Greens MPs

On Monday, Waleed Aly had a superb opinion piece in the SMH which sadly went largely unnoticed. In the piece he argued persuasively that the biggest long-term impacts of major economic crises are the changes to the socio-political terrain that they tend to trigger.

The prime example, of course, is the dramatic shift towards fascism and other forms of xenophobic politics triggered by the Great Depression, not only in Europe but across the globe.

Aly's great fear is that the current economic crisis could well lead to a new xenophobic politics. This is a fear which rang a deep chord within me, as one whose political views were shaped significantly by a Holocaust survivor grandfather.

I've just seen this excellent video that I felt was worth posting. It is from Van Jones talking about his new book, The Green Collar Economy, putting a concise argument for spending half the money that was spent on the Wall St bail-out on delivering an economic and environmental boom.

This article by Christine Milne was published in New Matilda on 24 September

In one of those perfect ironies, Prime Minister Rudd's announcement of his $100 million push to make Australia the global coal hub last Friday came on the same day that yet another so-called "clean coal" project, Santos' Fairview operation in Queensland, was scrapped.

The Fairview collapse "was to do with getting the funding balance right", according to a Santos spokesperson quoted in the Australian Financial Review last Friday. That, of course, is code for "we want more money from governments", tactfully argued by a company whose last half-year profits were $304 million and whose project has already been handed $75 million in taxpayer funds.

This has taken a while, but we finally have Christine's Budget Reply Speech up on YouTube and postable to the blog. Those of you who have enjoyed reading or listening to it may be interested in watching it.

In five parts.

Part one

Treasurer Wayne Swan wants community input into next year's federal budget, and is asking for submissions by January 18.

I read Paul Murrays' column in the West Australian Like it or not, we are a greedy lot at poll time (Aug 23rd) with interest, and was pleased to see that Paul is in agreement with the Greens (whether he would care to admit it or not) on this critical issue.