The Morrison Coalition Government
Australia, August 2018 – ?

This section added 2019/12/07

What matters in regard to Australia and climate change action?

PM Morrison says that under his government Australia is meeting its climate change commitments and lowering its emissions. Both points are arguable, but how important are they apart from their relevance to the honesty, or otherwise, of our prime minister; do they really much matter?

	2020: Australia ranked second last of 177 nations on 'climate action' As reported in RenewEconomy "In the 2020 edition of the Sustainable Development Report, Australia’s score for 'climate action' saw it rank second last, sitting 176th of 177 countries assessed".
	Comment 2020/05/16 Support for anything fossil-fuel related As the Covid-19 pandemic recedes in Australia the talk in government is about reviving the economy. It seems that anything connected with energy will get Morrison government support so long as the energy has some connection to fossil fuels. Little support is forthcoming for renewables. I will remind our federal government that coal is used to produce the steel in wind turbine towers and that oil is used in the manufacture of wind turbine blades. I've no doubt that fossil fuels are also involved in the manufacture of solar panels somewhere along the line. By giving some support to the renewable energy the Morrison government would also be supporting fossil fuels. Perhaps this knowledge will help them make this much needed step? Perhaps? Maybe?

I suggest they don't, what matters is this:

• Is Australia doing all it can to save the planet from climate disaster?
• Is it doing its share as a nation?
• Is it doing as much as it can without adversely impacting its economy?
• Is it doing as much as it is ethically obliged to do?

The answers to all four questions is NO. Australia is failing on many counts:

• Australia ranks 53^rd in the world in population, but sixth in the world in the CO₂ produced by its electricity industry;
• Australia has 0.3% of the world's population, but produces 1.2% of the world's greenhouse gasses;
• Australia's per-capita greenhouse gas emission rate is about 17 tonnes per annum, more than three times the world average, which is about 5 tonnes per annum.
• If Australia's fossil fuel exports are taken into consideration the nation is responsible for about 3.6% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Australia has an ethical obligation to bring its greenhouse gas emission rate down at least to the world average. Not only is the Australian government failing to fulfil it ethical responsibilities, it is doing practically nothing to combat climate change.

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Australia's emissions intensity (as distinct from total emissions) over the last decade or so has decreased because of the rise of renewable energy generation. No thanks to Prime Ministers Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison or Energy Minister Angus Taylor. The Coalition has fought against the adoption of renewables all along. The federal Labor party under Anthony Albanese is little better. Both major parties are blinded by the short-term profits and political donations coming from the coal industry.

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This section added 2021/02/02

Corruption in the Morrison government

A number of sections on this page demonstrate the corruption of the Morrison government:

• The Morrison government's criminal support of the fossil fuel industry and opposition to reducing carbon emissions (both domestic carbon emissions and the carbon emissions from Australia's coal and gas exports) is their most blatant corruption;
  
  
• The government opposes an Independent Commission Against Corruption for obvious reasons;
  
  
• Morrison's Sports Minister, Bridget McKenzie, corruptly handed most of $100 million to marginal seats held by the Coalition before the 2019 election, as reported by the Auditor General.
  
  
• The Morrison government flew retiring Finance Minister Senator Mathias Cormann around the world in an Airforce jet at an estimated cost of $3,000 per hour so that he could find himself a lucrative job.
  
  
• The Morrison government handed out drought relief money to non-eligible councils to help win the May 2019 election.
  
  
• PM Morrison again pandered to the fossil fuel industry (and neglected Australia's huge renewable energy potential and climate change) when he announced what he called a gas-fired recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
  
  
• In an article by Kate Griffiths, Dannielle Wood and Tom Crowley, all of the Gratten Institute, published on The Conversation, 2021/02/01, it was revealed that more than half of funding for the major parties is kept secret.

  So not only does the government do favours for those who donate to their campaign fund, but the public is not even allowed to know who many of those donors are!

  The same article mentioned some of the major donors who gave money to both of the major parties; I quote:

  "The Australian Hotels Association gave $154,000 to the Coalition and $271,000 to Labor. Woodside Energy gave $198,000 to the Coalition and $138,000 to Labor. The Macquarie Group (including Macquarie Telecom) gave $254,000 to the Coalition and $184,000 to Labor. ANZ continued its regular donations to both sides with $100,000 each."

  It is inconceivable that these organisations give these large amounts of money to the political parties due to their generosity; they are expecting something in return.

A careful look through this page would probably bring to light more examples of the corruption of the Morrison government.

Footnote; Labor

It should also be mentioned that the federal Labor party too is very supportive of the Australian fossil fuel industry, not keen on an Independent Commission against Corruption, and receiving big monitory gifts that suggest improper influence.

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Gas-fired recovery

In a blatant gift to the fossil fuel industry Prime Minister Morrison announced in a media release of 2020/09/15 what he calls a gas-fired economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quoting from an article in The Guardian, written by Adam Morton and published 2020/09/17:

In a speech in the Hunter Valley, the prime minister repeated a claim he made at the press club in February: there is “no credible energy transition plan for an economy like Australia that does not involve the greater use of gas”.

This is simply a fantasy and a lie. There is no credible evidence to support it. See, for example, Transition to Renewables without Gas by the Climate Council and the Australian Energy Market Operator's Integrated System Plan to which the Climate Council's page refers.

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This section added 2020/10/07

The Beirut explosion, irresponsible government and climate change

On 2020/08/04 more than two thousand tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded causing colossal damage to the city's port area and killing at least 200 people.

What has this to do with the Morrison Government and climate change?

The ammonium nitrate had been stored in a warehouse in the port of Beirut for six years in spite of the knowledge that it presented a risk of just such an enormous explosion. It was a disaster waiting to happen and was being ignored by the Lebanese government.

Climate change is a developing disaster that will impact billions of people and practically all life on earth, and, similarly to the Beirut case, it is not being given urgent attention by the world's governments.

Worse than Beirut the Morrison Government is making the situation worse by supporting the fossil fuel industries and resisting the introduction of renewable energy. While the Lebanese government were guilty of gross carelessness, the Morrison government is guilty of actively exacerbating the problem.

The Lebanese government was guilty of a crime of omission, the Morrison government is guilty of a crime of commission.

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Morrison government tries to force its own abysmal ethical standards onto a bank

Littleproud again Minister Littleproud showed that he was either remarkably ignorant on the matter of climate change or both dishonest and not sure how to lie about the subject in September 2019.

As reported in The Conversation in an article by Saul Eslake dated 2020/11/08 and titled "From coal to criticism, this isn’t the first time the Coalition has tried to heavy the ANZ". Mr Eslake wrote:

Last week, the fifth most senior minister in the Morrison Government, agriculture Minister and Deputy National Party Leader David Littleproud, threatened the ANZ bank with “every lever at the federal government’s disposal - including the availability of deposit guarantees”.

His concern was an ANZ statement about climate change.

The bank had said that it supported the transition to a net zero emissions economy by 2050, and that as a consequence it would no longer provide banking services for new business customers with “material thermal coal exposures”.

Any conscientious person would think that ANZ's statement indicated a proper concern for the future of the planet, its people and all its diverse and wonderful life.

