Documents reveal the scale of carbon pollution leaking from a Darwin LNG tank was like adding 8,300 new cars to the road every year. It is about to be filled again.
I think a lot of people have decided that and it’s reflected in rise of the Greens, some progressive independents and the mixed bag that is the teals. One of the main issues is that it’s mostly confined to electoral politics so nothing really happens in between. There’s a lot of activist campaigning and organising but the campaigns and groups behind all the activity are still a bit disconnected politically and sometimes even socially.
One thing to keep in mind is that it’s objectively better to have Labor in government over anything to the right of Labor. Labor is in general more socially progressive than anything to it’s right based on a lot of its support base being actual workers, regardless of how conservative many of those workers may be.
The recent big Palestine solidarity protests were only as big as they were because a lot of Labor supporters/unions first broke ranks to join the Harbour Bridge protest and then the party as a whole finally got the memo after Albo declared the government’s intention to recognise Palestine. Labor members have been protesting for Palestine since Oct 7 but Labor as a whole has not mobilized around the issue like it has with other national campaigns when it came late to the party (work choices, East Timor etc).
This pattern is reflected throughout many social and political issues. Labor as a whole doesn’t really move unless it comes from the top. At the moment the top is captured by neoliberal ideologues and has been since Hawke. If this were to change everything to the left of Labor could be dwarfed by how many more people Labor could bring into action to work on social and political change compared to the entire left of Labor as a whole. This scenario seems highly unlikely though.
I think a lot of people have decided that and it’s reflected in rise of the Greens, some progressive independents and the mixed bag that is the teals. One of the main issues is that it’s mostly confined to electoral politics so nothing really happens in between. There’s a lot of activist campaigning and organising but the campaigns and groups behind all the activity are still a bit disconnected politically and sometimes even socially.
One thing to keep in mind is that it’s objectively better to have Labor in government over anything to the right of Labor. Labor is in general more socially progressive than anything to it’s right based on a lot of its support base being actual workers, regardless of how conservative many of those workers may be.
The recent big Palestine solidarity protests were only as big as they were because a lot of Labor supporters/unions first broke ranks to join the Harbour Bridge protest and then the party as a whole finally got the memo after Albo declared the government’s intention to recognise Palestine. Labor members have been protesting for Palestine since Oct 7 but Labor as a whole has not mobilized around the issue like it has with other national campaigns when it came late to the party (work choices, East Timor etc).
This pattern is reflected throughout many social and political issues. Labor as a whole doesn’t really move unless it comes from the top. At the moment the top is captured by neoliberal ideologues and has been since Hawke. If this were to change everything to the left of Labor could be dwarfed by how many more people Labor could bring into action to work on social and political change compared to the entire left of Labor as a whole. This scenario seems highly unlikely though.