Thirty four years ago, on this day, October 14th, 1992,
The managing director of Western Mining, Mr Hugh Morgan, had shown bigotry, ignorance and hysteria in his criticisms of the High Court’s decision in the Mabo land rights case, the Prime Minister, Mr Keating, said yesterday.
Garran, R. 1992. Keating attacks Morgan ‘Bigotry’. Australian Financial Review, October 14, p. 7.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 356ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the white settlers had stolen the land, because that’s what settlers do, white or otherwise, and committed various quick and slow atrocities. There had been a promise by the Hawke government to negotiate a treaty; “Treaty now” as Yothu Yindi sang). Hawke had fled the stage with his tail between his legs on that one.
The specific context was in 1992 the High Court of Australia made the Mabo decision, which had freaked the miners and farmers out. Here we see Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating getting up on his hind legs and calling out Hugh Morgan for being an asshole and a racist asshole, and Keating was wrong about many, many things, but he wasn’t wrong about this.
What I think we can learn from this– broken clocks are right twice a day.
What happened next Morgan kept funding effective climate denial via his guy Ray Evans, and here we are living in the world that Morgan and Evans wanted and created, and it’s a shitty world.
Keating’s Redfern speech, 10 December 1992.
xxx
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
xx
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
October 14, 1974 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor is warned about carbon dioxide build-up.
October 14, 1977 – a UNESCO education conference mentions climate change…
October 14, 1980 – Barry Commoner’s “bullshit” advert…