Sorry local politics again, but final election summary of the real issues for the governing Coalition:
1) Climate. The coalition will do nothing except make the problems worse.
2) Energy Transition. More taxpayers’ money for more fossil fuels.
3) Disaster preparation. Terrible Coalition record. No sign they will change as climate change is not real, and its always someone else’s responsibility.
4) Corruption so ingrained the PM has never noticed any. Coalition apparently worried that people will start noticing corruption. So lets avoid any form of investigation.
5) Aged care. Possibly, the most incompetent minister in history. Absolutely (and literally) shit conditions in many places, ignored royal commission….
6) Persecution of people on disability, or unemployment. Should this continue?
7) Allow people who claim to be religious to persecute others and run the government because they are so righteous?
8 ) Completely ignore Covid, increasing Covid deaths and long Covid, because people like me will be told we died of existing conditions which were not previously likely to kill us.
9) Increasing the cost of housing. Well that’s what the Coalition appears to want.
10) Do nothing about banking, ignore the royal commission….
11) Ignore aboriginal people, in the hope they will go away. What deaths in custody?
12) Surreptitiously keep on winding back Medicare until it becomes non-functional.
13) Keep running down hospitals.
14) More tax cuts for the very wealthy and tax increases due for the middle class, because we all know that works to increase the wealth in the right places.
15) Massive funding increases for wealthy private schools as an education reform.
16) Increasing inequality – what a surprise. Obviously the will of God in action.
17) Ignoring women worried about sexual harassment at work – it is still absolutely right for the PM not to have spoken to them and to have said they should be grateful they were not shot at. But making up a problem about trans women in sport, without any sporting organisations complaining about ‘the problem’?
18) Helping the Chinese gain more influence in the Area, through subsidising the sale of Darwin’s port to China, and ignoring or insulting the Pacific Islands.
19) Throwing away money for subs, buying expensive fighter planes that won’t arrive for decades. Buying tanks we cannot use.
20) Lots of ex-coalition members saying don’t vote for this lot, because they are so bad….
21) If you vote against them you will upset the media, particularly the Murdoch Empire.
Yesterday right wing radio host Ray Hadley asked Anthony Albanese, the leader of the Australian Opposition repeat after him: “There will be no carbon tax, ever.”
Personally I would have preferred, he had not been sick and that he had said to Hadley:
“Sorry but I’m not going to allow Australian Policy to be dictated by a Radio host, no matter how popular or well intentioned. If we get into government, we will do what is best for Australia, not what you think is some gotcha moment. Besides, as Peta Credlin has admitted, we never had a Carbon Tax; we put a price on Carbon, and we redistributed the money back to the electorate so they would not be affected by price increases. All the price rises that Mr. Abbott predicted to come from the carbon price turned out to be complete rubbish, and emissions came down. It turned out to be an inexpensive remedy for a problem which was scrapped for no reason.
However, as you know we do not plan to install another Carbon Price of that sort – we will just use the same mechanism of pricing that the government has installed, but we will try to stop it being a tax-payer subsidy to companies who may never reduce their actual emissions.
If we cannot make the government’s policy mechanism of carbon pricing work, then we may have to reconsider. After all we have just been told by two Coalition members that the Government’s targets are not even targets – this may imply they know that the government’s pricing method may not be able to work.
The question Ray, is whether you want Australia to continue with the highest temperature increases in the world, massive bushfires, massive droughts, and floods. We live in one of the most fragile ecologies on the planet, and all the government can do is make the conditions worse, and fail to help people after they have suffered the consequences. I pledge that we will not only try and diminish climate change, move away from fossil fuels, but be ready to help communities that suffer from the climate change we have known about for over 30 years.”
Something like that would have been better… although it would have had the media screaming.
The Federal Coalition are demonstrably completely useless on this front. They are locked into more fossil fuels, extending the life of fossil fuels and increased ecological destruction to save “the economy” or really the fossil fuel and mining corporations. It is because of people like them we will be locked into massive floods, fires and droughts in one of the most fragile ecologies on earth. At best they don’t want to know there is a problem or don’t want to accept any responsibility.
Labor is not good enough, but it is better. So ’round 1′ to Labor.
2) Disaster response
“I don’t hold a hose” and help only for people who vote for them. These ‘facts’ make the point clear. The Coalition leave people alone to suffer, and send their prayers. They let go of any responsibility, and are completely useless in practical terms, and its clear the disaster situation is unlikely to get better by itself.
Labor could not be worse than the Coalition. So they win on the probabilities.
3) Corruption.
The Coalition seems to love corruption and rorts. There are so many examples around that its hard to list them. From Christian Porters’ anonymous donors, to Angus Taylor’s land deals, to sports and car parks, to carbon credits and land clearing, to travel expenses, the Coalition is wrapped in rorts.
The Coalition has delayed for over three years in bringing forth a federal ICAC, and has had its legislation for over a year but not brought it to Parliament for debate. The legislation seems designed to allow the government to continue to rort, and they blame Labor for them not bringing it forward. They are the government not Labor. “We don’t need no responsibility” is their slogan.
Labor at least has a plan for something. Round 3 to Labor.
4) Health and Medicare.
The Coalition have traditionally hated Medicare, apparently because it helps keep poor people alive. They have already started cutting away benefits on standard medical tests, and have appointed a new minister who appears to be hostile to medical or social services expenditure and has previously promoted big cuts for Medicare.
The Coalition cannot be trusted on this, Labor has a points score in this round on the probabilities. But we will be told this is another fake mediscare (even if the original mediscare was based on Coalition documents). Your health is your responsibility, and they have no responsibility to help you – you are not a fossil fuel company.
5) Growing suppression of free speech by a right wing media.
The Coalition’s response to this problem is to give more taxpayer funding to Murdoch for nothing, and to nobble the ABC.
They have no interest in fixing this problem as the situation benefits them, as is shown by most media headlines during this campaign.
Labor has some interest in balancing things out, but there is little they can do. Labor has a marginal victory in this area as they won’t try to make things worse.
6) Growing inequality
The predictable result of neoliberal policies and governing on behalf of the already rich, who then fund them to make the situation worse. This is tied in with almost everything that is going wrong. The Government is not responsible for what the market delivers, unless it does not profit the fossil fuel, mining or development companies, then it gets antsy.
Its hard to imagine Labor will do much about this, but at least they have shown some responsibility towards the less wealthy. Labor wins on the probabilities.
7) Indebtedness.
Government debt has grown under the Coalition, as is usually the case. Given the money thrown away on defense purchases we won’t ever see, or won’t see for years, or which is wasted through climate policies which are subsidies for polluters, Labor can’t be worse, so Labor wins again.
7) China
Is China a real threat to Australia? New ascending Empires always are a threat, but ‘when’ is the real question. Not in the immediate future, I’d guess, as we don’t share a border. The reality is that no one knows what to do with a potential enemy who is also one of our biggest markets.
However, allying with the UK and the US (again) is not a solution. The UK will not come to our rescue. Neither is selling Darwin port to them, or offending nations in the Pacific Region and giving the Chinese a way into our neighbourhood.
The Coalition has shown complete lack of competence again. No idea of how much different Labor would be, but this area is definitely not a win for the Coalition.
Conclusion
By my understanding the media should be jumping on the coalition for what they are: an incompetent bunch of corrupt, irresponsible, time wasters. But will it happen? Of course not.
This is a flow on from the Djokovic saga: You can make your own mind up.
First quote
Fordham: The Novak Djokovic case has raised another issue. He was kept in a Melbourne hotel that also holds asylum seekers that have been denied visas. There are refugees in that same hotel who have been detained for more than nine years, and taxpayers fork out millions of dollars to keep them in limbo. How is that acceptable?
Prime Minister: Well, the specific cases, Ben, I mean, it’s not clear that to my information that someone in that case is actually a refugee. They may have sought asylum and been found not to be a refugee and have chosen not to return. And that’s that’s a very, that happens in this country, people aren’t found to be refugees and they won’t return. And they don’t have a visa to enter Australia, then obviously they can’t enter Australia.
JOURNALIST: …On Monday, you said that those held in the Park Hotel in Melbourne were not refugees. Most of them are. 25 of them are. Do you apologise for that mistake? Or if you, if you’re now aware that that is not the case, is it appropriate that some of those people have been held in detention for more than eight years?
PRIME MINISTER:…. I didn’t make the statement that every single person was who was in that place was not a refugee. I said that was, to my understanding, the case with some people who were there. There are a number of people who were at that facility who have not been found to be owed protection.
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible] I’m asking about the 25 people …
PRIME MINISTER: They are all in various stages, various stages of the pathway to where they will ultimately be located. Now, as I can tell you, as it was confirmed to me this morning that those who are there, with some obvious exceptions, who have who arrived more recently, are people who came to Australia, illegally entered Australia by boat…. The suggestion that I said they were all not found to be refugees is not true. That’s not what I said. It was a question in a radio interview. I answered to the best of my knowledge at that time. And in quite a number of cases, that was indeed the case. There are people who who are in detention, who are not owed protection under the, under the Refugee Convention and our rules. Others, but I can tell you the ones that are, they arrived in Australia illegally by boat.
For quite a while, it has been the convention of the coalition to declare that you cannot be a refugee if you come to Australia by boat. No matter if you cannot afford air travel, no matter that you cannot wait for diplomatic clearance because your country is trying to kill you, not matter that if you return to your country you will die, spend the rest of your life as a political prisoner etc. etc… Coming by boat = bad.
