When Anthony Albanese claimed victory on election night in 2022, he spoke of making Australia a “common ground where together we can plant our dreams”. The moving sentiment, just about the only striking phrase of the election, appeared to indicate that his government would do whatever possible, within the limits all governments face, to restore commonality and common purpose in a nation fractured and directionless after a decade of right-wing misrule. There was hope.
Ha ha, in fact, there wasn’t. Two months or so later, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announced that the new government would be continuing and extending existing carbon credits and offsets schemes, turning Australia into a “green Wall Street”. The announcement came hot on the heels of the retention of the stage three tax cuts and the refusal to raise the basic benefits rate, and so was merely seen as part of the Festival of General Disappointment that follows the election of any Labor government.
Yet the “green Wall Street” announcement was a bit more important than that, because it wasn’t an isolated decision or action. Coming from the mouth of a minister from the “left”, in a government headed by a prime minister from the “left”, it was a programmatic announcement — not merely to the nation but, more importantly, to the party and its core supporters — that this was now a thoroughly neoliberal outfit.
It wasn’t just what Plibersek said but the way she said it: with a glutinous sort of glee. This was a big “eff you” to anyone in what remained of Plibersek’s faction who thought Labor might try to mitigate the global drift to neoliberalism, asserting that, in the matter of the environment in particular, things should be valued on their terms — and the market restrained as with regards to its control over them. The sheer exuberance of Plibersek was clearly one of relief, throwing off what she and others now saw as dogma and irrelevance.
The importance of such a move can’t really be overstated. Instead of pushing back against the haphazard, jerrybuilt, ramshackle neoliberalism the Coalition had pursued under two crackpots and a hostage over the past decade, Labor was now moving to streamline, purify and redeploy it. Labor was and is rational, efficient and disciplined, whereas the Coalition is a freak show and will be for some time. So in taking over the neoliberal approach of turning every aspect and layer of life into a market, Labor has suddenly reversed neoliberalism’s fortunes in this country.
Thus, the effect of the Albanese government has been to make Australia pretty much the most neoliberal government and state on earth. Why? Well, even though the actual implementation of neoliberal, and legacy anti-statist, policies might be greater elsewhere, there is also contestation elsewhere. For example, in the United States, there is a surging and real left within the Democratic Party, which has forced the Biden administration into recovery programs that have a degree of “New Deal” politics and social reconstruction about them — the big state getting stuff done.
In the UK, 40 years of neoliberalism — with some Blairite, big-state stuff added on top for a while — is now being challenged by a wave of strikes that has the potential to link up, and which has made it impossible for the Starmer Labour opposition to move the party back to a neo-Blairite position. Starmer and co have been forced to adopt key components of the program from the Corbyn leadership, much as they hate to. New Zealand and Canada have centre-left governments with a genuine left component and approach.
Only in Australia do we have a Labor government committing to programmatic neoliberalism, without any vocal opposition. A genuine left is gone from the party. The unions lack any independent point of view with any visibility. Having mounted explicit social critiques before the election, they have gone vewwy, vewwy quiet since.
The “industrial left”, once promising a program of sorts, has rejoined the socialist left. With the departure of Kim Carr, it is now led by Andrew Giles, which is like finding out, on the eve of D-Day, that your battalion is being commanded by Tiny Tim. The Greens have a real social democratic program and a critique, but it is being drowned out by debates about identity politics, which is simply the left flank of neoliberalism.
Key to understanding this is to see the relationship between the Albanese government’s general program and specific policies, and not to mistake one for the other. Its general problem is to extend neoliberalism into every facet of everyday life. From that, it may hang specific progressive and left policies, such as changes to enterprise bargaining. But these isolated moves shouldn’t be mistaken for the program itself. Carbon credits and “green Wall Street” is not an add-on, it’s the core.
