Australia news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      A dysfunctional America helps China – but hurts Australia and our region | Natasha Kassam

      by

      As the US presidential election rolls into its fourth day of counting, Chinese leaders are not necessarily joining much of the world in frantically hitting refresh for updated vote tallies.
      As America edges towards a Biden victory in painful slow motion, there is no sense of urgency in Beijing, which benefits from the prolonged uncertainty.
      Chinese leaders – and many of its citizens – believe the United States is in terminal decline and that President Donald Trump has hastened the inevitable. The troubling story of decay in America paints a different picture in China from that in the rest of the world: the authoritarian model of politics and economics is just as good, if not better, than the liberal democratic model of the “west”.
      The coronavirus pandemic had already started the toppling dominos. China recovered from its disastrous response, wielding state capacity like an authoritarian sword to contain Covid-19. By contrast, the US has surrendered to the pandemic, tragically with a death toll 60 times that of China. The successes of democratic smaller nations, from Australia to Taiwan, barely register in Beijing.
      The four-day election count (so far) and divided polity are seen as further evidence of the wounds in US democracy. So too the increasingly erratic claims made by Trump that undermine US democratic institutions. These are chalked up as wins in Beijing’s column.
      More wins, from a Chinese perspective, are coming, and many in Australia’s immediate region. Beijing has threatened over $5bn exports from Australia. The issue has gained less traction than usual as eyes are glued to the circus that US politics has paraded for four years.
      China has also been extending olive branches across south-east Asia, providing technical assistance and protective equipment in the pandemic and attempting to repair the reputational hit that Covid-19 caused. Many have made deals with China guaranteeing preferential access if a Chinese vaccine candidate is approved.
      This vacuum was left by the US. When it comes to global public health, America has literally left the building. Ensnared in its own pandemic crisis, the world’s largest economy abandoned the World Health Organization. US allies are among the countries that China has promised priority access to vaccines, including the Philippines and Thailand.
      With the US missing in action, Australia has had to go it alone. Canberra has looked to counter China’s efforts, promising more than $500m in “vaccine diplomacy” across the region.
      China may struggle to find these opportunities if Biden is inaugurated. A globalist at heart, he has promised to reposition the US on the international stage and re-join the WHO. Australia should embrace that prospect.
      But for Beijing, the outcome of the US presidential election changes few of its policy settings. The Trump administration’s tough stance towards China is a rare glimpse of unity in a divided country.
      A potential Biden administration would continue to challenge China in most fields, including trade and technology. And any instinct by a potential president Biden to nominate Obama-era officials would need to get past the inevitable China-hawk test if the Republican-majority Senate remains.
      Tough China policy is also good politics in the US – as it is in Australia. Both Australian and American publics have soured on China as more evidence of China’s aggression and human rights abuses have come to light.
      One difference may be that a Biden administration would be better coordinated with partners and allies on China policy. Under Trump, US policy oscillated from praising Xi Jinping to attempting regime change. A stable and consultative approach would be music to Australia’s proverbial ears, as it faces the brunt of China’s economic coercion with little backup or support. Biden could also be convinced to revive the ailing World Trade Organization, though US concerns pre-dated Trump.
      Still, who wins the US election matters much more to Australia than China.
      A weaker United States, led by a president elected in a messy and marginal victory, would only make China more confident. And a new administration, distracted by domestic turmoil, may lack the bandwidth to wake up to the urgent support needed in Australia, and the broader region. A divided America may translate into an isolated Australia. And this, in turn, would embolden China.
      • Natasha Kassam is a research fellow at the Lowy Institute More

    • 200 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Feeling powerless? How foreigners can survive the US election without complete nervous collapse | Van Badham