How low can they go? This seems to be one of the most despicable things that the Morrison government has stooped to; it's hard to imagine how they could go much lower.

Saul Eslake also wrote:

Littleproud is seeking to prevent one of Australia’s leading banks from making a conscious, ethically-based decision to bring its lending practices into line with the goal of reducing Australia’s carbon emissions.

This is a shameful attack by the Morrison government on a business that is making some effort to give our grandchildren a planet that will not be greatly damaged by climate change, ocean acidification, sea level rise and the air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels that kills millions of people world wide each year.

This section added 2020/10/11

At the time of writing there was a Liberal government in South Australia under Premier Steven Marshal while the Morrison Liberal government was in power in Canberra.

SA Liberals weren't always pro-renewables During the Labor governments of Mike Rann (2002-2011) and Jay Weatherill (2011-2018) the SA Liberal Opposition was mostly strongly opposed to renewable energy and supportive of fossil fuels, see David Ridgway, then Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council for example, a man quite ready to tell ridiculous lies in opposing the state's adoption of renewable energy. Home Top Index Perhaps the closing of South Australia's last coal fired power station in May 2016 showed the state Liberals that fossil fuels, coal in particular, had no future.

In the matter of action on climate change and the adoption of renewable energy the two could not be further apart. While the Morrison government does all it can to prop up the dying fossil fuel industries and sabotage the renewable energy industries the SA government can see that the future is in renewables; it has a target of 100% renewable electricity by 2030, and it is likely that that target will be met early.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this dichotomy is that neither government publicly criticises the other. The state Liberals, in particular Minister for Energy and Mining, Dan van Holst Pellikaan, are continually espousing the strong future of renewable energy for the state, but not a critical word will they say against the opposite stance in the federal government.

Tasmania, also with a Liberal government, was similarly pursuing a renewable energy future, with a target of 200% renewables by 2020.

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This section added 2020/11/27

An example of blatantly unethical mateship

Mateship The concept of mateship was first championed by Coalition Prime Minister John Howard. I have written at some length on the ethics of mateship on another page on this site. Jobs for the boys Australian governments of both major parties have a record of providing lucrative positions for retiring ministers, this particular attempt would have to be one of the most odious examples of these 'jobs for the boys'.

Senator Mathias Cormann announced in July 2020 that he would leave parliament by the end of the year.

In November 2020 the Australian people learned that Senator Cormann had been flown around the world in a Royal Australian Airforce plane at the Australian taxpayers' expense (probably in the vicinity of $3,000 per hour) trying to get himself the job of Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Senator Cormann's tilt at this position has the full support of the Morrison government who nominated him for the lucrative job.

As reported by the ABC "the OECD is an international organisation that works to create policies that promote economic growth and look to improve social and environmental challenges faced globally." (My emphasis)

Senator Cormann served as Australia's Finance Minister from 2013 to 2020, under the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments. In this position he has fully supported those governments in their battle to slow the development of renewable energy and prop up the polluting fossil fuel industries. He has actively fought against support for the environment.

Senator Cormann's nomination as Secretary-General of the OECD is not just a blatant case of mateship and 'jobs for the boys', in relation to this position in particular it is quite obscene.

I've written more on this subject on a dedicated page.

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Is Australia becoming a police state?

This section added 2020/06/15

Back in 2004 Australian Security Intelligence Services staff illegally broke into and "bugged, in a total breach of sovereignty, the cabinet room, the ministerial offices of then prime minister [Mari] Alkatiri and his government. They placed clandestine listening devices in the ministerial conference room ..."

The above is an extract from a transcript of ABC's Media Watch of 2020/06/15.

While this was bad enough, as the Media Watch episode noted, at the time of writing the ASIS officer (whose name we are not allowed to know, he is referred to as Witness K) who made this illegal activity public has been tried and sentenced in secret and even his lawyer, Bernard Callaery, is being tried at least partly in secret.

More can be read on the illegal bugging in Wikipedia.

I have written a little on then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's known part in denying justice to East Timor on another page on this site.

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Tax-payer liability for stranded assets

Michael Mazengarb wrote an article for Renew Economy on 2020/01/21 outlining research published by the Bank for International Settlements that indicated that central banks could be held financially responsible for stranded assets when nations are forced to act on climate change.

This seems to apply particularly to those nations whose governments tried to give the impression that fossil fuel industries had a strong future when, in fact, they have a very shaky future. Plainly, the Australian government is one such.

The Morrison government has heavily promoted coal mining in Australia, continually trying to convince investors that 'coal has a bright future'. If the industry collapses, due to forced action on reducing emissions, the Australian tax-payer, through the Reserve Bank of Australia, may well be held accountable for the highly misleading statements made by the government.

Clare polling booth, 2019/05/18 School kids Niamh and Emma asking for the world that they will inherit to be protected

They're back, 2019/05/20

In spite of the best efforts of kids who want a future, like those in the photo on the right, and a great many Australians who want serious action on climate change, Scott Morrison's Coalition government won the election of two days ago.

This was a surprise to most Australians, including the experts.

The Liberal/National coalition had help from the filthy-rich coal billionaire Clive Palmer and the shamelessly biased and pro-coal Murdoch media empire.

Palmer's party ran a candidate in every seat in what Palmer said following the election was a campaign aimed only at keeping Labor from winning government. The Palmer party didn't get any of its candidates elected, but may well have taken a lot of votes from Labor.

The election was largely won in Queensland where there were enough voters placing more importance on jobs in the coal industry than on the future of the planet to swing the balance of power to the COALition.

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This section added 2020/02/05

Morrison government used taxpayers' money to help win the May 2019 election

In addition to the blatant Bridget McKenzie sports rorts affair (covered elsewhere on this page) there was also rorting associated with the federal government's drought funding.

The Yorke Peninsula Country Times of 2020/02/04 stated:

"It has been revealed Copper Coast Council should not have been eligible for its $2million of funding through the controversial Drought Communities Programme – Extension. The government awarded funding to CCC, and several other councils, despite them not meeting criteria relating to employment in the agriculture, forestry and fishery industries."

The criteria of the drought relief funding stated that councils must have at least 17 per cent of workers involved in agriculture, fishery or forestry industries to be eligible. Only eight per cent of the Copper Coast Council's residents are in those industries, yet it was granted $2 million dollars. This was not the government's money that was misused to help win the election, it was taxpayers' money.

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This section added 2020/02/07

More rorts come to light

Jack Snape and Andrew Probyn wrote an article for the ABC earlier today (2020/02/07). Quoting from the article:

No guidelines. No tender process. No application form. Some recipients didn't know they'd even been given money until they read about it in the local paper.

And at $150 million, it's worth more than the scandal-plagued community sports grants program that cost the ministerial career of former Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie.

Projects funded under the so-called Female Facilities and Water Safety Stream (FFWSS) were even more heavily skewed towards Coalition-held marginal seats than the controversial sports grants program it was meant to complement.

And rather than being a nationwide program aimed at encouraging women in sport – as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and then-sports minister Senator McKenzie claimed – the great majority of funding has been pledged towards swimming pools in just 11 Coalition-held seats.

It seems there will be no end to the corruption of the Morrison government.

