by As I write this, the haze of smoke from the now-continuous bushfires is hanging over Brisbane, as it is over Sydney and other cities. It’s scarcely surprising that the Morrison government is doing its best to ignore the problem, but you might think the official Opposition would be making some noise about it. Not likely! On Nov 12, Penny Wong said the immediate focus should be on firefighters battling the blazes, people at risk and those grieving lost loved ones. “When we get through this, it is a responsible thing for us to focus on how we plan to keep Australians safe,” she told ABC radio. “Warnings about a longer bushfire season and more intense fires have been on the table for a long time.” Three weeks later, neither she nor anyone else in the Labor Party has had
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As I write this, the haze of smoke from the now-continuous bushfires is hanging over Brisbane, as it is over Sydney and other cities. It’s scarcely surprising that the Morrison government is doing its best to ignore the problem, but you might think the official Opposition would be making some noise about it.
Not likely! On Nov 12, Penny Wong said
the immediate focus should be on firefighters battling the blazes, people at risk and those grieving lost loved ones.
“When we get through this, it is a responsible thing for us to focus on how we plan to keep Australians safe,” she told ABC radio.
“Warnings about a longer bushfire season and more intense fires have been on the table for a long time.”
Three weeks later, neither she nor anyone else in the Labor Party has had anything of substance to say about climate change.
Labor has found time, however, to pump out what seem like dozens of statements claiming that, if only the Greens had supported Rudd’s CPRS ten years ago, everything would be so much better today.
I’ll leave aside the many dubious historical assumptions needed to make this claim stand up. Even if it were true, it would be about as relevant as Peter Dutton pointing out that Labor supported the White Australia policy in 1900.
The fact is that, at a time when the climate emergency has ceased to be a hypothesis and is a visible reality, Labor is more interested in scoring points off the Greens than in doing anything about the problem.
If there has been a more depressing time in Australian politics I can’t recall it.