– My question is directed to either the Minister for Science or the Minister representing the Minister for National Resources. I ask whether the Minister is aware that the solar energy report of the Senate Standing Committee on National Resources states:
There is no Australian energy policy and in the absence of any central direction to co-ordinate a search for alternatives, the complacency that currently exists will continue.
Is the Minister aware also that the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Thomas, endorsed at least the first part of that statement this morning on the radio program AM? Does the Minister agree with that proposition? If not, is he able to indicate what is the energy policy of the Government?
Senator WITHERS:
WESTERN AUSTRALIA · LP
-I shall take this question as I think it properly belongs in the area of responsibility of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for National Resources. I have not had the advantage of reading the report put down in the Senate yesterday by my friend and colleague, Senator Thomas. Therefore, I think it would be unfortunate if, not having read the report, I were to make any comment on it. However, as the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate has drawn my attention to it, I shall look at it and certainly shall draw the honourable senator’s comments to the attention of my colleague in the other place . https://historichansard.net/senate/1977/19770505_senate_30_s73/#subdebate-3-0
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 334ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that there had been interest in solar energy, especially in the aftermath of the first oil shock, ‘73-74 but that with the return of a Liberal National Government, some of that enthusiasm melted away.
The specific context was that there were lots of attempts at energy investigations and so on. (What’s interesting here is that thanks to what’s being said in Parliament, you can learn what is and isn’t being said on the radio, and to a lesser extent, the television and TV and radio are much harder things to research than newspapers.)
What I think we can learn from this is that when you have plentiful supplies of coal, investigating solar seems stupid and unfriendly to the incumbents, and people who are unfriendly to the incumbents tend not to prosper in our political systems.
What happened next. Solar energy advocates kept banging on, largely ignored. There was a petition in late ‘77. Solar only really took off in the 2010s onwards.
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.
I went to a student meeting. I am not a student. It was excruciating, obvs. Not because they were students, but because it could have been so much better but wasn’t, for the usual reasons. We are so doomed.
There’s a scene in George Orwell’s masterpiece (imo, ymmv) Animal Farm. The animals – the chickens, cows, Boxer etc, have just received such a face slap that they can no longer lie to themselves about what has happened to “their” Farm and their beloved Revolution. They can no longer pretend to themselves that they have not exchanged the drunken boot of Mr Jones for the trotter and paws of the pigs and the dogs. They walk down to a meadow and they start to sing what was the revolutionary song, Beasts of England. This below is a very long quote, but I put it in because it captures what Orwell was aiming at so beautifully, and it is worth your time.
The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking. The knoll where they were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside. Most of Animal Farm was within their view–the long pasture stretching down to the main road, the hayfield, the spinney, the drinking pool, the ploughed fields where the young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with the smoke curling from the chimneys. It was a clear spring evening. The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the farm–and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property–appeared to the animals so desirable a place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major’s speech. Instead–she did not know why–they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled. It was not for this that they had built the windmill and faced the bullets of Jones’s gun. Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.
At last, feeling this to be in some way a substitute for the words she was unable to find, she began to sing Beasts of England. The other animals sitting round her took it up, and they sang it three times over–very tunefully, but slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before.
They had just finished singing it for the third time when Squealer, attended by two dogs, approached them with the air of having something important to say. He announced that, by a special decree of Comrade Napoleon, Beasts of England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.
The animals were taken aback.
“Why?” cried Muriel.
“It’s no longer needed, comrade,” said Squealer stiffly. “Beasts of England was the song of the Rebellion. But the Rebellion is now completed. The execution of the traitors this afternoon was the final act. The enemy both external and internal has been defeated. In Beasts of England we expressed our longing for a better society in days to come. But that society has now been established. Clearly this song has no longer any purpose.”
Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of “Four legs good, two legs bad,” which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion.
So Beasts of England was heard no more.
[end of chapter 7, since you ask].
I think about that scene a lot, whenever I attend (okay, hate-attend) meetings of groups that say they are undertaking the difficult task of unfucking the world. Last night I thought about that scene a lot. “What’s my scene?” as the Hoodoo Gurus used to sing (probably still do?)
”I’m a betting man, but it’s getting damn lonely…”
The meeting started late. While we waited there was no invocation to “turn to someone you don’t know (well) – firm allies once didn’t know each other once, and we need to thicken the webs of loose (and close) ties, because you may have skills and resources that someone else could really use.” Or something warmer. Who cares. Something. Anything.
There was no gentle way to bring silence and commence the meeting. What happened to the chair raising their arms above their head and then other people following? XR used to do that and it was good – far better than tentative and then-more forceful/desperate announcements/shouts, which is what we got.
There was no gentle welcome, asking us to centre ourselves, to think about our responsibilities to make a better movement, and the opportunities the meeting held for that. Instead we were told things we knew, with jargon that would almost certainly alienate a ‘newbie’. Then we had two Zoom connections from interstate. These were mercifully not as long as anticipated, but neither were they in any way surprising. What was astonishing (to me – I am clearly old and out of touch) was that people responded to a guy on zoom who wanted them to repeat the second half of a (carefully chosen to avoid further legal imbroglios) chant. I did not know that was a thing, and – to quote another song – “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”
He left us with the hope that he would see us at a ‘big mobilisation in the future.’ Everyone’s happy place, I guess.
Then – and this still staggers me – it was over to ‘debating’ two motions to some upcoming student congress or conference basically ‘demanding’ (yeah, good luck with that) the Australian Government do x or y that they were plainly, obviously, never going to do. So, we were to debate things that
Nobody in the room was likely to have any disagreement with (certainly not one they show in public)
Were never going to be enacted.