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This section added 2020/02/15

PM Morrison and Senator Cormann mislead parliament

SBS News carried an article dated 2020/02/14 describing how PM Morrison blatantly mislead parliament over the Bridget McKenzie rorts affair. It seems that both the PM and the Liberal's leader in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, have claimed that "No project that was funded was assessed as ineligible at the time the assessment was made". In fact, as reported by SBS:

"a Senate inquiry heard that nearly half the projects funded in the so-called sports rorts affairs were ineligible.

On Thursday, audit officials told a Senate inquiry that 43 per cent of projects funded under the Coalition's $100 million program were not eligible for funding".

This was at least the second time that PM Morrison has mislead parliament. He had to send a letter to the Speaker to amend incorrect comments that he made while defending his dishonest Energy Minister Angus Taylor back in November of 2019. For more information on this see the article written by Brett Worthington for the ABC.

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PM Morrison and God
What would God think of PM Morrison damaging God's creation?

Prime Minister Morrison makes no secret of his Christian beliefs. How would God feel about the damage that PM Morrison is complicit in doing to God's creation through climate change and related problems. How could God be anything other than angry about the way that Morrison is treating God's creation?

Many of the world's religious leaders are demanding more action on climate change, they seem to think that God would want his creation to be protected.

But PM Morrison is not in a main-stream church, he's Pentecostal, so rational argument doesn't seem to apply.

Does PM Morrison see climate change damage as God's will?

Following his surprise election Morrison said that "miracles do happen". Perhaps he believes that it is God's plan to end 'Creation' and that he (Morrison) sees himself as one of God's chosen instruments to help bring about Armageddon.

What hope is there if any of our leaders think in ways like this and if the Australian people continue to elect such leaders?

The delusions of the man who will be in charge of our country for the next three years are terrifying

I'm shocked. I thought that we would have to deal with a man who was in the pocket of the mining industry but who would at least be amenable to reason. It's worse than that. His life is solidly founded in delusion. Read The Devil and Scott Morrison by James Boyce.

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This section added 2019/11/01

Morrison opposes action on climate change

	Farm profits fall 22% due to climate change New study: changes in climate since 2000 have cut Australian farm profits 22%; 2019/12/17; article in The Conversation discussing a report from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES). No doubt if PM Morrison wasn't away on holiday (during some of the worst fires in Australia's history and a record-breaking heatwave, both also connected to climate change) he would be sending our farmers 'his thoughts and prayers'.
	Morrison breaks collaboration commitment; March 2020 In an article in The Guardian, 2020/03/06, Adam Morton wrote that the Morrison government "will break a commitment to fund an international collaboration into what is required to shift to a zero emissions future."

In a piece of Orwellian double-think that Big Brother would be proud of PM Morrison called climate change activists selfish because they are pressuring businesses to be responsible. For Mr Morrison to call climate change activists selfish, when they are trying to make him and others look after the planet we all live on, is gross dishonesty.

PM Morrison's stance in looking after the fossil fuel industries at the expense of life on earth is criminal, selfish and extremely shortsighted. Most Australians want serious action on climate change and natural justice demands serious action on climate change, but Morrison is fighting against action. Morrison cannot see past trying to prop up the dying coal industry in return for more donations to the Liberal Party.

The ABC's political reporter Nour Haydar wrote a piece on 2019/11/01 headlined "Scott Morrison to slam environmental groups 'targeting' businesses with 'selfish' secondary boycotts".

PM Morrison's concern that so-called secondary boycotts (boycotting a company that supports polluting industries) may have serious consequences for the Australian economy should give heart to climate change activists; keep up the good work people, you are having an impact.

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This section added 2019/05/07, edited 2019/05/20

Last ditch scare campaign

In the last weeks before the May 18^th election, which all the polling was predicting that the Morrison Government would lose, the COALition was running a shamelessly dishonest scare campaign.

They were claiming that Labor would wreak the economy (in their six years in government the Coalition had not had a single budget surplus), but perhaps their most dishonest claim was that Labor's renewable energy target of 50% by 2030 would be cripplingly expensive. South Australia went from near zero renewable energy in 2003 to over 50% by 2018 at practically no cost to the tax payers. Why shouldn't Australia be able to do something similar?

Not only could Labor's targets be reached at little cost to the taxpayers, but they would provide a boost to the economy and provide thousands of jobs. See the 2019 Clean Energy Australia Report by the Clean Energy Council.

Labor is also promising to reduce Australia’s pollution by 45 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. While Labor's aims are less than is needed they are far better than the Coalition's energy/emissions/climate-change-action paralysis of the last six years.

The future of the planet and everybody's children and grandchildren is at stake.

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Ministers in the Morrison Government

Clements Gap Wind Farm Energy Minister Taylor is particularly opposed to wind power having notoriously, and very stupidly, called it 'gobsmackingly inefficient'.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison

ScoMo first came to prominence when he took a lump of coal into the Australian parliament and made a big point of telling people it was nothing to be afraid of.

Perhaps PM Morrison's biggest lie is in claiming that fossil fuels, coal in particular, are the key to lowering power prices. The fact that renewables are now cheaper than new-build coal fired power stations has been given a huge amount of publicity recently from many sources. Just one is the very recent (at the time of my writing this) article by Steven Long on the ABC Web site, 2018/01/03, "The reality is new coal power is not the answer for cheaper electricity bills". Mr Long wrote:

"The tipping point's been reached: renewable energy is now a cheaper source of power for Australia's future electricity needs than coal."

Mr Long quoted the Australian Energy Market Operator:

"The lowest cost replacement for this retiring capacity [Australia's fleet of ageing coal fired power stations] and energy will be a portfolio of resources, including solar (28 gigawatts), wind (10.5 GW) and storage (17 GW and 90 GWh), complemented by 500 megawatts of flexible gas plant and transmission investment."

PM Morrison also continues the pretence that coal has a strong future. In fact it is a dying industry.

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Environment Minister Melissa Price

Melissa Price showed that she was effectively bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry following a report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change released on 2018/10/08. Giles Parkinson wrote a piece for RenewEconomy the following day covering the Morrison Government's "breathtakingly stupid response to IPCC climate report" in which the 'Environment Minister' featured strongly. It seems that Ms Price's credentials to call herself Environment Minister are as good, or bad, as those of Rupert Murdoch's man Graham Lloyd to call himself an Environment Reporter.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor

I will not write much about Mr Taylor on this page, I have another page dedicated to the man. I would think that he would have to be the most biased and dishonest Australian Energy Minister ever.

Natural Disasters Minister Littleproud

Natural Disasters Minister David Littleproud had the lead position on ABC's Media Watch of 2019/09/16.

Littleproud again Minister Littleproud also tried to force the Morrison Government's abysmal ethical standards onto the ANZ bank in November 2020.

Quoting from the Media Watch transcript:

"DAVID SPEERS: You say climate’s changing and that’s certainly true. The question is, is this man-made climate change?

DAVID LITTLEPROUD: I’ve got no idea, but does it really matter? I ...

DAVID SPEERS: Sorry, you have no idea whether ...

DAVID LITTLEPROUD: I’m not a scientist. I haven’t made an opinion one way or another, but I don’t think it really matters. I think ...

