Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 31st, 2007 the Australian ‘Shergold Report’ was released:
The Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading releases the ‘Shergold Report’ which recommends Australia develop an emissions trading scheme.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Australian political elites had been warned repeatedly about climate change from the late 1970s onwards. The Howard government from 1996 had chosen to resist any and all domestic and international action on climate that would either inconvenience rich people and fossil fuel companies or even potentially lead to their inconvenience at some point in the future. So, for example, Howard resisted all calls to ratify the Kyoto Protocol even though it would mean nothing substantive, because the next deal might and once you’ve given in on one thing, you have to give in on the next, or it’s easier for you to be forced not to give.
The specific context was that in September, October of 2006 public awareness of concern about climate change spiked because of the Millennium drought, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, (he visited Australia) and a bunch of other factors. Howard’s resistance to climate change action or even the investigation of it became untenable, and so Howard did what any politician will do. He appointed a band, a panel led by a reliable civil servant, Peter Shergold. The panel was, of course, stacked with the usual suspects, fossil fuel hacks and CEOs and so forth, and didn’t have scientists or civil society people who would ask awkward questions. And Howard’s plan, I think, was for the Shergold report to be a fig leaf behind which he could hide ahead of the upcoming Federal election. He wanted to be able to use to wave the Shergold report around to show that he was willing to do something on climate change, or to countenance doing something on climate change, and so neutralise one of the rhetorical weapons that the Labour opposition leader Kevin Rudd had in his armoury,
What I think we can learn from this. that you can’t really understand the provenance and purpose of so-called “fact-finding” reports without understanding the politics and the motivations behind it.
What happened next. The Shergold report did not function as Howard hoped it would, and Howard was on a hiding to nothing, because people wanted actual action on climate change, and they thought that Kevin Rudd would deliver, or they hoped he would – poor deluded fools. See also. Chris Rootes, “first climate election” published in the journal Environmental Politics…
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.
Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 29th, 2007, Australian Prime Minister John Howard plays the “he’s an Englishman” card versus economist Nick Stern…
However, in a Parliamentary debate in May 2007, the Prime Minister suggested the [Stern] review was Eurocentric propaganda. He stated that the report of the Government’s Task Group on Emissions Trading:
… will not be a grab bag of proposals taken holus-bolus from a report written by an Englishman for European conditions and designed to promote the political objectives of the British government. That is what the Stern report is all about. Stern is not the biblical scholar of climate change that is posited by those who sit opposite. Stern has written from the perspective of an Englishman, from the European circumstance and from the European point of view. 73
Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 29 May 2007, 48 (John Howard, Prime Minister).
Macintosh, 2008 page 66-7
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that John Howard, as prime minister, had spent the 10 years from 1996 to 2006 amplifying and extending the previous Keating Labor government’s hostility to climate change action. Howard had painted himself into a corner, and it was understood that he wasn’t going to be able to paint himself out, or leap over the wet paint, or whatever the metaphor might be.
The specific context was that the UK Labour Tony Blair government had asked a World Bank economist called Nick Stern to produce a report on the “economics of climate change.” This was largely to overcome Treasury intransigence on the question of climate policy. The report, the Stern review, was released in late 2006.
It was at this point, not entirely unrelated, that John Howard had had to perform a U-turn and announce the creation of the ‘Shergold Taskforce’, which would look into the economics of emissions trading.
What I think we can learn from this is that even the best politicians – and Howard was a good politician. I do not mean that as a compliment – run out of steam and run out of road, and by this time, Howard had. Now, very rarely does a politician know when to leave the stage. If Howard had announced his retirement in 2006 his legacy, his “reputation”, would have been assured. But they all come to believe their own propaganda. They all come to believe that they are somehow indispensable. So… no one is indispensable.
What happened next.
Here we are 20 years later, at the beginning of the Fafocene. Economics has not saved us. What we needed was more, but we didn’t know how to get it. And the opposition to ‘it’ was extremely deep-seated and almost insurmountable.
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-five years ago, on this day, May 28th, 2001, the ABC reported on the Kyoto Protocol…
The World Today Archive – Monday, 28 May , 2001
Reporter: David Mark
JOHN HIGHFIELD: And now on The World Today let’s go to the third in our series of stories on the global warming crisis. It’s now been established of course that the greenhouse effect is more than just fanciful scientific theory.