And this is how you build an empowered, strategic and competent movement. Oh yes.
So, the speeches to the motion (nobody was asked to specify if they were speaking for or against – it was clear, man, that everyone was, you know, in favour) were all pure Dave Spart. As I said to a friend this morning, I had the fleeting thought that I was in some incredibly elaborate social psychology experiment where everyone else in the room was in on the gig – that this was playacting those scenes in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea you know, like, debate important motions about the Roman, you know, Empire, man. There were, perhaps, people with clipboards and stop watches waiting to see how long I could stick it out (as per that early-ish episode of the TV show Community).
But no, it was all on the up and up. “build a movement”, “class politics” “expose it as a system” “full on orwellian um censorship.” “It’ really important, you know, strength of this movement”
It was mildly interesting that the entire first motion got ‘debated’ with only men delivering their pearls of wisdom. [Audience demographics – 50 people present, 45 under the age of 25, I’d guess. Male/female roughly 50/50. Overwhelmingly white] I wondered how long this would continue- the whole meeting? But then in motion 2 some women piped up. Matters did not improve. Who knew that women could be just as jargon-y and dreary as the menfolk? It’s almost as if it’s the human condition.
We’re so toast. As per Frank Turner
Well it was bad enough the feeling, on the first time it hit,
When you realised that your parents had let the world all go to shit,
And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died
Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside.
But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left,
And got let down again by some poor excuse for protest –
By idiot fucking hippies in fifty different factions
Who are locked inside some kind of Sixties battle re-enactment.
So I hung up my banner in disgust and I head for the door.
Have a gentle way of starting, of centering people.
Design the meeting not around (non)violent agreement with two shitty motions (lobbying the Labor government is no more ‘radical’ than lobbying the Labor Party, my Dave Spartolescent friend) but around a set of questions that can be answered by a mix of on-paper answers (means good ideas don’t get discarded because they come from Miss Triggs) and small group discussions) around
What are we doing that we need to do we need to more of and what skills/knowledge/relationships do we lack to do that?
What are we NOT doing that would be good to do that we are not doing because we lack skills/knowledge/relationships – where do we get those?
What are we doing that feels good, but actually doesn’t contribute to the likely success (or slower failure) of “our “movement” (‘man’) to like, you know, bring down, you know, the capitalist imperialist, you know, system, man.”
Shoot me. Shoot me now. NOW, dammit.
There is no hope
It won’t be done differently. We lack the absorptive capacity, the impetus to develop that. The incentive structures are all wrong.
These meetings are about managing our despair, about knowing that the pigs and their dogs have won, and that all we can do is soothe-sing to ourselves and each other. We sing Beasts of England. Some of the lyrics get banned, but the song remains the same.
We will never put ourselves under any pressure to innovate, because there is a stable system for the gaining of activist credibility tokens, and why upset it?
Meanwhile, the bodies pile up and the emissions pile up. I wonder what those in the majority world, on the receiving end of the slow violence and fast violence dished out by the Empire and its proxies would think of events like the one I went to last night. Nothing printable. “Building a movement” my very fat arse. No more hate-attending for me, methinks.
Twenty five years ago, on this day, May 3rd, 2001,
The executive director of the GCP said in a Senate estimates hearing on May 3, 2001 that only one in 10 companies had met their emission reduction targets. (See also Report of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee, “The Heat Is On: Australia’s Greenhouse Future”, chapter 8.)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Australian political elites had been made aware of climate change as a threat in the 1970s; you had the Australian Academy for the Advancement of Science, Australian Academy of Science Symposium in September of 1980 you had the monograph that came out of that on the CO2 problem. You had the Office of National Assessments report. And, of course, from 1987 onwards, you had the CSIRO etc, banging the drum. Oh, you’d also had the Australian Environment Council, in 1986
Business had defeated a couple of proposals to put a price on carbon dioxide, (which is the only language they understand), first during the ESD ecologically sustainable development process, and then in 1994-95 they had defeated the carbon tax, and instead the Keating government had created a worse-than-useless “greenhouse challenge” voluntary scheme.
The specific context was that the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had come out, and George W Bush had pulled the US out of negotiating the Kyoto Protocol. It was pretty clear that if Howard were to win the upcoming election, he would do the same, whereas Labor would ratify.
What I think we can learn from this. This talk of “waking up” or “being woken up” has been going on for so long, and we prefer to be asleep.. And here we learn that, of the companies that had set emissions reductions targets, which was not all of them, by any means, only one in 10 were hitting those targets. So an adult government that gave a shit about more than its own comfort and power would change course. It would say, “we’ve tried the voluntary approach, it didn’t work,” and would legislate. That is, of course, reader, not what happened, and John Howard and his gang of fuckwits have condemned us all to hell.
What happened next. The Greenhouse Challenge was rebooted with very similar effects and finally basically ignored. There was a fierce battle over a carbon price between 2006 and 2012 and then in 2014 the carbon price was abolished by Tony Abbott, the thug disguised as a prime minister.
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.
Twenty nine years ago, on this day, April 29th, 1997,
“The challenge for Australia on global climate change”, 29-30 April 1997: summary of proceedings
One of those chin-stroking talkfests organised by
National Academies Forum, Australian Academy of Science, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Australian Academy of the Humanities, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Australian Academy of Science, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Australian Academy of the Humanities, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 1997.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 364ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Australian political elite had been warned about carbon dioxide through the 70s and 80s, and had chosen to ignore it until it couldn’t really be ignored any more, in ‘88. After an initial signal of willingness to be proactive and constructive, they had fairly quickly retreated into the asshole position that they hold today.
