By Situation Theatre 18/5/2019

From climate crimes to crimes against humanity, from coddling white supremacists to closing Indigenous communities, from attacks on public broadcasters to assaults on media diversity, from cutting funding to schools, hospitals, penalty rates, pensions and community organisations, to cutting arms deals with terrorists, from prosecuting whistleblowers to protecting the banks, from its war on civil liberties to its war on the poor, from Islamophobia to homophobia, from rigging the tax system to ruining the NBN, from naked corruption to never-ending corporatism, the fight against extremism compels Australians to give the Coalition an electoral flogging of painful proportions.

Today feels much like Christmas Eve as a child. Excitement about the prospect of waking up to a stack of presents (Coalition defeated in a landslide, Labor secures record majority, Dutton gone in Dickson, Abbott loses Warringah, record Greens vote as they snatch two more lower house seats and the balance of power in the Senate, Pat Dodson to become Indigenous Affairs Minister etc etc) but with the grave fear of waking up to a sack of coal.

The fear is real because this country cannot afford three more years of right-wing extremism. It’s a an especially terrifying prospect for the young, old, gay, Aboriginal, Muslim, female, disabled, sick, casualised, or poor amongst us.

The proposition of extremism in our political parties has been a matter of some debate in the weeks since the Christchurch massacre, with honest brokers like Peter Dutton saying the Greens are “as bad as Fraser Anning” and measured commentators like Greg Sheridan saying the Greens “hate our society and are insane” and “there is no moral difference between Clive Palmer, or Pauline Hanson, or the Greens”. The fact that there is no moral difference between Peter Dutton, Greg Sheridan, and a pit toilet didn’t come up.

Then you have dear, sweet, handsome, Richard Di Natale, accurately calling the Coalition the real extremists on 730.

By any objective measure, the claim that this Coalition Government has been extreme is uncontroversial.

You only have to read through their heinous record on refugees and the environment to feel overwhelmed by the depressing challenge Labor and the Greens face to overturn 2000 days of destruction.

And that’s not to mention the legislation they’ve passed in every other conceivable policy area, nor the even worse policies blocked thanks to the tireless work of activists (think of the Budget-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named).

Nor is it to describe their assiduous attempts to cultivate an atmosphere of hate across the country which bolsters ex-Liberals like Pauline Hanson, nurtures neo-Nazis, and sustains men like the Christchurch killer.

It’s for these reasons and many more that today’s election must send the strongest possible signal to our politicians that this kind of extremism will not be tolerated.

There could be no stronger signal than the downfall of the Coalition on a scale we have never seen.

This punishment is best executed with a simple three part strategy, summed up in this article we published yesterday.

The strategy is “Vote Greens, preference Labor, put the dogshit last”.

Voting Greens is a recognition that this is a climate election and according to The Conversation, The Greens is “the only political party in Australia with climate policies that put forward targets that would enable us to meet our international obligations according to the science”.

Preferencing Labor is an acknowledgement of the hard work they’ve put into creating a re-distributive policy agenda, but also the fact that they will still torture refugees and torch the planet, albeit more humanely and more slowly than the Coalition.

Putting the dogshit last is a statement that Australians deserve better than to be governed by the faecal matter of a rabid rottweiler.

C'mon Australia.

It’s time to face the climate emergency.

It’s time to put down this crazed, frothing, abomination of a government.

It’s time to vote in the most progressive cohort of people’s representatives Canberra has ever seen.