Some obvious remarks on the Djokovic scandal. I doubt there is anything new here.
Background: Government in Crisis
The right wing Australian federal government has recently been obviously stuffing up on issues related to Covid. Covid is exploding, hospitals are being overwhelmed, people are dying, etc. We won’t know how bad it will get for a while longer – by January 18 2022 about 256 people in NSW had died with or of Covid in 2022 – that seems to be over a third of those who died the whole of last year. The Government did not have enough vaccines, or Rapid Antigen tests, even though they demanded that people have them. Reports suggest the vaccination of kids before school returns is ‘stressful,’ to say the least, without the vaccines. Presumably the Federal government had all summer to prepare if they wanted schools to go ahead. The economy which was doing well, until the “Let it Rip” approach to Covid was implemented, is now tanking. Supply chain systems are breaking down for lack of healthy workers. Small businesses are taking it really hard.
While the federal government is not responsible for what State governments do, until it suits them, in December 2021, while omicron was emerging (omicron was first reported to WHO on 24 November), the Prime Minister Scot Morrison was gung-ho about the economy opening up and governments getting out of people’s lives. This lead was followed by Perrottet, the current Premier of NSW, who repealed constraints pretty quickly.
For all her faults I simply cannot imagine Berejiklian (the former Premier of NSW), going along with the Federal Government saying “Oh goody here is a new Covid variant we know nothing about other than it spreads really quickly, lets remove most of our public health measures before we learn more about it, and risk spreading it through all of Australia.” Perrottet just placated the Coalition and went ahead.
Even if they had delayed by a month or so to let it rip, to find out more about what was going to happen with Omicron without ripping, the decision would have been better informed.
These are not the only major problems the Federal government was facing at this moment, and it was declining in the polls with a federal election nearing.
A distraction is needed! One that will take up lots of air time…. What can be manufactured?
The Looming Australian Tennis Open attracts lots of eyes and minds
Originally the government (the Prime Minister himself) said it was up to the State government in Victoria to decide if Novak Djokovic could come in. Djokovic filled in forms and everything looked ok. According to Djokovic the Department of Home Affairs approved him directly (I cannot find evidence one way or the other). It turned out later he, or someone else, filled in the forms incorrectly and therefore lied to get a visa. He also was out and about in Europe, in public maskless, supposedly a day after after a positive Covid test – not an indicator of trustworthy behaviour. So there is plenty of reason to deny him a visa, or revoke the visa.
Legally it was never the Victorian government’s say so that counted – it is the Federal Government’s responsibility to issue and confirm the visa. So the PM was either wrong, deliberately misleading, hedging his bets, or at that time he did not think he needed a distraction beyond the tennis itself.
If the PM had a resolution about the visas and what was acceptable, he should have made it clear and visible before all this happened, rather than saying it was up to Victoria, when it never was. What stopped the Federal Government from saying beforehand publicly it was not possible for unvaccinated people to enter Australia to play tennis? Why let other unvaccinated tennis players through before Djokovic? Why wait until he was here? Perhaps, initially, they weren’t seeking a distraction. However, it looks completely capricious. Just as it does to release the decision Friday evening, when it would normally have been too late to arrange anything over the weekend, if it wasn’t for ‘extremely kind’ judges.
It is not as if it was unknown that the World Number One had refused to be vaccinated, so the Government could have prepared. But they had not, which could imply that they suddenly needed something which they thought might do them some good.
The distraction
The argument is that it is not implausible that they may have decided to distract people from their Chaos and change the news focus, by being Strong on Australian Borders which seems popular with voters, and their one sure public policy for near 20 years…. So to be strong, they seized upon the moment, and revoked Djokovic’s visa, and put him in immigration detention. A judge ruled the Feds had not followed procedural fairness, which was pretty blatantly correct – Djokovic was not allowed to speak to his lawyers before the visa was revoked, he was pressured by Border force to give up his rights, he did not have the reasons explained to him, etc.
The lying was then discovered, and the government had to decide whether alienating the sports mad Australian people was going to undo the protecting borders shtick.
Bizarre Reasons for a second removal of Visa
Then after a week or so, on Friday evening, the Minister for immigration, who basically has arbitrary power to decide who gets a visa, cancelled the visa again saying the visa was cancelled the second time because Djokovic’s presence: “creates a risk of strengthening the anti-vaccination sentiment of a minority of the Australian community”.
This is bizarre for a number of reasons:
1) The Federal government is not particularly anti-anti-vaxers. It has largely accepted demonstrations as an expression of free speech. It has members who spread what seems to be anti-vax information, who participate in demonstrations and who do not get reprimanded by the government, and they have done their best not to make vaccination compulsory. They were also trying to open the economy up, before ‘safe levels of vaccination’ were reached. Whether this is bad or good is up to you, but given this background, why worry about Djokovic so openly and so late?
2) The argument also has little legal force, when the lying on the visa forms would have done for the purpose of revoking a visa. Why not just deport him because of the failure to vaccinate, the false forms, or the deceits and stupidities he had practiced. These are all straight forward evidence of breaking the visa rules?
3) If you truly want to silence something, you do not go shouting it from the rooftops. Every anti-vaxer in the world has now been told to seize on Djokovic for their cause. This technique also leaves the government open to having to prove that he would be a political problem for them – which is not illegal in any case, and is he only a political problem for them because of the minister’s statement?
I quote Djokovic’s lawyers:
One could see a situation in which it was plain to anyone with common sense that cancelling the visa would cause overwhelming public discord and risks of transmission through very large public gatherings.
If the Minister’s argument is accepted by the courts it reinforces the arbitrary powers of that immigration minister. People can now be deported on the basis of how the Government thinks other people may respond to them if the government takes them to court. Yep this is bizarre. Either this is complete incompetence or a real double handed game. It is difficult to tell.
The final verdict
The case went back to a full bench of the Federal Court over the weekend – which is not normal I believe, and I’ve read lawyers wondering about this as well. I’m ignorant, but when was the last time a federal court sat on a Sunday? If not for a while, what does that say about priorities in Australia? Everything has been sped up so a decision can be reached in time for the tournament.
We now know Djokovic lost unanimously. The minister assumed that Djokovic “entered Australia consistently” with Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation documents, although the minister noted there was a dispute about this in the earlier court proceedings.
“For present purposes, I will assume that Mr Djokovic’s position is correct rather than seeking to get to the bottom of this here,” Hawke wrote.
Basically he argued the decision would have been the same regardless of the travel declaration and vaccination issues which were were the real rule based grounds for deportation, which they are claiming to have asserted – or at least the PM is.
The court also appears to have asserted that the Minister does not really have to give reasons or conduct investigations into breaches of visas. So the banning was purely on the grounds that people might have protested against the government as a result of Djokovic being here. And the court agreed that the minister was within his rights.
Now while it might be debatable if this is a good thing or not, people are usually banned for political effects before they get here, or after they start agitating, and this supposed effect would have to have been known in advance, and the visa could have already been refused if they were not seeking a distraction
We now know, the minister can deport anyone and apparently does not have to give any evidence for that decision other than their ‘common sense’.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems that once such discretionary powers are granted no laws govern them. Especially when courts rule the minister does not need coherent reasons, fairness or evidence. This probably should worry you.
There have been people waiting in the ‘confinement hotel’ Djokovic was briefly in, for 8 years or more, to have their refugee status decided, and its now clear to everyone the minister could arbitrarily release them if he chose. But they are not wealthy or famous, so they will continue to languish in jail for attempting to entry the country and claim refuge from persecution, rather than play in a tennis match or two.
Incidentally the PM seems to have misrepresented the position that most people held in the ‘hotel’ were refugees, by saying they were not. Amnesty International tweeted:
We’ve written to PM @ScottMorrisonMP asking to correct the public record on the false statement he made regarding refugees in the #ParkHotel on @BenFordham‘s program on @2GB873. Most of the people being held are refugees and are languishing in limbo due to his govt’s policies
There does not appear to be any record of the Minister’s arguments currently on the minister’s web site, but but the official document is now on the court website.
Firstly, there are lots of economic theories and practices guided by those theories- there is not just one economic theory, although people tend not to realise this. Some theories may be better than others. However, evaluating different theories is not the point of this post.
Nearly all economics faces some incredible difficulties.
Economics tends to be caught up in social values. After all, economic theory encourages behaviours, forms of organisation, government policies and aims for particular results. It is difficult to conduct social theory without importing values into it, and much harder to be objective about such issues, than it can be when studying physics for example. I suspect that values cannot be separated from what a person perceives to be reality, and what they ignore of reality. Values can prompt unreality, but we cannot not have values.
Values also get caught up in the dynamics of politics and power. The economic theories and practices which tend to be well known and used in a society will nearly always be those which support the wealth and power of the dominant groups in that society. Who else gets to promote theories and their proposers easily? Even if the theories were ok, they will be distorted by this practice, and become ideological tools to hide important processes, or to justify inequalities of power and opportunity. We could ask if some action is avoided because of economic damage, what kind of economic damage counts, whom does it primarily effect, and what might be a way of avoiding that damage?
As a result of these political processes, most current well known western economics, tends to assume that capitalism is an inherent given, rather than one mode of social organisation among many, even in capitalist societies. For example, people generally do not treat their children as only being cheap labor, or as a cost.