In March, scientists in Britain published the first evidence that global warming is happening as a result of the greenhouse gas pollution of our planet. And the impact could be catastrophic unless remedial measures are taken urgently.
The United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted the world’s temperatures could rise by almost six degrees centigrade over the next century leading to the flooding of many island nations, particularly those in the south and western Pacific in our region, as well as climate chaos, including prolonged droughts and violent storms.
Well, two of the world’s worst offenders on a per capita basis when it comes to producing carbon dioxide (CO2) are the United States and Australia of course. And we seem to be stepping away from things and the International Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which it was hoped to change the world’s attitude.
Well, in this third story, David Mark looks at the green record of our political parties in this federal election year.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that there had been a big wave of ‘act or we are doomed’ documentaries and programmes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (And, to be fair, similar ones in the late 1960s.)
The specific context was that, as per the May 20 post, there are ABC documentaries about climate change, because there is a recent hook i.e. the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report, which has just come out. And also it’s politically salient, because President George W. Bush has pulled out of Kyoto, and people were waiting to see what Australian Prime MinisterJohn Howard would say. Howard is at this point, playing for time, because there is going to be a federal election at some point in late 2001 and Howard can’t afford to piss off and galvanise small g and (large g) Green voters against him.
What I think we can learn from this is, again, the media, or bits of the media, were relatively responsible when they could be, but it didn’t help the wider picture, because the social movements aren’t there to harness the energy, anger, fear, of individuals (because that’s really hard to do).
Everyone understandably wants to vote for the right person and leave it in their hands because they’re busy, because politics is – as per Max Weber – “the slow, boring of hard boards”, and it can be boring and frustrating, and you just want to get on with your life. Unfortunately, while you’re getting on with your life, the emissions are climbing, the atmospheric concentrations are climbing, and then before you know it, the impacts are arriving. And by the time the impacts have arrived, it’s pretty late, too late, I would say, to do much about it. And this dilemma was understood in the late 70s, and it’s throughout William Barbat’s CO2 newsletter.
What happened next.
We didn’t do the work, and future generations are stuffed. Also, all the other species. Oh 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.
Twenty three years ago, on this day, May 27th, 2003 Labor MP Anthony Albanese seconds Kyoto Protocol legislation in Parliament,
MEDIA RELEASE: Anthony Albanese – 26 May 2003
Today, the Federal Member for Grayndler Anthony Albanese MP was pleased to second a Private Members Bill in Federal Parliament designed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.
Moved by the Shadow Minister for Sustainability & the Environment Kelvin Thomson MP, the Kyoto Protocol Ratification Bill 2003 will give legal effect to Australia’s Kyoto target and ensure Australian industry can take advantage of emerging new markets when the treaty comes into international force.
“Back at home, the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Kelvin Thomson, introduced a private member’s bill for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on 26 May 2003. As well as calling for the ratification of the Protocol, the Bill sets out requirements for the Commonwealth Environment Minister to prepare systems for involvement in international emissions trading schemes, a National Climate Change Action Plan, and imposes an obligation on the Government to ensure that Australia’s target of 108% of its 1990 emissions is not exceeded during the period 2008 to 2012.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 306ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Prime Minister John Howard had resisted Kyoto ratification, despite an incredibly generous deal having been negotiated by his Environment minister. In June 2002 Howard had, on World Environment Day, said he wasn’t going to ratify because it wasn’t in Australia’s economic interest.
And you had a young MP called Anthony Albanese who was part of the Opposition front bench, and they were trying to “punch the bruise.” They were trying to say that Labour would be better on the environment and appeal to some of the green voters who were deserting them for the Green Party.
The specific context was that we were still deep in the pretending phase. Completely unlike now.
What I think we can learn from this is that politicians make all the right noises early on in their career. Once they finally get into power, if they do well, it’s a story. It’s the sort of thing you see with Tony Blair in the late 1980s – it’s amusing and dispiriting.
What happened next. Well, Albanese did eventually become Prime Minister. And guess what? We are not saved.
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 genuinely tell people that building a wind farm here will save the planet from climate change you are doing a massive disservice to the environment. It is an atrocious misleading of the Australian community.”
Ian Campbell, Senate Estimates ECITA Committee, 25 May 2006, p.116.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 3xxppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that by this time, the Howard Government was beginning to look clapped out and tired. The first couple of environment ministers who had been intelligent and slick had been replaced by someone who was maybe not in their league, and he was starting to look idiotic, as was the government.
