The Dead Roo

Everyone’s been laying into Bob over the coal thing.

The Murdoch media doesn’t even maintain the pretense of journalism, try the - Courier Mail’s spin on the issue for example:

GREENS Senator Bob Brown is calling for the death of Queensland’s $24 billion coal industry and thousands of jobs, demanding an end to all coal exports within three years. … This man wants to kill off 20,000 Queensland jobs, exports worth $24 billion and the lifeblood of countless towns and ports .

The Democrats lay in the boot, Andrew reckons the Greens are just playing into the Liberals hands with these sorts of claims:

That’s why the comments by Senator Bob Brown that we should end all coal exports within three years are so unhelpful (apart from being totally impractical). These sort of comments actually reinforce the government’s scare campaigns that taking serious action to reduce emissions will cost thousands of jobs and plunge many people into hardship.

Quiggan agrees, the Greens are “dramatising” the issue:

In Brown’s defence, I guess he’s dramatising the urgency of the issue. But I’d have thought that the risk is that it feeds commentary which is always alert for signs of “climate change alarmism” to backtrack on the reluctant conversion to climate change realism that many pollies and news outlets have undergone over the past few months.

Mark Bannish claims to have lost all respect for Bob:

I have to say that these remarks by Bob Brown have lessened my respect for him considerably. He’s proved he can command media attention, but proved nothing about serious policy, or in my view, the real issues raised for those whose livelihood depends on the coal industry.

Now I’m going to join Bob in saying something unacceptable: Mark, John, Andrew, you’ve been played for suckers. Listen to yourselves, “Ooooh, we don’t want the likes of the Murdoch media, John Howard or the rotten hollow shell of the workers movement calling us extremists now, we can’t take bold steps, we can’t claim that decisive action needs to be taken. God forbid we offend our former enemies come new partners in dealing with this climate change thingy”.

Howard is attempting to co-opt, moderate, dillude, divide and marginalize any move for real action on climate change. And you’re buying it.

I’m with Bob. Bugger the Liberals, bugger defining what’s possible on the basis what our enemies define as acceptable, they are the same blood sucking b-rstards they were yesterday, and I’m still committed to making a major change to our countries impact upon the worlds environment.

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