Societies and economic systems seem to be what people call “complex systems”. That means they are composed of ‘events’ which are influencing each other. A theory may have been a good theory, but after a while the practices associated with that theory change the system, so that the theory no longer works – sometimes people say that the system is ‘self-reflexive’. Complexity means that all knowledge is a simplification at best, and that the only accurate model of the system is the system itself, and that reality includes people working with the theories. [This does not mean models of complex systems are useless, they are the best we can do, but they are not completely accurate in their predictions, and this should always be remembered]. ‘Items and events’ within complex systems do not exist apart from those systems, or without being influenced by those systems.
Complex systems don’t have firm boundaries. Economics, in its current forms tends to forget that John Stuart Mill’s removal of social factors, culture, politics and psychology was only an attempt to simplify the system to make a start at analysing it. He did not, and economists should not, think that economics is independent of these factors. If you remove these factors then you are going to be erroneous.
These factors seem to be relevant for all kinds of social and political understanding. They are one reason it is difficult to engineer a ‘good society’, whether we try to do this by regulation or unregulated capitalism.
This does not mean it is impossible to get a better society, but we probably should remember:
Our values can distort what we perceive and what we do.
Models can have values and politics and self-benefit hidden within them.
Capitalism is not natural, inevitable or inherently good.
Complexity seems to be a fact of life. Uncertainty, degrees of ignorance, unintended conseuqences, and unpredictability are normal. Useful values and policies probably have to reflect this ‘fact’. Everything we do is experimental, not given as true in advance.
Different fields overlap. You cannot have a healthy non-ecological politics, or an economics which disregards power, the power of wealth, or the existence of varied modes of exchange.
Prediction of alternates is always difficult, but the short answer is “almost certainly”
Neoliberalism in practice
Neoliberalism is a word usually used to describe policies which support corporate dominance while pretending to support free markets and individual liberty.
Neoliberalism aims to protect corporations from political influence and regulation while increasing political control by corporations.
It implies that wealth has no power to control markets or to allow people to buy political power, so it effectively promotes the power of wealth elites at the expense of ordinary people.
Although it allows corporations to control government, it pretends that government is independent of those corporations and is to blame for everything that goes wrong. This enables them to further render government useless for people, and increase corporate power.
It posits all human relationships as primarily being individually oriented, competitive and economically oriented (thus accidentally harming families and communities). The primary aim of this claim is to allow them to deny that wealth elites will ever team up for their own advantage – which is otherwise observable fact. Strangely they do recognise that workers can team up for their own advantage, making unions, and they argue this is bad.
The only class war they recognise, is when people team up to take on the wealth elites in general (not just part of the wealth elites such as Soros or Gates). The wealth elites suppressing people is just normal business practice.
Neoliberalism tends to be opposed to government handouts to unemployed or unfortunate people, but usually remains silent when there are government hand outs to the wealthy. Hence wealth and power inequalities continually increase, and people get left out of their own governance.
There are people who argue that all this is in the tradition of classical liberalism, but I doubt that is the case entirely; few classical liberals would argue that capitalist economics is the only driving force in human psychology, and neoliberals tend to demand extensive authority to protect existing corporate privilege. This is why neoliberalism can easily tilt into fascism, or authoritarian hierarchy, polarisation, nationalism etc.
It can be suggested that nearly everything bad today has come about through neoliberalism.
Costs of neoliberalism and benefits of no neoliberalism
Wages have stagnated because neoliberals dislike costs to business, lowering the amount of income you receive is important to them. They call this market discipline, or worker competition and flexibility.
Without neoliberalism, unions would have retained their place and would not be pushed out. Workers would have a collective power to be able to increase their wages, improve conditions of labour, and lower working hours without loosing money – as was the case in the 50s or 60s.
Because neoliberalism involves government by the wealth elite, it has an interest in preventing people from participating in government. Without neoliberalism, it might be that their would be more community government, and real public participation in electoral processes – the democratising and civil rights moves of the sixties and seventies might well have continued. If so, then people would be less alienated from the process of government.
Neoliberal corporations control most of the media, hence they can use it to mislead people as to the cause of problems. They often say the problems can be blamed on a non-existent socialism which needs curbing by more neoliberalism and hence more power to the wealthy. They also try to build loyalty through compulsive abuse of ‘alternatives’ rather than encourage discussion, fact finding and building ties between people across groups. This means that many people live in a neoliberal fantasy world, rather than engage with reality. Hence the ease with which real problems are ignored, and people encouraged to vote against their interests. Without neoliberalism, we would have more, smaller, and competing media organisations. There would be more views represented, and better investigations of problems.
Under neoliberalism the problems of climate change and ecological destruction cannot be faced in time, because that might involve restrictions on profit or on corporate privilege to pollute with ease and freedom. Dealing with ecological crisis will possibly curtail some of their liberties, and if the people suffer as a result, neoliberals can live with that. Fifties and Sixties style capitalism might well have easily dealt with climate change and ecological destruction. Indeed some argue neoliberalism was promoted to stop public interest in solving these problems.
Without neoliberalism, people might be more prone to admit humans are co-operative as well as competitive and that everything exists because of everything else, and we depend upon each other and our ecology. With an ecological vision neoliberalism does not make sense.
Likewise neoliberals stop changes to the rules of markets which might protect smaller people, and promote changes to the rules which protect wealthy people and allow them to get more of the general wealth. Neoliberalism tends to imply that all non-economic transactions are zero-sum; that is you gain at the expense of other. If other people are helped this takes money and status from you. Zero sum economic transactions tend to be hidden. This is one reason why neoliberalism is often known as trickle down economics – it pretends that making sure the wealthy get wealthier benefits everyone all the time.
Without neoliberalism corporations would pay more of their share of tax, and there would be more money for public services and general needs.
Without neoliberalism there would be less privatisation of public business, and better and cheaper service with less corruption. There might still be publicly owned businesses which would allow real competition and hinder wealth cartels. All of these factors would have likely kept the continuing rise in living standards for people which was such a factor of post WWII capitalism.
Conclusion
A clear description of neoliberalism demonstrates one reason people do not want to be labeled as neoliberals – its very hard to openly, or awarely campaign for more corporate power and wealth and less power and wealth for everyone else.
Without neoliberalism, we would still have problems, but life would probably be better. It has been one of the great disasters of the last 50 years.
I’m pretty old and I’ve seen a massive shift to the right over the last 40 years, so what might seem leftist to others seems rightist to me. So most people might call The Guardian ‘hard left’ but that is only the case because of the shift. Likewise the Right media have been engaged in screaming, shouting and name calling for over 40 years and people have become habituated to it and obviously don’t even notice it any more. The Guardian can occasionally engage in similar abuse and it seems to be a terrible shock to people who have been reveling in it the other way around.
Let me try to express the current spectrum relating it to the realities of 50 years ago
FAR RIGHT:
Support for established hierarchy, power and wealth, until the far right take over, in which case the hierarchy is The Party. They deliberately use, or encourage, violence to persecute relatively powerless people who disagree with them, or who they think inferior such as gays, people of the wrong religion, people of the wrong race. Women are baby making machines no more. The far right are nationalist, sexist, racist and militaristic; raising hatred and anger against particular social groups is fundamental to their strategy – discussion between groups has to be hindered or stopped. Seeking enemies is what they need to generate loyalty. The party aims to become a militia and violence is naturalised, but blamed on others. Any election which does not deliver the “right” result is clearly faked up by the evil left. Eventually elections must either give the “right” result or be abandoned. Science is abandoned. ‘Truth’ is whatever helps the party to gain support. The death of people to support the comfort of the hierarchy is something they can easily live with.
When I was young, the far right was anathema to both mainstream right and left. We remembered the Nazis and the violence of Fascism in Italy and Spain – indeed Spain was still fascist. Nowadays this dislike, and the reasons for it, has been forgotten and the Republicans are moving into the far right with significant success, and some people in Australia clearly want to follow them.
RIGHT:
The right supports the established hierarchy. In modern terms they support the corporate hierarchy, whatever they might say to the contrary. People exist to serve the market and their employers, and the workers should be persecuted and the wealthy nannied. Education exists to provide jobs. Universities should become profit centres, not centres for investigation. Any thought which differs from this should shut up.
Current examples:
Robodebt which penalises unemployed people who took temporary work (which you would have thought might be praised), and nanny big businesses who were paid Jobkeeper and did not need it but kept it.
If there is a country and farmers party then farmers are always sacrificed to mining, or other corporate, interests.
Freeloading pollution by business is good. Environmental protection that actually does anything, bad.
Any science (or thinking ) that might hamper corporate profits must be wrong, exaggerated, or biased by leftism.
Try to shield business from public anger; such as avoid Royal Commissions into banking for as long as possible, and then ignore most of the recommendations when it is found corruption is normal. Corruption is just the free market in action.
Talk about liberty, but always mean the liberty of the wealthy, everyone else has to suck it.
Be prepared to embrace a far right attack on a minority if it looks like it will be electorally pleasing and take votes away from the far-right and give those votes to the Right.
Currently moving into far right territory. This is the current position of the Coalition and Murdoch Empire, although Murdoch gives lots of space to the far right as well.