This will eventually negatively affect Australian society and culture, which is atomised enough as is. Some of us had hoped Labor would see its victory as a chance to reintroduce notions of common purpose, based on common sense, and to put that at the centre of politics. From there, the Coalition could be assailed for the destruction of the common and essential heritage of the Murray-Darling River, the endangerment of the koala and many other irreplaceable species and habitats. These are not left-wing values. Only the most right-wing ideologues argue there is no commons whatsoever, that it should be kept from the market.
Labor has now become the agent of that ideology. It will further undermine our fractured social solidarity. By coming from the other side, it will make the entire political spectrum neoliberal, and remove the notion of common purpose and shared goods from the political imagination. The downstream effects will be gradual, but real: a society where altruistic action and volunteerism are even harder to imagine than ever (even as Andrew Leigh takes his dog-and-pony volunteer show around the country), and a further decline in trade unionism, even as the ACTU and others run around like headless chooks because union membership is on track to fall below 10%, within the life of this government.
Within Labor and its supporters there’s no joined-up thinking about this, no one with a basic sociological understanding or mindset, no one who believes society is an actual thing. Carbon credits are Thatcher’s rule (“There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families”) applied to the natural world. The mindset in this country is now of a totality as regards that, and you can supply the adjective yourself.
As to what one does about this, I have no easy answer. But the first action is always thought, and a thorough refutation within oneself, of any refusal to recognise what has occurred. The Albanese Labor government is now the world’s most efficient agent for extending neoliberalism, and any understanding of Australian politics should proceed from there.
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On the face of it, Guy Rundle’s op-ed would appear to have some validity. However it paints a picture of a party which has appeared to abandon it’s progressive principles. However these are only appearances based on expectation and warrant further consideration.
Considering how recent governments have been so dominated by the paid for position & policy directions of lobby & interest groups, and their permeations into public opinion, it could well be that the Albanese cabinet is deliberately taking a slower and more incremental approach to change. They have stated often that they in a 6 year cycle to execute their agenda
Of course to believe this is correct requires a leap of faith. Essentially there are those who hold the faith and there are those who are disappointed through not having their expectations met. In only 6 months, they have already lost faith.
I am keeping the faith, knowing that they must resolve amny serious challenges. I have no doubt that come what may, at the end of his proposed 6 year tenure Anthony Albanese will have created a fairer more equitable Australia which will indeed be a common ground where we can all plant our dreams.
Although I’ve been pretty disappointed with a few things so far, I think you are absolutely correct. This is an incredibly pragmatic government and I reckon that’s the only way to go if important changes are to be made – ’tis the nature of our times. I suspect that it’s this approach or fail. Not a great choice for things like the environment or CC but we can’t afford to stand still or go backwards so hopefully we can build momentum over time.
I’m of a similar mind. The greatest threat to the ALP’s success is the media, always looking for gotchas, unwilling and unable to take a longer view and addicted to faux balance. So, pathetic attempts at ‘debate’ ala Dutton and the Voice are treated as valid positions rather than culture war posturing to a non-existent, mythologised base. This has the effect of creating uncertainty and division, an atmosphere that gives oxygen to the right. Keep an eye out for it.
The biggest leap of faith required to believe a six year plan is that Labor will have a majority – or any – Government after the next election, which is likely to be following the biggest economic catastrophe the country’s ever seen.
What forecast catastrophe is that? Seems to fit in with RW Anglo and other media, messaging like Putin, on the demise of the ‘west’? Used to make citizens anxious, fearful and even paranoid?
my what a learned person you be. Pray please feel free to present your sound logical fact based analysis that leads to your projection.Otherwise your views are better suited to fish and chip wrapping
* High (and almost certainly still understated) inflation
* Stagnant (at best, declining for most) real wages
* Job insecurity
* Skyrocketing rents
* Plummeting house prices (good in the long term if it continues, but disastrous in the short term)
* Rising interest rates
* Increasing inequality
* Inadequate social security
* A Government that thinks ideas like tax cuts are going to help
Of course, none of these things have ever been present ever. And random lists are such a robust analytical tool.
As you are helping to demonstrate, what would be the point of more effort ?