DAVID SPEERS: Sorry, just to be clear on this, you’re not sure whether man-made climate change is real?

- Speers, Sky News, 10 September, 2019

Can this Australian minister in the Morrison Government really so stupid? He doesn't know that climate change is man made? He doesn't think it matters whether or not it is man made?

Again quoting the Media Watch transcript, two days later, Minister Littleproud said in Parliament:

"Let me make it clear: I accept the science on man-made impact on climate change. Always have."

Is the man a shameless liar, is he hopelessly confused, or just stupid? What does he believe? What has my country come to, to have a federal minister like this?

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Josh Frydenberg expresses his hatred of renewable energy by defying everyone, and good sense, to block two wind turbines

While he was Environment Minister, in 2017, Josh Frydenberg went against the advice of his own department, against the wishes of the people of Lord Howe Island, against the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), against economical good sense, and against the environmental imperatives, to block the construction of two wind turbines on the island, condemning the people to stay with expensive and polluting diesel generation. Just because he, and the government he is a part of, hate renewable energy. Monstrous!

For more information refer to the article in The Guardian by Anne Davies dated 2019/09/18.

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The Great Barrier Reef
and the Great Barrier Reef Special Envoy, Warren Entsch

This section added 2019/05/30, Expanded 2021/02/03

Rosemary Bolger and Nick Baker reported for SBS in late May 2019 that newly appointed Special Envoy for the Great Barrier Reef Warren Entsch has claimed that "the reef didn't need saving" and refused to accept that climate change was the greatest threat to the reef.

This is totally at odds with what the world's climate scientists are telling us. The government's own Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is telling us that

"Climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs worldwide".

and

"The Great Barrier Reef is already experiencing the consequences of climate change. The cumulative impacts of recent coral bleaching events and multiple severe tropical cyclones since 2005 have caused an unprecedented decline in the health of the Reef."

Entsch went on to complain about adults "coaching" young people who quite rightly expressed deep concern for their, and the planet's, future. He said of the adults "They're frightening the living hell out of kids. It's like child abuse and I think they should be held accountable". If there was any justice in this world people like Warren Entsch would be held accountable.

This government seems hell-bent on destroying the future that these kids will live through.

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Chief of staff John Kunkel

Prime minister Scott Morisson's chief of staff is John Kunkel, the former deputy CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, one of the main coal lobbying groups. This is typical of the close connections between the Morrison government and the fossil fuel industry.

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This section added 2020/01/23

Bridget McKenzie

Bridget McKenzie, Sports Minister at the time, handed out $100 million dollars of taxpayers money as grants to sporting organisations just before the election on May 2019. A report by the Auditor General heavily criticised the way that these grants were handed out, as documented by Jack Snape on the ABC. The Auditor General said in his report:

Total denial! 2020/02/03 Printed in the Adelaide Advertiser: "... the inquiry by Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Phillip Gaetjens, formerly Mr Morrison's chief-of-staff before be became one of the nations's top public servants, found no evidence of pork-barrelling". (My emphasis.) This is obviously a blatant lie. It is, on its own, quite enough to demonstrate the complete lack of ethical standards in the Morrison government.

"The award of funding reflected the approach documented by the minister's office of focusing on 'marginal' electorates held by the Coalition as well as those electorates held by other parties or independent members that were to be 'targeted' by the Coalition at the 2019 election...

Applications from projects located in those electorates were more successful in being awarded funding than if funding was allocated on the basis of merit assessed against the published program guidelines."

As of the time of writing Prime Minister Morrison has not condemned any of Ms KcKenzie's actions. He has said repeatedly things like 'no law has been broken' and he and Ms McKenzie have said 'all the recipients were eligible'.

Shortly before I wrote this section the PM has called for an examination to see if there has been any "breach of ministerial standards". One could only conclude that if this has not breached ministerial standards then those standards must be very lax.

Whether or not anything illegal was done or whether the ministerial standards have been breached, there can be no doubt at all that the actions of Ms McKenzie were unethical, but the Morrison government seems to place little, if any, weight on ethical standards.

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Criminals

The people of Beijing are reminded of what a clear sky looks like Much of the smog is due to the burning of coal Attribution "Feng Li/Getty Images"

In a world in which government ministers were held properly to account, PM Scott Morrison, Environment Minister Melissa Price and Energy Minister Angus Taylor would all be tried and convicted of a crime against humanity and against the biosphere. What crime can there be greater than for a person in a position of power to knowingly lie in order to support actions that will damage the planet for all future generations of humans and for all life on earth?

By their lies and actions they are worsening climate change, ocean acidification, sea level rise and ocean warming.

Their actions will not even have an economic advantage, there can be no doubt that renewable energy is cheaper than new-build coal. The only groups to win (and then only in the short term) if the Morrison Government slows renewables development and encourages coal will be the coal industry and their puppets in government.

Australia and the world will suffer, economically and environmentally. Australia's future is with the renewable energy industry, not with polluting coal.

A life choice

We all have a choice in what we do with our lives. Why would anyone choose to take a course in their lives that would earn them the disgust and condemnation of future generations as these people have done? Do they believe that the short term benefits to them are sufficient to justify going down in history as the worst of criminals? Or do they simply not see the big picture?

Rats leaving the sinking ship

Probably unprecedented in Australia political history at the beginning of March 2019 seven ministers or former ministers had announced, or were expected to announce, that they intended to resign from Parliament at the coming election due in May. They were:

• Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne;
• Indigenous Affaires Minister Nigel Scullion;
• Jobs Minister Kelly O'Dwyer;
• Human Services Minister Michael Keenan;
• Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

Defence Industry Minister Steven Ciobo and Small Business Minister Craig Laundy were also expected to announce their departure.

It would seem likely that these people were motivated by one or a combination of the following reasons:

1. They were fed-up with the culture in the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
2. They could see no future for themselves if they remained with the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
3. They had had enough of the in-fighting in the Parliamentary Liberal Party;
4. They had had enough of the failure of the Parliamentary Liberal Party to act in any way decisively on greenhouse emissions or climate change;
5. They could see that the Liberal-National coalition was very likely to lose the coming election and they didn't want to serve one, or probably more, terms in opposition;
6. They simply saw that their future prospects would be improved by terminating their parliamentary careers.

It would be nice to be able to believe that number four was the main reason for the resignations, but to credit major party politicians with altruistic, rather than selfish, motivations would be hard to justify.

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The Morrison Government is out of touch with the Australian people, out of touch with reality, shamelessly dishonest and doing its best to stop Australia from grasping huge economic opportunities.

What do the Australian people want?

A Lowy Institute poll carried out on 1,200 Australian adults on 2018/06/20 showed that 84% of Australians wanted the government to "focus on renewables, even if this means we may need to invest more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable".

