Share This

The latest assessment of global climate change is out and scientists from around the world have recommended changes including some in agriculture, forestry and other land use designed to mitigate their effects on climate change.

NEWS

Analysis finds that more than half of black carbon never reaches the ocean bottom.[more]

Costs of carbon emissions are being underestimated, but current estimates are still valuable for setting mitigation policy, say researchers in Nature.[more]

Greenhouse gases released by thawing permafrost could accelerate global warming trends according to a new study of changes in peat chemistry as it thaws.[more]

Climate researcher Michael Mann says that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is in a cooling phase and has acted to help slow global warming.[more]

Climate feedbacks from decomposition by soil microbes are one of the biggest uncertainties facing climate modelers. A new study shows that these feedbacks may be less dire than previously thought.[more]

Increased amounts of ecosystem carbon have been recorded in the Mojave Desert after ten years exposure to elevated CO2 levels, according to a new paper.[more]

Two new papers highlight the issue of mathematical uncertainty in the climate system and the fact that greater uncertainty can increase risks and necessitate greater mitigation measures.[more]

The University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Version 5.6 global satellite-measured average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for March, 2014 is +0.17 deg. C, unchanged from February.[more]

Remote Sensing Systems, the US data services company that provides a global temperature data set for the lower troposphere constructed from satellite instrument measurements, has released data for March 2014.[more]

Recent research results show that an atmospheric hole over the tropical West Pacific is reinforcing ozone depletion in the polar regions and could have a significant influence on the climate of the Earth.[more]

Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent on 21 March, that multiyear Arctic sea ice is thickening, and that the winter 2013/2014 period saw the fifth smallest sea ice…[more]

Britain’s Meteorological Office has announced a major advance in improving the skillfulness of long range weather forecasts. Details are revealed in a paper just published in Geophysical Research Letters.[more]

Warm North Atlantic Ocean waters promote extreme winters in the US and Europe, according to new research which links long term natural variations in the Atlantic Ocean, known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, with an…[more]

Corals reefs off the Australian coast reveal centuries of rising sea levels and temperatures, according to a new paper.[more]

Autumn is ending later and Spring is starting earlier in the northern hemisphere, according to new research.[more]

Northern and Southern Hemisphere climates follow the beat of different drummers, according to new research.[more]

The effect of important air pollutants may be absent from key precipitation observations, according to new research.[more]

The Atlantic Ocean dances with the Sun and volcanoes. Natural fluctuations in the ocean temperature in the North Atlantic have a significant impact on the climate in the northern hemisphere. These fluctuations are the result of a…[more]

Climate change driven global warming may spread drying to a third of Earth, says a new study, and it is heat, not just rainfall, that plays into the new projections.[more]

Methane-producing microbes may be responsible for the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a new paper in PNAS.[more]

Oxygen depletion in the Baltic Sea is ten times worse than a century ago, say researchers in a new PNAS paper.[more]

A longer melt season for Arctic sea ice is allowing the Arctic Ocean to absorb more sunlight and warm, according to researchers from US agencies NSIDC and NASA.[more]

Climate change is already having an impact and worse is to come, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was published on 31 March 2014.[more]

Today (March 31 2014) in Yokohama, Japan, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the second installment of its AR5 report into climate change which looks at the impact of climate change….[more]

A list of extreme weather events observed around the world during the period December 2013 to end February 2014 has been put together by the World Meteorological Organization.[more]

Computer models forecast an El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event in 2014, according to the latest update issued by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.[more]

The recent slow down in the rise of global mean sea level which appears to have co-incided with the so called pause in global warming disappears once natural short-term variability – such as the affects of the El Nino-Southern…[more]

There is a statistical link between Arctic sea ice concentration in September and the weather that Europe experiences through the following winter, new research has found, indicating that it is important to incorporate Arctic…[more]

New research says that future heat waves will significantly reduce crop yields and threaten global food supply.[more]

