The Consumers & Taxpayers Association (CATA) has organised a No Carbon Tax rally to be held outside Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese’s Marrickville (Sydney) office at 12 noon tomorrow (Thursday 1st September). This is in direct response to Anthony Albanese’s sneering ‘Convoy of No Consequence’ remarks.
For more info on the latest No Carbon Tax rally, visit the CATA website. The Sydney-based organisation, GetUp!, is apparently planning a ‘counter’ rally to commence one hour before the Consumers & Taxpayers Association rally.
A quote from the GetUp! posting regarding the pro-carbon tax rally: “Some things are quintessentially the inner west – great coffee, chilled out pubs, street music and lively restaurants. We’re not just mums, dads workers and students – we’re stirrers, dreamers and debaters. We share a sense of responsibility or justice that compels us to do our bit to ensure we leave behind a world that is better than what we inherited. That’s why we have the Martin Luther King mural on King St.” Hmmm, and by implication, people who don’t want a carbon tax don’t care about leaving the world a better place than they found it? And a 2-dimensional image of a good person on a wall assures a community of good people? (In that case, thousands of Australian households are all the better for those cheap Buddha figurines that have been running out the door at Crazy Clarke’s in recent years.)
In reality, the inner-city region of Sydney is the most heavily polluted part of Australia. The natural environment has been absolutely decimated during 2 centuries of white settlement. If these inner-city residents were serious about improving the natural environment rather than just dreaming and debating, they would at least start working on their own backyard – by pulling out all introduced species of plants and eradicating feral animals (including foxes) and introduced bird species (from sparrows to starlings, blackbirds and pigeons); by removing paving, concrete and swimming pools; and planting native species of vegetation in an effort to at least encourage native birds back into the most densely populated, damaged part of our country. But no, they’d prefer to only have to tick a ‘carbon offset’ box every time they fly, plant a corflute ‘Vote Green’ sign in the midst of the terrace’s cottage garden, and go off to the local cafe to discuss what others should be doing miles away, over a latte.
The Just Grounds Community has collected more than 30,000 handwritten signatures calling for a Federal Election to be held, and are looking for additional signatures. There is a link to the petition on the home page of the Just Grounds Community website.
FNQ resident Neal Carpenter has posted an excellent comment on the Convoy of No Confidence on the ABC’s opinion website, ‘The Drum’.
I was appalled by the sneering insults directed at those involved in the Convoy of No Confidence. These personal insults are made by people who don’t know personally a single person involved in the convoy. I know a number of the people involved and they’re all exceptionally smart, thoughtful, logical, practical, hardworking and successful business people. For example, Rashida Khan and Alistair McClymont. These people are the cream of the crop of 22 million of us, so to speak. Travelling to Canberra involved a significant investment in time and money – many people travelled more than 3,000km to attend. Most, if not all, would never have attended a rally of any sort before. For Julia Gillard and her Labor cohorts to treat such people with absolute derision, the people who pay their weekly wages and have travelled such a long distance to raise a problem of national significance, is simply disgusting. It’s incredibly foolish for the Labor party to overlook the fact that every person who made it to Canberra represented thousands of other people who couldn’t make it there in person.
If there’s one personality trait that I absolutely cannot abide, that I find unforgivably detestable, it’s sneering. People who don’t have a healthy dose of humility are loathsome. Paul Keating specialised in sneering, in fact I think it was what he excelled at the most. Bob Hawke also had a mile-wide nasty streak. When at ag. college a couple of us headed to a public pre-election meeting at Bathurst, and asked whether the Labor party would guarantee the college would not be forced to amalgamate. We experienced the sneering first hand. Inevitably, people who sneer and belittle others, while portraying themselves as some sort of superior species, end up getting the rough end of the stick, so to speak.
If my memory of history serves me correctly, sneering at the peasants is what brought about the demise of the French aristocrats, all those years ago.
Tags: Conservation and the environment, Image of the bush, Australian agriculture