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Fighting Winter with Summer

Are you feeling a little confused about Australian Politics right now? Do you keep on trying to reconcile what the Government says with what the Government does?

 Perhaps the part of you that prides itself in common sense and “telling it like it is” seems to be reacting quite strongly to what the Government does, but the part of you that tries to apply some of the ideas you had to learn throughout your life is reacting very strongly to what the Government says?

Perhaps your reptile brain keeps tapping your education on the shoulder and muttering "something is going on mate, they are not doing what they say they are doing!"

The 1% are not stupid, they just want you to think they are

Those who currently run our Government do believe in the climate science and they know the water and energy conflicts are rolling across the world and are heading for Australia. They didn’t get to their position without intelligence, a survival instinct and an eye for future conditions that have to be planned for. They intend to survive the water and energy conflicts, and they intend to make sure the population will bear the brunt of the struggle to ensure that survival, not them. If the best chance of their survival in the new climate is claiming ignorance of this new climate while being in power so they can prepare for their survival, they will be claiming ignorance.

The Coalition is not in power in Australia, the 1% are
. The people who currently run our Government are not acting in the interests of the people who voted the politicians into Government, they are acting in their own interest. The people that voted for the politicians in the pocket of the 1% will not be treated any differently than other voters. Those in power now have no need of easily persuaded voters anymore, and they will have no need for easily persuaded voters in the future either. They have their politicians in power, what do they need the voters for now?

There is always the weakness behind the strength

I credit the 1% with being fully aware of the impending water and energy conflicts, and it is clear from their actions that they are taking the requisite steps to survive while preventing the population from taking the same steps. I am, however, a little bemused that they are so confident in the historical means of achieving a place in the 1% via the social constructs, that they think these tactics are the way they will continue to survive in the new climate.



Unfortunately their pride and entitlement will never allow them to consider the fact that their place in the 1% means nothing to the environment. Water and energy do not obey, and never have obeyed, the forces of nations, economies and capitalism. Our social contracts are intellectual exercises compared to the immutable laws of nature. When was the last time you saw the forces of physics and chemistry change for the whims of a Government? When was the last time you saw the wider universe obey the wishes of a Government? When did you last see the sun not rise for a Government, or water cease its desire to move according to its nature for a Government?

What is the strength we acquire out of weakness?

The concepts of nations, economies and capitalism are constructs that are now clearly shown to be exactly the wrong way to survive within the immutable natural laws. So if we are going to survive in the new world where a crippled climate is only factor that decides our ability to eat, drink and secure shelter, do you really think success will be assured by repeating the intellectual exercises that have put us so at odds with the systems that provide the essential means of our survival?

Humans cannot create particles on a scale that allows us to add to and repair our climate systems. This means our current habits of consuming the environment and not creating anything to add to the environment is obviously the worst survival strategy. Since we cannot create one atom of oxygen or water to add to the climate, but must rely on the climate to repair itself, clearly our way forward is social constructs that mirror the repair and maintenance systems of the environment.

The 99% are not stupid, we are just told we are

In the old ways of nations, economies and capitalism, the 99% were too powerful not be told they are stupid by the 1%. As survivalists in the system, you had better believe that the 1% know that the 99% is more powerful; the 1% are proud and selfish, but not stupid. Purely on a question of scale, to change human patterns of behaviour so they mirror an ecosystem, we need the entire population to participate. The 1% of the human population on earth are doomed if they think they can change the world climate without the survival and participation of the 99%.

And just as the immutable laws of nature bow for no 1%, so the 1% don’t exist without the 99% putting them there. If we withdraw our participation in the myth of the 1%, what are they to do?

Progressives are still trying to survive in the 20th Century, not the 21st

Progressives persist in arguing for making cosmetic changes to a national economic capitalist system that was created in climate ignorance hundreds of years ago, a system that created the climate crisis, and a system that allows the 1% natural domination of the discourse due to their place at the top of the structure. This is not the fight, but it is the fight that the 1% are super keen for us to keep fighting.

The 1% look so smug because they are watching their Opposition chattering away to the masses, watching their Opposition enforcing the idea that this is a civilised society on track to survive climate change by using all the old forces that created climate change.



Even more than media support of the 1%, the politeness of the Opposition in charging the Government with being stupid and cruel instead of clever and strategic is keeping the rest of us firmly in the dream world that we can negotiate with people who want to survive quite badly. The 1% are not negotiating with us. The 1% are very fond of survival, and they truly don’t care who dies first or last, people are simply going to die before them.

Ask yourself why the Government would formulate a budget that could be so easily attacked, if it were not to keep us busy?
Ask yourself why the 1% seem to be unafraid of the more numerous 99%, if it were not because they are planning to be ahead of us?
What would be be the logical path of a 1% intent on survival by being the last alive?

New problems, old systems

If, however, we actually look at their actions and not their rhetoric, if we consider how they intend to survive instead of how they tell us they expect us to survive, the answer is simple.

We need to get out of the old system. Nations, economies and trade are killing us. Ecosystems, weather and resources are being taken away from us. We can’t be economic citizens because the economy has nothing to do with the ecosystem. Water and weather and energy obeys no national borders, so why are we wasting our time with them, let alone arguing over hundred year old ideas about them when we should be moving on?