Neoliberalism is really a rhetorical ideology more than an economic system. Markets exist, however state power purpose and implementation is at an all time low in this country and will take time to reestablish itself. A change in rhetoric is underway and hopefully the rest will follow. This pragmatic Albanese is actually a lot more impressive than the old ideological one.
No, neoliberalism is the historical shift in which the market breaks out of social bounds and becomes the whole of society. We used to build cities through a board of works, for what we needed, not by selling rights to corporations, run hospitals as public goods, not fee machines, see universities as a place to educate people for the world not for a job. Neoloiberalsim – which we have now – reverses all this. And undermines the capacity to have a non-market world – or a non-market self.
You written a very poignant article & with it any hope of a ‘fair-go’ for the ordinary Australian has gone down the gurgler. Also gone will be untouched ecosystems as the land can be repurposed & simulacrums built somewhere more convenient. I smelt a neolib-rat a few months ago that became most redolent on the release last week of the Chubb review into the carbon credit system. 2 Qs here: did you suspect Labor would do this & were you surprised? Still don’t know why they’ve done this & is a deeper dive needed?
Exactly, Grundle. And neoliberalism even takes over our minds so that we can’t even imagine an alternative. And Thatcher did warn us – as well as telling us that under neoliberalism ‘there is no such thing as society’, she also told us ‘There is no alternative’ – both of which are utter BS.
What you are describing is an ideological system which mobilizes the sectors of the economy in a certain way, markets, public sector, education, health etc to benefit certain sections of society or for certain outcomes. I don’t believe Albanese believes markets can solve everything, quite the contrary. But I think he recognises the constraints on Government as it stands within the current precarious balance and economic framework. I think he believes the Government should act as much as possible on the will of the people for the people’s desired outcomes. That people’s desires have been affected and changed by neoliberal ideology means the ideology and its effects need to be unpicked largely away from an unviable individualism. It will be a slow process. Albanese has begun changing that rhetoric. He’s actually pretty good at it.
And I don’t think economics, which is a large component of neo-liberalism (markets being central to the ideology) is entirely responsible for the dominance of private interests over public ones. Technology has played a huge role the diminishing participation in civil society, both materially through automation and job reengineering to the detriment of the unions and atomisation of individuals through the entertainment and communications media, we are spectators more then we are players.
Also you have to recognise that neoliberalism wasn’t even spotted for anything until it was too late. It was just a lot of clap trap around economic rationalism, free markets, economic freedom, choice and whatever until it became politically empowered as a means to disempower the majority. Similarly the next ‘economic system’ will emerge when the next lot of rhetorical claptrap is empowered to disempower the minority and reempower the majority. That’s why the alternative ideology doesn’t exist yet and why the left has absolutely nothing to gush toward. The next thing will emerge through a process of pragmatic trial and error the same way every other system has ever emerged until it is finally recognised as ‘the system’ with a whole lot of wow characteristics.
Agree, needs to navigate many artificial obstacles that are thrown up. ‘Neoliberalism’ is used under various guises with media complicity in the 21st century, round a variety of socioeconomic issues, but seems more under the influence of 19th century ideology, WASP culture and class?
Hope you’re right.
But all I see are stage 3 tax cuts, a pitiful unchanged job seeker, more coal mines and an immigration policy that appears to have been drafted by the property council.
Colour me unconvinced.
Refer to the tea towel. A1, A2, B1, C1, C2, C5, A3, E4, E3
You’re surely missing the key point. If a Labor government not only carries the carbon credit programme but extends it to create a ‘green wall street’ – ie commodifies the whole of nature – then it is dissolving the common ground it sought to create. It’s all a commodity. With Labor using its immense energy and competence to further such
You might be right for now, but I am saying that’s a short term view. It’s too early to call them out on stage 3 tax cuts and Jobseeker. In regard to carbon credits it’s not unlikely that Albo and his team are yet willing to provoke the vested interests and the febrile elements of the media. They will take a smarter and more subtle approach, adapting progressively & pragmatically to maintain progress toward their Net Zero goals.
