Major Elephant In The Room Issues
Ignored In Australian Elections
By Dr Gideon Polya
24 August, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Australia is the world's worst per capita greenhouse gas polluter and has been involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars (excess deaths 23 million). Yet major Elephant in the Room issues such as war, climate change and human rights abuse were off the agenda in the recent spin-driven Australian federal election campaign that returned a hung parliament for the first time in 70 years.
On Saturday 21 August Australians went to the polls to elect a new federal Government. The incumbent pro-war, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-Zionist Labor Government (the Labs) is headed by post-Coup PM Julia Gillard who was installed by an overnight pro-Zionist led Coup against former Labor PM Kevin Rudd on 24 June 2010. Rudd was subjected to an overnight political assassination because his popularity had fallen from a record high to an election-losing low. Labor is opposed by the pro-war, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-Zionist Liberal Party-National Party Coalition (the Libs), these pro-war, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-Zionist neoconservatives being collectively called the Lib-Labs. The Lib-Labs were principally opposed by the antiiwar, pro-environment, pro-human rights minor party, the Greens.
Australia has a compulsory and preferential voting system. Everyone must vote or be fined. Further, in voting for both the House of Representatives (150 seats, each electorate representing roughly equal-sized populations) or the Senate ( 12 seats for each Australian state and 1 senator each for the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory ), voters must list the candidates in order of preference. The preferences are taken into account if a candidate fails to win an absolute majority.
The final election result may not be known for a week or so because of postal votes and recounts. However the current situation for the House of Representatives appears to be both Labor and Coalition with 72 or 73 seats each, 1 Greens seat (the first ever) and possibly 4 Independents. Labor got about 38% of the primary vote, the Coalition 44%, the Greens 12% and 6% voted informally (i.e. they spoiled their ballot or voted incorrectly by not indicating preferences). Over 80% of Greens voters gave their second preference to Labor so that the “2 party preferred vote” ended up being roughly 50% for both Labor and the Coalition. Neither the Labor or the Coalition now command a majority and Australia now has a hung Parliament for the first time since 1940 and will have to be governed by a coalition. The Greens were the great winners of these elections, gaining a House of Representatives seat for the first time and gaining the balance of power in the Senate with a total of 9 Senate positions.
The 2 major parties ran lacklustre, spin-driven campaigns that aimed to minimize controversy and reflected their very similar policy positions. While both parties supported a Stimulus Package to deal with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Labor strove to take credit for Australia 's relatively healthy post-GFC position (thanks are actually due to China 's massive purchase of Australian raw materials) and the Coalition argued (correctly) that the Labor Stimulus Package was extravagant and poorly focussed. The WorkChoices industrial laws of the previous Coalition Government had cost it government in 2007. Labor ran a dishonest scare campaign against the Coalition, asserting that Coalition leader Tony Abbott was not to be trusted and would bring back WorkChoices notwithstanding his vehement denials and his endless assertions that WorkChoices was “dead, buried and cremated”.
Labor and Coalition have similar bottom-of the–barrel polices on refugees but were differentiated by Labor wanting them kept in camps in East Timor (although the East Timorese have not agreed to do this) and the Coalition preferring Nauru (the Naurans being happy to be jailers of refugees again). The Greens campaigned mainly on effective climate change action, decent treatment of refugees and same-sex marriage (Labor and the Coalition being opposed to all 3). .
An extraordinary feature of the election campaign in Murdochcracy and Lobbyocracy Australia was the virtual absence of any discussion about the most serious issues facing Australia . The major reasons for reasons for this are (a) Murdoch News Empire ownership of about 70% of city daily newspapers; (b) a spineless and irresponsible Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC, Australia's equivalent of the UK BBC) which adopts a “balanced “ position between extreme right wing Labor and extreme right wing Liberal-National Party Coalition; and (c) Mainstream media and bipartisan, Lib-Lab refusal to properly discuss these key Elephant in the Room issues.