December 2018 The Morrison Government reached a new level of self-delusion. A press release from Energy Minister Angus Taylor foresaw "no further investment in large scale renewables, and no more significant emissions cuts – from 2022 all the way through to 2030", should it stay in power. At the time of writing this note wind farms and utility-scale solar farms were being built at record rates and both wind and solar power were as cheap, or almost as cheap, as power from existing coal-fired power stations and substantially cheaper than new-build coal, and their cost was steadily falling. By 2022 renewables will be replacing old coal-fired power stations hand-over-hand purely for economic reasons. The ABC reported NSW (Coalition government) Energy Minister Don Harwin saying after the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting of December 2018 "it's absolutely imperative that we end the Canberra climate wars, it's absolutely imperative that we get a sensible national approach which brings climate and energy policy together". The Queensland energy minister said that "we were completely blocked by Angus Taylor", "every state was in unison regarding climate change policy".

A poll of the people in Energy Minister Taylor's electorate showed that almost twice as many wanted to see Australia decrease its emissions faster, rather than slower.

Blind Freddy could see that there is no future in the coal industry and that Australia's energy future is in renewables but the Morrison Government is trying to deny this great opportunity to Australia.

Plainly the Australian people want renewable energy, not more coal power.
Plainly the Australian people want action on climate change.
Plainly the world's and Australia's future is with renewable energy not fossil fuels.

By the time of writing it was clear that renewable energy in the forms of wind and solar PV was cheaper than new-built coal-fired power. As decarbonisation becomes more urgent any coal-fired power station is likely to have a short life, further eroding its financial justification. No company is interested in building a coal-fired power station, it would simply be incapable of competing economically with renewables. The only way a new coal-fired power station will be built in Australia is with heavy subsidisation from the Australian tax-payers, and they plainly do not want it.

Has there ever been a federal government more out of touch with what the Australian people want, what is best for Australia and what the world needs?

I've written about who wants renewable energy? elsewhere on this site.

Nyngan solar farm At the time of my visit, April 2017, this was the biggest solar farm in Australia, at 102MW.

The potential for economic growth in the energy sector is with renewables, not fossil fuels

The world outside of the Australian government recognises that renewable energy is the future, fossil fuels are the past.

I've written below of just one renewable energy project that has huge economic potential that, if the Morrison Government had its way, would probably not go ahead. Fortunately, like so many other renewable energy developments, it seems likely to happen in spite of the best efforts of the federal government to halt progress.

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This section added 2019/12/01

(Federal Liberal) Treasurer Scott Morrison (later to become Prime Minister) makes a fool of himself

Hornsdale Power Reserve expansion, November 2019 Nick Toscano wrote an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 2019/11/19 about Neoen's proposed 50 per cent expansion of the Hornsdale Power Reserve battery. Toscano wrote: South Australian Energy Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said the battery was continuing to "break new ground". "As South Australia continues to increase its share of renewable energy generation, large-scale storage solutions such as grid-scale batteries will help address some of the key challenges impacting South Australia’s power system, such as energy reliability and inertia," he said. The 'big battery' has been a huge financial and energy success and is appreciated as such by the (Liberal) South Australian government.

The Hornsdale Power Reserve has been a huge and very valuable success in stabilising the Australian power grid

When the Tesla 'big battery' (more properly the Hornsdale Power Reserve) was first proposed Scott Morrison was reported in The Daily Telegraph as having said that Mr Musk’s bid to build the world’s largest lithium ion battery wouldn’t solve any energy problems because its capacity is so small. He said:

“By all means, have the world’s biggest battery, have the world’s biggest banana, have the world’s biggest prawn like we have on the roadside around the country, but that is not solving the problem,”

Morrison said Tesla boss Mr Musk was clearly very good at promotion. “I think he saw [South Australian Labor Premier] Jay Weatherill coming.”

What he demonstrated with this statement was his shameful and criminal devotion to the fossil fuel industry and his contempt for the truth and ethical standards.

Update February 2020

Energy consultant Auracon produced a report indicating that the amount of money Hornsdale Power Reserve saved consumers in 2019 jumped to $116 million, from $40 million in 2018. An article on the report by Renew Economy stated that the total investment for the battery was $96 million.

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This section added 2019/03/06

Huge opportunities for economic development thrown away

Australia has wind and solar renewable energy resources that are well up among the best in the world.

South Australia has shown very well that wind power can provide about half of an electricity supply with minimal changes to a power grid. The nation is seeing that solar PV power can also generate substantial percentages of the electricity that the Australian people want and need. At the time of writing utility-scale solar PV power installations are being built at a great rate.

German ambassador's visit On 2019/02/26 Shannon Beattie wrote an article in the West Australian about the German Ambassador, Dr Anna Prinz, who visited Karratha to learn about the hydrogen-producing potential of the Pilbara region. She intends to visit again.

In the Pilbara the Asian Renewable Energy Hub project, backed by the Macquarie Group and with a value of $22 billion, has been proposed with the intention of exporting electricity by undersea cable to Java and possibly Singapore.

Hydrogen

At the time of writing there are a number of pilot projects around Australia testing the economic viability of using our abundant renewable energy to produce clean hydrogen. Hydrogen can be exported as a gas or it can easily be converted into ammonia which can be exported or used for many purposes including the production of fertilisers; and ammonia can be converted back into hydrogen after exporting, if required. There seems to be strong optimism in the energy industry that if clean hydrogen is not yet economically very competitive it soon will be.

Again at the time of writing, Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who seems to have an ideological hatred of wind power, was holding up a feasibility study for what could be Australia's first off-shore wind farm, The Star of the South.

As discussed elsewhere in these pages coal is no longer needed for producing heat for things like generating electricity, renewable energy is not only much cleaner, but it is also cheaper.

This section added 2020/03/01

Metallurgical hydrogen

It is now becoming clear that renewable energy can also be used for metallurgical purposes. Coke, made from high-grade coal (usually called coking coal or metallurgical coal), has long been used for smelting ores and making steel, but its replacement with hydrogen is not only possible, it is becoming economically viable. And hydrogen can be extracted from water using renewable energy.

Iron, steel and other metals can now be made without using fossil fuels.

This has been discussed in an article published in The Conversation on 2020/02/27 written be Dominique Hes of the University of Melbourne.

Those companies and nations that are earliest to fully develop and implement the technologies involved will have a competitive advantage over those that stay with coal.

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This section added 2020/08/19

No support for Flinders University Covid-19 vaccine research

While the Morrison Government continues to support Flinders University research into a possible and tenuous link between wind turbines and some people possibly losing some sleep they are not funding promising research at the same university going into stage one human trials of a promising Covid-19 vaccine.

It seems that the Morrison Government will support anything that may conceivably put renewable energy in a bad light, but are not willing to invest in the development of a vaccine to protect against a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands. Our federal government has put five million dollars into the wind farm noise study, billions into keeping the economy going during the Covid pandemic, but are not willing to support this important research.

A Current Affair posted an article on the internet 2020/08/13 about the Morrison Government's failure to fund the research by Professor Nikolai Petrovsky at Flinders University. Professor Petrovsky was quoted as saying:

"We've had no support from the federal government to date in any of our program," Professor Petrovsky told A Current Affair. "We've obviously asked for it but we haven't received anything,"

The article went on to say that Professor Petrovsky would take the phase two trials to Pakistan.

A run-down on vaccines in development in Australia is given in an RMIT 'Vaccine progress report'.

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The Morrison Government has turned its back on these current and future industries because they don't involve coal.

Wind, solar and energy storage in one form or another are plainly the future of the nation, but the Morrison Government can't see beyond coal, coal and more coal.