      by

      There are only 24 hours to go until the polls close on the American election. Which is surprising, because the campaign feels like it has been going for eleventy-million-billion years.Americans, at least, get to vote. For the rest of the world, the whole experience is like waking up in a cinema that only shows The Fast and the Furious movies, and all of the exits are sealed shut with cement.We’ve been stuck in here with loud noises, annoying characters and zero plot development for months, eating the curtains for food and desperately hoping it all comes to an end without actual loss of life. Or, you know, a massively increased prospect of nuclear war.What it’s like to be trapped in America’s version of that cinema right now is unimaginable. Circumstances suggest it’d involve a lot of audience members holding guns, cheers ringing out whenever stupid lines are delivered and way too much coughing for anyone to feel comfortable.Elections in other countries universally elicit two responses from those foreign to them: “She seems nice” or “That’s a worry.” Jacinda Ardern may have transformed New Zealand into the world’s idea of Magical Happy Hug Land, but in their last election how many internationals were furiously scanning weighted polling averages at 2am because Wairarapa seemed too close to call?Now, millions of us around the world recently sport what I call the “FiveThirtyEight Pallor” – a face-bound, sleepless waxiness that results from relentlessly refreshing US poll sites to see if there’s any projected movement in Maine’s second district. Vast hordes of non-farming, non-Americans now intimately familiar with the price of soybeans in Iowa is a terrifying symptom of these anxious times.Is there a way for powerless, poll-watching foreigners to get through the next 24 hours – and the aftermath – without complete nervous collapse? Probably not. But let’s delude ourselves into thinking that we can follow the below advice and go through this with a sense of calm.1. We must admit to ourselves we are powerless over the US, and to think otherwise will make our lives unmanageableAs much as you may want scream HOW CAN YOU VOTE FOR THIS LARGE ORANGE CLOWN to Americans visible on Twitter, don’t. This very publication is haunted by the failure of “Operation Clark County” back in 2004, where British Guardian readers wrote letters of persuasion to a swing district of American voters, requesting politely they not vote for George W Bush. “Real Americans aren’t interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions” began one of the gentler replies.2. Prepare American-themed delicacies for the occasionIf you’re short on time, grab some traditional spray cheese-in-a-can or some Twinkies, but to really immerse yourself for the US election, follow the YouTube directions to whip up a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto Turkey with all the trimmings. Then, don’t eat this food; stare at it. Stare at the thick, plastic cheesiness. The sugary crustiness. The holy-god-how-is-any-of-this-still-legally-considered-food heart-endangering carbohydration of it all and ask yourself both a) does Britain really want a trade deal with these people? and b) is doing this to human food in any way culturally understandable to you? No. No, it isn’t. Do you think you can intuit their political choices now? No. No, you can’t.3. Don’t watch Fox News coverageThere are those who believe that Fox is some kind of foul, relentless rightwing propaganda hydra managed by a clan of vampiric undead that wilfully spreads lethal misinformation for fun. This is not true. It’s actually a sophisticated marketing operation for mass sales of anti-anxiety medication that no one needs until they watch one single uninterrupted minute of its programming. Save your money, and your cardiovascular health: avoid.4. Believe the polls: it’s not 2016 any moreThe 2016 election was a confluence of black swan events: an unpredictable Republican campaign, a polarising Democratic candidate, dark digital operations, WikiLeaks-dumped cache of stolen correspondence, and the FBI’s improbable decision to reopen the dead investigation into Clinton’s emails collided with outdated polling techniques. This year, poll techniques are updated, and as much as the Republicans are trying to make Hunter Biden’s laptop happen, it’s not going to happen.5. Don’t believe the polls, have you forgotten 2016?Remember the surety everyone had on election day morning that Clinton would be president by night-time and the tiny-pawed tangerine vagina-grabber would be left hustling for gigs on celebrity baking shows and charity golf events? By midnight we were coiled in foetal balls on the living room floor in shock, our cold hands begging for the comfort of a security blanket, or at least a wizard companion to guide us through a new, dark and terrifying realm.6. Vacuum the living room floor. Locate a security blanket. Order a wizardUS polling website Fivethirtyeight.com still gives the carrot-coloured super-spreader a 10% chance of victory.There’s one thing we know about The Fast and the Furious. Just when you think that the franchise is finally finished is when you’ll find out they’re making a sequel. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Where to watch US election day live results in Australia

