NSW: Finally, a district court judge rules out Perrottet government’s “fascist” anti-protest sentence

Reason, truth, and proportionality have triumphed over the Perrottet government’s fascist desires to stop climate protests and the police’s compliant fake evidence.

As I discuss further below, the judge’s finding in the Violet CoCo case raises the hope that people are beginning to realize how undemocratically oppressive New South Wales governments have become — because voters have allowed them to remain in office.

My featured article from the Saturday Paper reports the results of serial protester Violet CoCo’s District Court appeal against her brutally totalitarian jail sentence (15 months, 8 months minimum) under the new anti-protest law for protesting government inaction on climate change. Her crime was blocking a one-lane on-ramp to the Sydney Harbour Bridge for less than a half hour to raise public awareness of the climate crisis that threatens all of humanity with mass extinction from global warming due to fossil fuel emissions.

In 2022, the law was rammed through Parliament in less than a week with with Labor’s support, despite calls from a coalition of almost 40 civil society organizations to scrap it. Premier Perrottet and Labor’s leader, Chris Minns, (both members of their parties’ religious right wing factions) both expressed to the press how pleased they were with the draconian nature of the sentence.

Are these the kind of leaders you want to follow in NSW?

Climate activist Violet CoCo. Credit: Isabella Moore / from the article

by Royce Kurmelovs, 18/02/2023 in The Saturday Paper

Climate activist Violet CoCo and protest laws

In an exclusive interview, climate activist Violet CoCo, who won her appeal against a jail sentence this week, details what she has learnt about the ‘theatre’ of politics:

…District Court judge Mark Williams read his ruling this week on whether or not Violet CoCo would serve a 15-month prison sentence for blocking the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a protest…

Four months earlier, Magistrate Allison Hawkins described CoCo as “childish” and “emotional”. In sentencing her, she relied particularly on submissions by police that alleged CoCo’s protest had blocked an ambulance.

“You have halted an ambulance under light and siren,” Hawkins said. “What about the person in there? What about that person and their family? What do they think of you and your cause?”

Only, the ambulance never existed. New South Wales Police Force had been so eager to make their case, they had embellished their account with what Williams described as a “false fact”. Reviewing the evidence, he said: “How did that find its way in?” [my emphasis]

Footage recorded by Channel Seven of the protest, played for the court by Crown prosecutor Isabella Maxwell-Williams, was set aside. An assertion that CoCo had been motivated more by scorn at the treatment of her partner in a separate protest rather than climate change was also rejected. So, too, was any suggestion the protest was “not peaceful” or that CoCo should be punished harshly based on her “criminal history”.

Williams upheld CoCo’s appeal. Convictions were recorded for blocking the bridge, resisting arrest and using a flare, but no jail time was imposed. CoCo was given a 12-month conditional release order.

Read the complete article….

The red-back spiderweb controlling the NSW Liberal Party

A couple of weeks ago my article, “Is Premier Perrettet a far-right puppet, or the puppet master?“, detailed evidence on the public record showing how Dominic Perrottet’s current “Liberal” government represents the culmination of an infiltration of the NSW Liberal Party started more than 40 years ago by a Slovenian Nazi fascist propagandist by the name of Lyenko Urbanchich (wanted after WWII by Yugoslavia as a war criminal deserving the death sentence).

Lyenko successfully planted, co-opted and mentored helpers in the Ethnic Branch and Young Liberals, including David Clarke (MLC 2003-2019). Together Lyenko and Clarke also established themselves in the State Executive of the Party.

Clarke added hard-right Opus Dei Catholicism (Clarke became a “Co-operator”) to Urbanchich’s fascism. In turn they recruited several of the Perrottet brothers who had been immersed from birth in this sect. Their parents John and Ann were/are both self-acknowledged “supernumerary” members of Opus Dei). Some of the brothers, including Dom were schooled at Redfield College (overseen by Opus Dei pastors); and even through their Law/Commerce degrees at Sydney University the brothers lived in UNSW’s Warrane College, also established by Opus Dei. Dominic is now state Premier and brothers Charles and Jean Claude (at least) came through the Young Liberals are still involved in the nefarious branch stacking and other highly dubious politicking by hard-right Liberals.