RIGHT LEANING:
Think of providing bandages and medicines for those who fail in the capitalist system, or to repair the damage done by capitalism, but otherwise leave the system alone. Try to be relatively humane, and occasionally mention social mobility as a good thing, and help it happen. Think you can control climate change AND sell coal and gas, because it might be inconvenient to do otherwise.
Current Position of the ALP. Old position of the Coalition. Sydney Morning Herald in the past, although steadily moving rightwards
CENTERIST:
Take positions from Right Leaning and Left Leaning
LEFT LEANING
Admit capitalism and The Market do not always work. Provide bandages for capitalist damage. Increase the power and security of workers, so they have decent jobs, conditions and income. Aim for a functioning social security system. Encourage education to be about learning for life, with free and open thinking untacked by the government, and aware that sometimes academics are a bit batty, but that is kind of interesting. Social mobility is recognised as vital to getting new ideas and approaches and avoiding stultification. Prosecute corporate corruption, and social damage generated by corporate behaviour. Worry about ecological destruction and climate change. Encourage green consumerism, and environmental protection that goes a little beyond “isn’t it sad that iconic animals are dying out”. Recognise you cannot solve the climate problem by selling fossil fuels no matter how profitable. Hope renewable energy will solve the problems with a little just transitions theory. Think science is the best guide we have to reality.
The Guardian, in general, with the exception of one or two writers who would never be published in the mainstream media. Most Greens.
LEFT:
The Capitalist system might be the best we have, but it is inherently destructive and raddled with contradictions. The Left is actively critical of the way the system works. Left to itself capitalism will destroy society completely. Everyone should have equal power and representation. Workers should have input into the businesses they work for, rather than be treated as obedient machines. Workers know what they are doing, often better than management does. Government only exists to protect all the people, and to open the hierarchies. It may be necessary to nationalise industries in the public good, especially if they form “natural monopolies” (such as energy or water) or if they are needed for life, as competition can run down natural resources: It may be necessary to set up State run businesses as public services to compete with commercial businesses to guarantee competition and end normal crony capitalism. In the past this included things like the Commonwealth Bank, Telecom, ABC, etc. This will not be popular with business, because they don’t like real competition and non-corruption as it lowers profits. The left believes that we should severely prosecute corporate corruption and non-competitive behaviour, as we are relying on its absence for the system to work. They may also try to avoid situations in which incompetent or corrupt corporate heads get payouts on dismissal which could keep many workers in jobs for years. The aim is to mitigate and reform capitalism to such an extent it becomes a democratic system responsible to the will of the people, and not intrinsically destructive. Aim to change the delivery of harms into the delivery of goods. This was the post-war ALP until somewhere in the Hawke and Keating reign, and parts of the doctrine used to be received favourably by the mainstream right – partly because of the real fear of worker based revolution.
Nowadays, some Greens, some old people, and very small parties run out of bedrooms 🙂
FAR LEFT
Capitalism is inherently corrupt and destructive. It must be overthrown, and its supporters given the choice of re-education and taking real work, or being put against the wall and shot. Given capitalism is inherently violent against workers and steals the products of their labour and ingenuity, violence is justified in its overthrow. Because the new state will be threatened by overseas capital (which is always the case) then the State will temporarily be a dictatorship of the proletariat, until it is established, and strong enough to resist these external threats. The aim is complete liberty for all, not just for capitalist elites, but this always fails because of the chaos produced by revolution coupled with attacks from outside.
Most people used to think the Extreme left was well intentioned, but unable to perceive the effects of their actions. There is hardly any of this movement remaining.
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My personal politics is more or less old fashioned left conservatism; we should not abandon the checks and balances which grew to moderate capitalism and protect ordinary people, together with an appreciation of the dangers of inherited hierarchy and well intentioned radical disruption.
Charles Hampden-Turner, Linda O’Riordan and Fons Trompenaars have recently released a two volume work Capitalism in Crisis. This deserves some attention as they are all established business writers, who want to recognise problems with capitalism, and fix them. This is not radical left stuff, it is also fairly simple.
Here I will simply summarise the opening salvo, because its not available online as far as I can see, and I think it deserves some publicity. If this felt to contravene copyright by either authors or publishers please contact me via the comments. I clearly do not make money from this action.
Shareholder dominance = Shareholder extraction
Firstly they point out that wealth is created by all the people in the production/distribution/sales process working together. They call these people ‘stakeholders’. I personally strongly dislike this term but, despite being business writers, they Do NOT limit the term to people within or invested in the business, as is usual, and include people such as:
employees, suppliers, customers the community, the government, the environment and the shareholders.
They emphasise that while shareholders are important, they should be the last to benefit.
they can only collect what the other stakeholders have created between them.
Without the work of others there is nothing for shareholders. However, the system has now been [politically] structured so that shareholders get priority, and they tend to increase their percentage of their wealth generated at the expense of other stakeholders, therefore reducing the percentages that go elsewhere. [This priority is often explicit in business talk: “we must look after our shareholders” “Our sole responsibility is to our shareholders” and so on. ]
The authors allege that this set-up decreases productivity and innovation, probably as there are fewer rewards within the business itself, and less constructive connection with communities outside.
As we have seen repeatedly, companies engage in share buy backs, pushing the share prices up, and allowing managers who have been rewarded with shares to sell back to the companies on a rising market. It helps actions which temporarily drive up the share price, but weaken the company in the long run – such as sacking experienced staff. Going by the share price, and for maximum leanness or profit now, does little for company robustness or resilience.
Another problem is that those companies who spend money on improving themselves and their staff, in researching problems, and improving products, don’t give as good shareholder returns, and the share price often becomes cheap (not a good investment) and raiders can buy them up, and strip the spending away, funneling it back to the shareholders which now includes themselves. [Or they can engage in asset stripping, as was big in the Reagan years, in which components of the firms are sold off for more than the company is valued on the share market. The killing is made, and the often productive company destroyed.]
Money
Is the purpose of industry to make money? Or is the purpose of money to make industry?
“Industry” by which the authors seem to mean collaborative building or making, is what generates wealth. It needs money, but once its purpose becomes to make money then it can be hampered, as people focus on the money rather than on problems or the building – [the easiest route to personal benefit becomes selected, rather than company benefit]. Innovation is hampered because little monetary reward is given to innovations which are not directed or anticipated by superiors. Money can support innovation but not create it out of nothing.
Money by itself is sterile. No two coins ever created a third coin or ever will.
Money gives a single focus on getting more of it, or more ‘goods’. Past financial results govern predications of what will happen, and the push towards future performance, rather than paying attention to what is happening in the world – and this includes exploitation and destruction of our environment. Yet:
the unit of survival includes our environment and we will sink together.
Finally people try to control finance, which is impossible [it is a complex system], and company efforts to rigorously control its finance or the finance of the world further disorganises the company and the world financial system. [Although it is not discussed here, this can generate the problem of “debt capitalism” [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] (please note that many analysts reduce the total debt to GDP ratio by not including private debt which is important and nowadays seems to compare with government debt). Debt gives corporations ‘energy’ and financial stability, but eventually the debt grows to such an extent that it overwhelms the productive economy: growth comes from increasing debt rather than from production of useful items; property prices inflate and so on. Eventually, the system, or the currencies of the world, will probably have to collapse, and billions of middle class people will probably lose their savings and their homes.]
[This does not mean that companies should not look after their finances, but that over-control, or over-borrowing, can be disastrous. Finding the mean may not be easy]
The Wealth Cycle vs The Wealth-destruction cycle
In a wealth creating cycle, the focus is not just on profit to shareholders. Investors support the other stakeholders and then take a fair share of the wealth created between them all.
[Illth should also be minimalised, but this is hard in a primarily profit seeking environment, as harms are considered an externality or a bonus.]
In other words, wealth is encouraged by looking after the producers or increasing job satisfaction, rather than by treating producers as disposable servants or slaves. Good relationships are often important to human functioning, creativity and production.
In a wealth destruction cycle, relationships and good conditions are severed or destroyed by monetary concerns. The priority given to shareholders, means that they extract money from the other “stakeholders.” Wages are held down. Workers are threatened by redundancies. Workers are substituted for by machines, or by export of production overseas, and sacked. [A high unemployment rate, and low hyper-strictly monitored unemployment benefits, helps keep workers nervous and exhausted. Trainings become threatenings, consultation processes become enforcements.] R&D is cut as it often fails and is an expense. Supplier payments get delayed, and reliable, high-quality suppliers can be threatened if they do not cut prices. The tax payments which support the societies the companies use for earnings and production are minimised or avoided, often by complicated networks of ownership, overseas debt, transfer pricing and so on. Local environments, and living conditions, are destroyed, as few shareholders live in those environments, and its nearly always cheaper in the short-term to destroy.
The money is transferred away from workers upwards to shareholders, by the way the system is organised.
Shareholder focused management has conquered labour of all types, lowering wages (or increase in wages) for most people, and this means there is less money in circulation for basic products, which probably puts prices up to keep shareholders happy, which causes more poverty or precarity.
No wonder employees become disengaged, growth slows and world market-shares shrink. Wages in the US have flat-lined for a generation or more. There is growing resentment among people.
And the system that sets this problem up, then sets about blaming people [who have little power or responsibility, but who seem different]: migrants, refugees, [racial minorities, university professors, radical communists, feminists, scientists and so on, anything other than the managerial and shareholding elites.] This sets up a further hampering of the system, as real problems are not faced up to, especially if they cause corporate, or group based, unease.