A 40 per cent cut in CO2 emissions across the EU can be achieved at a cost of less than 0.7 per cent of economic activity, say experts.[more]

Leading atmospheric science researchers have pointed out in a new paper that extreme weather events will continue irrespective of climate change and that trying to link such events to global warming distracts attention from…[more]

Here is the text of the February global climate report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAA). Global mean surface temperatures in February 2014 were the 21st warmest in the dataset which goes back to…[more]

Greenland’s contribution to sea-level rise was previously underestimated and needs to be accounted for in future projections, according to new research. A previously stable region of the Greenland ice sheet is undergoing dynamic…[more]

Research suggests ocean mixing plays an important role in bringing iron and other nutrients to the surface to stimulate phytoplankton growth which helps support the ocean carbon cycle.[more]

Scientists explain in a new Nature paper that geological processes are responsible for ensuring that the Earth remains capable of supporting life and does not turn into a hot Venus or cold Mars.[more]

Two new papers show how analysing years of data Tibet and Himalayas can help better predict glacial response to global climate change.[more]

Research points to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and anthropogenic pollutants as factors in widening the tropical belt.[more]

A statistical “Bayesian hierarchical model” allows scientists to combine various sources of information as well as previous scientific knowledge to improve forecasts of changes in the oceans such as El Nino Pacific Ocean warming…[more]

NASA’s Operation IceBridge has started a new mission flying aircraft instruments over the Greenland ice sheet and polar sea ice with one aim being to help calibrate satellite measurements.[more]

Space observations have been used to help calculate how ocean life captures carbon dioxide and locks it away in biological materials.[more]

More accurate measurements of ice sheet discharge rates have been made possible by a NASA radar study of the Greenland ice sheet.[more]

The chances of an El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event later this year have increased, according to the latest report from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Computer forecasts agree that the Pacific sea surface will warm and…[more]

Cooling from atmospheric particles and from ozone may mean that IPCC low-end estimates of climate sensitivity are wrong and need to be increased by 30 per cent, according to new research. NASA says this means long term global…[more]

Aerosols from human pollution tend to weaken tropical cyclones according to a new paper in Nature Climate Change.[more]

New research puts the sun in the frame for causing the Little Ice Age by triggering persistent blocking patterns in the atmosphere over the North Atlantic.[more]

Four newly detected ozone-depleting substances started to emerge in the atmosphere in the 1960s, reports a study published online in Nature Geoscience. Although emissions of these compounds have been small, they are contrary to…[more]

Europe will experience greater warming than the global average increase in surface temperatures, according to new research.[more]

Arctic sea ice extent in February 2014 was the fourth lowest on record for the month and almost exactly in line with the long term trend decline while sea ice extent in the Antarctic remains significantly above average,…[more]

Satellite data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) shows the February global temperature anomaly for the lower troposphere as measured by satellite was 0.172C compared with 0.203C in February 2013[more]

Global temperatures will eventually rise by around 2C in response to a sustained doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to new research. This is consistent with the lower end of the range set out last year by the…[more]

New research projects a massive increase in financial losses due to floods in Europe over coming decades as the risk of flooding doubles, concludes a paper published online this week in Nature Climate Change.[more]

Changes in the salinity of ocean surface waters due to climate change are inhibiting deep ocean mixing, encouraging ocean heat storage and contributing to the so called pause in global warming, according to new research.[more]

Britain’s Royal Society and the US National Science Academy have issued a new report describing the facts of climate change in simple terms.[more]

Climate models do not overestimate warming and the so called pause is due to a coincidence of a number of factors, according to new research.[more]

The current mysterious growth in Antarctic sea ice to record levels will reverse, according to a new study based on computer models.[more]

A new satellite to measure global rainfall and snow has been launched. Measuring precipitation globally is key for the study of the impacts of climate change.[more]