Listed below are 20 major matters that were effectively not part of the national discussion in the Australian federal elections because of the ignorance and dishonesty of the Australian Mainstream media and right wing politicians.
1. "Don't mention the war" in Iraq .
UN weapons inspectors declared both pre-invasion and post-invasion that there were no Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. Former head of UK' s MI5 Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller has told the Chilcot Inquiry that pre-invasion Iraq posed no threat to the UK and that the Iraq War had increased the terrorism threat to Britain (see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10740001 ) . Indeed UK Deputy PM Nick Clegg has slammed the Iraq War as "illegal" and various people have demanded war crimes trials for Blair and Bush (most notably Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter and outstanding expatriate Australian writer John Pilger). The former president of the Australian Liberal Party John Valder has described former Liberal-National Party Coalition PM John Howard as a war criminal over the Iraq invasion. The previous Hawke and Keating Labor Governments were involved in deadly Sanctions against Iraq and the Rudd-Gillard Labor Government involved Australia in the Iraq War for nearly 2 years (4.4 million violent and non-violent excess deaths, 1990-2010; 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, 1990-2001; post-invasion violent deaths 1.4 million, post-invasion non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation 1.1 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 0.8 million; and refugees generated total 5-6 million - an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention; see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ).
2. "Don't mention the war" in Afghanistan .
The US Alliance invasion of Afghanistan was ostensibly over the 9-11 atrocity (although no Afghans were involved according to the US “official version of 9-11” and the pre-invasion Afghan Government had offered to hand formerly US-backed Osama bin Laden to a Third Country). PM Julia Gillard's first act as PM was to endorse continued Australian involvement in the Afghan War (post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths, 4.5 million; post-invasion violent deaths about 1.0 million; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 2.4 million; post-invasion non-violent excess deaths from deprivation refugees 3-4 million plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated by the US Alliance in NW Pakistan - an Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide according to Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention; see “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ) .
3. The US did 9-11 (very likely with Israeli involvement).
Eminent intelligence experts have made it clear that the US must have been involved in the 9-11 atrocity. Indeed former Italian President and intelligence intimate Professor Francesco Cossiga asserts that both Israel and the US were involved and eminent UK Middle East journalist Alan Hart believes that the US did 9-11 and very likely with Israeli involvement. Intelligence intimates former German Minister Andreas von Bülow and General Leonid Ivashov (former head of the Russian defence forces) ascribe the 9-11 atrocity to the US as does Major General Albert N. Stubblebine (former Commanding General of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, INSCOM). “Loaded gun” evidence for US involvement has been provided by Professor Niels Harrit and colleagues from the Chemistry Department, 9-Nobel-Laureate University of Copenhagen, who founded unexploded nanothermite high explosive in all samples of the World Trade Center dust they examined by state of the art chemical physics techniques (see: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19999 ). Yet the opinions of these eminent intelligence experts and scientyists is completely censored out in pro-Zionist and pro-US Australia . The closest this came to being discussed in the Australian elections was through leaks that Rudd and Gillard had skipped National SecurityCommittee meetings, Gillard sending along her bodyguard to take notes. The real issue of deadly dereliction of duty (and possible traitorous dereliction of duty) by Australian politicians and public servants was not discussed in the election campaign.
4. Violation of Australians and Australian sovereignty by Israeli state terrorists and Australian Israeli state terrorists.
While Australian sovereignty and border security were key “dog whistling” anti-Arab anti-Semitism and xenophobia election issues in relation to several thousand desperate refugees reaching Australian waters by boat each year, a key issue utterly ignored by pro-Zionist media and politicians was the failure of the Rudd and Gillard Labor Governments to act against those Australians, dual citizen Israeli Australians and other Israelis involved in Israeli terrorism against Australia, most notably the routine forging of Australian passports for terrorist purposes (e.g. the Dubai assassination) and the violent and murderous piracy against 5 Australians in international waters (5 Australian victims, 3 of them women, 1 woman tasered, 1 man shot and all violently kidnapped, robbed and falsely imprisoned in a foreign country by Israeli terrorists, including 3 Australian Israeli terrorists). Essential inaction by the Rudd-Gillard Government involved expulsion of an Israeli diplomat over the forged passports affair and using the word “deplorable” over the Israeli attack on the Gaza Aid Flotilla in international waters.
