Voting Tony out - a visit to Ground Zero

Your correspondent loves his election campaigns. The colour, the passion, the drama. The endings aren't always happy ones though. And in just seven days time we should know how this one ends up.

What better place to visit then than the pre-poll booth at Brookvale, in the Northern Beaches electorate of Warringah, where the sitting member is one Tony Abbott. He's a former PM, a climate denier extraordinaire and an experienced fighter and survivor.




Passions are running high around here. They're traditionally rusted-on Liberal voters, but they may well be ready for a progressive change. The leading contender for liberating them from the incumbent is independent Zali Steggall, Olympic ski champion and barrister. She has impeccable conservative credentials, but is running strongly on climate action and other progressive causes.













I met Zali's proud dad. He's a former local rugby league hero.

Early polls indicate she might just do it. Stay tuned.

Sydney's biggest ever climate march

Estimates of precise numbers varied, as ever, with published figures ranging from 3000 to 60,000! I was there, and I'd put it somewhere in the middle. It was definitely big though, and it was colourful, and very uplifting.

There were groups from churches, political parties, local action groups, solar power aficionados, and health professionals. There was even a small pro-nuclear group, and two (brave?) chaps whose banners just read < coal / >.  (I've no idea what that means exactly, or whether they were pro or anti coal. Note to placard writers: don't get too cryptic!)

There was music, there were speeches from some very worthy personages, and there were giant and horribly realistic versions of Tony 'King Coal' Abbott and Malcolm 'Innovate' Turnbull to scare the children.

We eventually marched from the Domain rallying place down to the Opera House, where the giant polystyrene politicians could scare the tourists too.

We'd been asked to colour code ourselves by dress choice, and march in our coloured blocks. I chose white, which was the designated colour for medicos and scientists. Several of my fellow marchers carried giant cardboard mosquitoes, signifying presumably malaria and suchlike diseases we can look forward to in a warmer Australia. 

Extreme postcodes: 2000 to 7923

Postcodes 2000 to 7923 cover just about everywhere in Australia, as far as I can ascertain. And Australia's extreme in that it's about the highest emitter per capita of greenhouse gases of any significant country on the planet. And of late it's been extreme in its attempts to subvert any meaningful action to change this.

A few years ago we were at the forefront, with a price on carbon in place, and substantial emissions reductions going on. Didn't last long though, and now that the rest of the world is moving finally in that direction, Australia's government, totally in the pockets of the fossil fuel industries, has reversed it all. It's almost too bad to be true.

Anyway, this week there's a special UN climate summit happening in New York. About 120 world leaders are attending. Our 'leader', one Tony Abbott, will in fact be in New York this week, but it seems he's 'too busy' to get to the summit. He's helping to cook up another war in the Middle East, after all.

In the build up to this special meeting, there have been hundreds of mass participation events all around the world. I did my bit and turned up at the Sydney event, at Bicentennial Park in Glebe. We listened to impassioned speeches, and we formed ourselves into letter shaped groups, spelling out a slogan which was photographed from above by a flying drone. I couldn't make out the wording from ground level, but I half hoped I was helping to spell out the rather rude message to our Prime Minister that I saw on some of the T shirts around the place. Turned out it actually said "Beyond Coal + Gas".

Aerial photo stolen from Sydney Morning Herald, Essential Media, 350.org, GetUp, AYCC, or the flying drone. (Thanks very much, whoever the rightful owner is.)

Black skies over Blacktown

I went out today on a mission to explore the suburb of Blacktown. I'm sure there was lots there to report on - a very large shopping centre and a very colourful melting pot population spring to mind initially - but my attention was hijacked by the dramatic sky and the bushfires raging to the west.

We're only a few days out of winter, but already the temperatures are in the 30s, there's been no real rain for two months, and a hot wind from the north west has resulted in several nasty bushfires on Sydney's western edges. Homes have been destroyed, firefighters injured, schools evacuated, all the usual.

Three days ago my fellow Australians voted in a new Government, led by Tony "Climate Change is Crap" Abbott. He's going to scrap the price on carbon pollution, and concentrate on the important things like chopping down and digging up, boosting the coal industry, and generally doing business as normal but more so.

So we ain't seen nothing yet.