sloppy lazy unfair journalism designed as "entertainment"...

Waleed Aly

From Victoria Rollison

Over the last couple of days, the Twittersphere has been full of congratulations for Waleed Aly’s The Project segment on the Renewable Energy Target (RET). If you haven’t watched it yet, here it is. Apart from the fact that it’s fairly amusing that journalists like Aly get congratulated for talking about the details of a policy, and showing that they actually care about policy outcomes, (because shouldn’t they all be doing this all the time?), the segment was, on the whole a good one. However, and this is a big HOWEVER, it does drive me crazy that once again, Labor is framed as the villain, along with the Abbott government. Because journalists like Aly, like most political journalists, and like pretty much every cycinical-Labor-bashing-I-know-best-and-I-never-give-credit-where-credit-is-due tweep who seem to call themselves lefties, but have learned the art of bashing Labor from the experts like Murdoch and his minions, can’t frame any story that is negative about the Abbott government, without also framing Labor as equally as villainous, equally to blame, and (watch my eyes roll), just as bad as the Liberal government. I don’t have words to explain just how frustrating this vogue way of talking about politics is!

Look at the video again, and notice how it implies that Labor is helping Abbott to kill the RET. You’ll see photos of Bill Shorten pulling a silly face (to show he’s stupid) and the graphics on the video’s backdrop have Liberal AND Labor MPs with characters from Sesame Street, presumably to show that they’re all childish puppets. And all the same. This type of not-so-subtle imagery, and the language around ‘bipartisanship’ is clearly aimed at framing Labor as part of the problem; in this case part of the reason the drawn out RET negotiations are causing a decline in investment and jobs in the renewable energy sector and a bleaker outlook for our future thanks to climate change caused by emissions that could be abated by an increased use of renewable technologies. But hang on Aly. Hang on while you try to bash Labor over this one and have a look at a few things I like to call factsand political reality.

Firstly, the RET, Aly forgot to mention, was a success of the previous Labor government. The way he spoke about the policy, you’d swear it originally appeared out of thin air! The Howard government introduced the policy in 2001, but set the target at a measly 9,500 GWh. It was the Labor government, in 2010, who increased this target to something far more revolutionary – 41,000 GWh – in order to reach the 20% emissions reduction target by 2020. It was this policy, implemented by a Labor government that gave rise to huge investment in the renewable energy sector. This investment was further boosted by Labor’s 10 billion dollar fund that was financed by Labor’s Carbon Price policy (which the Greens were also partly responsible for through Labor’s negotiations to form a minority government). So just to recap, Labor set the responsible target, Labor funded investment through the Carbon Price and Labor got zero credit for any of this from anyone in the media at the time, including the likes of Aly. Just like Labor gets zero credit for any of their progressive policy successes.

All of this background to the RET policy was left out of Aly’s segment. To someone uneducated about the policy, it would appear that naughty, bad, bad Labor was willing to compromise everything the RET has achieved by supporting Abbott’s bid to reduce the RET in a bipartisan show of deceitfulness. To someone who hasn’t been following the story (and if you care so much about climate change to retweet Aly’s video yet haven’t noticed what’s been going on for over a year, I think you need to translate this ‘caring’ into making sure you’re ‘informed’), you would think that Labor is the one putting the renewables industry at risk by helping the Abbott government to dismantle the target, when actually the opposite is the truth. The reason there is a stalemate between Labor and the LNP over this policy is because Labor has recognised that compromise must be made in order to salvage as much of the effectiveness of their RET as they possibly can, but so far Abbott hasn’t compromised enough to get Labor’s support. Labor’s position is that they want the target at, coincidentally, the place they set it in government in 2010 – 41,000 GWh. This is Labor’s ideal. But Labor isn’t in government anymore, and in case everyone hadn’t noticed, it’s fairly difficult to run the country from opposition. And this is the point at which I would ask Aly, because he didn’t mention it, what exactly would he like Labor to do differently? Labor has been fighting the Abbott government policy of reducing the RET to 26,000 GWh. If Labor had given bipartisan support to Abbott’s government, the RET target would be 26,000 GWh, a disaster for the renewables industry and a disaster for the future of Australia’s stable climate.