Our means of controlling the anxiety generated by the system in which we live typically makes things worse – we become more alarmed by the scapegoats and suffer more from the real problems we ignore. This in turn leads to more escapism and less focus on real problems. For many the escapism comes through drugs, alcohol or consumption, which further hamper people’s ability to deal with reality and adds to their problems.
Mind-set, Re-set
The usual solution is to change world view, and indeed that is important. [We can see the effects of the change in which a billionaire becomes the hero of displaced Americans and then tries to steal an election. Whether this change in world view will generate any long term change or not, it has certainly altered things.]
So the ideology of the Industrial Age is giving way to an ideology for the Age of Nature, which is a possibility, [but it is being hard fought against, and on many fronts. Not only by corporations by by Religions, who insist that we are not part of the World, we are part of Spirit or Soul, or our residence is in heaven above. ] However, the Age of Nature implies that ‘we’:
must learn to sustain what sustains us.
rather than believing in The Market or a kind of deity that rewards prudence and punishes sloth.
[An ideology of the Age of Nature, involves what I have called thinking ecologically. That is thinking in terms of systems and interactions, and the ways systems change with changes elsewhere, they way that changes circle on themselves. To go back to the beginning point, shifting the economy so that it benefits shareholders and shareholder companies, changes the whole focus of the way the economy works. People near the bottom, are of little consequence, as they get little money, and are not deemed worthy of money. There is no sense, as there was in the 1950s, 60s and 70s that the economy was about improving life for all, or that if lower profits helped worker integration, power and enjoyment then that was worthwhile. see footnote below]
The economy is more like a tree or living system. Nature is circular, systemic, paradoxical and fractal…. the whole is inevitably more than its parts.
We cannot command other creatures without consequences. Process works in multiple loops: self-interest spurs our willingness to serve others and serving others is in our own self-interests.
The question is whether we can make that change to viewing things from an ecological perspective, rather than a “dominance of shareholder wealth perspective”? It will be difficult as so much benefit is geared to wealth. This is the ultimate problem of climate change,
The reason I quite like this approach is that it’s focus on how shareholders and some managers have levered the system to benefit themselves and destroy our ability to perceive the world reasonably accurately, reminds us that the solution to destructive capitalism can be political. Neoliberal ideology helped support the takeover of the old system of capitalism, which worked reasonably well, and helped support ordinary people. So a new political development may be able to restore a modified version of this older ‘state of the world.’ Otherwise we are faced with the unstable prospect of either crashing, or overthrowing capitalism and that leads to its own dangers…
*
Footnote
From the Parliamentary library. Australian Conservative hero and deceased Prime Minister, Robert Menzies on social justice. In other words it is not necessary to live as we do:
“The country has great and imperative obligations to the weak, the sick, the unfortunate. It must give to them all the sustenance and support it can. We look forward to social and unemployment insurances, to improved health services, to a wiser control of our economy to avert if possible all booms and slumps which tend to convert labour into a commodity, to a better distribution of wealth, to a keener sense of social justice and social responsibility. We not only look forward to these things; we shall demand and obtain them. To every good citizen the State owes not only a chance in life but a self-respecting life.”
Menzies saw social justice as an issue of rights rather than charity.
“The purpose of all measures of social security…. is not only to provide citizens with some reasonable protection against misfortune but also to reconcile that provision with their proud independence and dignity as democratic citizens. The time has gone when social justice should even appear to take the form of social charity.”
Charity is a benevolence to be given or withheld to supplicants at will. Social justice is a defined right of respected citizens to social security in times of need.
Menzies, who had seen the excesses of laissez faire and the effects of boom and depression, rejected the view of government as merely “ holding the ring, while private enterprise fought and won on the basis of the fight going to the strongest and the devil take the hindmost ”.
Liberalism was not to be the servant of private enterprise. Again and again, using remarkably similar words, Menzies rejected this notion.
“We stand for the dynamic community force of private enterprise; we are its protectors and encouragers but we are not its servants. We prefer the live hand of the private entrepreneur to the dead hand of socialism; but if the individual is to have social and industrial justice and to be guarded against what might become the tyranny of the strong, private enterprise must accept its duties or even its burdens.”
the community has a definite responsibility to provide adequate security for individuals against the results of economic disaster. None of us accept any philosophy which says that those who fall by the wayside are to be left to fend for themselves.
The first answer to this foul doctrine of the ‘class war’ is to do all we can in a positive way to show both employers and employees that they work in a common enterprise, in which neither can succeed without the other, in which each should share in prosperity, in which the employer’s greatest asset is a body of contented employees who feel that they are understood and fairly treated, and the employee’s greatest asset is a successful business which can guarantee to him steady employment and expanding opportunities. We say to the employers of Australia that they have a great responsibility on this matter. One of the tragedies of modern large-scale industry is that the relations between employers and employees tend first to become remote, and then estranged and then embittered. The wage-earner in an industry is a human being whose welfare should be the care of the industry in which he co-operates. Legal duties and legal wages are not all. We have fallen behind advanced industrialised nations in our realisation that the personal factor in industry requires constant attention and a warm and sympathetic understanding. The best employers know this; but there are still too many who have failed to appreciate that an automatic resistance to all claims, and a belief that the only obligation to employees is to be found in minimum wages and conditions, are just as much an encouragement to the ‘class war’ as the subversive activities of mischievous agitators.
This blog note is an unfinished attempt to say something about the basis of ethics, legitimation, delegitimation and the struggles around them in the NSW country town of Narrabri, and the surrounding Narrabri Shire. While this is all highly provisional, it can be stated that the main struggle appears to occur within the context of ‘resources curse’.
Public Domain map of NSW from Ian.Macky.net [Unintended distortion by the blog software?]
Introducing Narrabri
The Narrabri region, as referred to here, is an area in the Northwest of NSW, often (but not always) called ‘the Northwest’, not just Narrabri town, or shire. It is cursed with plenty and lack of resources, both of which are issues because of climate change. Most of the time I will call the area the Northwest.
The Northwest has plentiful supplies of coal and gas, and a marked lack of water, through prolonged drought and possibly declining water tables. The Northwest used to be primarily a farming area, but farms are now hard pressed, and threated by recent mining, with coal dust and threatened damage to the water table through gas mining. There are also large cotton farms which may provoke more water shortages for smaller farms.
As shall be covered in more detail later on both the Federal and State governments seem keen to have more fossil fuel mines and have supported the mining companies in this area. These kind of events may foreshadow the outcome of the 2021 COP – we can also think of a massive expansion of Chinese coal mining [1], [2], and a UN report which apparently claims the world is going to increase fossil fuel emissions until at least 2040, almost three times higher than what’s needed to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
We may be seeing the Green Paradox ramp up [3], [4] – the idea that as it becomes likely coal, and even gas, will be phased out, there is an commercial and ethical imperative to sell or use as much as possible. This is a position encouraged by a massive price increase for coal, going from $US60.00 per ton October last year to $US230.00 per ton this month.
If we are going to try and specify groups, we can specify: farmers, business people in town, mining workers, residents close to mines (usually farmers), residents distant from mines (townsfolk) and Gomoroi people.
Legitimacy struggles
The situation in the Northwest involves an ethical struggle over the legitimacy of fossil fuel mining. Because there is no agreed on basis for ethics, it is hard to resolve this situation totally through the application of ethics alone; it seems probable there are large irresolvable differences between the positions of various social groups/categories. As suggested earlier, ethics is a matter of relative social power between different social group or categories, group identities, relative ‘structural’ positions between groups, changing or maintaining cosmologies, changing or maintaining customs and habits and changing contexts or framings, and arguments over those contexts and framings. It can in the final case depend on threat, violence and exclusion.
It seems to me that the legitimacy argument in the Northwest has several interactive strands, based on the factors just discussed. As also previously suggested legitimacy is not distributed equally between all sections of the population and involves struggle just like ethics. Legitimacy may also be risked any time it is asserted.
Maintaining and changing customs and habits
Fossil fuels are established and familiar, they involve established customs and habits, and modes of organisation. The way forward is relatively clear. This lends legitimacy and ethical potency. Renewable Energy may require new customs, new habits and new modes of organisation, as well as generate new forms of instability while becoming established, and so looks precarious and illegitimate.
There is a sense that the company itself claims to support local customs and improve them for example:
The Santos Festival of Rugby was a momentous success for Narrabri Shire and Santos, bringing the community together after prolonged drought and the COVID-19 pandemic for three days of rugby action in February…. The exciting pre-season game saw the Waratahs claim victory over the Reds, taking home a $25,000 reward and the prestigious Santos Cup.
In preparation for the festival, Santos upgraded Dangar Park with broadcast quality stadium lighting and installed wi-fi connectivity into the clubrooms, which will potentially attract more large-scale events in the future. The economic benefits to the community have been warmly welcomed. The event injected approximately $700,000 into the community through Santos’ direct spend with local suppliers, as well as indirect spend on hospitality and accommodation from visitors.
Other stories in the ‘Community News’, point out the company is going to be net-zero emissions by 2040, which seems improbable, that it is “supporting local business,” “part of the community” and so on. Trying to establish it is one of ‘us’, and generous.
Other people are also mining fossil fuels and selling them, why shouldn’t we?
