Pretty fucked up that inflation is caused by excessive profits, and tax cuts to the wealthy just cause wealth inequality and don't help the economy, and climate change is killing people and will effect people of colour in low lying islands the most - and somehow The Greens are the dangerous radicals who want to FIX ALL THESE THINGS BUT LABOR AND LIBERAL ARE THE ONES CONSTANTLY IN POWER.
The Libs have been in power for 20 of the last 30 years.
The Greens blocked Labor's emissions trading scheme last time they were in because it "didn't go far enough", Labor lost the next election, there was no effort to reduce emissions under the Libs.
Adam Bandt admitted he didn't know whether Labor's 43% emissions reduction target was a floor or a ceiling (it's a minimum).
Labor have proposed legislating the 43% reduction to make it legally binding. The Greens in the upper house are not sure whether or not to vote for it yet because they're not sure Labor can meet the target. The target they are aiming to make legally binding.
"Hurr durr Labor and Liberal same" okay but who gave us Medicare, superannuation, the NDIS, and who has tried to dismantle each of these institutions when they've been in power?
Thank god the Greens only ever do 1 bad thing once every 10 years and that bad thing is "having good faith negotiations with Labor to follow the climate science and make real progress" just like what is their policy platform and what the people who voted for them want them to do.
The CPRS was shit. It went against Labor's own report that was the basis for it being written, it had such miniscule targets, and didn't enforce shit - and it was watered down to appease the climate denying Liberals that voted it down. It's such a good piece of clever marketing to blame The Greens for Labor doing a shitty thing that was sabotaged by the Liberals - and then to complain about it 14 years on as if Labor even has a leg to stand on to begin with, let alone the moral highground, is the most absurd bit of pointless political theatre and stone throwing I've ever had to endure. It's like a broken record both as an analogy and functionally, given that the argument simply doesn't work.
Labor's 43% target is smaller than their 2019 target even though the problem is worse and it's only for domestic emissions - while Australia exports about 5+% of world's carbon emissions. Oh, and the domestic emissions are based off changes in land usage - something other countries don't do. So Australia is claiming we've already reduced emissions by 20% - when actually they've gone UP once you remove the land usage change factor. It's bad maths! It's a trick! 43% emissions reductions isn't good or applaudable - it's probably not even the fucking floor.
Is renewable energy great? Yes. Will it reduce emissions and power bills and I'm glad that Labor is doing something after 9 years of Coalition sabotage? Yes.
Is that enough, given that Labor is approving new coal and gas projects making all of that moot because we're one of the biggest polluters in the world because of our fossil fuel exports? Are The Greens trying to negotiate that the 43% target is a legal floor to meet with actual mechanisms to ensure it, instead of just a motion to aspire to an idea? Like how Parliament works? Like how the very foundation of parliamentary democracy works and so the Greens are just engaging in the most straightforward expression of the Westminster tradition that pre-dates the very invasion of Australia?
Labor doesn't even NEED a piece of legislation to make a 43% target - and said they'll carry on even without Senate support. The Greens can't sink this even if they tried! Because it's not anything!
The only real progress and significant action we CAN take is to phase out coal and gas as rapidly as we can, but that's not Labor's plan. Opening any new coal and gas projects WILL lock us in to more than 1.5C warming. Liberals would've thrown petrol onto the fire, but Labor is still letting it burn.
Greens policy is scientifically, literally, the reasonable basic thing to do. Period. Fact. And the fact that they're not marching in and demanding Labor capitulate to them and do every sensible reasonable idea the Greens have but instead being open to negotiation is proof that Greens are being constructive, despite Labor being the problem here.
Yeah. Complaining that THE GREENS are somehow the ones interfering with climate action is the epitome of political ignorance.
If you're going to complain, do it about something the Greens aren't so unambiguously right about.
@makaeru sure, Labor is way better than the Liberals. but the bar was real fucking low, and "better than the Liberals" is not actually a win.
I agree with what auspolchronicles said, but I would also like to add: The reason that Adam Bandt wasn't sure whether it was a floor or a ceiling, and the reason that the Greens have been making a lot of fuss about, at bare minimum, making sure that it is a floor, is that Labor have contradicted themselves on that already. He wasn't sure because you couldn't be sure, because Labor hadn't committed and that leaked paper with their proposed legislation indicated that it was piss-weak.
it helps to remember that Labor is playing a double game here. On the one hand, they want to appeal to climate voters - Labor/Greens swing voters, teal voters, and their own younger / more progressive base. On the other hand, they need to satisfy the massive oil and gas corporations that have been funding their party with donations for decades at this point. which means we will get fluffy language about how 43% is achieving everything we needed to, and that fluffy language will be an outright lie because those companies would be furious if Labor tried to legislate to actually bring fossil fuels in line.
Labor are trying to act in the interests of corporations and corporate profit, and that goes directly against the interests of living on this bloody planet. until we ban political donations from companies and instate a comprehensive and retroactive federal ICAC we will never be able to know how much of Labor's policy and action is just for the benefit of their donors.
(the Greens don't take corporate political donations, by the way. It's why they're always functioning on a shoestring budget, and also why their policy is actually good.)
