According to the Prime Minister, it’s a “stupid” decision not to invest in fossil fuel companies. Treasurer Joe Hockey says only someone “removed from reality” wouldn’t invest in fossil fuel stocks. Education Minister Christopher Pyne has said not investing in resources companies is “bizarre” and lamented his inability to force the Australian National University to invest in them. Junior minister Jamie Briggs believes not to invest in fossil fuel stocks is “extraordinary” and “remarkable”.
If you were an investor, you’d be tempted to believe Australian fossil fuel stocks now come with some sort of government guarantee as to their performance, with everyone from the Prime Minister and Treasurer on down giving the tick to putting your savings into the likes of Santos and Iluka Resources. After all, the government has an important role in determining the success or otherwise of companies: it has set about single-handedly destroying investment in a sector that competes with fossil fuel companies, the renewable energy industry, and declared itself a strong supporter of the mining industry. Coal is “good for humanity”, Tony Abbott insisted last week, in defiance of the reality of climate change. Indeed, mining is one of the five “winners” the government picked as a priority area for business welfare handouts in its industry statement earlier this week.
The problem is, it’s not the likes of ANU that is “removed from reality” about fossil fuel industries, but Australia itself, which under the Abbott government is being pointedly left behind as the rest of the world accepts the challenge of decarbonising industry and energy. And as the rest of the world moves, no amount of ministerial spruiking of mining shares will help those industries.
Surprise?
Look at their “dedication of our $tax resources” to the buggery they wrought on behalf of Woodside in East Timor – as members of the Howard government?
You’re way off the mark, Crikey.
All Abbott and his colleagues are saying is that by lumping resources companies into ethical investment decisions alongside arms traders and tobacco companies, Universities are on a left wing political crusade, and the decisions are most likely poor ones.
As vice-chancellor Ian Young said in today’s Australian, “We need to be…..able to say that we’re confident that the sort of companies that we’re investing in are consistent with the broad themes that drive this university.”
So it’s clear. The investment decisions are political. They are consistent with Green left wing politics and the ANU, if anyone was in any doubt, is driven by the green left. As are you, as demonstrated in your final paragraph.
Turn the lights off guys. You are burning fossil fuels every minute you leave them on and you wouldn’t want to do that, would you.
Whilst World trains to march to a new universal “beat of the drum”; the Australian Government leads our Nation lock step, backwards. The PM favours a ‘shirtfront’ rather than ‘fair play’, perfectly illustrates his and his Government’s approach to Refugees, or an unsuspecting Renewable Energy sector.
A “shirtfront” is simply the equivalent of a “KING HIT”!
Supporting Fossil Fuels in anything other than short/medium term . . condemns Australians to generational uncertainty/inequity.
Except Iluka Resources isn’t a fossil fuel stock. Nor are four of the other companies ANU divested. And renewable energy industries are critically dependent on the products of five of them, including Iluka Resources.
The persistent conflation of fossil fuel industries with mining, and the even more persistent tendency to frame mining and renewable energy/decarbonisation as opposites is really poor. Get it through your skulls: the renewable energy industry is good for mining. It’s quite resource intensive.
This editorial is really one long series of non sequiturs.
Two of the Toxic Trio of non sequitors leap in but OneHand just can’t keep his hand off it – pliz splain what is Left (not that there is owt wrong with that…)about not wanting to support armament & similar deadly industries like tobacco?
Breath not being held in expectation of a sane answer but curious that you’ve dropped the NH pseudonym.