Cosmology: Prosperity and development
This might be called a society wide pragmatic frame, but it also involves cosmology – in the sense that accepted wisdom implies this is the way the world works, and is the way the world works for the best – the assumption is that abandoning this frame is the first step to chaos.
Fossil fuels have brought what is defined as prosperity and development, where development is defined as the process of increasing material prosperity, increasing technical sophistication and boosting military security. Prosperity and development are defined as good, and as a purpose of life which should be spread throughout the planet – the undeveloped world tends to be seen by the developed world as ‘backward’: poverty ridden and intellectually inadequate whether this is true or not. Fossil fuels are the basis of modernity and benefit many people who use electricity and automobiles, as well as those who profit from them. Prosperity and Modernity are cosmologies which provide contexts and frames for fossil fuel production and use. Maintaining those fossil fuels is therefore the basis of that good, and a potential way of spreading that good. Without fossil fuels life will decline. It is certainly true that fossil fuels have provided plentiful energy (although it is getting harder to obtain), and it is doubtful that renewables can supply similar amounts of energy in the short term.
Many folk in the town (it seems especially influential business people) also support mining because they see the mines as a potential source of prosperity and jobs in the town, which will save the town. There is also a reasonably sized body of activists who see the mining as purely destructive – some of whom are trying to encourage renewable development. Mostly the mining’s obvious deleterious affects occur in the country, and affect farmers, but the ties between farmers and town seems weaker than it once was. There are larger corporate farms rather than family owned farms. Not having the same money farmers are said to not spend as much in town, and they don’t hire as much labour from the town – possibly because of technical ‘advancement’ and the increase in scale.
[Once it was] plausible to support a large family on 250 acres with crops, … [however] today a farmer would need 2000 acres and capital to invest in machinery and equipment.
Brooks et al. 2001. Narrabri: A Century Remembered 1901-2001: p.15
Given the apparent lessened ability to depend on farming, the Mayor of Narrabri at the time, Cathy Redding, argued that the mines should go ahead because:
Population retention would be one advantage for Narrabri, in that jobs would be created, new manufacturing businesses would develop and the multiplier effects of these developments would ensure regional growt
In reality, local prosperity is a matter of how the mining is organised, where the profits go, where the ongoing operational payments go and so on. It is a legitimising frame, which may have little local truth. Indeed the argument that gas mine workers come from outside, that profits are largely transferred elsewhere, while costs remain (such has increased rental housing prices, damage to ecology and water) seems to be one of the most common arguments against the mining. In general the response is largely to assert that prosperity will result, and that Narrabri Shire will avoid the costs. A number of local businesses do stand to benefit from the mines, from increased economic traffic in town and from contracting work with the mines, which legitimates the mine through prosperity contexts. However, results from the 2016 census imply that mining has a relatively low effect; it currently provides 5.4% of jobs, comparing with 11.6% in health and social assistance, 10.5% in retail, 7.7% in Education and 7% in Agriculture forestry and fishing.
Sustainability of the local area, becomes sustainability by new jobs in one field. This acts to promote the gas and distract from environmental damage. There are people who are enthusiastic about this form of sustainability, people who reject it, and people who accept it will happen. It is not really clear from the figures that the Narrabri region is in radical population decline, but we need to wait for the current census results.
I’d suggest that the people who accept it will happen and those who are enthusiastic are that way, because there is almost nothing else officially on offer to generate prosperity, although a brief survey our students did of people in the street, suggested that the idea of Narrabri as a tourist food town was very popular. Many people were clearly fed up of being questioned, which suggests they accept it will happen, rather than working towards rejection.
Renewables are personally popular, but seem to have little social consequence. There was at least some acceptance of the delegitimating arguments against renewables by lack of consistency, and lack of intensity – which is primarily about habit and custom – see below (#). There is little struggle against renewables, probably because renewables are not a threat. They can be almost ignored – which offers a degree of freedom.
Prosperity framings are reinforced by corporate and State practice, and by the widespread neoliberal ideology which acts to put business first, suggests local prosperity flows from encouraging or subsidising corporate prosperity, and attacks any kind of inhibition on business liberty – an ideology which is so persuasive that it is adopted by all the major parties. The supposed farmers party (the Nationals) always seems to put corporate interests ahead of farming interests, as when they protect mines instead of farms, or continue to agitate for lack of climate action, when farmers are pressured by climate change and water problems. Matt Canavan of the National Party has remarked:
About five per cent of our voters are farmers, it’s about two per cent of the overall population. So 95 per cent of our voters don’t farm, aren’t farmers or don’t own farmland.
Furthermore, with the gradual erosion of the welfare state and attacks on unemployed people, like robodebt, there is little other way for ‘ordinary people’ to survive unless it be hanging on to corporate ‘prosperity’.
Changes in Cosmology?
However, the context of this cosmology may be shifting, as argued in a previous blog, the Business Council of Australia, after a long period of complete climate-action denial, has moved into issuing plans for emissions targets and reductions in emissions. The plan is a little ambiguous about coal and gas exports, and it seems significantly motivated by fear of others acting on climate and lessening trade with Australia as a result, but it could change the context significantly and suggest that fossil fuels are not the only, or necessary, way to go.
Protestors can also use the ‘economic reality’ argument:
“Financial institutions around the world are increasingly unwilling to back polluting fossil fuel projects like what Santos proposes at Narrabri.”
Coal seam gas drilling has bought a harsh boom bust cycle to other towns, especially in Queensland, leaving the towns with little but damage and rusting well sites. This surprisingly, has little effect on the prosperity framing for many. It appears local business knows the risks, thinks it is smart enough not to be caught out by the damage that has happened in other towns, and that this intelligence helps support the legitimacy of the operation. They want it to succeed, or need it to succeed, without cost, so it must. To some extent this is doing what other people have done with the hope it has different consequences. However, the realisation of damage elsewhere is a challenge to cosmologies of prosperity.
Another challenge to prosperity through fossil fuels is the idea of prosperity through renewables. An ISF report suggested as one option the rather unlikely figures of “2,840 [local] ongoing maintenance and operation jobs by 2030” if Narrabri started going (corporate) renewable, whereas Santos only promises “up to 200 ongoing positions” [5], [6]. The problem seems to be that the ISF figures seem exceptionally high for solar, and so unpersuasive. People have another experience with solar farms in NSW – they require very little maintenance – mainly cleaning (with the expectation of water use).
Finally while the Gas mining has been justified by NSW need for local gas, a report conducted for the Climate Council suggests that NSW is likely to:
reduce its annual gas demand by the same amount that the Narrabri Gas Project is forecast to produce, as soon as 2030.
This report effectively renders the Narrabri Gas Project redundant. We already know that this project will drive up greenhouse gas emissions, worsen climate change and do nothing to reduce power prices. Now we also know the project is completely unnecessary when it comes to meeting the state’s energy needs,
Power relations – Fossil fuel companies and the State
In corporate capitalism, in general, corporations have more bases for power than community groups. The have wealth, contacts, prestige, ability to put out information, buy politicians and think tanks, even gain violence from police or from outsiders (there is no suggestion that companies in the region have done this, but it is certainly possible in general) etc. The power relations are not equal, and many people may think siding with the corporations could grant them benefits, while opposing them could make their situation worse.
Fossil fuels and fossil fuel companies, have State support which can override any local objection that does not command the allegiance of a vast majority of local people, and this potential for power when allied with at least some at the local level, not only gives fossil fuels support or indifference, but makes them easier and cheaper to mine. For example it has been alleged that the State government neglected to implement most of its Chief Scientists recommendations to make gas drilling safe [7], [8] [9].
One person in Narrabri insisted that
the government had not implemented 14 of 16 recommendations to limit the risk of coal seam gas made nearly six years ago by the then NSW chief scientist, now Independent Planning Commission chair, Mary O’Kane. “Our government has betrayed us,” Murray said.
The Federal minister apparently approved the gas wells before the company explained which parts of the Pilliga forest would be cleared, it finished investigating effects on local groundwater, or developed a biodiversity plan, important given local koala habitats and declines in koala populations not to mention other endangered animals. Later on the project was boosted by the Federal Government’s ‘gas-led recovery‘ (“Cheaper, more abundant gas is the second pillar of our energy plan for COVID recovery. We’ve got to get the gas.” “this [Narrabri project] is 1,300 jobs, $12 billion worth of investment and it is absolutely critical“) and that government’s agreement with the NSW state Government to fund gas [10], [11], [12], [13]. One comment was:
The state government has committed to injecting an additional 70 petajoules (PJ) of gas per annum into the east coast market in return for $3 billion from the Commonwealth government.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian flagged two possibilities to supply the gas; import it or source it from the yet-to-be-approved Santos Narrabri Gas Project, which will create 70 PJ a year….
[The local MP said:] “They have absolutely corroded the independent process,…
“Regardless of the good intentions and the upstanding integrity of the Independent Planning Commission, if the project is approved, the perception will always be they dangled $3 billion in front of them to get the approval.”
It seems that in July 2020 the NSW Government was worried that Federal support for the Narrabri project was too overt and that:
any impression that the outcome of the IPC [the NSW Independent Planning Commission] process is pre-determined could undermine public trust in the process.
They apparently realised that enforcing the case could undermine legitimacy. However, the project was listed as one of 15 major projects to gain a reduction in their “assessment and decision timeframes.” This received remarkably little publicity at the time. There are frequent references to a PM’s announcement, but the announcements I’ve found did not include all the projects, or mention the Narrabri project.