I think UK Labour and Starmer are taking that approach in opposition well ahead of the Tories in any poll, but sensibly cautious on policies and pronouncements to preclude UK’s mostly Tory friendly media, jumping on and distorting, to then reduce chances of election.
A progressive party in opposition here or in the UK has to choose between
Ain’t democracy wonderful?
Yes and no, they don’t need to be too specific on policies (how many people pay attention?), but big on slogans, till they gain power and be flexible dealing with the reality on the ground for electorate constituents and stakeholders; good management (Tories do this on a daily basis?).
Starmer stumbled by precluding any revisit of EU for PR reasons & timidity, but it’s a gaping open goal which Tories ignore, but Labour could suggest looking at portfolio or policy areas, without committing anything in public.
However, some unions, ageing left and Labour ‘Lexiteers’ in the UK are still pro Brexit, but based on a socioeconomic understanding or ideology of the 19-20th centuries, i.e. eugenics, exemplified by dog whistles or claims that immigrants create unemployment etc., but simply no compelling research evidence to support.
Of course Tories get away with performative politics through media and sound bites, are not held to account, while making sure they remain in power by the media focus being on Labour personalities etc.; Tory Party dictatorship with everchanging PMs?
Your recommendation sounds like Tony Blair again. He followed your method, and once in power carried on with slogans and what he called ‘eye-catching initiatives’ for years. For all his work his government earned the deserved praise of no less an expert than Margaret Thatcher for continuing her work. She regarded New Labour as her finest achievement.
It’s not my ‘method’, but being elected or electable is important, taking into account the PR, media environment and demographics.
Not sure how Blair of last century is relevant when media in UK has become worse, and Labour wedged in by many of their own ‘Labour Tories’. These inc. some unions, ageing monocultural electorates, FPTP voting and many pro Brexit, while politics in UK corrupted by Russian oligarch money, inc. some of the left, Tories, think tanks and media…..
I wouldn’t predict what a Starmer led government would do in power, but there is plenty to do… surely they can find competent people to develop, promote and implement good policies vs. public cynicism confected by the media?
What they should do is take a leaf out of the Conservative playbook with #2, and then once in power execute a wave of progressive reform as soon as possible. Then by the time the next election rolls around, the short-term pain should have mostly subsided and the benefits started flowing through so even if anyone remembers the ‘non-core promises’ they won’t care anymore.
This is what the Rustadons have been trying to convince everyone Labor was going to do in the leadup to every election for the last decade or two, before shifting to the ‘taking it slow’ with a ‘multi term strategic plan’ (ROFL) narrative.
But the problem – to make Rundle’s point in a more utilitarian fashion – is that the mainstream “progressive” parties simply aren’t, anymore – they’re Centrists who have embraced supply-side, market-driven neoliberal economics (happily throwing money at privatised social services to round out some of the sharp edges) and distracting from its deleterious consequences by focusing on (real, but vague, poorly defined and low priority for most) “identity politics” issues.
True, yet as you suggest, sad experience shows it never works that way. It was widely predicted when Blair won his first term in 1997 with a huge majority that he would soon implement various good things. Not just promises like immediately re-nationalising the railways (privatisation was an act of madness so extreme that Thatcher refused to go near it, it was John Major’s diabolical work), but other things not explicit in the manifesto. In fact Blair did the opposite. He promised little, and then he under-delivered. He never made any move to sort out the railways, he followed Thatcher’s lead with private finance to undermine public ownership and weaken the NHS, state education etc., and he refused to contemplate any roll-back of Thatcher’s work. See also Obama, who did nearly nothing with his first two years when he had full control of Congress, and then did even less after Congress went Republican.
“The announcement came hot on the heels of the retention of the stage three tax cuts and the refusal to raise the basic benefits rate, and so was merely seen as part of the Festival of General Disappointment that follows the election of any Labor government.”
