If Only There Were Some Alternative

Just to recap, in 2013 Joe Hockey pretended outrage at domestic car-industry subsidies (while having no issue with the multibillion dollar public assistance lavished on mining) and expended a lot of energy in parliament mocking GM Holden and daring them to leave. A few months later, the car industry packed up and left.

For the next 5 years, the Coalition did everything they could to suppress clean energy and keep Australia dependent on the dirty fossil-products of the party's biggest donors. Then in the leadup to the 2019 election, Scott Morrison undertook a smirking scare campaign attacking electric vehicles, ludicrously asserting that their introduction would "end the weekend". ("Tell ya what, it's not gonna tow ya trailer, it's not gonna tow ya boat, it's not gonna get you out to your favourite camping spot with your family", he lied, merrily.) By the end of that year half the country was burning in the Black Summer megafires, and while nature, property and people were incinerated, the PM enjoyed his Hawaiian holiday. Next Covid hit, and Scott appointed a brick-faced gas executive (named, for maximum satire-value, Nev Power) to plan Australia's post-Covid economic strategy. Nev recommended a massive public investment in the climate-wrecking gas industry. Surprise.
Now we're years behind the curve on both next-gen transport and climate action, completely prey to the global instability of fossils (in terms of both resources and leadership), and paying a fortune to live in the past.
Thank them at the next election.

(Cartoon by national treasure Jon Kudelka, whose designs can be found on Redbubble, and whose website is www.kudelka.com.au.)



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