New Australian Labor Government Fails on Nukes, Poverty & Climate

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Most Australians welcomed the defeat by Labor of the mendacious, corrupt, incompetent, climate criminal, and racist Australian Coalition Government in the 21 May 2022 elections. However the Australian Albanese Labor Government, while vastly better than its predecessor, is egregiously neoliberal, cowardly, pro-Zionist, US-beholden and pro-fossil fuels, and has so far failed on nuclear weapons, poverty and climate change that are the 3 key existential threats to Humanity.

The website “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty and reverse climate change” summarizes what Humanity needs to do in the present worsening crisis. A nuclear winter from nuclear war will decimate Humanity and the Biosphere. Poverty already kills about 7.4 million people each year, and worsening  famine in the global South due to the US-provoked but nevertheless war criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine surely demands urgent aid and systemic change from the rich global North to end deadly poverty in the global  South and the ongoing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust. It is estimated that in the absence of requisite action on climate change, the Biosphere will be devastated, and about 10 billion people will die this century in a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable human population in 2100 of only about 1 billion people.

Professor Stephen Hawking: “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action NOW [my emphasis]  to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change”. Summarized below is how after a mere 6 weeks in office the Australian Albanese Labor Government is already abjectly failing on the key existential threats to Humanity and the Biosphere of (1) nuclear weapons, (2) poverty, and (3) climate change.

(1) Labor is failing on nuclear weapons.

(i) Under Labor Australia blindly backs US nuclear terrorism through key communications bases crucial for US nuclear strategy (Pine Gap and Harold Holt), helping encircle China, hosting thousands of US military, and hosting nuclear-armed warships.  

(ii) Labor ignores continuing UK nuclear contamination of Australia (notably at Maralinga) that threatens both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

(iii) Labor supports anti-China Australian alliances with nuclear powers, namely the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) Alliance and the Quad (Australian US, India and Japan).

(iv) The circa $200 billion Labor-supported Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) nuclear submarines deal locks Australia in with US militarism, threatens an arms, risks nuclear proliferation, and will subject millions of  Australians to deadly poverty.

(v) The US lackey Australian Labor Government  strongly backs US hostility to peaceful but nuclear-armed China. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, but the Coalition Government insulted China in 14 areas, and Chinese investment has slumped. Despite China overtures, the new Labor Government  is following the counterproductive and insulting “megaphone diplomacy”  of its predecessor. Ignoring border spats with India, Russia and Vietnam,  China has invaded and occupied only 2 countries in the last millennium (Tibet in the 12th century and Xinjiang in the 18th century). In contrast, as UK or US lackeys, Australians have invaded 85 countries in 234 years (30 of the invasions being genocidal), and in the last 80 years Australians have violated all Indo-Pacific countries variously  through war, climate criminality, subversion, and covert US-backed regime change in Indonesia (1960-1965), Laos (1960), Cambodia (1970), Chile (1973),  Australia (1975, 2010) and Fiji (1987, 2000).

(vi) Australia is second only to the US in fervently supporting nuclear terrorist and serial war criminal Apartheid Israel that has 90 nuclear weapons with submarine-based and other missile delivery systems. Apartheid Israel has invaded the territory of 13 countries, has annexed the territory of 4 countries, and routinely bombs Syria, Iraq and the Gaza Concentration Camp. The WW1 onwards  Palestinian Genocide has been associated with 2.2 million Palestinians deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and deprivation, 2.1 million. Of 15 million Palestinians, 8 million are Exiled from Palestine, 5.2 million Occupied Palestinians have zero human rights under military rule and cannot vote for the government ruling them (apartheid), and about 2 million Israeli Palestinians can vote, albeit as Third Class citizens under 65 race-based discriminatory laws. Despite a century of genocide, 7.2 million Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel (Jewish Israeli 47%). Pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-apartheid Labor  supports the all-European, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish-anti-Semitic and holocaust-denying International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) of which Australia is a member, and which has been condemned  by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations.

(vii) Australia’s alliance with nuclear terrorist America  makes Australia a prime nuclear target. If the US uses nuclear weapons against another country, any nuclear response  on Americans would likely precipitate  all-out nuclear war (and the end of Humanity and the Biosphere). However  a graded nuclear  response would target Australia.  

(viii) Labor has yet to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). However US lackey Australia would violate the TPNW by continuing intimate involvement in US nuclear terrorism. It is therefore unlikely that  the US lackey Australian Labor Government will sign and ratify the TNMW.

(2) Labor is failing on poverty.

(i) Australia has an obscene role in the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust (7.4 million deaths from poverty annually) through low development aid – 0.22% of GNI compared to 1.05% (Luxembourg), 1.02% (Norway), and 0.99% (Sweden).

(ii) Serial war criminal  Australia’s defence spending will be 15 times greater than development aid by 2030. Fourth Geneva Convention-violating Australia was involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars that resulted in 40 million Asian deaths from violence and deprivation.

(iii) Labor will tolerate massive domestic poverty – over 3 million people, including 1 million children, live in poverty in rich Australia in which the property-owning rich are getting vastly richer and the excluded poor (including the working poor) are getting poorer. 

(iv) Labor will ignore huge preventable deaths in Australia preventive measure inadequacies mean that 85,000 Australians die preventably each year due to “lifestyle choice” and “political choice” reasons ranging from adverse hospital events and smoking to suicide and homicide.

(3) Labor is failing on climate change.  

(i) Climate criminal Australia is among the worst in the world for climate policy and climate action (in 2022 it ranked worst for climate policy).

(ii) Australia has 0.3% of world’s population but is responsible for 5.4% of global greenhouse gas pollution (including Exported as well as Domestic pollution).

(iii) Under Labor 114 new coal and gas projects will start, but science, the International Energy Agency (IEA)  and the Greens demand no new fossil fuel projects for a global “net zero carbon pollution by 2050”.

(iv) Labor pledges only 43% off 2005 greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 and the Coalition 26-28%, but the Greens demand “net zero or net negative Australian greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 or sooner”.

(v) Like the Coalition Labor rejects  any true costing of pollution via a Carbon Tax based on a Carbon Price ($200 per tonne CO2-equivalent but a global applied average of only $2 per tonne CO2-equivalent). The World has an inescapable  Carbon Debt in USD of $200-250 trillion that is increasing at $16 trillion per year, and Australia has a Carbon Debt of $5 trillion that is increasing at $400 billion per year and at $40,000 per head per year for under-30 year old Australians.

(vi) Australia is committed to continue leading the world in coal and gas exports, and is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality variously impacting Humanity, the Biosphere, and a worsening biodiversity loss.  

(vii) Coal-exporting Australia is complicit  in air pollution deaths totalling 75,000 overseas and 10,000 domestic. 9 million people die from ait pollution each year from burning carbon fuels.

(viii) Climate criminal Labor will be complicit in worsening  Climate Genocide. It is estimated that in the absence of required action on climate change, the Biosphere will continue to be devastated, and  about 10 billion people will die this century in a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable human population in 2100 of only about 1 billion people (see Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”).

Labor has already commenced a big diplomatic blitz from London to the South Pacific to falsely convince the world with spin that  it means business. However, small, cosmetic  improvements on the disastrous policies of the previous Coalition Government  are grossly insufficient. Labor spin will not alter the reality that a plus 2 degree Centigrade temperature rise is now effectively unavoidable, and that the world needs to urgently do everything it can  to make the future “less bad” for future generations.

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