Damien Tudehope was first elected to Parliament in 2015 after playing musical chairs in the seats of Baulkham Hills, Ryde, and Epping, sometimes as an apparent placeholder for Perrottet. One of his tasks on being elected for the first time was to Chair the Parliamentary Committee on the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

In 2018 Tudehope surrendered his lower house seat of Epping to Perrottet (because Perrottet wanted to shift there because it was “closer to home”), and was given a safe upper house position in return. In this repetition of musical chairs, David Clarke retired from Parliament to free the winnable space on the upper house ticket for Tudehope).

Alex Hawke is another David Clarke protege (MP from Mitchell, NSW, in the Australian Parliament 2007-present) from a strong Anglican background. Hawke’s presidency of the Young Liberals was one of the things being celebrated at Dominic Perrottet’s infamous 21st birthday party where Perrottet costumed himself as a uniformed Nazi. Hawke defected to Morrison’s Hillsong crowd around 2009 and is now considered to be a traitor by the Opus Dei religiofascists. The resulting Hillsong vs Opus Dei holy war for control of the NSW Liberal Party and government continues until today.

Do you want to be governed by these kinds of people and their ideals?

These masters of the spiderweb are only a dark corner of NSW’s overall political corruption

Today’s Saturday Paper’ also features “A brief history of Liberal Party scandals“. This outlines the incredibly long list of voluntary and forced resignations of Liberal premiers(!) and other politicians driven by ICAC investigations. “By sheer number of resignations, the NSW Coalition government goes to next weekend’s election as one of the most scandal prone in history.”

However, even this isn’t the whole story of Coalition government. The corrupt Liberal/Coalition government followed a scandalous Labor government: and then, there is the extensive “‘Fraud, money laundering’: Inside the Hillsong papers“, where a cache of leaked financial documents appears to document staggering misconduct and outrageous spending by leaders of the ‘church’ backing Scott Morrison’s motley crew.

What is the fundamental problem here, and what do we do about it?

The big issue here is that political parties who impose party discipline on elected members almost unavoidably end up reflecting party dogma and beliefs rather than working towards considered solutions to real-world problems. Where one party has a majority to govern in its own right, this makes it easy for leaders controlling the dogma and belief to become quite authoritarian and autocratic.

In states where unelected party apparatchiks and organizers (‘storm troopers’) beholden to a charismatic leader can gain control over nominations to safe seats (e.g., like in NSW), such thugs can control who can be elected, and continue controlling them after they are elected. Depending on the ‘Leader’s’ motivations and sanity, this control can easily lead to authoritarianism and outright despotism. Given that most charismatic leaders are psychopathic narcissists lusting for power, dictatorship is the common outcome. Basically this is how Adolf Hitler took over Germany, Vladimir Lenin took over the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Putin took over Russia (again) after Perestroika and Glasnost, Xi Jinping is taking over of China from what was a slightly democratic Communist Party; and how Donald Trump has been trying so hard to take over America by outright insurrection and rebellion.

In Australia our democracy is still strong enough to block and remove potentially fascist leaders and their political followers from our governments and political parties. We do this by ensuring that no one party has enough parliamentarians to govern in its own right. Both Liberal and Labor need to be downsized to the point that the balance of power is held by community independents genuinely working to represent the communities that have elected them rather than by sheepish puppets of a major party controlled by a charismatic leader supported by a cadre of thugs.

Where party MPs in ‘Safe seats’ can count on being reelected by ‘rusted on’ members of the Party they have no motivation to do anything for their electorates. Their positions are not risked if they work to force party dogma down everyone’s throats. Only where the seat is genuinely marginal do incumbents pay much attention to what their electorates actually want.

Only if you vote for someone else to actually win the seat (e.g., a community independent) can you count on replacing the party puppet with someone committed to listen to your needs and wants.

In the following election, if you still want to vote for your old party, you are far more likely to be presented with someone who knows that they will have to work for you – rather than the party leader – if they want to be elected, and then stay in office.