Where was Aly’s outrage when Abbott announced this 26,000 GWh policy? And where has Aly’s coverage been of Labor’s fight to stop this policy succeeding? Now, after a year of fraught negotiations, Labor has managed, with the help of the renewable energy industry, who they have been working closely with as any responsible opposition should, to pull the Abbott government kicking and screaming up to a place where there might be some compromise to save the policy – at 33,500 GWh. Yet the Abbott government won’t accept this compromise, insisting on 32,000 GWh, which is clearly just a political move to try to maintain some vestige of control over the negotiations and letting investment continue to suffer in the meantime. So again, what would Aly have Labor do in this circumstance? Give in to Abbott and accept the lower target, or keep fighting to bring them up to a target that is lower than Labor would like, but has been deemed acceptable for the time being to the renewable energy sector in order to keep investment flowing. It’s not clear what Aly would prefer Labor did because no one ever has this conversation when they’re busily saying Labor has done everything wrong and Labor is the villain and no one should support Labor and oops…. then we got an Abbott government and wasn’t that a disaster for climate change policy?

Some credit where it’s due Aly and quit the Labor bashing. Your RET segment would have been more informative had you not given in to your usual predilection for painting Labor and LNP as ‘the same and just as bad as each other’. I would better believe you cared about climate change if you didn’t paint Labor and Liberal as sharing similar climate change polcies. No one who really cares could possibly infer this. And your profession would be more valuable to our community if it didn’t imply a vote for Abbott is the same as a vote for a Labor government, which the outcome on climate policy has painfully shown to be a complete and utter lie.

http://victoriarollison.com/2015/04/17/labor-framed-as-the-villain-again/

By Gus Leonisky at 19 Apr 2015 - 7:01am
Gus Leonisky's blog
Login or register to post comments

have cash, but going pianissimo...

Dear colleagues and friends,

You may well be aware that the Guardian recently launched a campaign urging the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to end investments in fossil fuel companies. While we support the campaign’s ultimate aim of reducing carbon emissions to restrict global warming to 2C, we do not believe this is the strongest contribution we can make to this important goal.

--------------------------

Another person on behalf of about $18 billion US trust fund who thinks that stopping investing in COAL, GAS and OIL would not achieve anything.... As Victoria Rollison (read article above) says "let my eyes roll"...

These "fair-minded" "ethical" investors give me the shits. Time has long passed to be "fair-minded"... We need some swift punch-in-the-gonad to the fossil fuel industry and invest HEAVILY in renewables that are not going to destroy the planet's climate. BECAUSE urgency is the key... Every year we wait, we're letting more damage happen now and more in the future.

The present trend of global warming is possibly 0.3 degrees Celsius increase per decade, in the immediate future — after having been about 0.1 (increasing) degrees Celsius per decade over a 75 year period.

By 2030 the odds are that the warming trend is going to go up to possibly 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade and 0.75 by 2040. We know that the increase year to year are not consistently incremental, but on these trends alone and on just the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere this tend will continue accelerating and reach an increase of more than 4.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. There is already enough EXTRA CO2 on top of the maximum "natural" CO2 in the atmosphere to do this and add to more than 6 degrees Celsius by 2150. As we keep adding more CO2, the increase is likely to be 9 degrees Celsius on present day temperatures by 2200. Some mitigating factors are presently hiding the hiding-to-nothing. The melting of the ice surfaces on the planet absorbs a lot of energy. The warming of the oceans absorbs a lot of energy. The sea absorbs also a lot of CO2 and is turning "acidic"— itself a not discountable event as it destroys a lot of species means of survival.

Being fair minded, going pianissimo, at this time is being LAZY. We need FORTISSIMO ! We need BRAVE PEOPLE with vision...

Please, DO MORE TO kill-off the fossil fuel industry that still rules our lives, unfortunately. Divest from these industry and invest into renewable as much as possible. Invest half of the capital into this alone. the return of 4.5 per cent per annum on an 18 billion fund is a 810 million. A lot of money made from the dirty energy sources and dubious banking practices (including derivatives)... THEY COULD NOT CARE LESS ABOUT YOUR "ethical" values since you "do not care about them" either as shown by your investments.

DIVEST, URGENTLY...

By Gus Leonisky at 19 Apr 2015 - 7:55am
Login or register to post comments

33,000... could be better than zero...

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says Labor is willing compromise with the government on a Renewable Energy Target of 33,000 gigawatt hours of annual renewable energy production by 2020.

Signalling a shift in Labor's position that could end a months-long stand off between the two major parties over the RET, Mr Shorten said the sector needed investment certainty and jobs in the sector needed to be protected.

"We will work towards a deal, we've said 33,500, if it's the last issue on the table and the government wants to save face by saying 33,000 gigawatt hours as opposed to 33,500, ok," he told ABC Radio National.

"This game has gone on too long, the government is killing the renewable energy industry. We will have a look at it, if they say 33,000, if they are serious and whether industry could live with it, and we will take it to our caucus."

Mr Shorten said that, in the longer term, Labor's view was that renewable energy target should continue to rise to stimulate investment in the clean energy sector.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-signals-labor-willing-to-compromise-on-renewable-energy-target-20150504-1mz51v.html

Please Billy, refrain from using terms such as "game"... Use other words such as "situation" or go back into the annals of Labor history...

