By Situation Theatre 17/12/2019

At precisely the moment at which the ALP is positioning itself as the coal industry’s best bud, Richard Di Natale has reached out to Labor in a spirit of co-operation. Part three of our series on escape routes from the death cult of Australian politics argues that now is not the time for coalition-building with a fossil-fuelled party whose hatred for The Greens evidently outweighs their desire to “fight Tories”. Now is the time to fight the bipartisan commitment to ecocide by waging an anti-establishment class war and telling an inspiring story of political transformation.

An illustrative strategic tension has opened up amongst the Greens leadership on how to respond to the fresh hell that is the oil on canvas ozpol artwork of three million burnt hectares of forest in the foreground and a renewed bipartisan fossil fuel love affair in the background.

On the one hand, the SMH reports that Greens leader Richard Di Natale “has made a plea to Labor to work with his party on climate change and election campaigning” and to end the “fractious relationship” with the Greens. Apparently Di Natale has "consistently tried to reach out to Labor to try and establish a constructive working relationship" to no avail.

On the other, Greens co-deputy leader Adam Bandt has been taking the fight up to the Liblabs something fierce. As evidence, consider his accurate attacks on Smoko for his responsibility for the ongoing bushfire emergency, his principled defence of Jordan Steele-John for his description of the establishment as “borderline arsonists”, his attacks on Albanese for backing coal exports, and this delightful array of recent tweets.

At *1 degree* of global warming, we’ve got record drought & catastrophic bushfires in Spring.

Morrison boasts that Aust is meeting its targets, ‘doing our bit’ & everything’s fine.

Morrison’s targets will see Aust heated by more than *3 degrees* 🔥

The man is a threat to life.
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) November 21, 2019

Scott Morrison, December 2019: Australia is too small to fight the climate crisis on its own. Nothing we do will make a difference.

also Scott Morrison, December 2019: We will use our negotiating power to stop the world reaching a meaningful climate agreement.
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) December 15, 2019

As #Greens try to take on SmoKo for holding up a global climate summit until he gets the right to pollute more, Labor comes up with this.

‘Clean coal.’

C’mon Labor, help us take on the deniers, don’t parrot their lines. https://t.co/XFfwyMCkeT
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) December 15, 2019

Labor, right now you are the biggest Xmas gift Scott Morrison ever received.

(And be sure to send Tony Abbott a royalty cheque for pinching his lines.) pic.twitter.com/kE1aq62bCz
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) December 11, 2019

One of these men is adopting a clever strategy and it’s not Richard Di Natale.

We live in anti-political, anti-establishment times in which the public’s environmental fears have never been stronger, their desire for climate action never more intense.

Courting the Labor Party as they collectively blackface with a lump of coal is dumb politics.

Adam Bandt is onto something and we need to support his courageous efforts to take on the establishment.

The reason has everything to do with the power of an anti-establishment story to usher in radical change.

In this TED talk, Guardian columnist George Monbiot makes a compelling case that a powerful story is the midwife of political transformation. He explains how one particular story, the restoration story, is near universal. It can be found in everything from the Bible, to Harry Potter, to Lord of the Rings, and, he says, “has accompanied almost every religious and political transformation going back millennia”.

The story is fairly simple and, like most good stories, has three parts:

1. Disorder afflicts the land, caused by powerful and nefarious forces working against the interests of humanity.

2. A hero revolts against this disorder, fighting those powerful forces.

3. Against the odds, the hero overthrows the nefarious forces and restores harmony to the land.

Monbiot explains how two incarnations of this story told during the 20th century were so persuasive as to convince everyone across the political spectrum. First, Keynes’ restoration story convinced conservatives and progressives of all stripes to be Keynesians for 30 years. Then Milton Friedman and his ilk convinced everyone to be neoliberals for the past 40.

Monbiot says the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was our chance to replace the neoliberal story but a failure of political imagination has kept us stuck in the dystopian present:

“Without a restoration story that can tell us where we need to go, nothing is going to change, but with such a restoration story, almost everything can change.”

Or in the words of Gramsci, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born”, at least until we start telling a bloody good new restoration story.

Thanks to the pioneering work of the climate movement, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a silhouette of this story has been revealed:

1. Disorder afflicts the land, caused by the fossil fuel, media, and tech billionaires who have captured the state and are working against the interests of all life on Earth.

2. A hero, the 99%, revolt against this disorder, fighting against those powerful forces through class warfare and an inspiring transformational vision for a Green New Deal

3. Against the odds, the 99% overthrows the 1% and restores harmony to the land, delivering a safe and sustainable future for humanity to flourish, embedded within thriving ecosystems.

To circle back to Greens strategy, to start campaigning on this visionary anti-establishment narrative is not some luxury of smart politics or a means to a couple more seats or an extra percent or two of the national vote. It is rather an essential step to guide our communities out of the dystopian present and into a hopeful future.

To paraphrase Monbiot, The Greens task is to “tell the story which lights the path to a better world”.

Upcoming articles in the series will expand on the power of class war, solidarity, and vision in telling an irrepressible story of transformation.

You can read the first two articles in the series here and here.

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