How can Vote Climate One help you do this?

Vote Climate One is driven by the ever-increasing flood of solid scientific evidence that humans are totally altering our planet’s atmosphere and ecosystems in ways that is triggering a global emergency that will lead to planet-wide economic and ecological collapses and our possible/probable extinction over the next century or so. Some of the rapidly growing evidence for this is documented in our Climate Sentinel News. Failed states, dying coral reefs, and towns that remain unrepaired following climate disasters show these collapses are already beginning….

“We need to treat the climate emergency as a global war we are on track to lose unless we can focus our efforts on the only task that matters — reversing global warming. If we fail here no other tasks matter — our species will soon end up extinct no matter how we arrange the deck chairs on the burning ship.”

For this reason Vote Climate One is working to encourage and help voters replace dud and corrupt parliamentarians (who ignore our daily realities to serve their own greed and the desires of their leaders and special interest puppet masters) by electing others who place the evidence-based needs of their local communities first. These needs may range from working to bring climate change under control, to the often related issues of emergency management, water, transport infrastructure, telecommunications, better health services, or even just integrity in government.

Our Traffic Light Voting System seeks to assess every candidate in every electorate of your state as to how they are likely to respond effectively to the climate emergency — or your local needs…. We have only given our green-light ranking to candidates where we have found good evidence that they can be trusted to work for your community rather than their own or others’ greed and special interests. We provide a lot of detail on many of these candidates so you can make up your own mind how you want to preference them.

Our Convenor, Rob Bakes, explains in his home-made video how easy it will be to use our election guide when it comes time to fill in your ballot papers.

Daggy Grand-Dad explains how easy our voting guide is to use to help give our children and grand children some hope for the future.

Featured Image

“The protest in April 2022 saw an entire citybound lane [actually a one-lane on-ramp] shut down on the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the peak rush hour. (9News)” Wow! The evidence from this photo actually shows that traffic on 7 lanes of the Bridge is flowing normally. Perrottet’s implication in justifying the outrageous sentence, that the whole City was in gridlock, was a bare-faced lie – fake news supporting the application of autocratic power.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

How the NSW hard-right Lib’s spiderweb works

4 Corners’ “War Within” explores the holywar between Federal Senator Alex Hawke’s Pentecostals and Clarke/Perrettet religio-fascist Catholics

This article presented here follows on from, Is Premier Perrettet a far-right puppet, or the puppet master?, on the still active spiderweb of branch stacking, influence and probable thuggery by right-wing factions of the NSW Liberal Party. In writing this article I missed including ABC Four Corners’ report of “The War Within” broadcast on 04/07/2022.

The Slovenian Nazi sympathizer, Lyenko Urbanchich started building the web within the NSW Liberal Party more than 40 years ago. From around 2000, Lyenko’s protege` state MLC David Clarke nurtured Federal Senator Alex Hawke, several of the Perrottet brothers, and Damian Tudehope amongst others before retiring in 2019. Dominic Perrottet appears to be the heir apparent webmaster….

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Tonight on Four Corners, we expose the factional infighting being blamed for fomenting the Coalition’s devastating election loss … with Liberal party insiders speaking out [not] for the first time. We investigate extraordinary allegations about backroom party operatives and how they tried to wield their power. And reveal how, on the brink of a federal election, the internal warfare was deliberately escalated, driven by deep-set hatred and a hunger for revenge. 
TITLE: THE WAR WITHIN 

What does this have to do with the climate emergency?

ABC did establish that Charles Perrottet (one of Dominic’s several brothers) did meet with the dodgy developer Jean Nassif who planed to build several new tower apartment buildings in the Hills Council district. They could not confirm that the dossier correctly presented what was discussed at that meeting.