      by

      It’s been dubbed the most important US presidential election in recent history – one everyone in the world, including Australians, will be watching with great anticipation.
      Held amid a historic pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 220,000 Americans, and the most widespread civil rights protests in US history, this is an election that will define the course America takes.
      [embedded content]
      What will a Biden victory – who has vowed to take action on climate change – mean for Australia’s climate policy?
      What will a Trump victory mean for far right extremism, which has become a growing threat in Australia since his last election victory?
      How will either of them handle increasingly tense relations with our biggest trading partner, China, which has already placed Australian industries – such as barley and wine – in the crosshairs?
      A lot is at stake, not just for the US, but indeed for Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, and the entire world.
      Election day is Tuesday 3 November but for the Australians watching, most of the action will be taking place on Wednesday 4 November.
      So if you’re staying home or venturing out to a party, how and where can you watch the US election results live in Australia?
      Who will be televising it?
      Just like with past elections, Australian television stations will be holding special election day coverage. ABC TV, SBS, channels Seven, Nine and Ten will all be covering the election.
      The coverage begins at roughly 11am across the board, with ABC and Channel Seven starting earlier at 10am, and most going on until around 5.00pm.
      On cable, you’ll be able to watch rolling election coverage on BBC, CNN, Sky News, Fox News, and Al Jazeera English.
      Can I follow live results and commentary online?
      Of course there will be extensive coverage online.
      The Guardian will be running a liveblog covering the election throughout the day, in addition to the continued extensive US election coverage and will include a live results tracker.
      Major news broadcasters in the US such as NBC, ABC and CBS are expected to livestream their election coverage on YouTube, as they did in 2016.
      Traditional news publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, and digital platforms like Vice and Huffington Post, also held livestreams for election coverage in 2016.
      You’ll also be able to read live blogs at most major news platforms. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News and Fox News will all be running a live blog on the night.
      Where are watch parties being held in my city?
      Adelaide
      Gilbert St Hotel, 88 Gilbert St, Adelaide.
      UniBar, Union House, Ground The University of Adelaide, Adelaide.
      Brisbane
      Pig & Whistle, Riverside Centre 123 Eagle St, Brisbane City.
      Canberra
      PJ O’Reilly’s, 52 Alinga St, Canberra.
      The Well, University of Canberra, 20 Telita St, Bruce.
      Melbourne
      Online watch party only.
      Perth
      The Windsor Hotel, 112 Mill Point Rd, South Perth.
      Sydney
      3 Wise Monkeys, 555 George St, Sydney.
      Cheers Sports Bar, 561 George Street, Sydney.
      CPAC, Doltone House, Darling Island, Pyrmont.
      There’s a relative dearth of election viewing parties this year, mostly due to the ongoing pandemic.
      Nonetheless, there are a couple of events being held across the country.
      Democrats Abroad, an official arm of the Democratic party, has organised watch parties across the country. In Brisbane, they’ll be at Pig & Whistle, in Sydney they’re at 3 Wise Monkeys, and in Canberra they’ll be at PJ O’Reilly’s. They’ll also be hosting parties in Adelaide and Perth, but unfortunately for Melburnians, they’ll be hosting an online watch party.
      A group of American expats in Sydney have also organised a bi-partisan watch party at Cheers bar, with the group encouraging people to “chuck a sickie” to join them.
      At the University of Canberra, a student group has organised a watch party at The Well. Similarly, students at the University of Adelaide have put together a watch party at the UniBar.
      Also in Adelaide, an election watch party is being hosted at the Gilbert St Hotel, with attendees encouraged to join up and cry “tears of joy or fear”.
      Finally, CPAC, Australia’s largest conservative conference, will be doubling up as a de facto election watch party. The initial allocation of tickets has been exhausted, although the conference is advertising a “standby” ticket if restrictions ease next week.
      What time will polls close in the US?
      Poll opening and closing times varies state-to-state, but they all open between 6am and 9am, and close between 7pm and 9pm local time.
      For Australians, that roughly translates to polls opening at 9pm AEST on 3 November and the latest poll, that being in Alaska, closing at 3pm AEST on 4 November.
      What are the key states to keep an eye on?
      Because of the presidential voting system, where a president is decided by how many electoral college votes they win, a handful of swing states will probably be where the election is won or lost.
      Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Iowa are the states you’ll need to keep an eye on, with a majority of them having flipped from supporting Obama to Trump in 2016.
      When will the victor be announced?
      Over 70 million Americans have already voted, more than half of the people who voted in 2016, with experts expecting a historic turnout.
      Counting begins on election day, which means that throughout the day, winners will be declared in each state once a candidate has a clear lead there, and results are usually declared on election day, by 10pm ET in the US.
      That means a winner would normally be declared between 1pm and 3pm on Wednesday. However, with so many people voting by mail, the result could potentially still be up in the air by the end of the day.
      The numbers of people voting by mail is unprecedented, and coupled with the challenges of holding an election during a pandemic, it could be anyone’s guess when we’ll formally get a victor. More