The effectiveness of computer climate models is in dispute as a scientific argument over the ability of climate models to successfully simulate the so called global warming pause breaks out in the pages of Nature Climate Change.[more]

Judging the effects of climate change on extinction may be easier than previously thought, according to a paper entitled, “Life history and spatial traits predict extinction risk due to climate change,” published today (26…[more]

Here is NOAA’s report on the global climate in January 2014.[more]

New research suggests that climate models may have overestimated global warming because they do not include the impact of aerosols from volcanic eruptions. The implication is that this may be a partial explanation of the so…[more]

A new study will help predict sea level changes related to El Nino.[more]

An increase in Arctic cyclones is linked to climate change, according to a study based on historical climate model simulations.[more]

Researchers have warned in a new paper that attempts to mitigate the impact of global warming by injecting reflective particles into the upper atmosphere would create a severe threat unless the activity were maintained.[more]

Parts of the world have witnessed a series of extreme weather conditions in the first six weeks of 2014, continuing a pattern that was set in December 2013, according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).[more]

New research published this week suggests a three-in-four chance of an El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event beginning in late 2014. Meanwhile the Australian Bureau of Meteorology says the current status of the so called El Nino…[more]

MIT researchers find that the end-Permian extinction happened in just 60,000 years — much faster than earlier estimates – and appears to have been linked to an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, possibly due to…[more]

An article published online in Nature Climate Change today investigates how strengthened Pacific trade winds can account for 0.1C–0.2C of cooling through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake— this is enough to account for much…[more]

A joint report issued by the UK Meteorological Office and the UK Centre of Ecology and Hydrology states that the recent stormy weather that has afflicted the British Isles is “consistent” with global warming although the two…[more]

Satellite and local readings show that the rapid rise in sea-surface temperatures seen in the last quarter of the 20th century has significantly slowed in the past 15 years. The European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative…[more]

January data for the global lower tropospheric temperature anomaly has been released by Remote Sensing Systems showing an anomaly of +0.262C above the long term average[more]

Arctic lakes have been freezing up later in the year and thawing earlier, creating a winter ice season about 24 days shorter than it was in 1950, a University of Waterloo study has found.[more]

Satellite data shows that Arctic sea ice is getting thicker as Antarctic sea ice extent continues to expand to near record levels, according to a report issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, in Boulder Colorado,…[more]

Satellite data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) shows the January global temperature anomaly for the lower troposphere was +0.291C compared with +0.497C for January 2013. [more]

The WMO warns today in a press statement that global warming continues even though the rate of warming is uneven due to natural variations in the climate system.[more]

Global average storm surge damages could increase to $100,000 billion per year by the end of century, if no adaptation action is taken, according to estimates in new research.[more]

Global average storm surge damages could increase to $100,000 billion per year by the end of century, if no adaptation action is taken, according to estimates in new research.[more]

As climate change warms the Earth’s surface the distribution of plant species could be affected, warns a new study. This report courtesy of the University of Arkansas.[more]

Disappearing snow increases the risk of collapsing ice shelves in Antarctica that will release ice into the sea and so help increase sea levels, according to new research.[more]

Computer models used by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) suggest that an El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event may be triggered later this year, according to the latest update on the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO)…[more]

Asian ozone pollution in Hawaii is tied to climate variability, according to new research published in Nature Geoscience. This report from Princeton University.[more]

A reconstruction of the Met Office temperature record suggests that 2013 was, in fact, warmer than the El Nino year of 1998, that temperatures have been rising since 1998, that global warming continues and that the so called…[more]

A new paper in Science highlights the uncertain role that aerosols play in climate change.[more]

The sensitivity of the carbon cycle to tropical temperature variations has doubled, research shows.[more]

The UK Meteorological Office has updated its HadCRUT4 annual temperature database to include figures for 2013. The data shows that 2013 tied with 2002 and 2009 as the sixth warmest year on record. This means that the so called…[more]

