Extinction Rebellion, the raucous climate activist group holding rallies and civil disruptions across Australia, has made a lot of people mad for mildly inconveniencing motorists this month.
Nothing sums up that anger better than Studio 10 host Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s bizarre screed Wednesday morning, where she appeared to advocate running over protesters with cars. “Use them as a speedbump,” Kennerley said. “Put them in jail, forget to feed them!” Channel 10 later released a statement claiming Kennerley’s comments were “clearly a joke”.
Still, much coverage of Extinction Rebellion has been similarly shrill, and overwhelmingly framed in a negative light. In Queensland, where the protests have been particularly robust — people chained to roads, a man hanging off Brisbane’s Story Bridge — the response has been extreme. The Palaszczuk government has fast-tracked new anti-protest laws straight out of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era, and The Courier-Mail — which has been a major cheerleader for those laws — has devoted two front pages to attacking the group in the last four days (in between stories about Queensland’s heat wave).
The paper also provided full names and personal information about protesters who “bring misery to the lives of Brisbane commuters”.
On Monday, the Rebellion hit the streets of Sydney, and The Daily Telegraph sent a reporter “undercover” in a bee costume to infiltrate the group, a “sting” operation that also landed on the front page. Amid making several cringey bee puns (which will not be repeated in these pages), the Tele’s brave correspondent wrote that the protest felt “more like a bush doof or a Year 9 drama class”.
On Wednesday, The Australian’s Jack the Insider (whose name is not actually Jack) opined that the group was losing hearts and minds because hippies are smelly.
Other coverage swapped hostility for confused trolling. With protesters set to march on The West Australian’s offices in Perth over the paper’s alleged indifference to climate change, the paper bizarrely made its front page blank, to be used as placards.
Elsewhere, coverage was slightly more nuanced. Both the Ninefax papers and The Guardian reported on how protesters were hit with highly restrictive bail conditions normally reserved for bikie gangs. The ABC even ran an opinion piece from a protester apologetically explaining why she would be disrupting people’s commutes.
What do you think of the media’s hostile response to Extinction Rebellion? Send your comments to boss@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name for publication.
Good for those protesting!
Why do all those savagely accusing protesters feel this way? Do they not want the government to do more about climate change and try to bring about a less-bad future for their children and grandchildren?
It is (well it was) the same with strike action, which I remember being part of back in the days when I was a teacher. People always complain if they are inconvenienced. No matter that my teachers’ union strike action was most effective in reducing class sizes to manageable numbers, parents still complained. Same over climate change – I don’t want to see a rise of even 1.5 degrees C but it is probably already past time for the rise to be limited to anything less than 2C. People don’t get it and won’t come to grips with the severity of the situation.
When Kerri-Anne and Sam Armitage are agin you, then you are on a winner.
Keep demonstrating kiddies.
Is Kennerley actually licensed to make jokes?
Channelling a boofhead like Bob Askin who also claimed to be joking when he said run over the bastards in 1966 proves that our polity has not advanced one whit.
Kennerley is a sheltered airhead who said the election of a Labor government would bring the end of civilisation as she knows it . The possible real end of civilisation has failed to penetrate the air conditioned studio she operates in!
The Chinese government have allowed mass protests in Hong Kong for months and is finally tackling the violent elements that pop up at the end of the peaceful protests. In Australia we have a few climate change protests and laws are already being tabled to ban protesting. Neck that frothy schooner of western democracy, folks!
Was anyone expecting anything different from our authoritarian surveillance state that is terrified of the idea of 200, 000 Australian serfs marching in the streets demanding independence from the Queen of England; like our friends in Scotland did recently?
As neo-liberalism/corporate fascism continues its exponentially terminal decline, the technocrats at the top of the pyramid try ever more desperately to stop the sheep bleating out the truth. It’s all pointless. Kids these days know the adults are full of it, they have the world’s knowledge at their fingertips; yet they are told by their leaders to ignore the reality staring them in the face and to shut up, stop thinking critically and accept serfdom on a barren planet.
The continued assault on our environment that endless growth monopoly capitalism demands, guarantees a miserable future. Young people are well aware of this fact. Removing the window dressings of western “democracy”, such as the right to protest; won’t win the hearts and minds of the younger generation at this point, it only brings greater clarity to the lie of democracy we are sold.
Extremely well said.
Agreed
He speak good!
My observation is that much of the traditional media focuses on dramatic issues especially of emotional interest or lacking complexity. They fail to report on complex aspects of a slow moving event such as climate change and some of the sustainability risks it creates for business as usual across the corporate sector. That bias may be attributable in part due to a revenue stream that depends mostly on not upsetting the business model. Extinction Rebellion appeals to the drama and emotional aspects in news and their actions are one way of getting a mostly switched off public to switch back on to why there is a protest with a spectrum of age groups. The hope is that it will accelerate action on climate change, which the science is clearly telling us is likely to be catastrophic and costly for some current and yet to come generations. The changes required are massive and will need to be transformational across society and include a restructuring of economies to take into account that continued growth is not possible on a finite planet. Change will occur regardless of politics – it can be orderly or chaotic – climate inactions suggests the latter.