From the plethora of evidence accumulated over more than 40 years, faction fighting by – and even among — the ‘holy warriors’ on the dogmatic right of the NSW Liberal Party comes closer to what the ABC styled as mafia turf wars than any reasonable political process working to implement the democratically decided will of people. The winners’ goals seem to enhance their power in government to impose their ‘holy’ dogmas more widely on the populace, and to increase their funding from special interests who will support their campaigns in return for being allowed to do what they want to do with minimal government interference. The battle ground has largely been to control enough of admin and leadership roles in the Party’s political apparatus to be able to the candidates allowed to run under the party banner in each electorate – especially in those seats that are ‘safe’. In such safe seats, voters effectively have no say over the appointed candidate if they are ‘rusted on’ voters for the party.

History shows that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi’s used these kinds of tactics (combined with extreme thuggery) to take control of the German state prior to WWII to impose his ‘final solution‘ on the Jews and ‘Lebensraum‘. Similarly Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks followed a similar path to replace/exterminate the Russian monarchy and impose ‘dictatorship of the proletariat‘ on the people.

Also, and actually a lot more importantly where our future is concerned, physical reality (aside from power) rarely plays much of a role in dogmatic holy wars. From what I can see, none of the hard-right factions are concerned about our deteriorating climate. They certainly aren’t much concerned about mitigation or remediation of the damages already taking place. This makes them ready cooperators with special interests who will covertly and overtly fund their electoral campaigns, e.g.,

  • 21/02/2023 – The Guardian: NSW could invest in coalmines if companies can’t raise the cash, Dominic Perrottet told gathering
  • 05/12/2022 – Financial Review: It’s not just Albanese who’s stuck in an energy price mess. “…Perrottet waited until Kean was out of the country at COP 27, pushing NSW’s credentials in the energy transition, to call in departmental chiefs and insist that the approvals for Narrabri be speeded up rather than continue at a snail’s pace. Even more pointedly, Perrottet also appointed Paul Broad as his special adviser on energy – without Kean’s approval or knowledge – leaving the minister feeling blindsided. The gas industry takes this as evidence that Perrottet is equally determined to have an alternative voice on energy – and one with strongly different views to those regularly espoused by Kean.”
  • 30/01/2023 – Lock the Gate: Perrottet Government mulls approval for coal project that would produce 8 times NSW yearly greenhouse emissions. “… [I]f the Perrottet Government is serious about reducing emissions, projects like Glencore and Yancoal’s HVO coal project must not stand a chance of being approved,” he said. “Unfortunately, the NSW Government has a track record of backing new and expanded coal mining, and has failed to adopt policies to prevent coal mines from blowing NSW’s 2030 and 2050 emission targets. “This year, the NSW Government looks set to consider the most new and expanded coal mining capacity in the state since the Paris Agreement. This is an absurd position for a government that claims to have good climate credentials. “Considering such a carbon polluting bomb makes a mockery of any commitments our governments have to reduce emissions and puts Australian communities at risk from severe weather.  “Offsets are essentially a giant con, but the idea that 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions could be offset is beyond laughable.”

It’s time to cleanse NSW and Australia of this filthy and dangerous web!

How Can the election help?

VoteClimateOne recommends that if you vote in a ‘safe’ electorate and are concerned about the NSW Government’s intent to deal with the reality of the climate emergency or the Government’s lack of political integrity, think seriously about not voting for your Liberal candidate. This may help remove a puppet from Parliament, or at least turn your previously safe electorate into one where there is a chance to democratically preselect a candidate who will actually be concerned about your interests.

We won’t tell you how to vote, but we do suggest that you check our VOTING GUIDES – NSW for your electorate before you vote for our rankings to see how we rank all candidates in relation to their likely actions on the climate and ecological emergency. We will also flag candidates that we think are puppets or players in the Urbanchich/Clarke/Perrottet or Hawke spiderwebs. Note: our Guides won’t be finalized until we see the formal ballots for each electorate. Hopefully, we will be able to publish our rankings before the polls open. The guides are designed to help you make your selections at home, so all you have to do is transfer them to the formal ballot paper when you reach the polling place.

Featured image:

Concetta Fieravanti-Wells giving her valedictory speech on the end of her 17 years loyal service as Senator for NSW where she blew the whistle on corrupt practices in the NSW Liberal Party. From the Guardian

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.