The journal Science publishes results from a Polarstern expedition in the mostly unexplored South Pacific which discovered that dust blown out to land and falling onto the ocean affected the climate in the past[more]

A recent paper suggests that the recent expansion of Antarctic ice is at odds with what computer models predict should happen as a result of the depletion of stratospheric ozone and the Antarctic ozone hole even though the…[more]

New research suggests that forests played a key role in controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the past.[more]

Assumptions about the absorption of carbon by the land in polar regions may be overestimated unless they take into account the emission of carbon by inland waters, according to new research.[more]

A new paper claims to explain the paradox of why sea ice is growing in the Antarctic despite global warming. A combination of observational data and modelling reveals the potential significance of the north and tropical Atlantic…[more]

Changing landscapes are to blame for increased flood risk and not global warming says new research. Here is the news release describing the findings of the research which has just been published in the Hydrological Sciences…[more]

Researchers have found that air pollution over Asia – much of it coming from China – is impacting global air circulations.[more]

The so called pause in global warming that has been apparent since the late 1990s may be due to air pollution and to a greater frequency of La Nina Pacific Ocean cooling events as well as to other factors such as volcanic…[more]

The globally averaged temperature for 2013 tied with 2003 as the fourth warmest year since record keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA scientists. Here is the text of the NOAA press release and of the summary of the NOAA…[more]

NASA scientists say 2013 tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880. While this appears to confirm that the so called pause in global warming that began around 1998 appears to have continued in 2013, NASA…[more]

Extreme weather events fuelled by unusually strong El Ninos, such as the 1983 heatwave that led to the Ash Wednesday bushfires in Australia, are likely to double in number as our planet warms, according to researchers from the…[more]

New research shows that historic changes in the water cycle were the main drivers of widespread environmental change in western Europe. This has implications for the impact of the water cycle on climate change today.[more]

NASA searches for climate change clues in the gateway to the stratosphere using a Global Hawk research aircraft. This is the Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX).[more]

Analysis by the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum suggests that the European Union could achieve a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to help offset climate change at relatively moderate cost. This news report…[more]

The United States, China, Russia, Brazil, India, Germany and the United Kingdom are named as the seven countries accounting for most of the temperature increase believed to be due to climate change, according to a new study. This…[more]

A study published today highlights growing threat of intense tropical cyclones hitting East Asia. The intensity of such storms has increased over the last 30 years. This is consistent with what many climate scientists would…[more]

Life starts at 60. That’s the topic I was asked to address in a recent talk. But I insisted on putting a question mark at the end. Does it? It’s fashionable to think we’ll be reborn in our sixties into a world of pleasure and leisure. But really, it’s nonsense. By the time you reach 60 to a large extent you’ve made your life. Through good and bad luck, hard work and temperament you’ve got the structures in place – or you don’t. You’ve arrived at your sixth decade single and happily independent, or with a partner you still like. You’ve got there with money or with debt, with a network of reliable friends, with a home; or you maybe none of these things. If through bad luck, bad decisions, or a bad marriage you’ve arrived at 60 lacking secure foundations, it’s tough to build a new life. Ask men who’ve let friendships lapse about finding a network of buddies post-60; ask older women on the Newstart Allowance. “Life starts at 60” can sound pretty glib to the significant minority of older people who’ve fallen on hard times.

Fortunately most of us do have the basics in place. We’ve to a large extent made our life. Phew, we’ve got here. We’re the advantaged ones. We’ve reached our 60s with options and opportunities. I’m among you, enormously privileged. I had great parents, good state education, good men who loved me. I’ve had a happy career in journalism. I was there in the golden era. So the question for us is how do we live our lives now? For those of us on secure foundations, who’ve bit by bit pieced a good life together, how do we continue to contribute? Retirement need not mark the point where our contribution is no longer expected or necessary. Retirement should not mark the start of the Me decades.