In 1995 they had grudgingly signed on to the Berlin mandate – meaning they would come to the third COP (in 1997) with some plan for emissions reductions, and then had decided that they were not going to do that under new Prime Minister, John Howard. And most of 1997 was taken up with the Howard Government, sending diplomats around the place to try and get “differentiation” (an exemption for Australia).
Anyway, these sorts of conferences and seminars and events were happening because middle class people and so-called intellectuals want to believe that they are contributing to the betterment of the species and of its future. This is how they sleep at night, because having to admit that they were passengers on a train straight to hell would offend their amour-propre.
The specific context was that it was obvious that the Prime Minister (John Howard) was scientifically illiterate and a climate denier who was doing everything he could (which was a lot) to fuck shit up (to use a technical term). “Awks” as the kids used to say.
What I think we can learn from this is that we’ve been doing yakkety yak on climate for a very long time, and we will continue to do yakkety yak.
What happened next: Australia got an insanely generous deal at the Kyoto conference, an emissions reduction quote, in quotes of 108% actually closer to 130 once you took into account the land clearing clause, the emissions kept climbing. Australia’s fossil fuel exports kept climbing. The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 kept climbing. And after a certain delay, the despair and the fear of people who can read the Keeling Curve began climbing as well.
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.
Forty eight years ago, on this day, April 26th, 1978 – Australian carbon dioxide measurements from a ground based station at Cape Grim begin.
Tanks were immersed in liquid nitrogen to condense the air (Fig. 7), under ‘baseline’ conditions (strong onshore winds) in these 35 L stainless steel tanks, commencing mid 1978. The first tank filled was CG260478, CG reflecting its Cape Grim origin, filled 26 April 1978, and remains intact in the Air Archive at Aspendale today
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that accurate measures of CO2 in the atmosphere had begun in 1958 with Charles Keeling as part of the International Geophysical Year, Roger Revelle had managed to carve out some money. (We now know that Keeling had done CO2 measurement for the oil companies in 1954 thanks to the work of Rebecca John,)
The specific context was that Australian measurements of CO2 had begun in the early 1970s – they were initially from equipment attached to aeroplanes, TAA, commercial flights. However, something more permanent was required. So we should remember as well that from September of ‘77 there was an increase in awareness of the CSIRO scientists around atmospheric pollution by carbon dioxide.
What I think we can learn from this is that we knew plenty.
What happened next: Cape Grim is still measuring CO2 to this day. There was a conference on Philip Island in December 1978. There was a CSIRO symposium in Canberra in 1986, which got coverage in the Canberra Times. In 1986 the greenhouse project stuff started kicking in.
So where will the files for the commission for the future be and the greenhouse project and so forth? That would be quite. A good National Archives of Australia, find
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.
Over thirty people gathered on Monday night to hear from four highly-engaged (1) and deeply knowledgeable speakers on the question of what is being done/can be done on biodiversity in Adelaide in the era of accelerating climate change.
The event was organized (very capably indeed) by Unley Voices for Climate Action.
After a brief welcome to country (2) and scene-setting, four speakers each had fifteen minutes to explain what is going on.
The first three were from Green Adelaide, a state government created and funded body which is “working towards a cooler, greener, wilder and climate-resilient Adelaide that celebrates our unique culture.”
They were
Sarah White, Regional Data Officer for Green Adelaide
They were followed by Di Salvi, the lead Climate and Sustainability officer from Unley Council, who gave an overview of what has been done/is planned locally.
(I took copious notes, but have doubtless got things wrong/mangled them, and will update accordingly).
Ms White kicked things off with a numbers-heavy (because numbers is what she does!) presentation that highlighted the work that has been undertaken to map – down to a house level, where the trees are, what they are, and what benefits accrue (especially in terms of their cooling effect).
In the brief Q&A for her talk she expanded on this – the Green Adelaide survey also captures the understory coverage (which is particularly important for biodiversity).
She was asked how frequently the surveys were done. The work is very resource intensive, and – if I got this right – it has been at four year intervals, with another survey just completed.
Dr Sheryn Pitman delved more into the overall strategies underlying the Green Adelaide effort, including the recently announced Urban Greening Strategy.
Tree coverage varies widely in the 17 (or 18, depending on how you count) areas covered by Green Adelaide (the Adelaide Hills is not included), from 1.7percent in Seaford to 52% in Waterfall Gully. There’s a target for 30% across the whole metropolitan area, but of course, they also have to look at species diversity for “future proofing” against disease etc (see my question at the end).
In the Q&A the thorny question of what actual powers Green Adelaide has at its disposal was raised, but deferred (see further down the blog post)…
The third presentation, from Nat Giffney, brought it to the nuts and bolts of what is being done and can be done by individuals and communities. Reflecting on the point that Adelaide was – before the settlers turned up – a particular biodiversity hotspot, with grassland, heathland, wetlands etc etc, Giffney said that “we need to use every little parcel of land. The starting (but not finishing) question was “what once grew where you live?” She explained that the Green Adelaide website allows you to find out, but typing in “native plants.”
She pointed out that tree hollows, useful for possums and birds, take a very very long time to form, and bigged up the work of volunteers who spend many hours removing agapanthus, which overtakes native species.
[Such is the history of introduced species – at this point I was put in mind of the wonderful concept of “biological cringe”, developed by environmental historian Tom Griffiths] See also here.
Biodiversity is, though we often fail to see it, is essential for the health of well, everything, and the ability to ‘bounce back’ (or to a different state) following floods, droughts etc. [see also though, ‘the great simplification’ and the Sixth Extinction].
So, we need plants at different heights and densities, lizard lounges, frog bogs and all the rest of it. The final plea was to make sure that bird baths are out of reach of predators, and cleaned regularly.