5. 50 racist Zionist threats to Australia .
Further to item #4, a detailed dossier has been sent to the Australian Federal Police and to key MPs and media detailing 50 ways in which Australian, Australian Israeli and Israeli racist Zionists threaten Australians and Australian sovereignty (see: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/2010-summary-racist-zionism and https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli ) . The silence has been deafening. Cowardly, irresponsible, dishonest and intrinsically traitorous Australian MPs, journalists and public servants ignore crimes and threats against Australia in deference to domestic racist Zionists (RZs), to the nuclear terrorist rogue state of Apartheid Israel and to racist Zionist-dominated America .
6. Ongoing Aboriginal Genocide.
It is estimated from medical epidemiological data that 9,000 Indigenous Australians die avoidably each year linked to Third World living conditions and a 2- to 3-fold under-funding of Aboriginal Health. Yet this ongoing Aboriginal Genocide was ignored in the farcical, look-the-other-way Australia federal election campaign (see Aboriginal Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ ).
7. Deaths of Australians from fossil fuel burning.
From simple proportional estimation using Ontario, Canada data, circa 5,000 Australians die every year from the effects of pollutants from coal burning and over 1,000 Australians die each year from the effects of petrol and diesel burning pollutants (see: https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/how-many-people-die-from-carbon-burning-and-climate-change-each-year ).
8. US-linked Australian drug deaths.
About 350 Australians die each year linked to Lib-Lab Australian and US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to over 90% today. About 3,000 Australians have died from opiate drug-related causes since 2001 due to Australian Lib-Lab Afghan war policies (see UNODC World Drug Report; see: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19234 ).
9. War crimes and passive mass infanticide.
Further to points #1 and #2, under-5 infant deaths total 2.0 million (Iraq, 1990-2010) and 2.4 million (Afghanistan, 2001-2010), 90% avoidable and due to gross US Alliance violation of the Geneva Convention through war criminal imposition of horrendous deprivation, variously through bombing, sanctions, occupation and war.
10. .Lib-Lab betrayal of Australian children due to gross under-funding of Government schools.
Educated and informed parents in Australia know that they must spend several hundred thousand dollars to buy into a “good” neighbourhood with a good Government school or spend about $100,000 per child sending their children to a good private school. The majority of Australian children going to grossly under-funded Government schools are disproportionately excluded from university, good universities and good courses. Consult the "My School" site (see: http://www.myschool.edu.au/ ) and you will quickly discover that more than twice as many children from a top Melbourne private school get to university (61%) as compared to children from a particular impoverished Melbourne Government school (30%) - and this ignores consideration of which course at which university (e.g. medicine or law at the University of Melbourne).
11. Sexual abuse of Australian children.
It is reported that 34% of Australian women and 16% of Australian men have been sexually abused as children (see p235, the “Little Children Are Sacred” Report: http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf ). While the expert “Little Children Are Sacred Report” stated (p57) that “it is not possible to accurately estimate the extent of child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory 's Aboriginal communities”, the Indigenous Community was specifically and extensively singled out in this respect in the Mainstream media and Parliament. The massive sexual abuse of Australia children was of course ignored in the election campaign.
12. Debt and intergenerational justice.
The organization GetUp successfully intervened in the Courts to ensure that many new voters could be enrolled before the election. However missing from the election campaign were the issues of debt being imposed upon young Australians. Thus many relatively young voters facing or bearing HECS debts were unaware that they are being charged 10 times too much for their undergraduate tuition which is being currently provided in some instances by casual academic teachers for about 10% of the cost of such teaching provided by full-time academic staff. While the Opposition Libs drew attention to the huge Labor Stimulus Package debt, this criticism was muted by the reality that the Libs would have done much the same (albeit with less and better focussed expenditure). There was no mention of the Young Australians who will have to service Labor's huge Stimulus Package debt.