    • 250 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Australians ask me what the mood is in the US. I say optimism, quickly smothered by dread | Chloe Angyal

      by

      In Iowa, lawn signs keep vanishing. They’ll be there in the front garden one night, red white and blue against the unnaturally lush suburban American green grass, advertising to drivers and dog walkers alike that the people inside want Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States. “Joe 2020.” “Unity over division, Biden-Harris 2020.” “Bye-Don.” And the next morning, they’re gone. One man got caught stealing a sign, and then got caught stealing the newspapers reporting what he’d done. (Trump signs have been stolen and vandalised too).
      Iowa, where the presidential primaries began with the shambolic caucuses in February, has become one of the most expensive electoral battlegrounds in the nation. In 2016, the state went for Trump by a massive 10 points after voting for Obama by two in 2012; the 12-point swing was the largest of any state in the nation. Now, the swing state is living up to that label: FiveThirtyEight has Biden slightly ahead. But it’s not only the presidential race on the line: the incumbent Republican senator Joni Ernst is neck-and-neck with her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield, who has raked in a staggering amount of money – $28.7m in the third quarter of this year alone – to try to flip one of Iowa’s two red Senate seats to blue.
      This is my fourth presidential election in the US, but my first in Iowa. I grew up in Australia, and moved to this state two years ago after living in New York City for a decade, because my partner, an Iowan, ran for office here.
      The vanishing lawn signs, of course, are not the only dirty trick we’ve seen this year: Republicans have done everything in their power to make voting harder for people who likely won’t vote for them, from closing ballot drop locations to reimposing felon disenfranchisement to knee-capping the postal service.
      I voted early and in person, waiting for half an hour in a socially distanced line at the local library. That’s nothing compared with the hours-long wait other voters have endured, but still a tax in the form of time, and in the middle of a pandemic in which Iowa is faring absolutely terribly, a risk voters shouldn’t have to take to get their ballot counted.
      By now it has become a cliche to compare America’s voting system – a state-by-state patchwork of time-consuming and easily-screwed up registration procedures, followed by deliberately limited in-person voting options – to Australia’s. Similarly, it has become a threadbare exercise in horror to compare how the US has responded to coronavirus with how Australia has. When I returned home to see my family in July, I was required to spend two weeks in a hotel room in Sydney and was regularly tested for coronavirus during my quarantine. Six weeks later, when I flew back to Iowa, there was nothing to stop me from driving from the airport to my local supermarket, mask-free, and breathing all over my fellow Iowans.
      To date, more than 120,000 people in Iowa have contracted coronavirus, and 1,693 of them have died. The population of Iowa, where a Republican governor never issued a stay-at-home order and has pushed the state to a full re-opening even as case numbers continue to rise, is 3.1 million. Australia, with its population of 25 million, has seen 27,569 cases to date, 907 of them fatal.
      Cliches or no, it is hard to avoid making these comparisons as election day hurtles towards us. Because they are not simply thought experiments, they’re questions about life and death, and about who and what government is for. What would this country look like if it invested in the infrastructure of a truly representative democracy, as Australia has? Would the officials elected under such a system have taken the threat of the pandemic seriously, rather than allowing partisanship to warp their understanding of not just science but of what sacrifices we owe to each other?
      Just as it was hard to explain to Americans how stringent Australia’s policies for returnees were, it has been hard to explain to Australians what the mood is here as the election approaches. After four years under Trump’s Republican party – four years of obscene policies meant to harm the most vulnerable, four years of testing and in some cases breaking the institutional guard rails of American democracy – and eight months of coronavirus, the mood is sheer anxiety. The mood is utter exhaustion.
      The mood is optimism quickly smothered by fear and dread. This time in 2016, the polls predicted a Trump loss, but voter suppression and Russian interference kept just enough people from voting in crucial states to swing the election Trump’s way.
      The mood, for me and many of my fellow journalists, is disassociation and numbness, coping mechanisms we learned a long time ago are essential for doing the work of covering the horrors and incompetencies of this administration.
      The mood is anticipation of relief, mingled with the knowledge that relief might not come, that it all might go wrong, and that the election, like our lawn signs, might once again be stolen from us.
      • Chloe Angyal is a contributing editor at marieclaire.com and the author of the forthcoming book Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet From Itself. She is from Sydney and lives in the Iowa City area More

