Published: 8 November 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
As former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull once noted, it is “the first duty, the most solemn obligation of government, to keep Australians safe”.
Any government that fails to keep Australians safe will inevitably face a crisis of legitimacy.
Right now, the greatest threat to the safety and future prosperity of Australians are the impacts of climate damage and the cascading risks of the climate emergency - and the Morrison government is not acting to safeguard the country from this grave danger.
Instead, the Morrison government is threatening political repression against all those Australians of conscience who are demanding action.
Earlier this week more than 11,000 scientists gave their names in support of an academic article published in the journal BioScience that provided a blunt reminder of the urgency and scale of the danger we are in. According to the authors:
“Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to ‘tell it like it is’. On the basis of this obligation and the graphical indicators presented below, we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency...
“The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity. ..To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live...”
The Morrison government has no credible response to this vast threat to our lives and futures. Both domestic and exported emissions from coal and other polluting industries continue to rise under the Coalition government. And climate damage from fires, storms, more severe drought, and heatwaves is treated in an ad hoc or facile way, whether it is the inadequacy of ‘drought relief’ or the serial failure to act to save the Great Barrier Reef.
Above all, the Morrison government’s mounting crisis of legitimacy is driven by the institutional corruption of the coal industry.
The systemic influence of the coal corporations has perverted our democracy by diverting law and policy away from what is beneficial for everyone, to what suits this narrow-vested interest.
The systemic influence of the coal corporations has perverted our democracy by diverting law and policy away from what is beneficial for everyone, to what suits this narrow-vested interest.
So, what does the Morrison government do? Rather than addressing the causes of the problem and instead following the dismal playbook of other regimes facing crises of legitimacy, it has threatened to choose the path of political repression.
Again it was Malcolm Turnbull who recently suggested that many of the “conservatives”within the Coalition were actually “authoritarian populists”.
Political repression can be said to take place when the state attempts to exercise control or force over citizens, in order to restrict or prevent the ability to peacefully take part in the political life of a society.
Scott Morrison announced his plans for political repression last Friday in an address to the Queensland Resources Council. He began by thanking a man he addressed as ‘Macca’ - (former federal Coalition frontbencher and longest serving federal resources minister Ian McFarlane, who went straight from parliament to become CEO of the QRC) - for the invitation to speak. The prime minister then went on to warn his audience that:
“A new breed of radical activism is on the march. Apocalyptic in tone, brooks no compromise, all or nothing.”
According to the Prime Minister, this includes: “An escalating trend towards a new form of secondary boycotts in this country … Some of Australia's largest businesses are now refusing to provide banking, insurance and consulting services to an increasing number of firms who just support through contracted services to the mining sector and the coal sector in particular.”He went on to make this promise: “
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This is not something my government intends to allow to go unchecked. Together with the Attorney-General Christian Porter, we are working to identify a series of mechanisms that can successfully outlaw these indulgent and selfish practices.”
The asymmetry of Prime Minister Morrison and the global scientific community could not be sharper. Humanity’s best scientific brains are literally warning of the impending near-term apocalypse that will become inevitable if we do not change course. And the scientists gave a rousing endorsement to the efforts of the climate activist movement:
“We are encouraged by a recent surge of concern. Governmental bodies are making climate emergency declarations. Schoolchildren are striking. Ecocide lawsuits are proceeding in the courts. Grassroots citizen movements are demanding change, and many countries, states and provinces, cities, and businesses are responding.”
The scientists added another crucial comment: “The good news is that such transformative change, with social and economic justice for all, promises far greater human well-being than does business as usual.”
The causes of liberty, equality, fraternity and sorority, and sustainability are aligned. It is the institutional corruption of the coal industry that menaces them all.
Photo: GHD Engineering staff protest the Adani mining project (ABC)