13. Reparations debt from the War on Terror.
As estimated above in items #1 and #2, about 8 million people have died avoidably due to the US Alliance War on Terror. At a A$10 million valuation of a human life (US EPA) and assuming that “all men are created equal”, the US Alliance War on Terror Debt is now 8 million dead x A$10 million per person = A$80 trillion.
14. US Alliance creation of refugees.
A major issue in the election campaign was what to do with the several thousand desperate refugees who enter Australian waters by boat each year. For civilized people like the Greens the answer is simply to treat them humanely and process their refugee applications properly and quickly. For the human rights-abusing Lib-Labs the issue became the basis of a “dog whistling”, xenophobic campaign. While there are 50,000 illegal immigrants in Australia who have come here by plane, the boat-borne asylum seekers are not illegal and have suffered great privations. However the Lib-Labs have evidently done little about the 50,000 illegals while falsely describing the boat refugees as illegal arrivals. In a bipartisan exercise in utter hypocrisy the Lib-Labs express great sympathy for the asylum seekers and apply great vitriol to the so-called “people smugglers” who try to find safe haven for the asylum seekers that the Lib-Labs persecute and imprison The pre-Coup Labor PM Kevin Rudd described the so-called “people smugglers” as “scum of the earth” who “should rot in hell”. However this raises the question of how one should describe the Israelis, Australians and US Alliance warmongers who have created 22 million Muslim refugees in the first place (the breakdown being 2 million Somalis, 7 million Palestinians, 5-6 million Iraqis, 3-4 million Afghans and 2.5 million NW Pakistani Pashtuns).
15. Passive murder of refugees.
While the Libs have a policy of transferring asylum seekers from Australian territory (excess mortality rate 0.0%) to Nauru (excess mortality rate circa 0.0%), Labor proposes to transfer refugees to East Timor (excess mortality 0.92%, 2003 data, one of the worst in the world) i.e. Labor policy involves transferring refugees from the best to the worst excess mortality environment in the World. This horrible reality was lost even on the Libs during the election campaign.
16. Human rights violation of Aborigines and refugees.
The Lib-Labs grossly violated Australian law by removing Northern Territory Indigenous Australians (Aboriginals, Aborigjnes) from the protection of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act. Labor went further under Rudd and Gillard by suspending the human rights of Afghan refugees fleeing the Afghan Genocide and Tamil refugees fleeing the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka . These measures raised the ire of Amnesty and UN Human Rights officials but were not Lib-Lab election issues.
17. Under-employment and under-utilisation.
While Labor falsely scaremongered about a return to the draconian Lib WorkChoices regime and the Libs countered by repeatedly declaring that these draconian industrial laws were “dead, buried and cremated”, what went unnoticed was that the under-employment (or under-utilisation rate) had soared under Labor from about 10% in 2008 to over 15% in 2010. For casual workers under Labor hiring is basically a matter of take it or leave it.
18. Climate change inaction by Lib-Labs.
The pro-coal, do-nothing Libs made political capital over the pro-coal, do-nothing Labor backflip over climate change action that Rudd had described as the “greatest moral challenge of our time” – several months before the election PM Rudd declared that having done nothing for nearly 3 years they would do nothing for a further 2 years if re-elected. PM Gillars subsequently re-iterated this irresponsible position. However Lib criticism was necessarily muted because the pro-coal Libs won't do anything either. Both the Libs and Labs have a derisory policy of “5% off 2000 greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by 2020”. Australia 's Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution in 2009-2010 was over 4.3% higher than that under the Libs in 2006-2007.