The specific context was that by this time, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Westpac and other organisations had released their “business case for early (sic) action on climate change.” The Millennium drought was ongoing. There was going to be an UNFCCC negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia still hadn’t ratified. Mostly though, Prime Minister John Howard was just beginning to look like he wasn’t quite on top of things. There was a technology deal with the United States and Korea, the AP6, but it wasn’t really convincing people, and there was clearly going to be trouble ahead on climate and environment generally.
What I think we can learn from this. Governments get tired, and the good ministers burn out, or flame out, and they are replaced by second or third rate is and then you go into a death spiral.
What happened next. Howard lost the 2007 election, and incoming Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd deployed all of his considerable skill, humility and tact to usher Australia into a wonderful climate politics where sharp emissions reductions were combined with a realistic adaptation policy and… oh, come on. You know what happened.
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.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Evans, has thrown doubt over a long-standing Federal Government position on greenhouse gases in a move which will alarm the business sector.
The doubts on Australia’s response to the UN Climate Change Convention were compounded by Senator Evans’ admission that Australia had recently been “rolled” on its tough stand on the Basel convention on hazardous wastes.
At a Senate Estimates Committee hearing on Tuesday [24th May], Victorian Liberal Senator Judith Troeth asked: “Has Cabinet agreed that Australia will not implement measures under the climate change convention which would damage our competitiveness, unless other countries also do so?”
Gill, P. 1994. Minister signals change of policy on greenhouse gas. The Australian Financial Review, 26 May, p.6.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Australian Government had, initially, in 1989 made the right noises about a climate treaty, but by 1992 opposition within the Labor government had hardened. Although Australia signed up and ratified the UNFCCC, it also started looking for loopholes to avoid any real commitments. The specific context was that this is before the treaty became international law. They knew that that was coming, and they knew that there would be a Conference of the Parties, and they wanted to start getting their retaliation in first.
What I think we can learn from this. This is not “the bad guys.” This is not the evil cloven hooves, tail with a triangle on the end, horns on head Howard Government (boo, hiss!). This is that nice, cuddly, social democratic government led by Paul Keating. It’s important to remember this.
What happened next. Most of the political elite and industry fought tooth and nail against a domestic carbon tax, which would have been the thing to keep the international climate negotiations sweet. And they sent the Environment Minister, John Faulkner, to the Berlin COP without much more than promises to maybe take action at some point. There was a National Greenhouse Response Strategy by this time, but it was farcical. No one took it seriously. Ultimately then, once the next government came in, they stopped even pretending to give a shit about the UNFCCC, and played hardball, which is why they got the incredibly generous deal at Kyoto (which they still didn’t ratify). I could go on for hours.
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.
The “Stop the Chop” rally last night on the steps of Parliament House, on North Terrace, was at least as large as the one nine days earlier, before 585 trees got chopped down.
I have no doubt that many (most) who attended went feeling happy, energized (though how long that persists, we will come back to). Me, I came away with a very different set of emotions, ranging roughly from despondency to despair (I have learned not to bother, in these instances, with anger (1)).
The song remained, as I thought it would, very much the same. I wrote this (DO Mourn, then Organise) about the dangers in not facing up to facts about where things were at, and I don’t intend to recap at any length. The blog quotes Baldwin and Chomsky and is – but I would say this – worth your time.
Instead, I am going to talk about the likely consequences of this missed opportunity to engage people in granular involvement, rather than ‘mass’ engagement.
And I am going to introduce, of course, yet another made up word – this time, an adjective.
[FWIW – I am grappling with ideas about how we think about (collective) emotions in “social movements” and I’d be very happy to hear from people who are thinking about this too, whether they agree or disagree. I will not engage with trolls, or with smug gaslighters who try to tell me that things happened at the rally that didn’t, in fact, happen.]
What happened?
About 2000 people (and around the same number as last time) gathered on the steps of Parliament House. There was a better sound system and they heard various speeches telling them things they already knew.
There was no serious acknowledgement of the emotional toll that losing the battle for 585 trees would have had.
There were no concrete specific actions for people to take beyond “sign a petition” (because apparently “they can’t ignore us” except they have) and to turn up either the following morning at some random thing (too short notice) or else on Saturday June 6th in Victoria Park to tie some yellow ribbons around threatened trees.
