Australia’s dangerous politics of symbolism rolls on today. At The Guardian Wentworth is all about climate change:
The bricklayer can be sued and even jailed. If a doctor finds some old packets of thalidomide in their surgery and, in spite of the overwhelming scientific evidence of its horrific effects, dispenses it to pregnant women, they would go to jail. The example can be multiplied endlessly: the reality of our world is that we are responsible for our acts.
Unless, that is, you are an Australian politician.
A politician can destroy our future, a politician can ignore the best evidence and be responsible for decisions that lead to deaths of many and the suffering of all, and still be free until the end of their days to milk the legal corruption that is Australian public life, picking up highly paid sinecures as ambassadors, board directors, and lobbyists for the corporations they were once meant to regulate in our interest.
…This Saturday the voters of Wentworth have the opportunity to turn their byelection into a referendum on climate change. If you are a Wentworth voter, consider the historic responsibility you have and how in the past you have used it to good effect. Last year it was Wentworth, after all, that voted 80.8% yes for marriage equality, the fourth highest yes vote in the nation.
But at The Australian, ScoMo has gone one better, trashing decades of Australian Middle East policy to declare:
…a potential relocation of Australia’s embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in line with a decision by US President Donald Trump earlier this year to formally recognise the city as the legitimate capital of Israel.
In a significant shift in the Coalition’s Middle East policy, the Prime Minister will also move to a hardline stance against Iran, announcing an inquiry into whether Australia should abandon support for the Iran nuclear deal, which the US has also walked away from.
Mr Morrison will today unveil a foreign policy statement on Israel prompted by a decision to vote “no” tomorrow on a UN resolution to recognise the Palestinian Authority as the chair of the G77 group of nations next year.
It will include a deepening of defence ties with Israel, with an agreement to place defence attaches in each other’s embassies for the first time.
Mr Morrison said he had been persuaded to consider the issue of moving Australia’s mission to Jerusalem — in stark contrast to the position taken by Malcolm Turnbull — following discussions with the Liberal Party’s candidate in this weekend’s Wentworth by-election, Dave Sharma, a former Australian ambassador to Israel.
It’s a relief to know that such a contentious policy shift, that clearly raises Australian terrorism risk, has been so thoroughly thought through.
