Scotty from Marketing sets the tone of truthfulness for the COALition Government he leads.
Can we believe anything this crew of special interest puppets says on climate change?
The Crikey article presented here documents our Prime Minister’s deeeep respect for truth and honesty in government and shows how the COALition misrepresents reality. Can we afford to allow him or any of his fellow puppets stay in Parliament?
A Dossier of Lies and Falsehoods identifies a litany of statements, interviews, speeches and comments over the past two years from Morrison that are demonstrably untrue. Some were clearly intended to mislead, and these are marked as “lies”. Other statements were untrue, or turned out to be so, and these are marked as “falsehoods”.
“There are a great many of both,” writes Crikey politics editor Bernard Keane, “and most of them have been uttered while Morrison occupied the highest office in the land.”
The PM “lies openly and frequently, about matters large and small — Australia’s carbon emissions, or an inquiry in relation to a sexual assault within the ministerial wing in Parliament House, or simply whether he spoke to someone who refused to shake his hand”, Keane writes.
“Most of his lies are about himself, or his government, and what it has done, or failed to do; often he has lied about things he himself has said or done, as if he wasn’t present when a woman refused to shake his hand and he turned his back on her, or he didn’t carefully explain to Parliament that the secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet had given him no update about his report in relation to Brittany Higgins.”
Why have we made a distinction between “lies” and “falsehoods”? Because we appreciate that sometimes the PM might misspeak or be poorly briefed. We are not inside his head. We don’t always know his motive.
But when he repeats or fails to correct the same untruth, in the face of evidence to the contrary, we can only conclude that someone of his intelligence and high status objectively understands and knows what he is doing is lying.
As I have shown in many posts here and elsewhere there is a vast array of factual evidence that our we face an existential climate emergency from human caused global warming. Now that the warming is started it is further amplified by increased rates of ice melting, permafrost thawing, ocean warming, increasing aridity, increasing wildfires, weakening and wandering jet streams, etc.
If we cannot stop and reverse the warming process soon, the heating will continue to accelerate until our world literally becomes too hot for most living organisms to survive. Whole ecosystems will fail and collapse, including our agricultural ecosystems. If the heat doesn’t kill our species directly (e.g., death by heat stroke), crop failures, famine, social disorder, extreme weather, etc. will.
Given that we probably have not yet passed the point of no return — where nothing humans could do would be enough to stop the runaway warming process — there are many actions we can and should be making to mitigate and avoid the risk of extinction. Many of these would benefit from Government promotion and coordination: e.g., to immediately stop the production of greenhouse gases by stopping the burning of fossil fuels and methane gas producing agricultural practices. However, even the best science tends to understate the risks of inaction. Unfortunately, this makes it easy for our present COALition government to lie, misrepresent, obfuscate, distract, and humbug to hide any uncomfortable facts. And further, to actively work to prevent and delay any emergency actions that might in any way inconvenience their patrons and puppet masters in the from positive actions to control global warming.
To help you with your voting decisions we have reviewed all of the parties (even the microparties) and independent candidates to see who they are likely to pass their preferences to and where they stand on climate. Our conclusions inform our Stoplight Voting Guide. We don’t tell you who we think you should put at No.1 on your ballot, but using the Stop Light Guide, by putting our red-light candidates last you will ensure that your vote doesn’t helps to remove them from or keep them out of Parliament. Green-light candidates are those we think will put addressing the climate emergency at the top of their agenda in Parliament.
In terms of guaranteeing that our children and grand children have a viable future, stopping global warming is the only issue in the upcoming election that really matters. If we fail here, we might as well practice singing hymns as our house burns down around us, because nothing we might do will have any effect on the outcome.