Australians’ view of retirement has changed over the years. In the 1950s, retirement was a time of rest. Men broken by blue-collar jobs they’d started at 15 needed to recover. In the 1970s retirement was a reward: in return for years of labour and taxes society owed you the Age Pension and a few years of leisure before you died. By the 1990s retirement was seen as a right. It was a time of R&R – rest and recreation – cruises and grey nomading. The super industry cranked up expectations of retirement to include overseas holidays, air conditioning, restaurant meals, wine, and top rate private health insurance.

But just because we’re retired and no longer paying taxes, doesn’t mean society owes us 20 or 25 years of leisure. Just because we’re retired doesn’t mean we’re tired, as the Boston writer Ellen Goodman has said. Most of us are not physically broken by our desk jobs. A new mindset is needed for these years. We’re healthier, better educated than past generations of retirees. We don’t think old age starts at 65 as our grandparents did. Here’s a new R&R approach to retirement – it’s about renewal and responsibility.

Retirement is definitely an opportunity for personal renewal. Freed of the pressure to strive and compete, we can finally tap the nicer person lurking within – the more relaxed, well-rested, unhurried one. Surveys show people in their mid-60s are happy – possibly the happiest we’ll ever be. In our youth many of us were anxious and self-conscious. As we near the end of our lives, our sense of well-being dips again. But this is the sweet spot. If our retirement’s been voluntary not forced, if we’ve got those foundations in place, this can be a golden time to try new things, to get into shape, to travel, to spend more time doing what we love. Some people do find “encore” careers, and late-life divorcees do find “encore” loves. As a UK survey showed, people at this age can feel more vital than at any time since their thirties.

But it’s also a time to give back, to be responsible citizens. I think many people in their 60s and older have already adopted this new R&R approach to retirement. They’re giving back or looking for opportunities to give back. Some care for grandchildren or elderly parents, or help out financially. In total older Australians give $22 billion a year to help their adult children. Many volunteer – though the main age bracket for volunteering is 45-54, not retirees. Some older people are concerned about the environment, climate change, housing affordability, the legacy being left the next generations. They’re involved in organisations that are trying to make Australia a fairer place. In the US they have a term, “selfish geezers,” to describe well-off older people who get roused only when their own financial interests are threatened. But that’s far from a representative picture.

So in this new retirement era, this period of personal renewal and social responsibility, some of us find it’s all about balance again. Just as we tried in midlife to strike the right balance between work and family, so we’re juggling again. This time the balance we seek is between nurturing our relationships, and contributing to the wider society. It’s between being more relaxed, and being bored. It’s between having leisure and having purpose. In 15 years it might be time to grab a Me Decade, a period to reflect on the life we’ve made. But right now we’re busy living it.

What’s your experience of retirement? What are your plans? Please Comment.

Coming of Age is updated every Monday. Click ‘Subscribe for free’ to have it emailed to you.

Lenore Taylor political editor

Friday 18 April 2014 18.52 EST

Barry O’Farrell’s fall, Joe Bullock’s victory, Arthur Sinodinos’s woes, John Faulkner’s call for reform – so many of the dramas dominating the political debate have a common thread: the power structures of the major parties.

Both big political parties in Australia are built in a way that allows enormous influence to be wielded by a few factional powerbrokers.

Those powerbrokers often value loyalty over quality in the selecting of parliamentary candidates, their backroom influence disenfranchises most party members who – not surprisingly – leave, and this structure opens the real risk of corruption, because influence peddlers thrive best when power is concentrated in the hands of a few. In both parties the problem appears to be at its worst in the state of NSW.

It’s an organisational weakness most prevalent, acknowledged and analysed in the Labor party.

Veteran senator and reform-supporter John Faulkner recently wrote to NSW party members, pointing out that it was their party’s own culture that made possible the kind of corruption being exposed by the Independent Commission against Corruption (Icac).