Yes I support XR actions in the main – my concern is that we have very little time left for a global (let alone national) transition plan to be effectively implemented and it is now probably too late.
Keith Altmann: Civil Engineer/Town Planner.
We have the technology and the knowledge to rapidly turn the environmental situation around.
Just look at what China has done in the past 40 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfG0USvDTew
We are going through the third industrial revolution. We just need political will. At the moment the political will is coming from the people, not our bought and paid for politicians who even if they wanted to attempt dramatic change would be hamstung by the usual corporate suspects and party-room factions.
It may seem doom and gloom in Australia, but the most set upon victims of Western colonialism in Africa and Asia are seeing their standards of living rise. The Belt and Road initiative is working as advertised. Who would have thought mutually negotiated diplomacy and economic co-operation would result in greater health and prosperity for the countries involved?
We all have the world’s accumulated wisdom in the palms of our hands. Use it to improve your critical thinking skills and gain the world’s knowledge. Stop watching the cat videos and tapping your screens for the dopamine hits on facebag. Own up to the fact that our government is still at war with the indigenous people of Australia and that we cannot advance as a unified country until we have a treaty as well as shaking off our colonial masters in England. The country needs to heal before we can all move forward and focus on what we have in common rather than being ever more divided by the issues we disagree on.
It’s mystifying in some ways that the corporate free press is taking such a stance .Even their business models could surely see that there is a very lots of monies to be made in regards to the threats of AGW .. No ,there are future fortunes waiting to made .Eg. the battening down of environmental housing investments against the future onslaughts/storms of increasing AGW alone could see $billions of profits alone …I don’t know if such practices will ameliorate much the overwhelming affects of AGW but there’s certainly fortunes to be made..If capitalism can see there’s large profitable buck$ to be made out of the threats of Climate Change then we may have a hope of some definite change…wether the changes are of any use ,well only the future knows..
Surprise?
Is Kennerly anything beyond a high-profile conservative harpy?
As for the Curry or Maul? These people are progressives and don’t believe in the Murdoch Coal Cult – they are anathema to everything Murdoch and his Muppets stand for.
[Personally I can’t see how the movement can expect to win over a “soft centre” by putting them off-side.
That things have gone too far to expect anything positive to come in the short enough time needed to save the situation and turn things around.]
You have to realise that the “soft-centre” won’t be won over and prefer to be deliberately ignorant to the coming climate catastrophe. XR is rubbing their noses in reality and they cringe away with horror and fear while pretending to be angry.
Good on XR. When they start fighting you then you’ve already won. They’ve finished ignoring you and ridiculing you.
Don’t get me wrong, I love their passion. I just wish more of us had “suffered” from it 50-60 years ago ….. when Palaszczuk’s proposed “sop laws” would have had their feet up in Bjelke-Petersen’s head.
Along with a passion to oppose apartheid, and the Viet Nam war, while battling for feminism/women’s rights and equality – opposed by who they were then.
Back when the “Populate or(/and) Perish” dogma was tops. When ZPG was a fringe idea.
When feral rampant capitalism was an even greater protected species.
When protecting the profits of giant fossil fuel companies was the number one priority of parties and governments, dependent on their donations : rather than encouraging and investing in R&D and diversification of energy capture/generation, along with more efficient and sustainable uses for fossil fuels – that would have added to their cost and subtracted from their profits – rather than this cheaper “dig it up & burn it” mentality.
Think of all the species and lost opportunities we’ve simultaneously consigned to the past since.
All the palm oil and beef produced since then while the planet’s forests have been decimated.
The oil wars fought to keep profits rolling in ….. to benefit who?
The accumulated waste from our “affluent(?)” world – and in whose backyard that’s ended up and continues to end up.
The GFC – from a contumacious, amoral, rapacious, “self-regulating”/”market forces checked” capitalist free market – and what that did to millions of lives : and who’s paid for that besides the poorest of us?
The prospect of water and food wars “we’re” facing, watched over by super-bugs – that the powers that be would rather we didn’t contemplate.
Back “in our day” this back-up of capitalist effluent, manifesting from unchecked, unquestioned (when “we” all thought we were all doing pretty well out of it) feral capitalism was only lapping around our ankles – most of us were happy to go out and buy a pair of Wellies – those of us that could afford it.
Now it’s over around this generation’s navels – they can’t gaze at them like “we” could.
…. And who owns/runs that “frothing media” anyway?