Gotta agree. Australia has become a very right wing country now and Albo, once a leading light of the Left, will not be able to turn things around soon. I don’t know why young people are not rioting in the streets. Must be afraid a backpacker, a tourist working illegally, a 457 visa holder or a 500 class student will take whatever pathetic humiliating job they have. Workers today, mostly, are unlucky and desperate. Fearful that someone other than technology will take their place. This won’t change under Albanese.
Albo “a leading light of the left”? When will people start to understand he’s always been a pragmatist. He joined the Camperdown branch of the ALP, a left wing branch with some Trotskyite tendencies – and his early career reflected his branch. His history of hostility to the Greens is because inner west Sydney Greens grew out of the No Aircraft Noise party that almost defeated his wife when she stood for the lower house. He made accommodations with the Right once he was in parliament because that way lies advancement.
I think Albanese is shaping up to be a very competent PM. However when it comes to ideology he seems to have modelled himself on the Vicar of Bray.
Hi there. Yes I agree that the inner west, wimpies I call them, Greens grew out of the NON Party which did include some Laborites as well like Barry Cotter and Hall Greenland, the latter of whom joined the ALP in some vain attempt to carry it over to the Left and deliver it to one of the Communist Parties, particularly in the wake of the Peter Baldwin bashing.
The Greens might differ as to their origins. I concur with yours but many of the Greens, and I have ad some ferocious arguments with them I can tell you, would argue that they are the true inheritors of the Industrial Left. You have got me started into a discussion of the Sydney Left and its origins within my living memory. I disagree with that argument. which you did not put forward but has been put forward by others, including themselves, that the NSW Greens are the inheritors of the Industrial Left – Jack and all that. The BLF, the Federated Engine Drivers and Firemans Association (FEFDA), the Waterside Workers Federation, forerunner to the Maritime Union which now includes the old Seamans Union, and other more militant ones like the AMWSU. The metal workers. When you look at the Greens or anyone with those lily livered hands and hearts that populate the eastern suburbs and inner city of Sydney – anyone east of Strathfield and north of the Cooks River – can you really think that these Greens are working class. They look more at home and sound more like some of the cast of Doc Martin. Even Downton Abbey. Provincial pommy types. They are the upstairs cast of Upstairs and Downstairs. Can you see that the likes of Fiona Byrne, Lee Rhiannon, Jenny Leong and the many others who have stood for all those privileged electorates have done a hard day’s work in their lives!!!???
The Left triumphed in the inner west because the Right were too violent and criminal. That is all. To be aligned with the Right in inner west ALP was to be associated with some violent and odious creatures even more than those that populated the last 6 years at least of the former NSW State Labor Government. Most of these 70s and 80s and even into the 90s types, ALP Right in the inner city and even elsewhere, are either dead or in gaol or in disgrace. The ALP Left likes to paint itself as holier than thou. A bit like the Greens and they have a hard time of doing that in the inner city but most of the inhabitants of these areas are practical enough, a bit like Albo, in realising that the Greens are more than a little unrealistic, their policies are a case of overreach (they want to still close down Sydney Airport), don’t appeal to the electorate much in that they are too focused on the environment and not enough on people and their struggles. Even with the preferable Cate Faehrmann in my opinion.
Competent is not good enough. An accountant is competent. An electrician is competent. Clerks usually are as are managers. I don’t want these types of people as my leader. I and we deserve much more.
I agree that “competent” isn’t a very high bar but – after the kind of government the Australian people had to endure from 2013 to 2022, a competent pragmatic PM can look like a genius.
Can you see that the likes of Fiona Byrne, Lee Rhiannon, Jenny Leong and the many others who have stood for all those privileged electorates have done a hard day’s work in their lives!!!???