Right, before we continue with the rest of the report, a request. If you are reading this, there is a non-trivial chance you were living in Adelaide in the 1970s, and active on environmental matters. If so – and especially if you were involved in the campaign to get a deposit scheme going for beverage containers – I would like to interview you. ALSO, if anyone knows anything about M. Allen of Malvern, who wrote this letter to the Advertiser, published on December 14 1973, please get in touch.
Sir – One reads (“Advertiser,” 11/12/73) of the Australian Government’s interest in entering the car manufacturing industry of the Miners’ Federation move towards development of a national trade union policy to conserve energy resources, of the prediction of the British National Development Council that the energy crisis will probably halve the growth of world trade and the fear of the Member for Angas (Mr. Giles) that future petroleum shortages may affect all of us as private individuals and the business community.
What none of these individuals or groups gives any consideration to is the fact that our past rapacious use of fossil fuels, both in industry and in the motor car, may well bring about changes in climate far more catastrophic to our way of life than shortage of fuel.
While conservation of energy resources is commendable, what is urgently needed is a complete reappraisal of our values and priorities and a thorough investigation of the long-term consequences of our actions in both the private and industrial sectors.
M. Allen
Malvern
Now, back to the report!!
Speaking last, Di Salvi of Unley Council had the hardest job – keeping the attention of the audience after a solid 50 minutes of very dense information. She managed it with aplomb, telling a compelling story about the Council’s efforts in creating more tree cover and wildlife cover (full disclosure, my late father, Mike Hudson, was a Councillor for many years, with an interest in ‘pocket parks’ before they were sexy).
Thermal sensors are available via the Unley Library catalogue, so you can take an inventory of your house and garden.
The Council did a “tree voucher lottery” skewed towards areas in Unley with less foliage, and this appears to have been a success, with fruit trees being particularly popular, and most of those planted still alive.
There are, of course, challenges
A micro-break to stretch legs and recombobulate from the large amount of information received was followed by a short and sweet Q and A.
The first question was “more of a comment” but – gasp, a short and pertinent one (it didn’t come from a man) – it was about the importance of night lighting and not making life hell for nocturnal creatures. The happy news is that not only is there a webinar on this (the webinar series “will beat Netflix”) but when Unley Council was replacing some lighting recently, they made sure the new stuff was wildlife friendly.
The second question was from me – I asked if thought had been given to the speed of climate change and what trees etc will survive the temperatures we are likely to be seeing in the year 2050 (which is only just around the corner). Pleasingly, the answer was an emphatic yes.
“Are there priority species?” asked someone. Well, that’s complicated, because of course there is no one size fits all plan for such a wide variety of habitats.
The question of what actual power Green Adelaide had to enforce, rather than cajole, came up, and was fairly deftly dealt with (no legislative or budgetary power, but the kind of ‘soft power’ – data dependent – that can make some meaningful changes.) Until we institute the green eco-utopian government, that’s probably the best we can get? (as distinct from hope and plan for).
“What is being done about fake lawns?” asked someone. It turns out that some councils have banned them, and Sarah White pointed out that the data that Green Adelaide is able to provide about the cooling function of real lawns helps policymakers see the light.
An expert on climate extremes suggested that Green Adelaide run an educational campaign to inform people that the time to water their gardens is BEFORE the heatwave starts (once it has started your efforts will be pretty futile) and this was received with great enthusiasm by the Green Adelaide representatives.
And then, very shortly after 9pm, the event was brought to a close. Nicely done!
Dates for your diary
Btw – You can email the Unley folks on – uvforca@gmail.com
May 3rd GreyBox Day
May 18 – next meeting of the Unley for Climate Action crew.
Possibly June 1st for “virtual powerplants” meeting (about batteries alongside solar panels, and feeding back into the grid).
Random reflections
The event was urgently needed, for me at least. I needed something to restore my faith in “activism” – in the idea that people could put on an event that started on time, did what it said it would do and was generally efficiently and effectively run. (I won’t link to my rant about last Friday, but you can find it if you look)
What would I change? Very very little. Perhaps a ‘turn to a person you don’t know’ at the outset, and a ‘clap clinic’ style device for keeping people to time. If the speeches could have been recorded, that would be great for people who couldn’t attend (but this is labour intensive and the game may not be worth the candle!). These are quibbles. It was a fine event, and lovely to see an all-female panel for once (fanel as opposed to manel?)
Footnotes
(1) I would encourage everyone – but especially men writing about women – to avoid the word “passionate”. It is far too often code for “emotional/over-invested/unreliable” with shades of “hysterical.” See also Malcolm X and the use of the word “articulate.” (And Chris Rock, for that matter).
(2) It was a nice touch to flag that first nations people are reclaiming their language and fire practices and that “for 190 years they’ve put up with colonization.”
Update April 22.
Here are some links kindly sent through by the Green Adelaide folks
Green Adelaide Webinar recordings: Webinar – YouTube (this is where people can access ‘The colour of the night: wildlife sensitive lighting’, along with a lot of other topics).
It comes down to what your definition of “movement” is.
If you believe, as Adam Bandt and his colleagues seem to, that a movement is a bunch of people from a Big Organisation, jetting in from their HQ and standing on a stage, offering “hope,” authenticity and validation to ranks of people who are sat mutely in rows, wanting their (begging) bowls filled up, then Friday was another success in a long line of successes.
If you believe, as I and a few (many?) other people do, that a movement is made up of individuals, small groups, large groups, pulling mostly in the same direction, as frenemies, helping each other out, learning from each other, sharing ideas and resources, then Friday night was another catastrophic shit-show/missed opportunity in a world that can’t afford any more missed opportunities.
