Possibly, but Turnbull did take over as head of https://murdochroyalcommission.org.au/ after K Rudd stepped down to take whatever diplomatic job it was he took.

I think the Murdoch press had a big hand in Turnbull being replaced as PM, because he was actually considering implementing renewable energy policies https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/19/turnbull-warned-rupert-murdoch-trying-remove-him-prime-minister

That same day the Daily Telegraph had warned of “a toxic brawl” over energy policy. On Sky the night-time commentators Peta Credlin and Andrew Bolt ramped up their negative assessments of the national energy guarantee and of Turnbull himself.

So he is probably butthurt for other reasons too

Is this the great Factorio Square spitter massarcre?

“It became clear that they’re motivated by profits,” said Roberts, adding that the drive is unsurprising, since CEOs of public companies can be removed if they do not maximize profit growth.

We really need governments to force triple bottom line accounting onto corporations for the very reason stated in the above quote. While CEOs are only accountable to the shareholders of the company (single bottom line accounting) then they will only ever work for profit.

With triple bottom line accounting, CEOs would not only be accountable to the shareholders (economic accouting), but to stakeholders (social accounting) and the environment (ecological accounting).

To use fossil fuel companies as an example, a stakeholder to that company would be any person who has to breathe in the pollution that said fossil fuel company released into the atmosphere. The way in which companies would be accountable to the environment is that they could no longer ignore the externalities of their product (e.g. pollution from fossil fuel use) and the cost of those externalities would need to be included in the upfront cost of the product. Accounting for these things would then allow us to see the true upfront cost of fossil fuels, which should aid in actually getting companies to act on these issues, as it will less profitable to sell such a damaging product. It will also further demonstrate that the upfront cost of renewable is far lower than that of fossil fuels.

It still isn't a perfect solution, and we will still be living under capitalism and the idea of infinite growth, but it would at least be a step in the direction of corporate accountability.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line

I think the reason why the working class continue to undermine themselves (especially people from the older generations) is the main stream media channels (9, 7, sky, any Murdoch newspaper) are owned by billionaires with vested financial interest in getting the working class to vote against their own financial interest, by convincing them it is good for the economy, when really the billionaires consider themselves to be the economy, and what they mean by it will impact the economy is that it will impact them.

This is why those news sources have always actively promoted the LNP, while actively demeaning the Labor party. They don't even need to say any of these things outright, they get away with it by allowing LNP MPs to blame everything wrong on labour while the LNP are the government, but actively promote the LNPs active opposition as good when they aren't in government. This is completely contradictory to how they neg Labor for being an opposition to the LNP when they are in opposition.

Ultimately, they created a cognitive dissonance within the working class to get them to vote against their own interests.

This actually seems pretty positive, but I guess also demonstrates how responsible Howard is for helping set in motion Australia's apathy towards environmental destruction, especially when it gets in the way of fossil fuel operations.

Am I being crazy thinking that if Australia was reamed by extreme weather this summer it would be better than not, as all the climate change deniers will use non-extreme weather as a 'see the climate isn't warming' argument. At least if this summer was fucked up, they would then have a more difficult time arguing climate change doesn't exist, which could be good timing as extreme weather is still dependant on local and global climate patterns, so there will be a return to less extremes once La Nina returns.

At the same time, more extreme weather is the last thing I want people to have to experience, especially as those who suffer the most from the extreme weather will probably be those least likely to deny climate change.

In summary, I think I'm being a little crazy sitting here hoping shit burns to the ground to prove a point.

Yeah I'm at the point of life where a lot of my friends are having kids and I am terrified for their future, but hate the idea of having to have these kinds of conversations with them because they deserve to have hope for the future, for their kids future.

But I'm also torn because I think these discussions need to be had if we want people to get active, so we can effect the necessary change in time. And if anyone deserves to truly be angry, its parents.

I guess maybe, a $15k fine might not be high enough if they are willing to keep doing it.

Just another example of a fines being seen as the cost of doing business.

I identify as 'meme'

Did a quick google search of his name, turns out his time at News Corp was limited, and it didn't end on good terms

Early on Friday morning, News Corp Australia announced that Williams had resigned, just 20 months into the job. In a letter to staff, Williams thanked his colleagues, while admitting that "the issues encountered have at times been frankly really confronting". Confronting, indeed. In his short and tumultuous tenure, Williams had managed to not only alienate some of the company's most senior editors, most notably Chris Mitchell, editor of The Australian, and Paul Whittaker, editor of The Daily Telegraph, but infuriate Lachlan Murdoch, the man who had originally got him the job. "News Corp might be a publicly-listed company run out of Delaware, but there's never any mistake that you are working for Rupert," former Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen says. "It's a family company. You run it the Murdochs' way or you don't run it at all."