How do we step away from the old ideas of economies and money as the signs of a successful society and make involvement in ecosystems a sign of being a good organism of the world, not a citizen of the conjured up notion of a nation?

 What have we to learn about borders of environment, weather and animals rather than rates of trade or banks? The working week is not the way that ecosystems, weather, water and food are husbanded, interacted with and allow us to survive, so why are we still obsessed with the working week?



Why do we have ornamental plants anywhere on this continent? Why do we have golf courses? Why is not every drop of our water going to plants we can eat? Where are our roofs made of energy creating cells? Where are our rainwater tanks and grey water retrieval systems? This nation has the money for fighter jets that can’t save us from the weather or water scarcity, but not for a nation of scientists who are food sufficient, water preserving and in charge of the biggest collection of clean energy infrastructure to survive in the world?

Reassessing our Leaders

In 2016 we will have the opportunity to vote for leaders who work for the good of their constituents (those able to vote, and those not yet able to vote), not corporations, political parties or long dead historical ideas. I think most people with eyes and opinions will concede that the people in charge right now appear to be having problems growing up into their leadership roles.



The leaders in charge across Australia’s political landscape right now seem to be under the illusion that they were voted in to do what they personally found most attractive from the past, instead of what the people they represent need for the future. They seem to think that, as individuals that overwhelmingly represent a specific and narrow age, education, status of residency, ability and experience, they can cling to the ideas and values of a rapidly dying generation instead of attempting to represent the populations who are growing up to experience the policies they form.

The leaders in charge across Australia’s political landscape right now seem to be under the illusion that they owe allegiance to the idea of the past of a political party and system rather than the future political platforms that Australia needs them to grow into. They seem to excuse their homogeny of life experience despite the fact they work in a political party and election system that was created by people, can be undone by people, and should be grown and changed by people. There is no organisation on the face of the earth that cannot and should not be improved and be allowed to change with the diversity of the population that uses it. Systems LITERALLY do not exist without people in them, and our system clearly serves the past population makeup, not the present population.

The leaders in charge across Australia’ political landscape right now seem to think that corporations, which do not exist without the people that make them up, are actually more important than the people within them. No system created by humans exists without us there, it dies when we step away from it. So it seems a flight of fantasy at best to watch policy being formulated to benefit an entity that does not exist without the presence of the people the policy is designed to disadvantage.

The Abbott Government is hopefully the last time that we will have to endure current politics as wilful self-destruction.

The Abbott Government displays very sobering signs of being unable to operate in a reality that is not of their own construction. Even worse for them, they are destroying themselves by constructing their reality with policies from the past that destroyed their past creators and implementors over and over again.

The policies of the Abbott Government are ineffective for them for good reason; they are the policies of regimes that no longer exist. And these regimes don’t exist because they destroyed themselves.



The leadership in charge across Australia’s political landscape right now lack vision and bravery; they lack empathy, presence and imagination; they lack greatness, generosity and graciousness.


But here is the good news, they don’t get power, prestige or influence if we walk away from their parties, their policies and their platforms. Systems don’t exist without the people in them! So, uh, let’s step away from them ...
It's Time
Australia has three major political parties, each backed by their own training and voting block: the Australian Greens have the Environmental and Activist movements, Labor has the Unions and the Liberal Party has the business sector.

The largest population in Australia without a voice is women; our very urgent needs for parity, safety and leaders are being ignored and wound back, our leadership is locked out of power and as voters we are unable to direct our vote to a party that champions us.

Australian women do, however, have an established and proven mentorship and training ground for female candidates to gain political experience and female voters to gain access to candidates to influence policy; the Country Women's Association.
Not our circus, not our monkeys
So, women of Australia, take thee to the CWA, become involved with all manner of practical local politics, all manner of women as mentors and all manner of consulting to Government, and participate in politics on your terms.

Find your own policies, build your own campaign teams, field your own candidates and vote for the candidates who have the best vision for new politics you can find. You are the only people who can build the future, because the existing systems are dying, and trying to take us all down with them.

And for all of our sakes, be militantly inclusive; as 51% of the Australian population, the women of Australia include Indigenous Australians, refugees/immigrants, the LGBTIQ community and anyone who has additional access and medical requirements. Our new politics must include everyone excluded from the current systems so our votes and candidates count the first time, and into the future.
Textbook
Anyone who thinks they can argue for 21st Century Climate Aware action with 20th Century Climate Ignorant ideologies is going to be pulled back into historical patterns of conflict and paralysis, which is exactly where the Government and their corporate partners want their population.
A definition of madness
Systems are just tools, they should react and change with the user, but our systems are not changing with the population that use them, as evident by under-representation of varied proportions of our population in almost every area of public and private life. The systems are wrong, not the diversity of the population trying to use them.
Ask for me tomorrow
The current Australian Government makes announcements that destabilise the news cycle, and these announcements come in two forms:

1. An outrageous suggestion designed to let opponents react with scorn and satire, but neither suggestion nor satire achieves anything but noise, and a false sense of protest for those who did not vote for this current Australian Government.

2. A very real threat that opponents cannot ignore, but is sure to be withdrawn or watered down once it has short circuited the news cycle and wasted the time and resources of those who did not vote for this current Australian Government.

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