That’s it. That’s the post.
Read on at your peril.
First let”s say the good stuff (because one of the standard response-but-not-replies is that I “never say anything positive” (1)
The event, at the Jam Factory on North Terrace, had a fair number (150? 175?) of people present (certainly slightly more than at Thursday’s rally).
Most of those people (but not all) seemed to enjoy themselves, and get what they wanted (or at least expected?)
They heard from some voices that are too rarely platformed (i.e. First Nations people)
Er…
That’s it
Not much, is it? And absolutely not enough. It wasn’t enough forty years ago and it most definitely is not enough now.
Here’s what happened, from my perspective. On Thursday, there’d been a rally. It was held under time and place constraints. Here, on Friday, the organisers had more space and time to show what they could do.
There were people at the door to check that everyone had RSVPed, that their name was On The List. This felt a little bit “off”, and I almost decided to test the idea that I wouldn’t be able to get in without giving a name and email. But then they found me on one of their sheets of paper (we will come back to this).
The event was billed to start at 5pm but it was quarter past when we were called to order (we will come back to this). People were mostly sat on the chairs, talking to people they knew. There were empty seats, but also people standing at the back and the side. Perhaps 150 people?
The event started with a lovely coming-onto-the-stage led by Uncle Jack and his fellow panellists, and a welcome to country. After that, I gotta write, it was mostly downhill.
Kirsty Bevan of the Conservation Council of South Australia got things under way. The transcript could be submitted to the “I” column of UK satirical publication Private Eye. She also said that us gathering there in the evening was an “action”? Really? Are we emptying the term “action” so far as to include these sorts of meetings? A rally outside an AGM would, in some people’s minds, be a borderline example of an ‘action’, but a meeting counts as an action now? If the rest of the event had been good, I wouldn’t be “nit-picking” (2), but it wasn’t.
The standard line appears to be that the Santos business model is causing climate change. This is indisputable, but the question is then, how do we stop it? (3)
Next up, Adam Bandt, formerly a Greens MP. – “together we are going to build a movement.” Again, it comes down to what you think a movement is. In my view there was basically no “movement-building” going on.
Bandt also flipped through the stump speech memes he had deployed at the rally. “Governments don’t go to war over the sun and wind…”) “There’s more of us than there are of them.” And then, cringe, “Remember the Franklin Dam campaign.” Well, about half the audience were 60 or more, and CAN remember it (it culminated in a 1983 High Court decision saying that the Hawke Federal government DID in fact have the power to over-rule the Tasmanian government on the question of a hydro-electric dam). But maybe the example of a ‘victory’ you are pointing to is … (checks notes) … FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO then maybe – just maybe – you’re doing something wrong?
Bandt then held out the promise of the audience being able to “take a couple of actions” and that he would tell people what they were (we will come back to this).
Then, the bombshell.
Bandt quickly and casually announced that the event – which had been advertised as a Q&A would not, in fact, have q and a, because there wasn’t enough time
This was astonishing, and absolutely – in my opinion – deadly for the credibility of ACF and CCSA as campaigning organisations.
They had advertised it as such. They had the venue for two hours. They started fifteen minutes late for no apparent reason. Nothing was stopping them holding the advertised Q&A.
This was a brazen bait-and-switch
Either they never intended to do a Q&A, or they did but some OTHER reason stopped them and they were too scared/embarrassed to say what that was. So they came out with the “lack of time” excuse instead and relied on everyone being too polite to make a big deal of this.
Why am I making a big deal of this?
Because “we” are supposed to be better than the lying conniving exploitative extractive assholes who are trashing the planet
“We” are supposed to be honest, competent etc
Either they never intended to do it, or “something came up.” I am not sure which is worse. It simply cannot have been a lack of time. That is a brazen lie and it is shameful that Bandt had such a low opinion of the audience that he thought it would fly. The only thing more shameful is that the audience went along with this. So much for their self-respect.
Then followed the speeches from the First Nations representatives, which almost redeemed the whole sorry show. Almost, but not quite.
For me, the key call was from Kara Kinchella. “We have to do better than we’re doing.”
Quite.
But on the evidence of this awful event, which was pure ego-fodder, we are NOT doing better, and we seem not to know or care.
Bandt then did a “conversation” style thing with the three speakers, making sure to interject favoured campaign factoids (Santos has had sales of $47bn over the last ten years, and paid zero company tax.”
At just after six pm (with the venue available for another hour!) Krsty Bevan drew the formal event to a close. Almost. There was still time for Bandt to claim that there were “a few hundred of us here tonight” (nope). And that we should all sign a petition and saying “I look forward to seeing you at the next rally.”
It was (to me) fascinating that the impending (mid-May) Australian Energy Providers annual conference was NOT mentioned. Could it be that ACF and the CCSA are afraid of bad publicity because of those “bomb-throwers” of Extinction Rebellion?
The final, inevitable, invocation was to stay, listen to some music and buy a beer “talk to each other” – having done precisely nothing to design the meeting around making it easier for people who came not knowing anyone to talk to strangers.
Some people did stick around, but I was not the only one heading for the door. And at the tram stop I met someone who’d been at the same event and we compared notes, agreeing that it had been intensely top-down, designed it seemed to us mostly about gratifying the egos of the comperes (this is distinct from the panellists) and harvesting contact data for future use.
I will write again about all this, but I have a couple of (well, four) closing thoughts to share.
First, there was a kind of ‘love-bombing’ going on (so much so that it gave me flashbacks to a late 1980s ‘Festival of Light’ meeting I went to(4). Repeated effusive (fulsome, in the original sense) thanks for attending, but without any attempt to say thank you in a meaningful way (i.e. by enabling people to form or strengthen the kind of weak ties (as per Granovetter) that make a movement.