There’s a fair point here, but on the other hand, from a politics and policy perspective they’re not wrong.
publicly butchering factioning competition with trumped-up sexual assault charges is not a totes cakewalk, but…even if you do wield the slaughterhouse knife in the plush safety of coward’s castle
great stuff. the inner west greens are the quintessence of self-indulgent soft pap proggery.
hall greenland is a fine candidate for ‘most useless, narcissistic, faux-lefty middle class spoiler in Oz political history’. so impressed by his own impeccable moral purity that he couldn’t even maintain functional solidarity in a caucus of one.
metal guru you and joanna should pitch a regular column to crikey. a great bookend to runders’ melbourne lefty dissections, for those political tragics living up here (in a real city, not an oversized provincial country town)
Terrific 2nd paragraph Jack. Almost as good as GR’s Tiny Tim reference. Can u imagine it? However I can’t agree with the description of Melbourne. I am a real nationalist and all of Australia is good. Everywhere. Everything and everyone serves a purpose. We don’t know how lucky we are. Sometimes I have to remind myself.
I’m going to have to excise the 2nd paragraph and Save it onto Word so I can look at it and have a good laugh once in a while.
A history of the Left in Sydney (and the Right for that matter) is something to which se could all train our minds if for no other purpose than levity.
As I see it, the ALP (Alternative Liberal Party) is behaving pretty much as I expected it to behave despite all the rhetoric from its spokespeople before and after the election. In other words, it is (like the Liberal Party) in office to protect the interests of large corporations and the rich but to do so in a way that makes it seem (on the surface) to be more challenging to those who hold real power and exert real influence in Australia (or indeed in any “democratic” capitalist country).
It suits the ruling class to portray the ALP as “a radical socialist alternative”; when in reality it is no such thing. The ALP no longer even pretends to have a socialist platform (as it did when I joined it some 57 or so years ago). The existence of such a party helps to persuade the electorate that we have a real choice in politics when in fact, the reality is far different.
Remember that neoliberalism was introduced by those “dreaded socialists” Hawke and Keating over 40 years ago. In a masterstroke, the capitalist class got these “working class” charlatans to do their dirty work for them. Imagine the outcry that would have ensued if it had been the Liberal Party which had been responsible for this change. The capitalist ruling class knew very well that the attitude of traditional Labor voters would be along the lines of, “Oh those working-class champions Hawke and Keating would not do anything that was not in the best interests of working people”. These two must rate as two of the greatest confidence tricksters in the history of Australian politics. Sure they (especially Keating) used to wipe Howard and Costello across the floor of Parliament like the “dirty rags” that they surely were. That was all part of the act. When it came to tackling the real issues of taxing the rich and nationalization of essential services, they were nowhere to be seen.
The conservative media helps to maintain this pretense by their hysterical attacks on the ALP prior to just about every election at the state and federal level. It all adds to the theatrical dimension of the charade.
What is needed in this country and elsewhere around the world is a renewed democratic socialist alternative party that gives first priority to dealing with social inequities in a serious and meaningful way rather than focusing totally on issues such as identity politics.
If the media launches hysterical attacks against a faux-social democratic party delivering just another brand of neo-liberalism imagine how they would react to a real democratic socialist alternative.
Absolutely Mr Denmore!!
Although after ‘crying wolf’ for so many decades, perhaps they might have trouble being believed. Who knows?
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/topics/greens
They already have the McCarthy dial maxed out when it comes to centre-right Labor, and totally jump the shark at anyone on the other side… I wonder if there’s a possible backfire effect in the offing
Well the yoof seem to be swinging pretty strongly left, so maybe. But they are vastly outnumbered until the boomers start to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Hear hear!
You need to also consider the domination of neoclassical economics at the time. Combine that with our dominant culture and none of this is terribly surprising.
Consider slso other things that went on in Grundle’s good old days like having to donate a slab to the right electricity bloke to make sure your power was ready to go for the weekend.
Whether we want to admit it or not, we ordinary people are part of creating this mess.
Indeed. Further this whole discussion is taking place as if “Australia” is hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world. There was/is a powerful international and transnational context for the West’s embrace of neoliberalism.