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      For Australia's sake, I hope Trump's climate science denialism loses | Michael Mann

      by

      Anyone in Australia who witnessed the Black Summer bushfires (as I did), and anyone in the US who experienced the thick smoke from our western wildfires (as I have), knows how much damage climate change is already doing. The stark reality is that worldwide efforts to avert ever-more catastrophic climate change impacts lie in the balance in the 2020 US election.Donald Trump will go down in history bearing substantial responsibility for the deaths of over 200,000 Americans due to his rejection of the advice of public health experts and his refusal to endorse policies such as social distancing and mask-wearing that could have saved many thousands of lives. But his rejection of the science of climate change sets the stage for a far greater toll. Far more human lives will be lost from the impacts of climate change if we fail to act.Whether or not Trump gets re-elected – and how other countries like Australia respond to the outcome of the US election – could determine the fate of our planet. Indeed, I’ve stated that a second Trump term might well be “game over for the climate” if it leads to the collapse of international efforts to act.The damage caused by Trump’s climate denial is painfully visible within the US as we endure climate change-fuelled extreme weather events, including unprecedented wildfires in the west and unprecedented hurricanes in the east. But the damage can be felt around the world. Trump has proudly, and shamelessly, trumpeted his climate denialism on the global stage, joining with petrostates such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil in opposing international climate efforts.Indeed, Trump’s actions have emboldened Australia to be less ambitious on climate too, prime minister Scott Morrison following Trump’s lead in promoting climate denial, coddling fossil fuel interests and blocking efforts to support a clean, renewable energy transition.By pulling the US out of the Paris agreement (one of the first and only campaign promises he kept) Trump ceded America’s leadership on the defining challenge of our time. Thus far, other countries have fortunately filled the leadership void, at least temporarily. The EU and China, with its new net-zero pledge, have stepped up to the plate, recognising that they will benefit from the opportunities of a clean energy economy and better protect their citizens from dangerous climate change impacts.But nobody stands to benefit more from climate action, or lose more if we fail to act, than Australia. Having spent a sabbatical leave down under earlier this year, aimed at collaborating with scientists in Australia to study the impact of climate change on extreme weather events, I instead witnessed those impacts first-hand. I saw the muted beauty of the Blue Mountains when shrouded in wildfire smoke. If Trump is re-elected, and we collectively continue down a path of insufficient climate action, it may not be long before those fires rage year-round, and the Blue Mountains are lost in a perpetual grey and dismal haze.It’s the same with the vibrant sea life of the Great Barrier Reef, which I was fortunate enough to witness with my family during my time in Australia. The delicate ecosystems of the GBR are already on the ropes, with fossil fuels pushing up temperatures in the ocean to the point where bleachings occur with such frequency and ferocity that corals simply cannot recover. Research released this week found that the reef has lost half its coral, largely due to warming oceans caused by climate change. Add the impact of ocean acidification from increasing carbon emissions, and we could sadly, within a decade or two, be reading the GBR’s obituary for real.It doesn’t have to be like that. For one thing, renewable energy costs are plummeting while the technology just keeps getting more efficient and better, so dirty energy no longer makes economic sense. For example, on one recent Sunday, all the electricity demand for the entire state of South Australia was met by solar power alone, and every state and territory in Australia has committed to go carbon neutral by 2050. Here in the US, we’ve seen a record number of cities and states stepping up on climate goals too, knowing clean energy is good for their communities’ health, resilience and prosperity.Policymakers must accelerate the shift to clean energy that is already under way. As we’ve learned in the Trump-era, some fossil fuels are too far gone for even the most determined polluter-in-chief to save. Though another term would give Trump time to defend his environmental rollbacks in court and solidify his dirty energy policies, he has already failed to save coal from market forces, and another four years isn’t going to reverse the long-term decline of the industry.This is a cautionary tale for Australia. In both the US and Australia, conservative politicians seem more eager to bail out dirty polluters than protect the public, denying politically inconvenient science in order to offer lavish payouts to help unprofitable fossil fuel companies.If we are to avert catastrophic warming, we must do just the opposite, providing financial incentives for renewables and disincentives for fossil fuels. That will level the playing field, and accelerate the clean energy transition.We must take the earliest exit possible off the fossil fuel highway. By trying to squeeze out the last drop of fossil fuel industry profits, the Morrison government could well be on its way to bleaching the life from Australia’s coral reefs and blighting the blue of its mountains.There is some good news, however. Regardless of whom Americans vote for – and for the sake of the planet, I hope it’s Joe Biden and the Democrats – Australians can still work together for structural change at home. You can’t solve it alone, but we also can’t solve it without you. Australia has seen that the sun can power an entire state’s electricity for a day. Now it’s time to make that happen every day.Australia must distance itself from the handful of bad petrostate actors who have sabotaged global climate action and rejoin the coalition of the willing, when it comes to the battle to save our planet.• Michael E. Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. He is author of the upcoming book The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, due out in January (Public Affairs Books) More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Former Republican congressman says Murdoch's media outlets fuelling 'climate rejectionism'