There was repeated chanting of ‘stop the chop’ (From a biased psychoanalytic perspective it was as if people were willing the past week not to have happened, pretending it hadn’t. Wanting to disappear into a fugue state.
There was repeated claims that the “movement” was growing. The only evidence adduced for this that I heard was that 47000 people had signed a petition (there was, apparently though, a problem with this petition, because a different one – it was not clear for what – was being set up – and people could sign it on the six clipboards circulating).
This put me very much in mind of that line from Casablanca “You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart.”
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.
What was the broader context
The defeat of the “left” and the progressive (NOT the same thing) ecological forces over the last 60 years. The inability to democratize the state and to stop its total (rather than partial) capture by corporate and technocratic interests, especially in response to the public pressure upsurges of the 1960s and 1970s.
There are lots of factors here. One is the ‘professionalisation’ of campaigning groups and ‘Non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs), so that they become captured by middle-class/tertiary-educated people and – crucially – the perspectives of those people. It was fascinating that the “Conservation Council of South Australia” didn’t even bother to send out an email in advance of the rally. They are ducking and covering.
What was the specific context
In 2023 the Malinauskas government passed some absurdly repressive laws (mentioned – and booed – last night) raising the maximum fine for various forms of protest (e.g. trespass) from $750 to $50,000. Well, it worked. As nobody at the rally mentioned, the Australian Energy Producers had just held a conference on North Terrace and bar a few Extinction Rebellion people, nada.
There is a growing sense of loneliness, atomization, despair in the air, and people are quite understandably desperate to congregate with other people who think and feel like them, even if it is only briefly, only futile. It’s apparently ‘better than nothing’.
What do we learn?
Here’s the promised neologisim. Are you ready? Bravadic.
Bravado is the noun – meaning blustering swaggering conduct.
Well, last night felt very much like a display of ‘bravadic hope’, of people gathered, like all the animals of Animal Farm (except the pigs and dogs) to sing ‘Beasts of England’ as a way of soothing themselves. (see here for the Animal Farm quote, and a bonus snark about a terrible student meeting).
Why is this so? It’s partly because (thanks to fifty plus years of losing) we don’t have expectations or norms about how leaders need to nurture actual movement-building techniques in social movement organisations, during campaigns. It’s always possible to rabble (a)rouse, without helping people develop the tools, spaces, language to cope with inevitable setbacks. Instead, we allow a silence to cover (in the short term) those wounds. (I will write more on this soon, and link to it). We come to think of a campaign as a series of Big Events, rather than granular slogs. I coined the term emotacycle for just these purposes. What we are seeing here, I reckon, is the peak of an emotacycle.
What do I think will happen next (NB it’s the future, so wtaf do I know?).
The anger and energy on display over the last week will dissipate. Not among everyone, but among enough people to make a serious difference at the level of a ‘movement’. The Saturday June 6th event will be significantly smaller (harder to get to, people have other responsibilities that don’t impinge on a Weds/Friday evening for an hour, people don’t see the point).
A feeling of ‘well, I’ll get involved again if I have to closer to the time of the Next Big Threat’ will kick in.
The opportunity to do something different, something that actually counts as movement-building, will be (further) squandered.
What needed to happen
There were two thousand people present. I already have written two speeches about what needed to be done. You can read them here and here.
Basically, the expectation needed to be created that those present would not simply go home, but they would get together with people they knew, and think hard about all the things that they could do with existing skills and knowledge, and the other tasks that needed doing, but for which skills and knowledge might be in short supply. People needed to be told that turning up at a rally now and then, supplemented by signing a petition and being chronically online battling trolls in a Facebook group, Is. Not. Enough.
Footnotes
(1) This not because I have become a more mature or calmer person, but because I have at least managed to massage my expectations down down down).
Federal Cabinet faces a showdown over greenhouse environmental issues after ministers yesterday heard alarming predictions that meeting Australia’s emission targets could significantly cut economic growth and boost fuel prices.
The Minister for the Environment, Senator Robert Hill, and the Minister for Industry, Senator Nick Minchin, both entered Cabinet yesterday armed with new evidence about the extent of Australia’s greenhouse problems.
Economic research commissioned by Senator Minchin found that forcing industry to meet Australia’s targets under the Kyoto international greenhouse agreement could reduce gross national product by up to 1.4 per cent in 2010.
Taylor, L. and Skulley, M. 2000. Cabinet clash on greenhouse. The Australian Financial Review, 24 May, p1.