“Our present system rewards intrigue, trading favours and doing deals. Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald or their ilk would not be able to win preselection in a genuinely democratic process where all party members cast a vote. Their success depended on nothing but factional anointment, they required no support beyond the leadership of a faction,” he said.

Union-based factional power blocs also did the self-serving deal that elevated Joe Bullock to the number one spot on the WA Senate ticket, a man who has publicly declared he thinks many of the ALP members he is supposed to be representing are “mad”.

Faulkner proposes grassroots pre-selections for upper house candidates at state and federal level as part of a solution.

But his diagnosis of what ails the party to which he has devoted his working life does not sound all that different from what Liberal reformer John Ruddick says is wrong with his side of the political divide.

“We have a preselection system which has been manipulated so that all the real power has ended up in the hands of three or four people, with maybe a dozen others who do their bidding, and those people become very attractive to the commercial world and to lobbyists because they have power within the party and over many of the sitting politicians,” says Ruddick of the NSW Liberal party.

In fact, as Icac is revealing, lobbyist Nick Di Girolamo, who drew both Arthur Sinodinos and Barry O’Farrell into Icac’s orbit, and Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid, were often working together. And despite neither Sinodinos nor O’Farrell having been accused of corruption, they have each now paid the price for the system they worked within.

And, like Faulkner, Ruddick sees democratisation as the remedy – he wants electorate plebiscites for lower house preselections and statewide plebiscites for the upper house.

Former Liberal MP Ross Cameron is also calling for an end to the delegate-based voting systems in the NSW Liberal party in order to get rid of “the incentives for factionalism, branch stacking and lobbyist control”.

But Liberal and Labor would-be reformers face the same dilemma – the powerbrokers who benefit from the current system also control the structures that might change it.

On the Labor side, reform is incremental because the union-based power blocks control the state and national conferences which have to implement any changes to the system. Once those forces had had their way, the groundswell for reform that built before Labor’s last national conference in 2011 petered out into yet another committee, which appears to have done nothing much at all.

Labor leader Bill Shorten will give a delayed speech about his plans for reform next Tuesday, but will face similar opposition in the lead-up to Labor’s national conference next year.

On the Liberal side, Tony Abbott also supports change and last year announced an “eminent person’s committee” to look at reforming the NSW party – led by former prime minister John Howard. It is likely to present a reform plan next month ahead of the state council meeting in September.

But, according to Ruddick, the state council is a “gerrymander”, with factional leaders creating new “on-paper” branches that meet at most once a year in order to elect a delegate to state council and keep hold of “the numbers” – presenting Liberal reformers with exactly the same structural impediment to change as is faced by Labor.

But after the shock of O’Farrell’s sudden demise and new premier Mike Baird promising to “return confidence” to the political system, reformers like Ruddick are feeling more confident than they have for a while. (Until Wednesday, Ruddick was facing expulsion from the Liberal party for publicly speaking his mind.)

The new NSW premier is also vowing to “take action” on lobbyists. Ruddick thinks this should include banning “in-house” lobbyists from holding party executive positions, on top of the ban of “third-party” lobbyists, which Abbott instituted after the federal election.

A ban like that would have an immediate impact. NSW Liberal party president, Chris Downy, is the chief executive of the Australian Wagering Council, which lobbies on behalf of the online gambling industry. The treasurer, Peter McGauran, is the chief executive of the Australian Racing Board.

But, according to the reformers, without “democratisation” of party processes, any crackdown on lobbyists would not end the root cause of the problem.

Meanwhile, as my colleague Gabrielle Chan has reported, independents like Cathy McGowan, Tony Windsor and Andrew Wilkie are facing a surge of interest from people wanting to run community campaigns to challenge major party politics.

Turns out voters respond to candidates and parties who listen, engage them, give them a say and don’t appear to be mostly interested in shoring up their own interests and power. Who knew?

Actually, both major parties know it. They just can’t quite work out how to change.

