Climate Minister Chris Bowen’s diary shows just what it should

Andrew Whiley writes: Seems your reporter appears to be a bit miffed that Climate Minister Chris Bowen has spent his time implementing the new government’s domestic climate policies, rebuilding our international presence and credibility on climate action, and talking to holders of investment capital who are looking to build clean energy generation — which in itself requires increased resources extraction of some minerals (“Inside Chris Bowen’s diary: business leaders got the minister’s ear, climate advocates less so”). 

These are exactly the “dalliances” to be expected from a new climate minister. Speed of implementation towards targets depends heavily on levels of new investment in green and clean technology. It’s an absolute priority and needs to remain a priority if Australia is to meet its initial 2030 domestic emissions reduction goals — let alone any new targets post-2025 for the mid-2030s. 

Advocates have a voice. Urging further action has a place. But much of Australia’s climate focus should now be about capital allocation, increasing investment that supports decarbonisation across the real economy. Bowen’s diary in his first six months appears to reflect that. As it should.

Taking a deep breath over Revive

Joanna Mendelssohn writes: It’s such a relief to see arts policy getting back on track (“Albanese government gets Australian culture down to a fine art”), but I am concerned that while there will be grants for individual writers, grants for individual visual artists and designers aren’t given the same prominence.

As Ben Eltham rightly noted, there’s more than a flavour of “Back to the Future” with Revive. As far as I’m aware, the first time a national First Nations body was given full policy and financial autonomy was with the original Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of Whitlam’s 1973 Australian Council for the Arts. The success of that board in creating the policies that led directly to the international market in Australian Indigenous art should be considered by those who assume First Nations peoples are not good at developing policy.

In light of the long-term poverty of many arts practitioners, I hope the government now goes further back in time and revives a version of the old Commonwealth Literary Fund of 1908, which provided a modest special pension for writers (and their families) if they fell on hard times. Before it was subsumed into other funding schemes, I think it was both tax-free and twice the rate of the Old Age pension. Recipients weren’t named until after their death.

Dutton’s losing battle

Richard Creswick writes: The opposition leader is destined to go down in history as a serial loser for his opposition to noble proposals to finally give First Nations peoples some of the recognition and justice they deserve (“Peter Dutton will surely vote No on the Voice — he has nothing to lose”). Dutton is using cynical partisan politics, and specious methods to derail a process that a majority of Australians recognise as right.

He will deservedly lose this fight and, perhaps, encourage a renaissance of moderation with the LNP, but it will be a very long road back, hopefully taking generations.

Roger Clifton writes: There are plenty of voters out there who realise that renewables can only ever “reduce” fossil emissions, but that nuclear energy will be required to totally replace fossil fuels. Whereas the left has long been conflicted about nuclear energy, the Liberals can more easily turn around, having only ever argued that nuclear was unnecessary in a fossil-rich country. The Liberals now have a chance to present themselves as born-again environmentalists, rescuing the greenhouse and industry from fossil emissions by removing legal obstructions to nuclear energy.

Stop, look, listen

Barry Welch writes: Warren Mundine and his lot are claiming that migrants should also be recognised in the constitution. Given that everyone who has come here since 1788 is a migrant, they are already in the constitution, migrants even wrote it and voted for it in a referendum (“Voice will be silenced on TikTok”). Sadly First Nations peoples didn’t vote for it and weren’t included in it.

Ray Armstrong writes: Unless Albanese can whittle the concept of the Voice down to two or three simple sentences, it will never get up. Why? Because nobody has the time or nous to read the 300 pages of detail that are readily available. Voters have been brought up on a diet of three-word slogans and sadly that is all they can comprehend. Albanese should have learnt this from Labor’s 2019 election loss. People are just not interested in ploughing through hundreds of pages of policy. Unfortunately, the party with the shortest sharp slogans will win the debate. And look out, the Mad Abbott is there waiting in the wings for a Senate recall! 

The school of life

Peter Slade writes: I solved the homework issue myself more than 50 years ago (“The case for banning homework so kids can have a life”). I was in secondary school and rarely did it. A few teachers asked why, and a few zealots threatened me now and again, but otherwise nothing happened. The consequences? Not much. I scraped through in exams, which were really the only form of assessment back then. I got through university as well, although I put in a few hard yards at that stage. University suited me I think, whereas secondary school was uninteresting and somewhat claustrophobic.

Ivan Ilych’s book Deschooling Society is good on this stuff. Teachers set up conditions for the imposition of conformity, as well as imagined standard ways of learning and teaching. They can start to look like machines and are certainly infantilised.

Another good writer on this sort of thing was Neil Postman. He was interested in the impacts of technology on education and the deadening of learning. There was an implied correlation between teaching and learning, when often they are unrelated. Educational theory? What on earth is that? I heartily agree with the contention that schools exist to create compliant industrial and commercial cannon fodder. Homework just coerces parents into the task of wrecking their kids.

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