And
Industry started a strong campaign against the Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill’s, proposed greenhouse trigger yesterday. This follows a fiery Cabinet discussion on Tuesday [23rd] over new greenhouse measures proposed by the Senator.
The Federal Cabinet is understood to have reached a clear understanding on Tuesday that no extra greenhouse requirements should be imposed on the proposed $1billion Kogan Creek power station in Queensland.
It rejected a memo from Senator Hill that the project be forced to invest in greenhouse-abatement projects to offset its own emissions. However, a spokesman for the Environment Minister said the Cabinet had not made a final decision.
2000 Taylor, L. 2000. Industry adds its weight to oppose greenhouse move. The Australian Financial Review, May 25, p.7.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Australian political elites and economic elites had decided to resist climate action. They made this decision not in a smoke-filled room, but sort of collectively in ‘91-92. And they continued to push against any action. Even very moderate action, like a small carbon tax in ‘94-95 set them frothing and foaming at the mouth.
The specific context was that there was pressure on the Minister for the Environment for a so-called greenhouse trigger, so that big developments would get called in for a proper look and more-than-rubber-stamp approval.
What I think we can learn from this. Again, industry wants rubber stamps for their big projects that are going to make the money. They don’t want the politicians “interfering,” and they don’t want the politicians to have power and to have democratic control. This is how the game is played.
What happened next. The trigger was defeated, and greenhouse triggers have been defeated ever since in Australia, which is essentially a quarry with a state attached.
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.
When he was unceremoniously dumped by the Labor Party in late 1991, after failing to effectively counter Liberal leader John Hewson’s Fightback! campaign, the level stood at 355ppm.
When he died in 2019, the atmospheric levels stood at 411ppm (they’re now pushing 430ppm). I don’t intend to recap his climate mis-steps (see here) and missed opportunities (I did that already in this Conversation piece: Bob Hawke, the environmental PM, bequeathed a huge ‘what if’ on climate change). Nor do I intend to give a blow-by-blow account of who said what about what to whom tonight (a video was made and is already up – if you’re ‘into’ history, politics etc, it’s definitely worth your time.
What I intend to do is … serve up a few banalities and call it a day.
Banality one is that History is about what gets told and how. It’s also about what doesn’t get told (and how it is not talked about – usually by running out of time/focusing on something else.
Fortunately there wasn’t that much banality on display tonight at the Hawke (!) Centre on North Terrace. The event was to launch/publicise a new book ‘Gold Standard: Remembering the Hawke Government’.
It was ably compered (not facilitated!) by Misha Ketchell of The Conversation, who had managed to tear himself away from The West Wing to serve up a series of more-than-perfunctory soft-ball questions to the three professional historians (and co-editors of the book). These were (drum roll please)
They covered a lot of ground, and wore their deep expertise lightly (this should of course, be the norm among academics, but trust me, it ain’t).
They (especially Holbrook) were good on the way the Hawke government came to loom large as a picture of stability after the 2007-2018 bloodbath of the Prime Ministers. (Fwiw I think the Hawke/Keating era looms large because it was ultimately the death of the Australian Settlement, something discussed at the end of the event by – iirc- Bongiorno).
They (especially Black) were good on the way that the media landscape (mass, social) has transformed out of all sight, and how much more difficult governance is now. There’s a story (not told tonight) of Julia Gillard pointing out that you could offer a huge detailed set of policy statements and the journos would be hungry again hours later. The beast is hungry hungry hungry, and that isn’t helping anyone. (Thomas Mayo covered some of this last week in his Nelson Mandela lecture at the same venue, btw, and it too is well worth your time) – here, inevitably, is my blogpost about that.
What they didn’t cover (at all, or in great depth for my monomania)
So, for me as a former Australian resident and occasional visitor (nearing the end of the latest visitation), a few trends/dilemmas strike me afresh every time I cross the girt sea.
The exquisite vulnerability to climate change (which is being accelerated by the relentless search for fossil fuels for export purposes: The Australian Oil and Gas lobby has just finished its latest trade fair about 200m from the Hawke Centre. It faced only tiny protests, after State Premier Peter Malinauskas unleashed some nice authoritarian anti-protest laws in 2023).
The running sore of a lack of any real reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples (the acknowledgement of country at tonight’s event was pretty cursory, tbh). If October 7th hadn’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room, then the heart-breaking vote against the Voice would have really damaged Australia’s international standing.