With any new industry the advantage is with the early adopters; the Morrison Government has not provided any support for the development of these innovative projects, thus allowing Australia's competitors a head start.

An era when Australia dared to have a vision

An endorsement by Thomas Keneally of the book The Snowy: a History by Siobhan McHugh:

“You should read this tale of an era when Australia dared to have a vision”.

In 2019 no one could accuse the Morrison government of “having a vision”. When we could be leading the world in renewable energy, instead we are leading the world in clinging to old ways that everyone knows must go as soon as possible - coal in particular.

By the way, the book is a good read.

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A decade of transition in the Australian electricity sector

Change in terawatt-hours generated in the National Electricity Market between 2008 and 2018. Image credit: Simon Holmes à Court, The Guardian

The graph on the right records the change in Australia's energy mix in the decade from 2008 to 2018.

In spite of the best efforts of the recent coalition governments, from the Abbott Government starting in September 2013 to the MorrisonGov.html, doing all they can to support the coal industry and slow the growth of sustainable energy, renewables have made great inroads into power generation in Australia.

Quoting Simon Holmes à Court in the Guardian article that published the graph:

"Highly polluting brown coal use is down 36.6% and black coal (still dirty!) has fallen 9.4%, mostly replaced by wind and solar."

At the time of writing it was looking like the rate of renewable energy installation and coal power station retirement was only going to increase.

These governments have been nothing short of criminal in their opposition to action on climate change, but fortunately they have been notably ineffectual in their efforts to stop the transition to renewable energy.

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We need a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC)

The Morrison Government is opposing a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), just as the Turnbull Government opposed a royal commission into the financial industries.

PM Turnbull was forced into allowing a royal commission into the financial industries and it uncovered a huge amount of exploitative, even criminal, behaviour.

I suspect that a federal ICAC would unearth just as much sculduggery as did the royal commission on the financial industries.

Of course Scomo doesn't want an ICAC, it would uncover his misdeeds and those of others in or close to government.

For more information see The Chaser.

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Cynical wastefulness

Sundrop Farms – the 40 MW solar thermal installation that powers a huge greenhouses at Port Augusta If Scomo really wanted to do some good for reducing emissions he would make sure that the proposed Aurora Solar Reserve solar thermal power station with energy storage project went ahead at Port Augusta. Photo taken by my drone 2016/03/14

In what appears to be a desperate last-ditch attempt to gain some emissions reduction credibility PM Morrison has proposed a scheme that is breathtaking in its cynicism, shocking in its wastefulness, useless in its effects on emissions, shameful in its failure to grasp clearly visible opportunities and criminal in its betrayal of future generations.

The Emissions Reduction Fund renamed as the Climate Solutions Fund

Ian A. MacKenzie, Senior Lecturer in Economics with the University of Queensland wrote a piece for The Conversation on 2019/02/26 titled "The government’s $2bn climate fund: a rebadged rehash of old mistakes".

"The government has put a new name on an existing scheme, while steadfastly refusing to learn from mistakes made along the way. In cruder terms, it’s slapped a gleaming coat of lipstick onto a pig of a policy."

Giving money supposedly aimed at reducing emissions to companies so that they can burn more fossil fuels

Paying a foreign-owned company to burn gas

Adam Morton wrote a piece in The Guardian, 2019/02/25, titled "Emissions reduction fund to pay for fossil fuel plant that would be built anyway".

As part of their Emissions Reduction Fund (rebadged a "Climate Solutions" fund) the Morrison Government announced that it was giving a million dollars of taxpayers' money to South African-owned gold miner Gold Fields to pay for a gas turbine powered electricity generator.

The gold miner stated that they would have built the gas turbine anyway.

If the Morrison Government really wanted to reduce emissions or find climate solutions they would have encouraged Gold Fields to build a solar farm or wind farm rather than installing a gas turbine.

Paying Rio Tinto to burn diesel

In an article by the Australian Conservation Foundation the Foundation’s Chief Executive Officer, Kelly O’Shanassy, said:

“Rio Tinto is one of the world’s largest companies. It is disturbing that it will receive what looks to amount to several million dollars from government climate change programs to switch from burning one fossil fuel to another."

To make matters even worse, Adam Morton wrote for The Guardian, 2019/02/26, that the generator had already been commissioned before the Climate Solutions fund opened.

The Morrison Government is blocking a project that will cost the taxpayers nothing but will reduce emissions by about five million tonnes annually.

At the same time as PM Morrison announced his Climate Solutions Fund, Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who has justifiably been accused of having a "blind hatred toward renewable energy", was blocking progress on a feasibility study for Australia's first offshore wind farm, the Star of the South offshore wind farm in Bass Strait.

I have written about Minister Taylor and his hatred of wind power in particular on another page on this site.

I have argued elsewhere on these pages that for a person in a position of power to knowingly lie in order to slow action on climate change has to be the greatest crime in the history of humanity. Surely PM Morrison's and Energy Minister Taylor's actions would have to be condemned as criminal.

Just one project is sufficient to demonstrate the stupidity (or corruption) of the Morrison Government

The Morrison Government sees the future as being black; all about coal, fossil fuels generally, uncontrolled climate change, ocean acidification, air pollution, the loss of thousands of species and the Great Barrier Reef and great damage to the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit from us.

Others, such as British Billionaire Sanjeev Gupta (who is investing $1 billion in renewable energy in Australia), famous investor Warren Buffet (who has invested $1 billion in renewables) and Macquarie Bank (which has invested more than $20 billion in green energy globally) and who are backing the proposed $22 billion Asian Renewable Energy Hub can see that the future is green, sustainable and clean.

Peter Williams wrote a piece for the West Australian on 2018/10/08 about the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH). Its scale is truely breathtaking:

• A total installed capacity of 11 GW+ (average electricity consumption for the whole of NSW on the national grid is about 8 GW);
• More than 1400 wind turbines, more than 7.5 GW (more than ten times the size of the largest existing wind farm in Australia);
• More than 3.5 GW of solar generation (more than ten times the size of the biggest solar farm currently in Australia).

The Morrison government, corrupted by the influence of the fossil fuel industry, would deny Australia projects such as this. The AREH Web site mentions that "the Governments of Indonesia, Singapore and Western Australia have been engaged", but significantly not the Morrison government of Australia.

Incredibly, Australia's Energy Minister Angus Taylor is on record as saying that wind turbines are "gobsmackingly inefficient". This is an indication of the depth of idiocy to which our federal government has sunk!

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Fair dinkum power

Prime Minister Scot Morrison was talking to shock jock Alan Jones and said that he wanted 'dispatchable power'. Jones told the PM not to use that term because "people don't know what it means". In response to Jones, the PM said "real power, fair dinkum power". And from then on PM Morrison and his Energy Minister Angus Taylor have been using the 'fair dinkum power' catch phrase ad-nauseam. (See Media Watch, 2018/10/29.)

Coal power stations have been unreliable Contrary to the claims made by PM Morrison and the rest of the coal lobby the record shows that coal fired power stations are not reliable. Home Top Index On average there was one break down every three days in an Australian coal fired power station during 2018; with the misleadingly named HELE (in truth neither High-Efficiency nor Low-Emissions) power stations failing more often than older black-coal fired stations.