Fighting against large fossil fuel companies is also a difficult process in Australia, as if you win, it seems possible the State will change (or appeal) the law so you lose, or the Company will try again in a marginally different manner, or that they will successfully claim a new mine is an expansion of an old mine. For example, after the Rocky Hill coal mine was refused on the grounds of the emissions production overseas when the coal was burnt, the NSW government legislated to to prevent “the regulation of overseas, or scope-three, greenhouse gas emissions” in mining approvals to give certainty to miners [14] [15].
Fighting against fossil fuels is fighting against both the State and Fossil Fuel companies and unlikely to succeed in terms of power relations and money.
The State is not supporting development of any LOCAL processes in the Narrabri region (that have been mentioned to me) which could provide prosperity or increase survival opportunities, which do not depend on fossil fuels. This makes it harder to challenge fossil fuel legitimacy. However, the NSW state government, has recently managed to gain emissions targets for 2030, and it does support corporate renewables elsewhere, through Renewable Energy Zones, which seem to be geared to supplying the big city and industrial areas on the Coast. But it is not clear that the state or federal governments do much to support local energy supplies via renewables or community renewables, or will oppose fossil fuels directly. Both Parties in Australia have made it clear they are in favour of mining fossil fuels, establishing new fossil fuel mines, and selling the products overseas.
Opposition resources spokeswoman Madeleine King has said Labor will not stand in the way of new mines and believes Australia will export coal beyond 2050…
For so long as international markets want to buy Australian coal, which is high quality, then they will be able to.” Ms King said Labor was “absolutely not supportive one bit” of a push by Malcolm Turnbull for a moratorium on new coalmines
One framing which allows them to claim this is compatible with climate action is the convention that emissions only occur in record of the country burning the fuel, and likewise should not apply to the company profiting from the emissions (as they are outside its control). If the measures were changed this claim of legitimacy might fall.
In a somewhat contradictory policy regime the NSW Government made declared the only active petroleum/gas exploration licences to remain in action were to be those supporting Santos’s Narrabri coal seam gas project, due to concerns from other regional communities [20].
So again we have the power differential and the assumption that fossil fuel profits are good, but changing the law like this also draws attention to the way the law is a political tool used to benefit particular groups.
Context/Framing: Regulation
Current regulation which is based on previous habits, limits connecting energy sources, and energy sources with users, without using the grid, especially if they cross property boundaries. These regulations are largely a matter of custom, and do not reflect the new situation, but there is inertia, because the new situation is easy to ignore, if we keep established power relations going.
Connecting these household sources might provide some kind of new paradigm or framing once it is established, or perhaps during the establishing.
Recent proposals for a feed in tariff suggests that household players could end up paying for export, further discouraging action.
These regulations shape the economy to favour existing players, deliberately or not.
Enforcement?
Apparently, in 2016 the State government increased penalty terms for protesting on land and disrupting mining equipment [21], [22], [23]
There is little sign that the Australian State will change its pro-fossil fuel status, so while it may be useful to try and take back the State, it is also useful to move outside the State, perhaps through local level activity, to try and overwhelm the legitimacy of fossil fuels in general – but the question is whether working outside the State removes legitimacy.
Local Power relations and desires
Local action rarely has state backing when in opposition to mining.
Surveys and polls
There is repeated self selecting survey and other evidence to suggest that most to a large percentage of people in the region do not support the gas fields. For example 64 per cent of the local submissions to the Environmental Impact Statement Inquiry in 2018, were opposed – non local submissions were even greater in their opposition. A Lock the Gate survey of 840 people found 97% of people were in favour of renewables to provide long-term jobs, 52%, of people surveyed were opposed to the gasfield, 28% of people said they were in favour of the gas, and and 20% were unsure. “55% of the people surveyed said they were very or somewhat concerned about the gasfield and only 24% said they were not concerned”. Never the less, the implication is that a reasonable number of people could accept both gas and renewables. A Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance (a collaborative research institute with members such as Australia Pacific LNG, QGC, Santos, Origin Energy and CSIRO) survey found that that 30.5% of residents ‘reject’ the gas, 41.7% of residents would ‘tolerate’ (27%) or be ‘ok with it’ (15%) (which suggests at least some of these would be accepting or indifferent), while 27.8% of residents would ‘approve’ (13%) or ‘embrace’ (15%) CSG development (pp.5, 22). It again seems clear that lack of enthusiasm, overwhelms support – but suggests that perhaps it would be difficult to organise opposition against corporation, state and law.
As implied earlier was the case, it appears to the GISERA survey that “Residents who lived out of town held significantly more negative views towards CSG development than those who lived in town”, and that:
Potential impacts on water quality and quantity were the top two concerns (M = 3.75 and M = 3.74 respectively), followed by community division over CSG development (M = 3.63) and the disposal of salts and brine (M = 3.63)
(ibid: 24)
An Informal survey conducted by UTS students in the streets of Narrabri town, presents some further clues as to what might be happening. Out of “four priorities” for the town 59% selected ‘more employment’ again showing possible survival anxiety dominates, 29 per cent selected ‘improved government services’, 9 per cent ‘stronger community life’, and only 7 per cent selected ‘more sustainable environment’ as their highest priority. Asked to identify the biggest threat to the Region out of five choices, 31% chose drought and climate change, 29% chose loss of local businesses, 20% chose drift of population to larger towns or cities. Asked to choose multiple options for the future, 69% chose local farming and food culture, 43% chose community-owned renewable energy, 31% chose large scale renewable energy, and 29% chose large scale coal and gas. Again the suggestion from this multiple factored informal survey is that mining has fairly low committed support, on par with community renewables, and possibly flows from anxiety about survival.
A click through survey on the Land website, when checked on 23/10/21, gave the results to the question ‘Do you want CSG production at Narrabri?’ as 76% No and 24% yes, but I see no mechanism to stop people voting more than once.
Lack of State support for alternative development in the area, reinforces the apparent ‘need’ for gas and the prosperity/survival it promises but may not deliver locally. This can be seen as part of the connection between State and Fossil fuels. However, local contracting and other businesses which can possibly benefit from mining, take these power relations into the local area, not only through individual businesses, but sometimes through the Local Council (which has to look after local business as it is a major source of local income for people) and through the Chamber of Commerce.
Local Power relations and fragmentation
In the debate about the gas, hostility has been marked, and become pretty polarised. Anecdotes of painful events were common, such as stories of break up of long standing friendships and groups over the gas issue, stories about public rudeness, public ridicule, unfair division of time or access to Council, and so on. People seemed extremely wary of anything that might start an argument.
Both sides, to some extent, blame external forces for the fraction. Many of those we spoke to who were in favour of gas, claimed that people from Lock the Gate were not locals, but city folk – trying to imply the protestors were not from the area, and thus delegitimate them through social categorisation.
These lot just rock into town and tell us what we should be doing with our land. I mean we’ve been here our whole lives.
Interestingly no mention that the mining companies are also from out of town, which indicates the effectiveness of the “we are one of you” categorisation game played by the mining company. However, the objection to protestors goes through conservative politics and there are still ongoing attempts by pro-fossil fuel groups to strip LTG of its charitable status, and reduce its funding.
This indicates a legitimacy struggle over fossil fuels, but it also shows the local cost in a relatively small community.
Framings and power
These framings interact and appear to magnify each other in terms of granting legitimacy (support and acceptance) for fossil fuel mining. Social order, customs and habits is largely built on fossil fuels, and survival is reduced to what is good for business, which is reinforced by alliances between miners and the State, and regulations which are based on the needs of established industry and which inhibit competition. Laws reinforce the survival threats against protestors, which have the probable intention of making delegitimation reluctance or rejection visible. Even the divisions in town seem to be based on external forces, and the hopes or despair begin cultivated, and it implies that there is some way in which people are being treated as extreme or the differences cannot be ignored. It could easily be alleged that local resistance is overwhelmed by outside input, and local fears about survival.
These are largely external contexts which are provided to the region and which shape possible action in the region. The main sign of what is happening locally is the social fragmentation, which seems to be encouraged by these external factors as much as by internal factors.
However, there are some signs that these contexts could be changing (the NSW targets, the BCA, the visibility of ‘cheating’ in the courts), and there is the possibility that changes in complex systems can accelerate quickly. Further signs shall be discussed below.
Delegitimating Fossil Fuels
Reframing 1: fossil fuel damage
The proposal for the gas suggests there will be around 850 gas wells over 425 well-pad sites, so the project will have significant impacts on local appearance. People are assured that no serious ecological damage, or damage to the town economy, will arise from fossil fuel mining, which is perhaps contradicted by this number of wells. This reassurance is impossible to guarantee, but neoliberalism seems happy to ignore damage that helps profits of large companies. However, this complacency is a possible breaker of legitimacy, as admitting that a process could damage the ecology, town and farming seriously, could reframe that process. Not admitting the possibility of damage (when it is reasonably well documented elsewhere) also adds to the perception that those who won’t admit the possibility are lying – the new frame is in play. So we have prosperity and damage framings being brought in.
