Images from The Monthly, ABC, Renew Economy, and Fairfax Media
By Situation Theatre 24/6/2020
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
They lied their way into the Iraq War despite massive domestic opposition, including 600,000 people who rallied across the country. There have been 208, 103 documented civilian deaths as a result of this war, according to Iraq Body Count.
Their treatment of refugees has been found to serially violate the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. They dismissed 2,000 incident reports of “assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts, child abuse and living conditions endured by asylum seekers held by the Australian Government, painting a picture of routine dysfunction and cruelty” as “hype” and they accused refugees of deliberately harming themselves and inventing claims of sexual assault to get to Australia. On the Government’s asylum seeker policy, Trump said they were “worse than I am”. They warned of the dangers of a “single act of compassion”, attacked refugees for being unemployed and taking Australian jobs at the same time, as well as for taking our hospital beds. They smeared them as potential rapists and murderers. They fought a series of court battles to prevent sick children getting urgent medical attention in Australia, fought two class actions for subjecting refugees to torture, crimes against humanity and intentional infliction of harm, and repealed a law designed to get refugees essential medical care.
They abolished the Climate Commission, cut hundreds of jobs at the CSIRO along with its budget, abandoned Australia’s emissions reductions targets, approved the largest coal port in the world in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, and defunded the Environmental Defenders’ Office. They appointed a climate sceptic to review renewable targets, scrapped the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, halved the Emissions Reduction Fund, axed the carbon tax, repealed the mining tax, slashed the renewable energy target, and directed the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to stop investing in wind power and roof top solar and redirect funds to carbon capture and storage. They approved Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, created a $5 billion infrastructure fund for “clean-coal” power stations, presided over significant rises in emissions, dumped the clean energy target, and made sweeping cuts to overall environmental spending. They approved a $443m fund for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, an organisation with ties to BHP, Shell and Peabody Energy. They increased taxpayer spending on coal and gas, killed the National Energy Guarantee, lied about reaching Paris targets “in a canter”, received a bottom three ranking for environmental policy among wealthy nations, and attacked teenage climate activists. They dismissed international climate conferences and reports as “nonsense”, approved dumping one million tonnes of spoil in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and stacked all relevant key positions with coal and gas advocates. They removed climate “crisis” from the Pacific Islands draft declaration, were ranked last on a list of 57 countries on climate policy, ignored warnings of fire chiefs because of their climate politics, holidayed in Hawaii while the country burned, and denied the link between bushfires and carbon emissions.
And that ain’t even the half of it.
Why they want to kill off the study of history and politics in this country is anybody’s guess.