The source of the above quoute: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/making-the-wrong-enemies-how-williams-was-cut-down-at-news-20130809-2rnsx.html Which was a Wikipedia citation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Williams_(media_executive)

If he managed to anger them so much while he was employed by them, hopefully he can anger them even more de-shitifying the ABC.

I cant say for certain, but I can definitely speculate. I do know cotton requires a fair amount of water to grow, but I don't think it would use as many petrochemicals in the production. Though it would still use some, even if that is just in the supply chain through things like diesel for trucks and ships. The chemicals they use (like pesticides) may be derived from petrochemicals, but even if they aren't they could be damaging to the environment in many other ways. So I think polyester could have the greatest emissions of the two.

I guess it could depend on the scale of production too. Like if we were to try and replace all polyester clothing with cotton, that could have a massive impact due to the amount of land and water needed to produce such quantities of cotton clothing and such. But at the same time, creating clothes out of plastic isn't going so well either.

Ultimately we will probably still have to have some diversity materials for sustainable clothing production. It will really come down to a balance of land use, water use, what uses the least amount of chemicals, and probably a lot of other considerations.

Unfortunately we don't have a rail freight network that either works well or reaches every township in Australia, and until we do encouraging the switch from ICE road haulage to EV road haulage is the best way to reduce transport industry emissions.

For a lot of the more rural towns (or a least for the ones I know of) that do have rail connections, they are only accessible using diesel locomotives as there is no electricity network set up to power electric trains. So if we don't want to introduce more emissions from rail freight we would have to electrify the whole rail network.

Realistically we should be building rail and allowing EV trucks to be more accessible, but Australia is a big place, building all that rail infrastructure will take time. A good stepping stone would be to build rail connections to regional urban centres and then have trucks distributing it to the surrounding towns, but even building that much rail will take time. And that's just the construction. The amount of time it would take to secure the land corridors for the rail would be considerable alone. AEMO have been having a difficult enough time securing land rights to build transmissions networks across properties

Damn, gives a good perspective to the size of that Wedgie!

Considering

Only 1% of Australian taxpayers own nearly a quarter of all property investments across the country, amid concerns over escalating rates of wealth concentration.

Data provided by the Australian Taxation Office has revealed the extent of that concentration, with more than 7% of property investors – or 215,321 people – accounting for 25% of all property investments.

That 7% also have three or more interests in investment properties across the country, with 1% of investors – or just 19,895 people – currently holding six or more investment interests.

And that is only the top 1% of tax payers (which is only 7% of investors), I can't imagine what percentage of property investment is owned by the top 10% of tax payers.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/04/a-quarter-of-australias-property-investments-held-by-1-of-taxpayers-data-reveals

I wonder if it has anything to do with this: https://www.businessinsider.com/smartmatic-lawyer-compares-murdoch-mafia-boss-fox-news-defamation-case-2023-9?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=topbar

Yeah the laws should definitely be updated to say if you are found corrupt by icac or any other corruption body then you are no longer entitled to the pension.

Maybe some of them will reason that getting the pension is more valuable to them than accepting donations from corporate sponsors.

Yeah these quotes from your article really got me

"Self-serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose," the memo read.

"Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth."

Utter madness

So I've been reading up on this topic a bit more and I came across this

Problem Australia’s interstate freight rail network comprises many long sections of single track. This restricts the number of train paths, reducing rail’s competitiveness with road, and hindering rail’s ability to meet growing freight movement demand. The interstate freight rail network needs to be enhanced to accommodate growth in the freight and passenger task, and improve efficiency and safety.

From here, https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/map/advanced-train-management-system-implementation-interstate-rail-network

On the bright side it is a proposal to upgrade a lot of the rail corridors to support more freight than we have currently. Though it was added in 2016 and is still only in the 'potential investment options' phase

It's sucks these results weren't what was hoped. I remember reading an article from the CSIRO years ago suggesting this to be a good method to reduce emissions from cattle. I can't remember what percentage reductions of emissions they claimed though.

At this point I'm thinking this idea could be similar to carbon capture storage, in the sense that the idea was taken up as a means of greenwashing for the beef industry, so they could continue to grow while 'reducing their emissions'.

I guess 28% is still better than nothing, presuming it isn't used as an excuse for further growth.