Second – some of those people present – especially ones who are already plugged into networks – DID have a good time, did have a kind of bonding/re-charging of their batteries. But so what? that’s not enough, and certainly not enough compared to what could have been done. It all has a vibe of the animals singing Beasts of England to soothe themselves after the latest evidence of their defeat at the hands of the pigs and the dogs. (That’s an Animal Farm reference)
Third – if people who attended are turned into ego-fodder, if they leave without new connections, new ideas, then whatever hopium the organisers have ‘inserted’ into them fades and they have to come back for more, or they just to give up.
Fourth – there is an irony in all this. We (the good people) are opposed to Evil Organisations who disregard the skills and lived experiences of local people, who see those people only as in the way or simply usable as resources. But when the same dynamic – top down, extractive, is used by nominally different campaigning organisations, we are so colonised, so desperate to believe in a Brighter Future, that we don’t even see the dynamic.
So what happened and why does it keep happening?
So why did I write this?
For the shiggles. Because a couple of people said they were curious. Because I am not writing enough.
What response do I expect?
For the most part, absolute silence.
For the next part, indifference, derision and ad hominems.
For the next smallest part, willful incomprehension and counter-“attacks” that set up various strawmen and knock them down.
There is a limit to how much ‘defensive writing’ you can do, in order to try to maintain a conversation with people who are – in my experience – absolutely determined NOT to have a conversation about these issues (namely the ongoing failures of ‘big’ green organisations). The more you try to anticipate their responses (again, not replies) and neutralise them, the more time and energy you waste, the more reader(s?)-bandwidth you take up, the more you allow low-rent people to live rent-free in your head. And for what? So, foregrounding the ‘good’ stuff (which ain’t that good) is my only conscious attempt to frame this in ways ‘acceptable’ to the ‘right’ people. They’re not reading, and if they’re reading they’re not taking it in, and if they’re taking it in then they’ve not been doing anything, and will continue not to. What was that about ‘rent-free”? Sigh.
Words matter. And they reveal how we conceptualise the world, and our actions. Gathering for a meeting as “action” my very fat arse.
Also, if you’re doing housekeeping, perhaps actually ask someone from the venue where the toilets are?
Thirty three years ago, on this day, April 17th, 1993,
The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, and the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, Simon Crean, have denied knowledge of alleged Treasury proposals for a $1.9 billion energy tax.
Mr Crean rejected reports in The Weekend Australian and The Age on Saturday [17 April] which suggested that a tax on the energy content or fuels and possibly carbon emissions, being discussed by Treasury and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, had drawn on studies by the Department of Primary Industries and Energy.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2026 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the anti-greenhouse action forces had won famous victories in 1991 and 1992, watering down the National Greenhouse Response Strategy and the Ecologically Sustainable Development process to derisory levels. However, they knew that, because of international ratification of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the battle would not be going away…
The Business Council of Australia and others were paying very close attention to what was happening in the United States under Bill Clinton and the BTU tax, and also what was happening and Europe, where carbon tax had been defeated there.
I don’t know who leaked what to force Keating and Crean into this public statement, but the obvious question is cui bono? And a leak like this, feeding a story to tame journalists (there is rarely another kind sadly) means that you get to fire a shot across the bows of the pro-tax crowd. But of course, suppressing fire, as anyone who’s been in a proper fire fight will tell you, doesn’t really work.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are always games, wheels within wheels, you name it. This is one of them. We learn that 33 years ago, the straightforward, surely uncontroversial proposition that you tax things that are harmful in order to discourage their use and to encourage the creation of alternatives, was beyond the pale (Keating really hated the greenies).
What happened next
Well, there was an environment minister called Ros Kelly. She had to resign. Her replacement was another guy who knew all about the issues, the late Graham Richardson, he had to resign, quit, I forget which. And then Senator John Faulkner came along… And in early 1994 was saying, “Yeah, we might be looking at a carbon tax.”
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.
“Australia is preparing to host a major international meeting of environment ministers to broaden global acceptance of forests as a source of carbon credits.
But the meeting comes at a time when the ability of forests to actually generate these credits is increasingly in scientific doubt.
The High Level Forum on Sinks will be held in Perth from April 17-20.”
Hordern, N. 2000. Australia pushes carbon sinks. The Australian Financial Review, March 3, p.16.
And
Australia is being accused of deliberately “stacking” a conference of international environment ministers in Perth next week in a bid to undermine the global goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The conference, starting on Monday, is about the use of “sinks” or the planting of trees to gain credits, a suggestion under the Kyoto Protocol which could be used to offset countries’ inability to reduce emissions from industry and motor vehicles.
Australia has invited ministers from around the world, but stands accused of inviting only countries sympathetic to its own position on sinks.
Germany and other European countries which are of the view that overuse of sinks could encourage countries not to reduce emissions have been left out.
An Australian Greenhouse Office paper on the conference reveals that only “key members of the European Union”, Finland, France, the UK and The Netherlands, were invited.
Greenpeace’s international policy director, Mr Bill Hare, yesterday accused the Federal Government of stacking the conference. Mr Hare said Tuvalu and other Pacific nations were also not invited, when small Pacific States were likely to be most in danger from sea level rises caused by the greenhouse effect.
Clennel, A. 2000. Greenhouse Gas Conference `stacked’. Sydney Morning Herald, April 15, p.15.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Australia’s political elites had been warned about carbon dioxide build up as a problem, repeatedly, by scientists, by spooks, by journalists, by politicians, and they had ignored it all. They had carved themselves a spectacular deal at the Kyoto conference, and there were a whole load of people who wanted to make money from selling carbon credits, plant a tree in Australia and get paid for doing so by some Japanese or Korean polluter who doesn’t want to cut their own emissions. Ker-ching!
