had the ammunition to attack the Coalition.

“The Labor Party realises that there has been some improvement – not a big improvement but some improvement – in the security situation in Iraq,” he said.

“I think that is something that has meant that the Labor Party doesn’t feel it is politically expedient to talk about it.”

Howard has got that particular indicator badly wrong. Expedience is part of the Labor party’s strategy in not using Iraq as a major issue this campaign, but it hasn’t been for lack of ammunition. Labor has refused to be wedged on the issue, that’s all, so there haven’t been any big headlines. Again, it’s an issue that has pushed the swinging voters away from the Coalition, and it’s not because they haven’t thought hard about their reasons for mistrusting Howard et al in this area.

Finally, another issue which has been largely ignored this election campaign, yet which also does not mean that people don’t have ammunition to fling against the government on it: the NT “intervention” aka invasion and recolonisation. Yet another issue that has made many swinging voters turn away from the Coalition and to the minor parties, which realistically means that most of their preferences will flow to Labor in the Lower House.

None of these swings reflect simple boredom and a thoughtless yearning for change as the PM and Abbott are saying. They are a matter of passionate revulsion in most cases, and the recent onset of a broad understanding (due to recent interest rate rises) that no Australian government actually has that much control over an economy which is driven by foreign demand for our minerals and a few other primary products, therefore the economy scaremongering is irrelevant.

The rusted on supporters of the major parties haven’t changed their opinions or voting intentions much since 2004. It’s the swinging voters who have done so, and the Coalition has no idea about how to woo them back. The advertising blackout starts this evening too. Hooray!

crossposted at Hoyden About Town and LP in Exile

Apparently 13 ALP candidates are still listed as employed on government websites. So they MUST HAVE BROKEN THE LAW, you know, because government websites are renowned for being up to date. Oh, and the Liberal Party is waiting for the ALP to produce evidence that no crimes were committed before they will refer it to the AEC. I’m not really sure on what planet that makes sense.

Even worse than that, a staffer of George Newhouse is anti Semitic Zionist, which is a crime against humanity or something. Especially when the Jew hating pinko ALP staffer’s boss is Jewish and his father was a Zionist.

Finally Tony Abbott is given a free pass in the SMH to have another go at running his “Are all you voters are so dumb that you don’t realize that we are the greatest thing that ever happened to you?” argument. Though, I don’t care about that one so much because every time Abbott tries to communicate he offends about three-quarters of the population.

Seriously, is this all they’ve got? Where’s the sex, drugs, and scandal? Frankly, I just don’t think that their hearts are in it anymore.

Cross-posted at LP in Exile where you can make comments while we wait for all the bugs to be ironed out of our new site.

I’ve been reading another bad book over the past week – a really bad book. It’s a long spray at consumerism and urban sprawl. It follows a fairly familiar formula – after the introduction (where you tell the reader what you plan to say), the author moves onto a quick survey of the human condition, cramming in as many references as possible, then launches into several chapters of condemnation and denunciation.

Writing that first chapter is a complex job. To show readers you’re not an intellectual snob, you have to mention popular culture, so references to pop music and movies (but not cinema) are a must, the earlier the better. Of course you now have to convince them that you’re not a bogan either, so you bung in the literary references. Reference one or two web-sites to show that you’re not a complete Luddite (very necessary in this writer’s case). Top that off with some guff about human evolution, neurology and psychology, add a dash of philosophy and religion and there’s your first chapter written.

Pull it off, and your readers will be convinced that you’re a very knowledgeable person, whose facts are reliable and opinion trustworthy. Well, some of them – enough, you hope to preserve you from the ingnominy of the remainer bin. As long as no-one notices the non-sequiturs and the fact that you’re relying completely on emotive argument – including the odd dose of alarmism – you’re home and hosed.

Here’s an entertainingly alarmist passage from that first chapter, with some explanatory notes from me.

The fantasy [of a world without pain or mental suffering] approaches. A recent Scientific American article by Stefanie Reinberger showed how unpleasant tastes could be eliminated with a new type of food-additive called adenosine monophosphate (AMP).

A very good start – scare the reader by dropping in a frighteningly polysyllabic chemical name lifted from one article in Scientific American. On no account should you do any further background reading – you might learn a couple of facts that might get in the way of your very enjoyable self-inflicted panic:

• Adenosine is one of the four nucleosides that make up RNA – a vital part of the biochemical mechanism that transcribes DNA sequences into proteins. Without adenosine, there would be no life as we know it.
• Adenosine monophosphate is a precursor to two other compounds – adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). All three compounds are used within living cells to transfer energy obtained from breaking down sugars and lipids (fats) to processes that build other cell constituents – like proteins. Without AMP, ADP and ATP there would be no life as we know it.

Moving on:

AMP is a ‘bitter blocker’ that overrides our ancient sensitivity to bitterness, acquired to protect us from eating toxic substances like strychnine, by preventing communication of the recognintion of bitterness from tastebud to brain.

A good, strong continuation: OMFG! They could use this “new” food additive to poison us all with strychnine and we wouldn’t even know it!

The additive has already (2004) been approved by the US Food and Drug Admininistration; the application of similar principles could mean we never have to taste anything unpleasant.

A bit of a slip there – noting the US FDA’s approval of the drug was a plus, but the second clause of the sentence is a bit of a let-down. Most of us prefer to avoid unpleasant tasting stuff, most of the time, which is why some cook, others eat out, and others buy take-away. But this is bad for us:

Brussels sprouts could taste like gruyere, or ice cream, or chocolate and still be as good for us as the bitter cruciform original.

