Labor achieves peak hypocrisy?

It was a very big week for Murray Watt, although he didn’t put a word about what is likely to be his most far-reaching decision as environment minister on social media.

Yep, Labor formally approved the 45-year expansion of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas export terminal in Western Australia, locking in twelve coal-fired power station’s worth of atmospheric pollution until 2070, along with further damage to some of the most significant rock art on the planet.

While not surprising, Watt’s decision is still shocking in its ramifications. As the climate crisis deepens its grip, this approval will add around 90 million tonnes of emission to our atmosphere each year.

The deal is also an economic disaster, with the Australia Institute estimating that the value of royalty-free gas exported via the North West Shelf by Woodside over the extension period as $215 billion (equivalent to around four years of Australia’s total defence budget).

Woodside has already tripled WA’s wholesale gas and electricity prices since it began exporting the state’s domestic gas reserves in 2020, and that situation is now expected to worsen, creating a local gas shortage which will negatively affect the Australian economy, particularly the manufacturing sector.

Murray Watt has provided no details about how Murujuga’s ancient rock art is going to be protected from acidic gas emissions, but Woodside is understood to have further watered down consent conditions in the last three months of secret negotiations.

Clearly the company is too big for any government with an eye on its own survival to say no to, hence…

Peak hypocrisy

The Woodside decision came just days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travelled to the Solomon Islands seeking the support of South Pacific nations for Australia to host next year’s Conference of the Partries (COP) climate talks. Without even blushing, he said, ‘Countries like Tuvalu and Kirabati, their very existence is threatened by climate change.’

Albanese has already attempted to sweeten the deal by providing a large number of free police cars, presumably to quell the riots as the islands go steadily underwater, along with $100 million to support community-scale ‘adaptation projects’ across the Pacific. How many metres of sea walls is that likely to cover?

Senior Australian government ministers including Penny Wong and Richard Marles also hiked to the top of a volcano in Vanuatu, pledging to out-spend China for influence in the region, though many details of this $500 million agreement remain secret.

Australia’s own 2035 emissions reduction target also remains under wraps, but this number is expected to finally be released this week, probably as soon as the government can find a big enough distraction to hide it.

According to the Climate Change Authority, Australia is currently on track to spend our entire carbon budget 14 years early. Will the people supposedly elected to do something about the climate crisis fiddle the numbers? The suspense is killing us.

Speaking of distractions, as race-based rallies across this country continue to heighten tensions, inflamed by the unfolding disaster in the USA, Northern Territory senator and human wrecking ball Jacinta Nampijinpa Price continued her rampage through the Coalition last week, aided and abetted by the Murdoch media after she attacked the Indian community and then refused to say she was loyal to opposition leader Sussan Ley.

Price has now lost her shadow ministry but not her megaphone. Next stop Pauline Hanson’s One Nation?

Following this debacle, the Coalition has just recorded its worst ever Newspoll result, with their primary vote slumping to 27 per cent.

Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.

You can find more of his writing at Patreon and Gumroad.