The only fly in that ointment being that for you to be able to engage in carbon trading, your country’s government would have to have ratified Kyoto. Now at this point, it wasn’t clear what would happen, because if the Americans did ratify Kyoto, the pressure on the Australians to do so would be enormous.
And therefore it made sense, in 2000 to be holding these sorts of conferences and pushing these sorts of lines.
A year later, once the Bush administration had pulled out that particular balloon lost all its air. Though, it’s fair to say as well that the so-called Sydney’s Futures Exchange didn’t even last that long.
What I think we can learn from this is that some people dreamed of global carbon trading. Never happened.
What happened next: Bush pulled out of Kyoto. Australia pulled out of Kyoto. Kyoto looked dead. The whole carbon credits thing looked dead. And then in 2004 Russia Duma ratified the Kyoto Protocol, bringing it into force and the whole UNFCCC circus sprang/staggered back into life.
Around 150 people gathered outside the Adelaide Convention Centre to ‘welcome’ delegates to the Annual General Meeting of the oil and gas company Santos. Marc Hudson investigates.
The Adelaide Convention Centre sits on North Terrace. The only thing between it and the South Australian parliament is a railway station. I mention this because in September 1977 there was an election for the right to sit in that parliament. During that election questions of mining, and energy, were high on the agenda.
One party – we will come back to which – had the following as its policy statement on this.
Fast-forward 49 years and Santos, (an acronym for South Australia and Northern Territory Oil Search) the oil and gas company that some say has a disproportionate influence on South Australia’s politics, is holding its Annual General Meeting. Around 200 people gathered for a protest rally organised by a group of environmental and social justice organisations including the Australian Conservation Foundation, Action Aid and the Conservation Council of South Australia.
Under the watchful (and occasionally baleful) eye of plentiful South Australian police, delegates and protestors shared the same escalator up to the entrance of the convention centre.
Four protestors, in mock business suits, were on the pavement at the foot of the escalator.
All held signs and one, Ian, from Extinction Rebellion, chomped on a cigar. He explained the purpose of the protest –
“We’re here because Santos is the biggest company in South Australia. They’re having their AGM today. The shareholders will be here, and they are running programmes, projects around the country and overseas that are impacting the environment, that are impacting and overriding the rights of indigenous people. If anybody stands in front of them, they will take them to court. They’ve constantly taken indigenous people to court, and they keep appealing any decisions they lose. So we’re here to call them out. We’re here to support the First Nations people, but we’re also letting the public know that we believe Santos pays no tax. Hasn’t paid business tax for last 10 years. They pay very little money in donations to the government, and they always get what they want from government.”
(full interview transcript at the foot of this post]
Up the escalator, on the plaza outside the entrance the Convention Centre (the inevitable vast panes of glass – the banal calling card of global corporate architecture), thronged various people with placards and t-shirts bearing blunt messages (not all of them entirely safe for work). Various TV and print journalists scurried around, with police ‘liaison’ officers mingling too. (See InDaily’s report here).
There was a brief welcome to country, delivered first in a First Nations language and then in English – “Because we all family, right? Yeah, happy together. I’m strong like the ground, like the country, and we’re soft like water too. So I bring you all here in the spirit of humanity. That’s my mom’s words.”
The speeches at the rally were necessarily brief, (and there was a telling absence from the line-up, of which more later).
The MC (who did well!) was at pains to get all those present to be aware of – and repeat out loud, twice – the fact that the speakers from today’s rally would be at an event – No New Gas! Q&A with Frontline Traditional Owners and Adam Bandt – Conservation Council SA – tomorrow (Friday 17th April) at the Lion Arts Factory, 68 North Terrace, from 5.00pm, where more detail would be delivered, and more ways to be involved in the various campaigns.
Adam Bandt, formerly a member of parliament for the Australian Greens, and now CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation, kept his remarks brief. Gas, he said, is as dirty as coal (this in response to the messaging – pushed by Santos and many others, that gas is somehow a ‘transition’ fuel). He said that gas was driving the climate crisis and pointed (as did a later speaker) to the algal bloom that is wreaking havoc on the wildlife in the oceans of South Australia (and on the livelihoods of those who rely on fishing, tourism etc). Bandt pointed to the hotter summers and ever more sever heatwaves, to waters sources being under threat. He concluded his remarks by saying that Australia has solar and wind sources that are the envy of other nations, that governments don’t go to war over solar and wind and that Australia should be aiming for energy independence. He also, – and this will not have endeared him to the delegates – proposed healthy taxation of Santos’s profits.
Adam Bandt
Next up was Uncle Jack Green, of the Northern Territory, where he and his kin have been confronting the Mcarthur River Mine. His comments were brief, but compelling. He reminded those present that the mines threaten the water, and that “we live on that water – doesn’t matter who you are, cattle, human, kangaroo.”
The next speaker was Kara Kinchella (sp?), whom I believe (will correct if wrong) of the Gomeroi traditional owners from New South Wales. A coalition of groups, made up of Gomeroi Traditional Owners, NSW Farmers, the Country Women’s Association of NSW, Unions NSW and the Lock the Gate Alliance, have created the Breeza Declaration. (can’t find online, but this is the closest I got)
Her takeaway message – “we need to get angry, before it’s too late.”