It’s important, in alarmist writing, to strike the right note of hysteria and the prospect of chocolate flavoured brussel sprouts is certainly hysterical. Also, while a malapropism (cruciform for cruciferous) assists in convincing the reader that you’re hysterical, it reinforces the reader’s tendency to respond with the kind of hysteria you don’t want to create.

But is this really what we want? Do we, even at the relatively trivial level of taste, want a world where our only sensations are pleasurable ones? Will pleasure have meaning when that’s all there is?

Poor execution, but the author of this passage has the right idea – miss the major issues completely so you can pose a set of rhetorical questions whose answers will strike guilt and fear in the hearts of all but the most decadent of hedonists. The reason that adenosine monophosphate poses such a threat to civilsation and culture as we know it is because it’s us that have gone soft – it has nothing to do with anything the food processing industries might do. Nothing at all.

The book, by the way is Blubberland by Elizabeth Farrelly, of the Sydney Morning Herald. This post is a by-blow from a more extended review that the anonymous one appropriated for another shot at temporary notoriety and a bit of ready money, fame and fortune being completely beyond his capabilities. No doubt that review will turn up here, later in the week.

See larger image here.

The bit about “election rival ‘gay’” would be more accurately summed up as “independent candidate you’ve never heard of plans to use gay hunks to push campaign”, but what impression is it going to leave on people who only read the headlines? They’re going to think it’s about Rudd, aren’t they? It’s an attempt to make him have to deny that he’s gay for the rest of the campaign, just to smear him in the eyes of the public.

There’s more at The Orstrahyun and The Poll Bludger.

crossposted from Hoyden About Town, and also crossposted at LP in exile, where readers may leave comments during LP’s server woes!

We haven’t heard anything about aspirational nationalism in this campaign. If you cast your mind back to August, it was John Howard’s new big philosophical idea. Boldly going where no nonsensical phrase had gone before – back to the future, and all that.

Perhaps that’s because it was immediately satirised on Facebook as “Ass-Nats”. But there was a point to the five tenets of aspirational nationalism the Dear Leader articulated. It was a justification for pork-barrelling and the War on the States, which was then at its most intense.

The bizarre rhetoric has faded from view, but the political strategy is still firmly in place. “All politics is local”, decrees Coalition headquarters, and all over the country Coalition MPs and candidates are discovering that issues like “hoons” are the most vital concerns of their constituents. Even in Brisbane, where Labor MP Arch Bevis has very little to worry about, Liberal candidate Ted O’Brien (when not being gagged from radio shows by his party headquarters) is insisting in the one leaflet he’s produced that us inner city denizens are deeply concerned about drag-racing.

Most of this “localism”, as I’m suggesting, follows a template handed down from campaign central on Collins Street. But candidates can tweak it a bit to give it the true local touch. Embattled Moreton MP Gary Hardgrave, for instance, is promising to beef up police numbers at the Salisbury and Moorooka cop shops, apparently oblivious to the fact that the federal government has no control whatsoever over the allocation of police resources.

Presumably, and this is the beauty of Ass-Nat-ism, Hardgrave won’t have to follow through on his promises anyway, and in the unlikely event both he and the Coalition are returned, can always blame the state government, which after all actually decides how many cops are on the beat.

You’ve got to hand it to the Libs’ strategists. This strategy might just have some impact (however slight) in shoring up threatened incumbents.

But the equally embattled and rather eccentric Ryan MP, Michael Johnson, might have taken Ass-Nat-ism a tweak too far. Johnson is being lampooned in Brisbane for promising to lobby the state government for more beds at Wesley Hospital in Auchenflower. He’s apparently unaware that it’s a private hospital.

But the icing on the cake is $15 million for a park in the middle of nowhere. Or, to be more precise, right next to the unpopular Goodna bypass, which along with the revenge of the Rudd wets, is causing him so much grief in his supposedly safe seat.

The Brisbane City Council, who would have to pay for the upkeep, knows nothing about the park Mark Vaile promised in Brisbane on Sunday. Unfortunately for Johnson, there’s an email trail which shows just how political this park is.

“I am bleeding on this issue and expect support now. This is a slow burn.”, wrote Johnson to the PM’s office.

There are also allegations that the land on which the park will be built is to be resumed from some local Liberal donors, who’d make a pretty profit on compensation from the feds. But Johnson, rather strangely for a candidate whom you’d think needs all the publicity he can get, is refusing to talk to any journos but the local press, so the story remains mired in confusion and claim and counter-claim.

All politics may well be local, but that can cut both ways when the local member in question gets a bit too blatant in playing the politics of porkbarrelling.

Crossposted at LP in exile, where readers may leave comments during LP’s server woes!

In today’s GG the Shamaham breathlessly announces that the latest Newspoll survey of the marginal electorates demonstrates that Howard has “fought back in key marginal seats”. Well, that is if you squint really hard, hold your breath, jump up and down on one foot while tilting your head in just the right way.

Thankfully someone at the GG thought it best not to just rely on the Shamaham’s analysis this time, so there’s also a much more sober article from Sol Lebovic. Sol’s take is that the Libs are pretty much screwed, but there’s a slightly smaller swing against the Libs in some marginals in NSW than elsewhere, or something like that anyway. 

As ever with this campaign, I’d suggest you hit the blogosphere if you don’t want to risk getting drawn in by the Shamaham’s poll madness. The Poll Bludger has already jumped in and picked apart the figures for this survey.

P.S. Apparently the ABC is buying whatever it is that Dennis is selling.