The Global Financial Collapse is really the only evidence we need.

But why are we failing to move on politically?

Unfortunately the political parties formed around conducting this experiment are extremely large and well financed.
We have allowed them to take up a position in the public narrative as ‘good economic managers’.

This must end.

Parties such as the Liberals in Australia, the Republicans in America and the Tories in the UK have been playing economics by a rulebook – Capitalism and Freedom – written by the economist Milton Friedman at the Chicago School of Economics in 1962.

This vision of a shrinking government with ever-diminishing controls on ‘the market’ (corporations) extolled two benchmark policies;

• deregulation (cutting red tape) and;
• privatisation (sale of public assets and services).

Its main justifications were that government-run institutions are inherently inefficient and wasteful, that government employees are not motivated to provide the best service for their clients, and that corporations are inherently driven to compete, thereby ‘the market’ will penalise them for being inefficient.

There are two main problems with this…
1. Corporations that are allowed to run government inherently act in their own best interest – to increase profits, not in the interest of people.
2. Corporations with this power also act against corporations that don’t have ‘the ear of government’ – this results in an increase in anti-competitive monopolies that have no competition.

The results are clear to see.
Removal of regulations in the US led to monopolistic financial institutions lending vast sums of money in a greedy race for interest. The result has been the biggest public bail-outs the world has ever seen and a global collapse in market confidence unprecedented even by the great depression.

Australia under Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan managed to steer away from this plummet in confidence by a swift and targeted government spending package. This action was supported by the antithesis to Friedman’s ‘free-market’ model – the economic model of John Maynard Keynes.

This action was singular in the world, as most governments were trying to shut the gate after the horse had bolted – dictating ‘austerity’ or a decrease in all government spending. In Europe this has been especially devastating. Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland have been the worst affected, and Germany has had to take the reins of their economies to avoid a complete collapse of the Euro.

Somehow the Labor party in Australia has allowed these events to slide out of public view.
By buying into a media war with Liberals over a concocted soap opera of leadership struggles and a ridiculous racially-fuelled fear that we are about to be swamped with rich queue-jumping ‘boat people’ Labor has allowed the public narrative to slide into a dumb abyss.

Only the Greens now hold a reasonably unblemished record of supporting a higher public narrative of true leadership. Unfortunately our monopolistic media environment has cast them unfairly in the public mind (over many decades) as a ‘one issue’ party with no policies and leanings towards communism. These perceptions will take a LOT of public discussion on twitter to overcome, but the signs are already apparent…

We cannot allow the hard work of generations of unionists to disappear overnight.
The Labor party must join with the Greens to reinstate a rational public narrative; in spite of Rupert Murdoch.

For this there is one main barrier; Labor is supported financially by corporations with a greater say than it’s own members and unions in how the party platform will be implemented when in government.

What promises are made publicly before an election are restricted by pandering to these donors. We have even seen a popular elected Prime Minister removed from office for trying to implement a reasonable tax on mining companies.

These are dangerous times for Labor, and therefore for the Australian people.
Our own economic collapse is not far away if we do not diversify our economy.
Pandering to the most vocal, greedy and monopolistic mining corporations (supported by the banks, developers and insurers) can no longer be the role of Labor.
A great divorce must take place.

There is a benefit to this taking place.
The Liberals are standing on one leg.
The only thing they stand for is protecting the corporate interests of a few.

The only card they can play is bombarding the public with advertisements.
Allow them to play that card.

My advice to the Australian Labor Party;
Reintroduce the original robust mining tax as the MAIN way of diversifying and saving our economy.
It is.

Let them spend every cent they have at their disposal driving the general public up the proverbial wall with negative advertising. And go viral with your own message. We will support you.

References;

Graphs based on data available at periodicdisclosures.aec.gov.au

My own categorisation of donor interests was used, feel free to peruse my spreadsheet by downloading here;
http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/445755/Donations3.xlsx