Has this clarified anything? I doubt it.

In any case, PM Morrison seems to be under the misunderstanding that coal power is dispatchable, of course it is not. Coal power is base load, that is, coal power is suited for providing electricity at a steady rate; dispatchable power is, as the name suggests, capable of being dispatched as required.

PM Morrison likes to make statements implying that coal-fired power stations are available all the time; ignoring the fact that they are typically unavailable about 15% of the time due to maintenance or breakdown.

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Victorian election of November 2018

The Labor Daniel Andrews Victorian Government faced an election on 2018/11/24. Most predictions were that the result would be close but would probably go to Labor.

What actually resulted was a Labor landslide; very unusually there was a huge 4.8% swing toward the Government; if there are big swings they are more often than not against a sitting government. The morning after the election it was looking like Labor would get 55 seats in the 88-seat Lower House.

No one was in any doubt that federal politics had a big influence on the Victorian result; the policies of the Morrison Government had a lot to do with this devastation of the Victorian Liberal/National coalition.

What do the Australian people want?

Peterborough Solar Farm Photo taken with my drone, 2018/05/12

A Lowy Institute poll carried out on 1,200 Australian adults on 2018/06/20 showed that 84% of Australians wanted the government to "focus on renewables, even if this means we may need to invest more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable".

A poll of the people in the Morrison Government's Energy Minister Angus Taylor's electorate showed that almost twice as many wanted to see Australia decrease its emissions faster, rather than slower.

A poll carried out by a local newspaper concerning a proposed energy park (wind, solar, storage) near my house indicated 83% support for the project.

Blind Freddy could see that there is no future in the coal industry and that Australia's energy future is in renewables but PM Morrison and Minister Taylor is trying to deny this great opportunity to Australia.

Plainly the Australian people want renewable energy, not more coal power.
Plainly the Australian people want action on climate change.
Plainly Mr Taylor is out of touch with what the people in his electorate want.
Plainly the world's and Australia's future is with renewable energy not fossil fuels.

Has there ever been a federal government more out of touch with what the Australian people want, what is best for Australia and what the world needs?

I've written about how I see Australia's energy future and who wants renewable energy elsewhere on this site.

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This section edited 2019/03/06

Arms spending: Under the Morrison Government Australia has become unjustifiably militaristic

Ethics The arms business is notoriously dirty and unethical. When a nation exports arms for sale they lose all control over what those arms are used for; often they are used in dirty wars, such as that between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

When a nation spends more money than necessary on armaments there is less money available for looking after the people of that nation. North Korea is the classic example of this, its military is given huge amounts of money while most of its development is vary backward and many of it people live in poverty. The USA, too, spends enormous amounts of money on arms while the US people suffer.

Another problem is that any nation that spends more money than can be reasonably justified on armaments causes mistrust among it neighbours. They wonder whether aggression is being seriously considered.

At the time I wrote this section of this page Australia faced no more credible outside threats than most other nations.

While it ranked 53rd in population among the world's nations Forbs ranked it 12th in arms spending. Among the 15 nations with the highest arms spending there were only four that spent more per capita on arms than Australia: in order of decreasing per capita arms spending these were the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the USA.

Money that is spent on armaments is not available for education, health, emissions reduction, infrastructure, welfare and many other desirable services. The quality of life of the nation's people is degraded unnecessarily.

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This section added 2019/02/14

Refugee invasion scare

In mid February 2019 a bill passed through both houses of Australian parliament allowing "asylum seekers to be transferred to Australia [from offshore detention centres] for medical attention if two doctors say they need it, unless the Home Affairs Minister rejects it on security concerns (ABC)."

While this bill sounds perfectly reasonable to most people, it was very important because it passed in spite of being opposed by the Morrison Government. "It's the first time in 90 years that a sitting government has lost a vote on its own legislation" (The Guardian).

Following the historical defeat in parliament PM Morrison immediately started a scare campaign foreshadowing an invasion by refugees organised by people-smugglers.

It would suit the Morrison Government very well if a couple of boat-loads of refugees were to turn up on an Australian shore.

Considering the total lack of ethical standards shown by the Morrison Government (and partly documented on this page) we should not be surprised if they or there supporters were to pay people smugglers to ship some refugees to Australia.

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This section added 2019/06/04

Bushfires

Sediment in Crystal Brook following the Bangor fire The Bangor fire was finally extinguished by 60 mm of rain. At Crystal Brook, where this photo was taken, many kilometres downstream of the burned land, the ash and silt (grey in this photo) was conspicuous. Photo 2014/02/15

Scientists tell us, and recent experience has shown us, that with climate change bushfires will become more and more frequent and fierce. The Morrison Government's refusal to take climate change seriously will be a disaster for Australia through property loss and the damage inflicted on environments and soils through bushfires.

From an article in Scientific American, June 2011.

"If climate change drives temperature up a degree or two," goes the common dismissal, "how bad could that be?"

Here's an example: Higher temperatures draw moisture out of live and dead trees and brush, making them more flammable. The heat also can alter precipitation ... lengthening the fire season. A one degree Celsius climb in average global temperature could cause the median area burned annually by wildfires in parts of the American West to increase up to sixfold.

A one degree rise in temperatures could occur well before 2050.

If global warming will make the US forests more flammable, it will do the same thing in Australia.

Bangor fire, South Australia, 2014

The Bangor fire, near my home in Crystal Brook, burned largely in steep inaccessible country for a month before being extinguished by heavy rains. The rain on the soil left totally bare by the fires caused terrible erosion.

The photo on the right is of debris including soil and ash left in the Crystal Brook in the town of the same name. The upper parts of the Crystal Brook catchment were burned in the Bangor fire.

The native vegetation will recover to a large extent in a few years following a fire like this, but the soil will take hundreds or thousands of years to be replaced.

Increased frequency and ferocity of fires will be disastrous for Australia's fragile soils.

This section added 2020/01/02

Bushfires and dust of late 2019 – early 2020

Smoke plume between Australia and New Zealand The brown area to the southeast of Australia is a smoke plume being blown across the Tasman sea from the exceptional fires in New South Wales.

There were unprecedented bushfires in Australia and by 2020/01/02 more than 1200 houses had been burned in New South Wales alone. The fires were probably worst in NSW, but were also bad in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia. (The Eyre Highway had been closed due to fires in the Western Australian gold-fields region and, at the time of writing, were expected to remain closed for at least another five days.)

While the fires were not directly caused by climate change the conditions that lead to the fires were certainly made far more likely due to climate change. Australia had been suffering from drought for several years; this, like the fires, was likely linked to climate change. The drought also made the fires worse than they would otherwise have been because the land being burned was exceptionally dry.

Smoke levels in Sydney in particular were high enough to be hazardous to health; they were also high in Melbourne and Canberra for weeks. As can be seen in the satellite photo on the right the smoke plume was blowing right across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand; smoke from Australia's bushfires was also reported in South America.

Luke Henriques-Gomes wrote an article about the fires in The Guardian dated 2019/12/31. Many others were available on the Internet.

At the time of writing more catastrophic fire danger weather was being forecast for 2020/01/04 in NSW.