The increase in inequality and the visible rise of rough sleeping (which is the merest sliver of the tip of the iceberg of homelessness etc). The ‘cost of living’ crisis is a permacrisis for many. It was not always this bad, at least in Australia…
Not all of this can be sheeted home to Hawke, but Hawke’s record especially on climate, the failure to keep the 1988 promise of a Treaty, and the failures around public housing (alluded to near the end), deserved, in my opinion, a bigger chunk of tonight’s assessment. It’s one thing to say you want to avoid hagiography, it’s another to actually avoid it. That said, this was a very nicely done event, and they did, after all, only have an hour. The closest we got to a discussion of neoliberalism (a word mentioned once or twice, almost in passing, and called ‘economic rationalism’ back in the day – though there are ongoing debates about whether those two are the same thing), was Black talking about ‘civil erosion’ the (global) collapse in trade union membership and so on, and then another mention in the context of too-much hagiography.
At this point Frank Bongiorno gave a shout out to his book about the 1980s, and pointed to a list of failures (of treaty, of public service reforms, of the marketization of services that would be better off under actual public control).
Interviewed long after being booted out of the Prime Ministerial role by her own party (sound familiar?) Margaret Thatcher was asked her greatest achievement. She said… Tony Blair.
Blair learned from Hawke/Keating – the early years of Blair gave me a real sense of déjà vu for the mid-80s, in terms of the way the political battles were fought. But I am a bit of a weirdo perhaps (1).
The economy grows, but the problems, the pile of debris we call progress, also grew. Now, 20 and 35 years after they left the stage, those problems are becoming impossible to ignore…
Footnote
At the bus-stop on the way home (after a fabulous meal at Dino’s, the Greek place at the King William Street end of Hindley Street) we bumped the sixteen-ish year old daughter of a friend. The mum is very smart, as is the daughter. I asked her is she knew who Bob Hawke was. Nope. But then, I don’t think at her age I knew who, say, Arthur Caldwell was. The caravan moves on.
Joe Hill (of the International Workers of the World)
[Update – speech I won’t give at the bottom of this post]
The American novelist, thinker and civil rights activist James Baldwin wrote, in January 1962, that “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Ahead of another rally on the steps of Parliament House on Friday 22nd May (5.30 to 6.30), I think we need to face a few facts (as I see them – your mileage may vary).
(It seems to me that ) Malinauskas is in a much stronger position than he was a week ago.
First and foremost, he has completed the chopping down of the trees – there is no physical thing to defend anymore. [update – there may be some remnants, but the major job of work has been done, I think.]
Second, with the help of the Advertiser (of which more in a separate blog post) and all mass media he has painted his opponents as ‘extremists’ and smeared the lot of them (1). Sure, it won’t have worked as a smear on everyone, but it will have made some people reluctant to engage with future campaigns (the point of it is, after all, to raise the costs of ‘recruitment’ and ‘retention’). This is not new. See this below from 1970, with NSW Premier Robin Askin talking about ‘professional agitators’.
A significant number of people will be (understandably!) demoralised, disenchanted. This will especially be the case if the rally on Friday is smaller than the 2,000 is who turned up last Wednesday.
I just read this on Facebook, and I think it is accurate (emphasis added) –
I know yesterday was disappointing, honestly, the past week has been tough. A lot of us are feeling depleted, angry, depressed.. Just tonight I even ate half a tub of ice cream trying to cope
The point is that those people who were previously engaged in “activism”, or have strong existing sympathetic networks will be better able to deal with those feelings, but those who are – for whatever reason – more isolated, will be having a really really tough time of it. Grief can easily curdle into cynicism and disengagement.
If Malinauskas is stronger (some will dispute this) and ‘we’ are weaker (some will dispute this) then this makes the campaigns to come (MotoGP, Fracking moratorium) more difficult. Momentum counts for a lot.
Crucially, then, the same mistakes must not be committed.
For me, the rally on Wednesday May 13 was a seriously missed opportunity to get those who attended (and those who didn’t) energised, connected and inspired. There were very very few concrete and engaging actions being suggested. It was (and I was listening closely) mostly about what other people (politicians) were already doing, and a petition to sign).
I wrote a blog about this, and suggested that the number 585 could have been used. Here is the end of a ‘speech I would have given’
This is great. Thank you. But this is not enough. We need more. So a final pledge is coming up..