I’d argue that the idea of an “industrial Left” is obsolete in the Post-Industrial era. Labor parties everywhere are grappling with the new context. There IS a society, but it is being transformed in ways we barely understand by new technologies and new power configurations. I am glad of a competent Albanese Labor Government grappling with these unprecedented conditions than the other shambolic possibilities!
From my grounded experience and research in north Australia with Indigenous ranger groups abating carbon emissions using savanna burning practices and methods being paid for this arduous work is actually about both reducing carbon emissions and sequestering carbon in living and dead vegetation. This activity also generates biodiversity social cultural and economic co-benefits good for the social fabric of communities. If this is a part of a neoliberal project it is being reconfigured in ways that are of benefit to all of us although without doubt this activity is undervalued. The recent review of ACCUs recognised this while the inappropriately named Nature Repair Market Bill 2022 might actually see payment to rangers for biodiversity improvement and protection they currently provide over large parts of Australia. As the Australia Institute often highlights it is a travesty that this good work is being undermined by subsidisation of the fossil fuel sector – let’s give credit where it is due and focus the activism and rhetoric on what must stop.
But the point is, a corporation can pay carbon credits to subsidise this piece of activity, which allows them the right to trash a piece of land somewhere else. That’s the universal motion of the commodity. In doing so, that obviously trashes landscape (2), but it also turns the burning practices at landscape (1) into something other than a hybrid of traditional and modern practices in a non-market framework. Instead, they’re part of the commodity system. The character of the land as untradeable and incommensurable is undermined, and so is the full meaning of the practice. The more comprhensively the commodity system spreads, the more the non-commodified character of country becomes undermined, until it is all commodity, even that part of it saved from development. At that point, the burning practices have more in common with activity and souvenirs for tourist consumption, than they do with real connection to tradition, or finding a way to unite old and new practices in a shared engagement with non-commodified country.
“At that point, the burning practices have more in common with activity and souvenirs for tourist consumption, than they do with real connection to tradition, or finding a way to unite old and new practices in a shared engagement with non-commodified country.”
And now look at it from the point of view of people belonging to Country who are fulfilling their fundamental, deeply held responsibility, need and desire to care for Country.
Which they can only fulfill while their carbon credits are worth more than the lithium under the country they’re caring for?
a corporation can purchase ACCUs but this does not give them a right to trash a piece of land elsewhere, i think you are mixing up a diversity of schemes here. I also think you conflate the land as a commodity (it is not tradable but it is leasable) and carbon as a commodity/property right under the Carbon Farming Initiative. I also think you are conflating market/non-market and tradition/contemporary, sure savanna burning is a contemporary form of market exchange, its hybrid nature is in the deployment of indigenous ecological knowledge alongside new technology including burning using incendiaries and choppers. I reiterate this activity needs to be paid for by the Australian taxpayer from the Emissions Reduction Fund or from corporates or environmental philanthropists in the so-called voluntary market. But it reduces carbon emissions and surely that is the most pressing immediate issue (plus all the other benefits I outlined).
Well Guy I disagree I am not prepared to accept that this Labor government is just as Neoliberal and actually better at it than the last pall we lived through.
By adding an economic value to everything and then working on ways to extract that wealth Neoliberalism had to eventually begin to realise that it was eating its tail, that selling all forms of life and hard fought goodwill that is egalitarianism, life becomes emblematic, of Donald Trump, or Scomo, so destructively selfish that it is hopeless.
I too was appalled at Tania Plibersek and her handling of the most crucial indicator of a logical future, rebuild the environment don’t sell it.
There would have been some kind of agreement made with our majority Neoliberal media , the public/social manipulative power behind Neoliberalism the king makers, the public relations arm of Neoliberalism that sells everything.
I think people are beginning to wake up to this scorge, if Guy is correct there will be no dramatic change to funding, board stacking and acknowledging the power of Neoliberalism by the ABC. There will be no flushing of the 20 years of crony capitalists in the public service, that is the real damage these selfish arsewipes inflicted on this country.