‘THE Australian way’.

The message Scott Morrison takes to the most important international meeting of all time.

Subject matter?

Saving the planet from burning.

What a contrast with fellow Conservative, British PM Boris Johnson.

They share similar market ideology, politically they’re birds of a feather. One stark difference!

Johnson is the planet’s vocal proponent for mitigating climate change.

He reads the science and acts accordingly.

Our Torys, the Liberal and National Party pessimists are gung-ho for mining coal and gas.

Apparently we can remain the world’s third biggest exporter of hydrocarbons while “meeting and beating our targets”.
What is it about spin when it combats scientific facts?

What’s behind the repeated clichés, “clean coal”, “when the sun doesn’t shine etc”?

Have you heard Scott Morrison or Barnaby Joyce give voice to “acidified oceans”, or the chilling “mass extinctions of species”?

The ‘Anthropocene’ will never cross their lips.

Why do Australians elect leaders who wilfully reject science?

Do we as a people dismiss research as a distraction from sunshine, sport and beer?

These asks get to our national acuity.

Donald Horne pinned it in 1964 with his revealing analysis of Australians. His book, ‘The Lucky Country’, dived into the Australian psyche.

It defines Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce decades later.

Here are Horne’s prescient words.

“Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.”

If Scotty, Barnaby and parliamentary deniers read this classic they would see themselves with depth beyond a mirror.

Regards,
Warren TINDALL,
Bellingen.