The Prime Minister appeared distinctly agitated when answering questions about Bowen’s expensive and poorly attended paradise climate talkfest in Fiji.
‘It’s also going to cost taxpayers a lot of money,’ said one reporter, pushing their microphone into frame, ‘more than $20 million. Is that money well spent, considering only five [non-Pacific] leaders are showing up?’
To many taxpayers watching, the notion a conference might attract a bill of $20 million simply isn’t conceivable.
What else could be achieved with that sum of money? A school? A library? A health clinic? A road? A phone tower? A pool? Well… Maybe not a pool. North Sydney managed to spend $122 million on theirs. Still, there are plenty of uses for $20 million that don’t involve sending bureaucrats to the beach.
‘Well that’s – that’s not true!’ Albanese replied, looking quite cross. ‘That … with respect. You are being so disrespectful to the Pacific leaders who are here. You are being – did they count Fiji? Did they count Australia? Well. Well… You’re being very disrespectful here in the Pacific.’
Did we count the nations properly?
The Prime Minister gave everyone a free lesson in how to miss the point, bickering over something we will now call ‘nation math’. It’s the panicked arithmetic a Prime Minister does when the global warming conference dick measuring gets a bit frosty.
Sorry, was that disrespectful?
How much taxpayer money has the Australian government given the Pacific in the last 100 years? Does anyone even know? How much has been taken from Australians and given away to pad out conferences with luxury or to grease the shaking of hands so that when China tries to join in, the Pacific slips out of Beijing’s grip?
If you question the merit of showering climate money on the Pacific, plenty of politicians, press, and experts repeat the line that we’re not really buying climate things, we’re buying influence. And we need influence to protect the Pacific from China so that the Pacific protects us from China.
And yet the line is a lie.
Australian money is not buying influence in the Pacific. On paper, perhaps, but how many times have we poured money into a region only for that nation to sign a memorandum with China or allow China military access to their ports, water, and natural resources?
Let’s say the Chinese navy arrives in the waters around Fiji for a spot of sunbaking before heading to Taiwan, does anyone really believe Fiji would turn the Chinese navy away because of our climate money?
If the goal is to hold influence for defence purposes you build ports, weapons bases, and airstrips. You might even smother coral reefs in concrete. Exactly what China has done. That is influence.
What we allow politicians and the media to justify as influence is nothing more than domestic politics. The audience is Canberra. The people being taken for a ride are Australian voters. It is a look at us, we care about climate pitch, not the purchasing of influence and it is high time other so-called serious commentators stopped giving the government a free pass on this.
We do not hold influence.
We pretend to hold it so voters don’t freak out about decades of defence failure.
Besides, even the domestic optics are souring. Every time an Australian hears about the government’s little passion projects, such as gifting PNG $600 million for some sort of NRL nonsense, resentment builds.
There is always money for the Pacific, but if you are allowed to access your own super money, oh well that would be an inflation disaster!
Isn’t it strange how climate money is never seen as inflationary… On that note, how much climate-related borrowing has contributed to our present trillion-dollar debt and inflationary situation? Can we get a graph, shaded in green, so we can assess the inflationary pressure of climate politics?
When it comes to the topic of better ways to spend $20 million, we might point out that plenty of Australian communities live on dirt roads with no sewage, no running water, no reliable energy, and dodgy internet. With the amount of tax collected from Australians, our regional areas could have been paved with gold. Except, those voters lean conservative and they are of little-to-no political value to Labor. It is unlikely Labor politicians and bureaucrats are thinking of our kids while they are overlooking paradise talking about ‘climate change’.
Worse, despite this being our money, according to reports Labor went to some lengths to keep the RSVP list secret. So, you can’t rouse on reporters for asking questions.
‘The first thing Chris Bowen should do is apologise to Pacific leaders for letting his unfettered ego embarrass them. Only Chris Bowen could oversee such a disaster,’ said Dan Tehan.
Not sure about that one, mate, Jim Chalmers seems reasonably competent when it comes to surveilling calamity.
Australia has to be careful. No amount of conference pandering or sports gifts can change the result of the UN resolution in support of the International Court of Justice ruling which established a potential pathway for Pacific Islands to demand untold billions from nations such as Australia for ‘climate reparations’. A resolution Australia brainlessly supported.
Right on cue, Tuvalu’s climate change department has come out making noises about the Pacific climate doomsday and how much that might be worth.
Last week, Australia was accused of ‘not doing enough’ and that ‘the very least a country like Australia should be doing is stopping future expansion and it’s not doing that’.
Frankly, how dare another nation dictate to Australia the future of its energy grid. Try that with China or Russia and see how far you get. Scorning Australia’s energy grid while China has 1,195 operational coal plants and 50 on the way along and 170 gas plants, Australia’s handful of fossil fuel generators are not even worth mentioning.
If the Pacific Islands want to be useful, they could corner Chris Bowen and educate him on the climate virtues of nuclear energy. If rising sea levels is really the existential threat claimed at these COP conferences, the only true low-emission project workable at scale in Australia is nuclear. But you’re more likely to see the Department of Climate Change and Energy post a childish three-eyed fish meme than a policy.
The point is, the Prime Minister can be as cross as he likes when asked about the value of a climate conference, but don’t tell reporters that questions are ‘disrespectful’ while burning through $20 million.
Every time someone says we should lower taxes, Labor whinges about ‘muh hospitals’ when really, why should we believe them when they keep throwing money at stunts like this?
Save the planet, Labor, and learn how to use Zoom like the rest of us.
If we removed the entire Department of Climate Change and all its parasitic bureaucratic spawn, we could probably give Australians a massive tax cut.
And the first political party that promises to do that will win.
Because in a contest between performative climate nonsense and cutting taxes … the economy wins.
Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