The penultimate speaker (it was clear that the event had started late, and the rally would therefore be somewhat truncated) was Joseph, from Papua New Guinea, where both Santos and the French company Total have operations. Total has managed to get permission – and here Jospeh quoted from a newspaper article ‘to discharge waste into the environment’. As he pointed out, the waste kills the fish, the prawns and poisons the land – this is a human rights abuse issue. He got a full-throated cheer from the crowd for his suggestion that “if it’s safe, take all the waste and dump it in Paris, at the Eiffel Tower.” He closed saying “Santos, you are responsible, don’t do this.”
There was a short break for a group photo, and to send the various delegates into the AGM to ask their questions. The final speaker was Kirsty Bevan, of the Conservation Council of South Australia.
She said she is often asked “why South Australia?” (with, I think, the implication in the question being that SA is a backwater and people here have the luxury of thinking that nothing they do matters) She said that she always replies that Santos has its HQ here, but also, beyond this, there problem is not one for the future but rather one of the
“crises that we’re seeing play out in front of us. It’s not a future problem, it’s a now problem, and we’re seeing extreme weather events. Our surface water temperatures in the ocean have risen by 2.5 degrees, well above the normal, which is what has resulted in the algal bloom, which we’re entering our second year.” (you can read the full transcript at the foot of this post.)
Earlier I alluded to a missing speaker. So, who was absent from the line-up? Well, this is NOT a criticism of the organisers, merely a reflection of the reality we live in – where were the union figures willing and able to speak out on the dangers of continued extraction of oil, coal and gas? There have always been tensions – sometimes managed well, sometimes not – between organised labour and environmental movements. There have been Green Bans, environmentally-inspired pushes for Full Employment, dreams of a “Green Gold Rush” around “green jobs” and climate jobs” (something Australian Conservation Foundation pushed in the early 1990s and late 2000s respectively – the second time with the peak body for Australian Trades Unions). But today, for whatever reason, no union rep was to be heard.
In 1977 Australia was in the midst of a debate about uranium mining and the export of uranium to countries with nuclear reactors. There was then (as there is now) talk of nuclear power for Australia. Which party had that manifesto commitment? It wasn’t the Greens – they would not exist until the early 1990s, brought into existence from one-betrayal-too-many from the Australian Labor Party. It wasn’t Labor. It wasn’t the Liberals (though there were Liberal figures pushing for renewables research and development.) Reader, it was the National Country Party, now known as the Nationals.
In 1977 the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at roughly 333 parts per million. Carbon dioxide traps heat on the earth’s surface. The more there is in the air, the more heat is trapped. Today, in 2026, the CO2 levels are at almost 100ppm above that – 430ppm. They are climbing faster and faster each year. More heat is trapped. More consequences for our past inaction – stretching back long before 1977 – pile up for present and future generations.
My two cents: There really is only so much you can do to innovate with the format of a rally like this, especially when time is tight. Tomorrow afternoon, at the Lion Arts Theatre, it will be easier to see if there is the kind of innovation in how activists hold events that is desperately required. Watch this space.
Transcript of interview with Extinction Rebellion person.
Marc – It’s 16th of April, 2026, I’m outside the Convention Centre. I’m talking to two men in business suits “representing” Santos. One of them has a cigar, as per photo. You’re from extinction rebellion. Why are you here today?
Ian – We’re here because Santos is the biggest company in South Australia. They’re having their AGM today. The shareholders will be here, and they are running programmes, projects around the country and overseas that are impacting the environment, that are impacting and overriding the rights of indigenous people. If anybody stands in front of them, they will take them to court. They’ve constantly taken indigenous people to court, and they keep appealing any decisions they lose. So we’re here to call them out. We’re here to support the First Nations people, but we’re also letting the public know that we believe Santos pays no tax. Hasn’t paid business tax for last 10 years. They pay very little money in donations to the government, and they always get what they want from government.
Marc – And what next for after today? How does the campaign against what Santos is doing continue?
Ian – Okay, in May, we have the Australian Energy Producers conference here in Adelaide that is the lobby group for the oil and gas industry in Australia. All the CEOs will be here, and government ministers will be here. They’ll be here for four days. So we’ll be here to disrupt them.
Marc – I seem to recall, at the last AEP meeting in Adelaide two or three years ago, there were protests that ended up with the Malinauskus government changing the laws. Any comment?
Ian -We’ll do whatever we have to do. We’ll keep doing it because they are not changing. The government is going down the path that Santos tells them to go down, and we’ll keep resisting.
Transcript of rest of Kirsty Bevan speech
It is so important that South Australians stand up and declare that we are not responsible for the climate crisis. As individuals, there are organisations and there are companies who are contributing every day to an accelerated changing climate, whether they’re digging that gas out of the ground which releases greenhouse gases, whether they’re burning it to turn it into liquid gas to export it overseas, they are releasing greenhouse gases which are all contributing to the climate crisis. This part is not under question.
So what do we do? We get them to pay, not the South Australian public. We get them to play for the crisis that’s resulting and our algal bloom, which the report we did at the Conservation Council, we submitted a report that showed that in the first 12 months conservatively, the economic impact of the bloom was around 250 million that’s a quarter of a billion dollars. And who bears the cost of that? We do.
Our role here in South Australia is so important, and we need two fronts at the federal level. We need to show that we are united and that they have a strong voice, that the federal government needs to stop any future expansions of gas and in South Australia, we need to make a firm stand to say that Santos is not a household name. We need to stop promoting Santos at our climate friendly events like the Tour Down Under. We need to stop promoting Santos in our universities and on public land, and we need to stand together to show that we won’t stand for it.
And the government needs to make a change. You can all join up to the Conservation Council’s programme. There’s some people around with their placards out, their hands up, come sign your name, be a part. Showing up to these events is what makes it really matter. But we will continue to hold the government to account. And I thank every single person here today for coming out. Thank you”