19. ETS fraud and exclusion of agriculture from greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution reduction.
The former Lib leader Malcolm Turnbull and former Labor PM Kevin Rudd came to an agreement over a Carbon Trading Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in 2009. Unfortunately the Rudd-Turnbull ETS was appalling in 3 respects: (a) the ETS approach has been slammed by top scientists and economists as empirically ineffective, dangerously counterproductive and inherently fraudulent (see: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/sciennce-economics-experts-carbon-tax-needed-not-carbon-trading ); (b) the Australian ETS was falsely named the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme because it will actually increase Australia's Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution (see: https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/post-copenhagen-australia ) ; and (c) World Bank analysts have estimated that annual GHG pollution is 50% bigger than hitherto thought and that livestock is responsible for over 51% of the bigger figure (see: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 ). However the Rudd-Turnbull compromise proposed to permanently exclude agriculture from any GHG reductions – permanently leaving over 51% of the problem unaddressed forever.
20. 300 parts per million CO2 and Climate Genocide.
Top climate scientists (including the UK Royal Society Coral Working Group) advocate an urgent return of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration from the present dangerous and damaging 392 ppm to 300 parts per million for a safe planet for all peoples and all species (see: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/300-org---return-atmosphere-co2-to-300-ppm ). Top scientists have advised that "delay is not an option" (255 members of the prestigious US National Academy of Science, 2010) and "inaction is inexcusable" (Synthesis Report of the 2,500-delegate March 2009 Copenhagen Scientific Climate Change Conference). The Lib-Labs don't merely have a policy of inaction and a continuing increase in GHG pollution, they ignore the demand of top climate scientists that we need to have negative CO2 emissions. They also ignored in the election campaign the dire predictions of both Dr James Lovelock FRS (Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson ( Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) who recently estimated that fewer than 1 billion people will survive this century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming – noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (see Climate Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ).
Conclusion.
The appalling catalogue above of major Elephant in the Room issues that were ignored by the Lib-Labs and the Mainstream media in the recent Australian election campaign reveals the extent of spin and dishonesty in right wing Australian politics. Even the ignorance-plus-greed-characterized Australian electorate finally realized that they were being grossly deceived by the Lib-Labs in the 2010 Federal election campaign, denying both the Libs and the Labs a majority in the house of Representatives. The great hope from these latest Australian elections was a substantial increase in support for the anti-war, pro-environment, pro-human rights Greens. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end for the pro-war, pro-coal, human rights-abusing, environment-abusing, anti-science Lib-Labs and the end for anti-science, spin-based politics in Australia .
If look-the-other-way, war criminal, climate criminal, politically correct racist (PC racist), pro-US, pro-Zionist Apartheid Australia doesn't clean up its act then the World will insist that it does, just as the world successfully acted against Apartheid South Africa and is slowly advancing sanctions and boycotts against Apartheid Israel..
Already 22 million people (about 9.5 million of them under-5 year old infants) die avoidably every year due to deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease – and man-made global warming is already clearly worsening this global avoidable mortality holocaust. However 10 billion avoidable deaths due to global warming this century will yield an average annual avoidable death rate this century of 100 million per year. Australia is disproportionately culpable. “Annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO 2 -equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is 0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), less than 3 (many African and Island countries), 3.2 (the Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 54 if Australia's huge Exported CO 2 pollution is included).
Unfortunately, just like Apartheid South Africa and Apartheid Israel , Apartheid Australia is locked into immoral, racist and deadly policies. Australia has been described as a mountain of coal and iron ore in a sea of natural gas and the unspoken promise in the 2010 Australian Federal elections was Business As Usual (BAU) with Domestic and Exported GHG pollution until the world forces Australia to stop. If dog-in-the–manager Apartheid Australia fails to rapidly reduce its world leading per capita GHG pollution then it will inevitably face Sanctions, Boycotts, Green Tariffs and criminal prosecutions before the International Criminal Court. All decent Australains are morally obliged to support the Greens.
Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/
bengalfamine_programme.html ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