      by

      A former Republican congressman has blamed Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets for fuelling “climate rejectionism” among conservatives, suggesting they could be part of the reason why the United States is failing to lead the world to tackle global heating.Bob Inglis, a former South Carolina congressman who has renounced his previous climate denialism and now leads a group seeking to rally conservatives to act, questioned the role of News Corp and Fox Corporation during an event hosted by the Australia Institute.Inglis told the progressive thinktank that Australia and the US shared a form of “climate rejectionism that comes in conservative clothing”.He said both countries also shared “a particular news organisation that has a great deal to do with that” – and pointed the finger at Murdoch’s Fox News and the Wall Street Journal in particular.“If you look at Fox viewers in America – that’s where you find the climate disputation,” Inglis said.Inglis said his group, RepublicEn, which campaigns for conservative leadership on climate action, believed that a change in the way the issue was covered by those outlets would be “the holy grail” in unlocking greater ambition in US policy.“If Fox would just change or if the Wall Street Journal editorial page would just change – either one of those and this would be finished, we’d be done with climate, we’d be acting,” he said. “It really is that important – so if anybody can get to the Murdochs please let me know.”Business leader and former Sydney lord mayor Lucy Turnbull also sheeted home some responsibility to large media businesses such as News Corp during the same webinar event on Wednesday.Turnbull’s husband, the former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, was ousted as leader of the centre-right Liberal party in 2009, and again in 2018, in part because of internal battles over climate policy.“There are a lot of people who have a huge level of conviction about the fact that climate change is with us, that we have to act,” she said. “The problem is that the polarisation makes it hard to do that because you have the people [who believe] that it isn’t a problem despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that it is.”In a clear reference to News Corp, Turnbull added: “They have a very loud voice in a lot of political debate aided by very large media organisations, especially one which crosses both the US and Australia and other countries besides.”She said this had resulted in a “fragmented, deeply polarised conversation”, which could be a symptom of the fragmentation of politics around the world.The comments come as another former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, campaigns for a royal commission to be launched into the Murdoch empire in Australia.The petition, launched on the Australian parliament’s website on Saturday, has so far attracted more than 236,000 signatures.The focus on the company comes after Rupert Murdoch’s youngest son, James Murdoch, said one of the reasons he had stepped away from his father’s media empire was because it legitimised disinformation and sowed doubts about facts.He told the New York Times climate change and coronavirus were both public health crises and “political spin” should not get “in the way of delivering crucial public health information”.James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, also issued a joint statement in January – midway through Australia’s summer bushfire crisis – to say they were “particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary”.Last year, however, Rupert Murdoch told shareholders “there are no climate change deniers” around his company and said his business was early to commit to “science-based targets to limit climate change” and was working to reduce its climate emissions.Inglis and Turnbull discussed media coverage as part of the wide-ranging webinar on Wednesday, which also canvassed the forthcoming US presidential election.Inglis contended that Republicans would undergo a “reappraisal” of their position on climate policy in coming years, although that reassessment would come faster if Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump for the presidency. Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris climate accord is due to take effect the day after the November election.Inglis, who previously visited Australia in 2017 as a guest of the Australia Institute, recounted how he had once insisted that climate change was “nonsense”.“I didn’t know anything about it except that Al Gore was for it and, in as much as I represented probably one of the most conservative districts in America, that was the end of the inquiry,” he said.But Inglis said he had a “three-step metamorphosis”, based on his children pressing him to take environmental issues seriously, his own visit to Antarctica to see ice core drilling evidence and his snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef.He spoke of the importance of bridging divides, saying he was grateful to have been “extended grace by people who knew it was real before I did”.Inglis urged people on the left of politics to accept new entrants to the conversation “without saying you’re the dumb kid in the class, the last one to get it” because “if you welcome them in we can solve this thing”. More