The possibility of water damage has to be defended against, or else they cannot proceed. The company denies possible serious damage to the water table (the famous Great Artesian basin), which is above the gas tables. The gas comes through the water. Even if they seal the drill holes well enough to not have produce damage immediately, they probably cannot guarantee these seals will not fail in hundreds of years, and when you are dealing with ecology you are dealing in thousands of years at least… There is also water in the gas tables, and that is toxic, and there are signs that leakage has already occurred.
Bringing in the question of environmental damage, and possible poisoning of basic necessities such as air and water, challenges the prosperity frame’s coherence.
There have been protests against gas mining in the region, since it was first proposed, with national community activist organisations such as Lock the Gateand People for the Plains, having a large presence in the area. For example on its current website Lock the Gate attempt to reframe gas in terms of damage, ecological and economic.
When every fracked gas well needs 30 million litres of fresh water and 18 tonnes of chemicals, and when gas already contributes 19% to our greenhouse emissions, it’s actually a recipe for disaster…
For every 10 jobs created in coal seam gas (CSG), 18 jobs are lost in agriculture Over 120 farm water bores in Queensland have already run dry because of coal seam gas Direct loss of farmland for CSG results in farmers losing up to 10% in economic returns More than $2 billion in public funds have been allocated to the gas industry in the last financial year
The threat of environmental damage is now so ‘obvious,’ that it can be used to draw the ire of neighbouring farmers, as when Lock the Gate suggested it was likely that the Gas Company would extend its mining operations into neighbouring areas of the Northwest such as Namoi Valley and Liverpool Plains, as such creeping expansion has happened elsewhere and the State Government’s moratorium on further gas exploration did not cover that area. The local MP stated:
I think it is highly hypocritical to suggest that one electorate in regional NSW should have these things and another shouldn’t…
I would like to see all of these PELs [Petrol Exploration Licences – which include gas] totally extinguished because most coal seam gas (CSG) and gas reserves that are based in the coal bed interact with water aquifers and to get to the seams you have to punch holes through the aquifers.
We have just been through the worst drought in living memory which showed us just how important groundwater is and our regional communities know how important groundwater is.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re in the Tamworth, Barwon or Northern Tablelands electorates, it’s important in each and every one of them.”
Emily Simpson, NSW Farmers Association Policy Advisor had previously also pointed out that while farmers did not oppose gas in principle,
the location of the Narrabri Gas Project creates an unacceptable risk to the precious water resources of northern NSW.
The many conditions attached to the project are designed to minimise this risk, however do not recognise a simple reality: water sources that are damaged cannot be replenished or replaced. The possible harm to water resources has been confirmed by the NSW Government’s own Independent Water Expert Panel.
Bringing climate change in as a frame, suggests that while fossil fuels can bring prosperity and order they are gradually bringing in chaos and disorder which may be so great as to undermine the existence of the shire itself. It is not clear how effective this framing is in Narrabri itself yet, although it is clear from reading the Federal court judgement in the duty of care case, referred to above, that evidence about climate change was extremely significant to the judge – and people did talk about drought and climate change.
The International Energy Agency has argued that there can be no new gas, coal or oil projects if people wish to avoid catastrophic climate change. The IPCC agrees in its latest report. Thus support of new coal could be seen as completely destructive, a position perhaps harder to take as climate change becomes more obvious…
The gas company makes a few half hearted suggestions that it is green. After taking over another gas company, the managing director said:
the combined group would be better-equipped to seize opportunities to expand into clean-energy technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and zero-emissions hydrogen. “Size and scale have never been more important as we look to fund the energy transition to net-zero emissions,”
This implies that rather than cease emissions they hope to remove them, which is not a successful technology at the scale required.
As a number of my colleagues have suggested, there is some evidence to suggest that knowledge of climate change, has made external organisations more interested in offering support to local people opposed to the mines, perhaps providing support, or perhaps increasing the local friction.
Climate change itself is also starting to increase destabilisers of legitimacy, through increased droughts, fires and storms. Through observing the consequences, farmers are starting to ally with environmentalists, and possibly indigenous people, to protect their land from ill effects of ‘development.’ Recently in Australia the National Farmers Federation has cautiously announced support for an emissions target in discussions with the National Party who reject the idea:
Far from creating uncertainty, a target actually creates certainty in an industry where much is uncertain…. the one thing that is certain is that if we set targets we can work towards those targets
This again is a small change but it fits in with other changes, in moving the legitimacy of emissions.
Reframing 3: Cheap energy with local benefits
Renewable energy, especially solar is cheap and modular. It can be built up, part at a time, in small clusters. It does not require the large amounts of capital that fossil fuel energy requires to generate community level low polluting power. It may not be as profitable as fossil fuels but while that is important for corporations, that may not always matter that much for community groups. But it sets up possibilities.
Over 60% of dwellings in the 2390 postcode which includes Narrabri have rooftop solar, so solar is popular, but rooftop is not communal – its about individual virtue, concern or money saving. It is possible to have solar panels and still support fossil fuels.
There is a relatively new organisation called Geni Energy which is exploring the possibility of community renewables being used to generate cheap energy for activities which could lead to prosperity in the region (‘the Northwest’) beyond coal and gas. The idea is to bring plentiful energy into the region, which keeps money in the region, as opposed to the profit centres being outside the region (as with the coal and gas). As previously explained regulations make this project difficult, but not impossible. However, the issue is how quickly the community projects can get up, and how much support they can gain in terms of the framings contexts of customs and becoming habitual, prosperity, external power relations, regulation, and enforcement. That requires several breakthroughs, their ability to build community and extra-community networks – which they are trying to do – and their ability to shift people into enthusiastic support and acceptance.
Reframing 4: Corporate Solar
The company currently establishing a commercial solar farm [24], [25] does not seem well connected to the community, does not seem to provide many continuing jobs, and the connections to take power out of the region are not particularly good, and there is no sign the State government, or anyone else, will improve this. Commercial renewables will be unlikely to supplant fossil fuels, or bring similar prosperity to the Region, (few jobs after construction and money leaves the town) and if they do, that does not remove the link between fossil fuels and prosperity in made in Narrabri.
There are some other corporate solar farms in the air, but some people have said these are ambit claims primarily to lock others out. In any case they have no significant involvement in the region, or apparent connection with people. They are all pretty vague.
Corporate solar is not necessarily helpful in raising support for renewables or delegitimating fossil fuels.
Other Tools
Court cases and appeals against Environmental approvals have been the most effective. While they have not stopped the mining, they have delayed its onset, which (if the State could be persuaded to take export and other emissions seriously) would possibly eventually stop the permissions give to mine.
Conclusion
The contexts and framings for legitimating renewables and the delegitimating fossil fuels do not appear (at this moment) to provide the level of mutual reinforcement that the pro-fossil fuel contexts provide.
The prosperity / devlopment /growth format more or less engenders the State fossil fuel company alliance, and the commonsense that life requires fossil fuels. Habits and customs mean that people in the developed world use (actively or passively) for transport, food transport, computing, delivery, exports, imports, plastics and other components all the time. Without fossil fuels these habits would have to change, and that produces a degree of fear. New habits, and other cosmologies have not yet developed, although they are developing.
Professing support for fossil fuels does not have to involve an active campaign against renewables, they can rely on habit, regulation, power that is external to site, and hardening social categories to get the support to get them through. While the State government is changing, it does not seem to be wanting to stop fossil fuels, or lower them that much. The gas company is in the position where it is likely it has a time limit and would like to get the gas out as soon as possible.
There is no reason to assume that maps of legitimacy for fossil fuels and renewables would overlap in terms of the positions of various groups on the grid – while I can make good guesses as to where groups might appear, there is as yet no hard data which would allow the plotting.
However groups in Narrabri seem to be fractured and histories of past pain possibly leads to low levels of discussion and difficulties in developing cross group policies or actions. The history benefits those who would stay with gas and coal mining. There is also no way to enforce renewables, but the law enforces fossil fuels and restricts protests.
However, it seems possible that the legitimacy of fossil fuels is largely supported by indifference, acceptance, or the sense of there being no alternative. This could change, if there was an alternative, or there was more reach out by activists (which may be hard given an audience avoiding pain).
The main hope is that the context framing of the legitimacy systems for fossil fuels are starting to show cracks, becoming precarious and coming to their end, and that like the electoral legitimacy of the US government, they will collapse rapidly, and in this case in time for action to have some mitigating effect.
There is the possibility of trying to avoid the state and function outside it, circumventing regulation rather than following regulation. This requires the formation of a local movement, perhaps in community energy, through social enterprises like Geni. In Western Australia there seems to be a formal movement to do something like this with proposals to help towns get off the grid, and be put in charge of their own energy through disconnected microgrids.
That solar energy, is cheap and modular, means that community groups can build their own energy supplies over time, buying (or gifting) panels as they can afford to, and if the regulations change, connecting them up.. They don’t have to have huge building projects, projects can be manageable and use local labour.
Courts seem incapable of enforcing strictures against Fossil Fuels, but they make the artificial and political nature of the current set-up clearer. If the laws are changed or ignored, then the laws supporting the fossil fuel system seem more arbitrary and less legitimate – it also engenders delay which, if the context, changed, might make a significant difference.
Complexity suggests that small regular changes can make large differences to the whole system; the question becomes what are those changes?
So there is hope, amidst the difficulties, but it will not be easy.
All I can do is suggest that legitimacy is complicated and that the data indicate that is so. Part of what research can sometimes indicate is the inadequacy of data, and stimulate new questions.
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