24/08/2019

Australia's Climate Change Inaction Is Now Bipartisan. Protest Is All We Have Left

The Guardian - *

Queensland Labor gearing up to criminalise activism is only a taste of the kind of intimidation that’s likely to come
‘“Blocking roads is dangerous, reckless, irresponsible, selfish and stupid,” Palaszczuk tweeted. “The sinister tactics some protesters are using are dangerous and designed to harm.”’ Photograph: Darren England/AAP
“Even though I was the one who had been assaulted, I was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. […] I will never forgive or forget what came next. I was ‘verballed’ by the police who manufactured the most incredible statements about the whole thing.”
That was Peter Beattie, who would later become ALP premier of Queensland, detailing his treatment by police during anti-apartheid protests against the South African rugby team in July 1971.
The Springbok demonstrations stirred an entire cohort of Labor activists, appalled by the state of emergency Joh Bjelke-Petersen declared to protect the racist tour. Beattie was one such protester; Wayne Goss – Labor premier between 1989 and 1996 – was another.
Annastacia Palaszczuk also seems to have been inspired by the events of 1971. But not, unfortunately, by the protesters.
Her speech on Tuesday attacking climate activists echoed all the arguments made to justify the repression unleashed against Beattie and Goss and their comrades.
In 1971, Premier Bjelke-Petersen also explained that police needed more powers “in the face of the threat of real violence and defiance of law and order with subsequent dangers to life and property.”
On Twitter, Palaszczuk posted an image denouncing “extremist protesters”.
“Blocking roads is dangerous, reckless, irresponsible, selfish and stupid,” she tweeted. “The sinister tactics some protesters are using are dangerous and designed to harm.”

Any sizeable rally or strike – from the Vietnam moratorium to the Change the Rules marches – blocks roads.
The Bjelke-Petersen government gave exactly the same justification for criminalising protests. The anti-Springbok marches disrupted law-abiding citizens, he said.
Yet it would be wrong to see Palaszczuk simply as a throwback to the reactionary politics of Queensland’s past. Rather, her comments reflect a new development, with the two major parties forming a united front against climate action.
In Queensland, the ALP has granted Adani all the environmental approvals necessary for its Galilee Basin mine, as well as opening up tenders for coalmining in five other areas.
Federally, Labor MPs have rushed to join Craig Kelly’s Parliamentary Friends of Coal group, while Penny Wong has told Insiders that her party doesn’t support shutting down the coal industry in Australia.
Wong’s statement was applauded by Ian Macfarlane, the former resources minister now working as a lobbyist for Queensland mining.
“Penny is a very pragmatic person”, he said. “Anthony Albanese should be congratulated for aligning Labor on this and taking a bipartisan approach with the Coalition.”
That “bipartisan approach” means that those concerned about climate change can’t realistically hope for any action from parliament.
Oh, there are minor parties, of course. But the world’s leading climate scientists gave us, in the most recent IPCC report, a mere 12 years to prevent temperature rises above 1.5C – and one of those years is nearly up.
There simply isn’t time to wait for the Greens or independents to become electoral forces.
That’s why activists are sitting on roads in Queensland. It’s why school students plan to walk out again in September and why a new coalition intends to blockade the International Mining and Resources Conference in Melbourne in October.
For what else can they do?
Scientists tell us, with increasing desperation, that the planet’s ecosystems are collapsing everywhere. Should we simply sit back and watch it happen?
In the context of environmental emergency, the civil disobedience employed by activists of the past offers the only realistic option.
That’s why Palaszczuk’s speech matters.
Her plan to criminalise protest isn’t simply a manifestation of old-fashioned Queensland conservatism.
It’s a taste of the future.
All over the world, the governments that refuse to act on the climate catastrophe are gearing up to fight the environmental rebellion they recognise as inevitable.
In Britain, George Monbiot notes the campaign of demonisation launched by what he calls “dark money-funded lobby group[s]”, including a smear report labelling Extinction Rebellion as an “extremist organisation”.
In America, legislation criminalising environmental activism has become increasingly common, with Trump’s administration proposing an offence of “inhibiting the operation” of an oil or gas pipeline – a crime punishable by 20 years’ jail.
On Tuesday, leaked audio revealed Derrick Morgan, from a lobby group called American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, boasting about its success in secretly pushing model legislation to be used against protesters.
As The Intercept’s Lee Fang notes, the text Morgan describes “has been introduced in various forms in 22 states and passed in nine states: Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota.”
It would be naive not to expect something similar here.
Already we saw a French television crew arrested in July for filming protests near the Abbot Point coal terminal, a preview of the kind of intimidation that’s likely to come.
In the 1970s, the Bjelke-Petersen government mobilised huge numbers of police to suppress the anti-Springbok protesters. As many activists noted at the time, the brutality in Queensland was only the faintest echo of the repression experienced by the movement within South Africa itself.
Here’s the thing though: apartheid still fell.
Just as an entire generation became radicalised through those marches in 1971, young people today are stirring, rediscovering the tactics of the past.
With the major parties choosing coal over the planet, what other choice do they have?

*Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist

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