Dust too

Together with the smoke that was blowing across the Tasman Sea was enough dust to colour New Zealand's glaciers as reported for the ABC by Stefanie Garber on 2019/12/06. This was perhaps more as a result of the drought than the fires, but of course both drought and fires were made much more likely by the climate change that the Morrison Government was failing to act on.

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Smoke the biggest killer

This section added January 2020

Nancy Cushing, associate professor at the University of Newcastle, wrote a piece for The Conversation on 2020/01/13 headlined "Even for an air pollution historian like me, these past weeks have been a shock". She wrote of the air pollution from the smoke of the last couple of months:

"the terrible air quality is unmatched in terms of severity, duration and extent."

I suggest reading her article for more information on the extent of the problem.

This note added 2020/05/27

An article written for the ABC by Georgia Hitch on 2020/05/26 reported that the royal commission set up to look into the Australian bushfires of the 2019/20 summer was informed that smoke killed nearly 450 people.

The Morrison Government, with their refusal to take emissions reductions seriously, must accept a share of the responsibility for this and similar fire disasters around the world exacerbated by climate change.

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Sea level rise threat to Pacific islands

I write this section in August 2019, just after the Pacific Islands Forum on climate change and its threats to the Pacific Islands held in Tuvalu. At this forum PM Morrison refused to do anything to reduce Australia's huge greenhouse gas emissions, condemning the lower lying of the Pacific Islands to being overrun by rising sea levels.

An article written in The Guardian by Lisa Cox was headlined "Morrison’s ‘arrogance’ on climate blasted as Australia accused of ‘trying to destroy’ Pacific islands".

A former President of Kiribati summed up PM Morrison's attitude to inaction on the reduction of greenhouse emissions with the question:

“How can you justify being part of a family [the Pacific family] and part of a group which you’re trying to destroy?”

I note with disgust that prominent Labor spokesperson Senator Penny Wong said that she would not want to see Australia commit to phasing out its coal industry either.

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GetUp attacked by Morrison government

In or about early 2019 opponents of renewable energy, including the fossil fuel lobby developed the shamelessly dishonest Internet site Rite-On to weaken GetUp. By mid year Rite-On seemed to have failed.

So in August 2019, no doubt with the full approval of the fossil fuel lobby, PM Morrison announced another attack on the pro-rights and pro-renewable energy group.

On 2019/08/20 Krystian Seibert wrote a piece for The Conversation titled "Yes, GetUp fights for progressive causes, but it is not a political party – and is not beholden to one". The Conversation is a reliable source of information.

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Morrison Government refuses to cooperate with Ruby Princess inquiry

This section added 2020/08/17

Many of Australia's Covid-19 cases in the first outbreak came when infected passengers were able to freely leave the Ruby Princess cruise ship. A NSW government inquiry reported in August 2020.

Quoting from an article in The Conversation, 2020/08/14 by Michelle Grattan:

"... the federal government was sharply criticised for refusing to allow an official to appear before the inquiry, with commissioner Bret Walker SC saying this belied Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s promise of full cooperation."

Australia is supposed to be a democracy run by a democratic government. You'd hardly know it with Morrison in the Prime Minister's position.

Related pages

On this site...

Relating to government... Australian governments... Abbott Howard Rudd Turnbull Party policy... Liberals war on renewables

Angus Taylor; a gobsmackingly dishonest Environment Minister

Australia's energy future

Dishonestly or corruptly opposing renewable energy is a crime against humanity.

Dishonestly opposing renewable energy from a position of power is arguably the greatest crime in the history of humanity.

End of coal: why the coal industry has a very limited future.

Ethics: a subject that many in the Morrison government would do well to learn about.

A green or a black future

Greenhouse/climate change: the greatest threat currently facing mankind.

Ignorance, the problem and its prevalence

Killer coal: how the burning of coal kills millions of people world-wide each year.

Selfishness or altruism?: self or all?

South Australia's success in changing toward renewable energy

Stop These Things; a very dishonest anti-wind power Web site admired by, and contributed to by, Mr Taylor

What matters in regard to Australia and climate change action?

Who wants renewable energy?

Why accept climate science

Why support wind power

Wind power lies; Mr Taylor features strongly

Wind power opposition: almost universally dishonest.

External links...

Several links are scattered through the text above and many are provided in the other pages on my site.

A single mega-project exposes the Morrison government’s gas plan as staggering folly, 2020/05/27, written by Bill Hare and Ursula Fuentes, both of Murdoch University, for The Conversation.

Adam Morton wrote a piece for The Guardian, 2019/03/01, titled "Out on its own: Australia the only country to use climate funding to upgrade coal-fired plants".

RenewEconomy, Lip service and lies: Coalition’s response to the IPCC report; written by Joshua S Hill, 2018/10/12.

RenewEconomy, the Morrison Government's "breathtakingly stupid response to IPCC climate report", by Giles Parkinson, 2018/10/09.

Xihhua is one of many news organisations that have reported on British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta's statement that he can show that renewable are cheaper than coal for electricity generation.

The Conversation factcheck, 2017/08/14, concluded that while power from existing coal-fired power stations is cheaper than new-built wind power, "as things stand today – wind power would be cheaper than coal as a new-build source of electricity." Prices for wind and particularly solar PV power continue to fall.

The Conversation reported that "Big firms voice lack of faith in ‘cumbersome’ and ‘impractical’ Emissions Reduction Fund", while Environment Minister Melissa Price wanted to continue with it.

Index
On this page...

Arms spending: Australia is unjustifiably militaristic
Beirut explosion, irresponsible government and climate change
Blatant favouritism
Blocking Star of the South
Bushfires
  Bushfires and dust of late 2019 – early 2020
  Smoke the biggest killer
Climate action
Coal beyond criticism?
Corruption in the Morrison government
Criminals
Cynical wastefulness
Decade of transition in the Australian electricity sector
Entch, Warren; Great Barrier Reef Special Envoy
Energy Minister Angus Taylor
Environment Minister Melissa Price
Fair dinkum power
Farm profits fall 22% due to climate change
Frydenberg's hatred of renewable energy
Gas-fired recovery
GetUp attacked by Morrison government
God and PM Morrison
Great Barrier Reef
Hydrogen
  Metallurgical hydrogen
Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC)
Last ditch scare campaign
Life choice
Littleproud, Natural Disasters Minister
Mateship Morrison style
McKenzie, Bridget
Metallurgical hydrogen
Ministers in the Morrison Government
Misleading parliament (both PM Morrison and Senator Cormann)
Morrison against action
Morrison government tries to force its own abysmal ethical standards on a business
Morrison makes a fool of himself
No cooperation with Ruby Princess inquiry
One project shows the stupidity (or corruption) of the Morrison Government
Opportunities for economic development thrown away
Out of touch
Police state?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison
Rats leaving the sinking ship
Refugee invasion scare
Related pages
Rorts; Morrison government used taxpayers' money to help win the May 2019 election
  More rorts come to light
Sea level rise threat to Pacific islands
SA Lib government and Morrison government at opposite ends of the energy spectrum
Tax-payer liability for stranded assets
Vaccine research not getting support
Victorian election of November 2018
What matters?

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