By Gus Leonisky at 4 May 2015 - 10:29am
Login or register to post comments

you would not believe waleed aly

The Project's Waleed Aly dresses down Zaky Mallah over 'irresponsible' Q&A outburst

Zaky Mallah may have had the final word during a stoush with a federal MP on ABC's Q&A, but Waleed Aly didn't give him an inch during a combative interview on Channel Ten's The Project on Tuesday night.

Aly accepted no side-stepping from Mallah, 31, who made national headlines after he said Australian Muslims were justified to travel to Syria to join Islamic State during his appearance as a vetted questioner in the Q&A audience on Monday night.

The reports over-egged Mallah's parting comment, directed at Foreign Affairs and Trade Parliamentary Secretary Steve Ciobo, which was: "The Liberals have just justified to many Australian Muslims in the community tonight to leave and go to Syria and join ISIL because of ministers like him."

But Aly pushed Mallah to take responsibility for his "irresponsible" outburst during a pre-recorded interview on The Project.

Mallah - the first Australian to be charged under the nation's counter-terrorism laws - made an unreserved plea to Australians not to join Islamic terror groups, as he had in many media appearances both before and after his Q&A appearance.

"I've been on your program before and I've made it very clear that anyone who wants to go and travel to Syria or to Iraq to join ISIS, don't go," Mallah said.

"It's an organisation that has hijacked Islam. It's an organisation that has hijacked the jihad. I don't support ISIS and I don't support anyone leaving Australia and their families to head overseas and join this group," he said.

But when Aly pressed him to address the fact that many Australians had interpreted his words on Q&A as a call to arms, Mallah deflected by admonishing the Abbott government's proposed changes to anti-terrorism laws that would strip dual nationals of citizenship.

"I don't feel like you're taking responsibility for this," Aly said.

"You were asked a question about what you said and your response was to talk about how bad the government was. The inflammation in this came from you. It came from what you said," Aly said.

When Mallah responded with another critque of the Abbott government, Aly accused him of derailing to the very debate he claimed to have initiated.

"It seems to me you've completely misread what's happened today," Aly said.

"No-one is having a conversation about the government and the rule of law. That conversation was actually already under way. Your intervention completely blew it off the rails.

"Your intervention has made this about you, and about radicalisation in the Muslim community and about the fact that words such as yours drive people towards that radicalisation.

"I wonder if you are aware of the fact that it seems you are doing a lot more damage than you are help?" Aly said.

Mallah conceded that "maybe the tone of [his] voice was too harsh", but he stood by his words.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/the-projects-waleed-aly-dresses-down-zaky-mallah-over-irresponsible-qa-outburst-20150624-ghvux0.html#ixzz3dwPED6Dt

I would not be surprised to find out that Waleed Aly is an apologist for Tony Abbott's ultra rabid right wing behaviour... So far all the Waleed signs point to this. Nothing wrong with this. Waleed is a grown man with his spot on the box and is entitled to his onion (onion is better than opinion because it makes me cry) but here we have a slight distortion of facts. The challenge by Mallah was made to what appeared a right-wing neo-fascist position displayed by Ciobo. In fact as we can see here, Mallah does not want Muslim to go and join Isis as he had said many times before on Waleed's program.
But we should know that ISIS is a more or less another American venture that "went wrong". ISIS was first bolstered by America with the help of the Saudis and "its" Al Qaeda to destroy the secular regime of Assad in Syria. Now the US is annoyed that things are out of hand... What did they expect? that people would not get killed?
The USA did the same caper against the "communists" in Afghanistan by financing the Mujahideen, who eventually joined with (or became) the Taliban who eventually were friends of Al Qaeda...

By Gus Leonisky at 24 Jun 2015 - 12:24pm
Login or register to post comments

waleed step in it again...

"We have nothing to hide. We welcome any audit," he continued. "It is really disappointing that people want to come after some good people that have raised a lot of money and made a serious difference to seriously underprivileged children.

"You can all get stuffed if you want to have a go at us for it but we are very, very proud of what we have been able to achieve."

However, when Aly suggested he would reserve judgment until the results of an independent audit were made public Warne leapt straight onto the front foot.

"You doubting me, mate?" he asked testily. "You think we've got something to hide?"

Later, Warne took to Twitter to make it clear he and Aly were unlikely to be sharing a drink in the dressing rooms any time soon.

By Gus Leonisky at 11 Mar 2016 - 8:38am
Login or register to post comments

Primary links

Search

Recent comments

Democracy Links

Member's Off-site Blogs