We need artists, poets, songs. We need tiktok videos, we need memes, slogans. We need blogs. We need letters to the Advertiser. Sorry- I was just playing with you. We need to bypass the Murdoch media. We need lawyers, we need conversations, we need networks. We need people standing outside football matches with placards and information about what is being done by this government, and in whose benefits. We need – well, we need more ideas than I have, we need all the ideas, skills and energy that YOU have.
Does each of you pledge to go home from here and – alone or with your friends – come up with a list of five things you all can do, with your knowledge, your skills, your networks, your time? Then DO those things, get better at those actions. Share those actions? Do you?
(Hopefully ‘yes’)
Talk to five people
Write an eight sentence letter to the Premier and your MP
Come up with a list of five things to do.
If you pledge it, then on three, 585!
(hopefully people chant 585)
What is to be done
The American linguist Noam Chomsky once wrote
“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.”
It is not clear to me that the organisations trying, valiantly, to defend the parklands are able to do this – time will tell, she usually does (1).
We have to face facts (which doesn’t guarantee that we will ultimately change them).
The parklands are under siege. They have been before. This below is from 1984.
We have to develop skills, knowledge, relationships. We have to spot where we have absolute lacks or single-points of failures in our organisations and networks. That takes time, effort and does not come with any endorphins.
We have to give guidance, encouragement and support (emotional, intellectual etc) to people who are new, who have limited time, who are despairing
We have to acknowledge that there are risks in despair leading people into de-activation or into (more) conspiracy theories, or into smugness and dismissal of posts (like my last one and this one too presumably) that try to raise questions of efficacy.
Friday’s rally will – I presume – predominantly be attended by a subset of those who were there last Wednesday. The mood will be angry, sombre. There will probably be some recriminations, some hopelessness. I don’t think the ‘stop the chop’ chant will work in the same way.
All this is an enormous challenge for the speakers, for the strategists.
Not an insurmountable one, but enormous. A bit like the polycrisis we face – of a collapsing biosphere, hollowed-out democracy, accelerating wealth inequality, and AI-enshittification.
Happy times.
Footnotes
I’d like to believe that nobody could be stupid enough to have tried to doxx Malinauskas, that it must have been a ‘false flag’. But I also know that – sadly – it is entirely possible that it was simply an own goal by people unable to think through the likely consequences of their actions.
Four minute speech I won’t give at the rally on Friday May 23
I want to take you to a bad place. Then, we come back, and we start walking, together, to a better place.
Let’s remember the last week. The trees being chopped down, the possums and birds fleeing. The naked contempt that the Premier has for democratic norms, for heritage, for Mij Tanith and the others who put their bodies in the way of his ego.
Just for a few seconds stand in your anger, your despair, your sense of hopelessness.
It’s horrible, isn’t it? Not a place to stay, not a place to return to.
We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We have to go through it.
We have to go through it, together, helping each other as we walk.
If we want to be in better shape a year from today, we have to walk together, we have to grow, learn, organise and perhaps win.
We have to grow, as individuals and groups. We have to grow our skills. So many, but a key one is to become good at having conversations with people who don’t know what is going on, or are too busy to be involved, or have swallowed the lies and the smears.
We have to grow the size of our groups, by making it easier for busy people, unconfident people, to be meaningfully involved without coming to endless meetings, or being online 24/7.
We have to learn – the history of our state – and it didn’t begin in 1836. The politics and economics of the moment. We have to learn how social movements work. We have to learn from our past successes and mistakes. We have to learn how protest movements grow and win or lose, how they get distracted, divided, repressed.
We have to organise – along our streets, our places of work and worship, among our friends and acquaintances. And today’s stranger is tomorrow’s acquaintance may well be next year’s firm friend. By organise I do not mean everyone joins a party and takes orders from on high. I mean we share skills and knowledge, we learn from others, we strengthen the ties of those all around us to form networks, overlapping, stronger here than there, so that w.
Not everyone has to become expert at everything, but all of us can – and must – get better at something. All of us can – and must – contribute to growing, learning, organising.
Over a hundred years ago, a real labour leader – as opposed to Malinauskus – Joe Hill, was executed. Famously, he said ‘don’t mourn, organise.’
Nine days ago we stood here, chanting “stop the chop.” Today we are chanting “stop the chop – never again”.
Today I say to you, do mourn, but then organise. Grow, learn, organise, and, a year from now, we can be winning.