    • 238 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Fit for office? From Trump to Abbott, 'vitality' is too often conflated with character in politics | Eleanor Gordon-Smith

      by

      It was important to US president Donald Trump to beat Covid-19. Not to recover from it, or to be successfully treated for it, but to beat it, as you would a wrestling enemy with the back of a chair. Already he has begun reframing his hospital discharge as a sign of strength. On Monday, campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp told Fox News: “We’re going to defeat this virus. We’re not going to surrender to it like Joe Biden would surrender,” deliberately leaving open the interpretation that the relevant “surrender” was getting sick and dying. The president retweeted columnist Miranda Devine’s characterisation of him as an “invincible hero, who not only survived every dirty trick the Democrats threw at him, but the Chinese virus as well”.It is the latest instalment in a long history of the conflation between physical fitness and fitness for office, as though facts about a person’s character can be deduced from whether they get sick.Rightwing, authority-hungry leaders often make this move. From the state of their bodies we are supposed to deduce things about the state of their person. Vladimir Putin rides horses shirtless; shoots tigers; hugs bears. Jair Bolsonaro removed his mask after his Covid-19 diagnosis to show reporters how little it affected him. “Just look at my face, I’m fine”, he said.When these are the characters who voice a connection between physical wellness and moral character, the falsity of that connection is obvious. It is cartoonish, even – Trump himself is so obviously unfit (apparently owing to a belief that humans are born with finite heartbeats and to exercise is to waste them) that it’s almost impossible to take the position seriously.But the presumed link between physical health and strength and worthiness is far more politically widespread. In March a staffer for Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren tweeted a photograph of her jogging jauntily up a set of stairs, hair springing with her gait, while fellow candidate Bernie Sanders trailed behind her on an escalator, paunched and balding. “This hits me so hard,” said the staffer, assuming an obvious connection between physical mobility and leadership.The character endorsements for “fighters” who make it through disease are common; Gabrielle Giffords’ recovery from a cranial gunshot wound was used to show her strength of character, and Barack Obama –in his own right a good athlete – took many photographed opportunities to play basketball in shirtsleeves. Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott was possessed of genuine physical strength, which the public was seldom able to forget, as his rivals needed help to do a pull-up or failed to sink a basket.The assumption in all cases is that the visual impression of a person’s body is a reasonable guide to their character, or that since certain traits express themselves physically, the physical lack of those things shows they are lacking in the person’s character. This is just a bad and backwards deduction; intellectually energetic people are often physically spry but not all un-spry people lack intellectual energy. But this does not stop candidates leveraging physical wellness as a sign of some deeper strength.Now, of course, a candidate for political office has to be well enough to do the job. There are reasonable criticisms of an ageing political class and of specific individuals who stay in their jobs past the point where they can do them well. When your job involves working on other people’s behalf, you have to be able to do it better than the next best candidate, and there are some forms of physical wellness that bear on whether that’s true.But the broader connection between vitality, power and physical health is damagingly false whether it comes out of Trump’s mouth or the Warren campaign’s. It should be seen with special suspicion by those committed to accessible healthcare, a policy built on the idea that whether you are sick is not a function of what you deserve and that usual interventions of character will not save us.If – as most of us do – we believe that physical illness is not a sign of decrepit character or weakness, then we have to be careful about the photonegative thought that physical wellness is a sign of burnished character or strength. It is not only Trump and his fellow rightwing personality-leaders who seek to leverage that thought. Political positioning everywhere leverages the idea of physical health as strength, which in turn licenses the associated thought that physical illness is weakness. Whichever side of politics it appears on, that thought hurts millions of people. As any sufferer of chronic illness will tell you, the presumed connection between character and body runs deep in society, in the glances of strangers, the minds of loved ones.The president’s bizarre machismo around the virus is just the latest and most visible expression of that thought. Perhaps seeing it in such an extreme form can help us identify its more pedestrian, creeping, insidiously ordinary forms. We would do well to regard them, too, with the same sense of absurdity.• Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a writer and ethicist currently at Princeton University More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Which way will expats vote in the US election? – Australian politics live podcast

      by

      After the first presidential debate airs Katharine Murphy talks to Kent Getsinger, the chair of Democrats Abroad in Australia, about how US expats will be voting. Are voters willing to back Joe Biden? Will the reaction from the debate bring in more votes? How has Covid-19 impacted the foreign voting system?

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More