Patented Dort_Owl unhinged rant that goes way off track incoming
This stayed fairly on track. I want a refund.
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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It's even worse. Green energy advocates in the Civil service have been seeing their careers stall for decades. And are now getting the brunt of "well if you hadn't tried to advise against us stealing Timorese oil (which we did anyway) then we wouldn't have shut down our heroically inefficient refineries. And then we'd only be completely screwed instead of catastrophically screwed. In conclusion, tear down that windfarm!"
It's a bit of a digression but I was recently discussing the state of labor relations in the US with someone and in every single workplace it's basically devolved into management just refusing to ever admit any wrongdoing. Even in nonprofit institutions with long standing contracts you'll have ice cold HR people who won't give an inch on blatant violations until there's a credible threat of labor action or arbitration. Also US labor law either implicitly or explicitly requires management and labor to cooperate so management is usually just flagrantly violating the law.
Capital has figured out they don't have to offer the carrot anymore and they certainly don't have to apologize. It's just the stick now. Until the masses figure that out we're fucked.
Do not attribute to incompetence what can be explained by ~~malice~~ the national interests of protecting domestic capital
Apparently the gubbermint is terrified of reminding people of covid restrictions?
It's feckless, demonising people making the individually rational choice to stockpile fuel instead of actually doing something systemic (and thereby erasing said individual incentive) is asinine. Further cutting the fuel excise is just welfare for the petro companies since the market is uncompetitive.
They won by a bloody landslide and their interpretation has been that neoliberal fiddling around the edges is called for. I mean obviously neolib parties suck but they suck so much more than even recent memory when their power was far more limited.
I wish I knew anyone here that was more left than a neolib with a bleeding heart (my wife aside). I love the land, the critters, the sand and soil etc but my god I hate the culture and politics
Practically everyone I've spoken to in the last few weeks has been really mad the government hasn't done anything to actually deal with the crisis, and it looks like the media will use their incompetency to ensure the libs or maybe even something like One Nation ends up winning the election over do-nothing Labor. They might even hold an emergency election or something to try and kick Labor out, because it isn't enough that they do nothing, they need to be replaced with someone who will do everything to make things even worse but blame the problems on immigrants or "the left" or something and get glazed in the press for it.
And it fucking sucks because the far-right parties will offer the most ghoulish and self destructive solutions (like doing more fossil fuel bs) and they'll win because they're offering some kind of action even if it's terrible action.
This is why professional losers like Dems in the US or Labor here and in the UK are so dangerous. Being the "lesser of two evils" by doing nothing can empower the worst kinds of fuckers to get power in the long run
Yeah, they know what they're doing, they know they're controlled opposition, they don't care as long as they personally benefit from it.
I thought one nation was mostly eating up libnat turf?
Yeah, but it seems like the Murdoch media has been favouring them over the liberals lately, so they might try and push them as the "alternative" to the two old stale parties.
What would you like to see Labor do?
Confined to just this alone removing the american boot from their throats and aligning with other middle powers for starters
How do you propose the Australian PM does this?
I’m not trying to be facetious here but your criticism of the Labor party really doesn’t acknowledge the political reality Australia is in.
If any PM attempted to extract Australia from the USA without Australia having nuclear weapons capable of reaching mainland USA Australia would eventually be invaded by the USA or at the very least bombed similar to Iran.
While it’s a nice sentiment to want to reduce USAs influence in Australia (I strongly agree) it’s not really an actionable step without first having the means to defend ourselves against an aggressor who has significantly greater military power.
We would just not, like there's no way they're interested or capable of doing that.
It's difficult to know what is possible because much is behind the scenes but like aukus is never going to deliver subs, or at least none capable of being operated independently, so one option is to try realign on that with Europe/Canada. Closer ties to China are possible, we're already heavily economically integrated.
Threatening usa access out of Darwin is significant for their military strategy, so is pine gap, which gives Australia leverage while making new alliances.
Cancelling data centre approvals threatens the usa stock market (a fucking huge number are being shoved down our throat), regulating usa tech would also make them unhappy.
Military strategy could explore drones as defensive weapons, there's a lot of australia to hide them in and launch from to repel any aggression.
There are levers to lean on in order to withdraw from entanglement and secure more favourable terms while building ties with e.g. canada, france etc which is still somewhat palettable to the racist public.
On the upside, some state governments are doing some cool shit like making public transport free.
To be clear, I don't disagree with you. It's nowhere near enough, and any progress will absolutely be rolled back as soon as possible. But IDK free PT for a while is kinda good I guess?
Hell yeah
To be honest do you think we could actually implement the ideal policies we have in our minds, if we were in the office?
If I was the governess of Treatlers and I took away they treats, in order to implement green energy f.ex They would probably kill me.
certainly some of them are implementable yes. And as you gain social capital from improving things somewhat you can use that to convince people of more of the program.
one way to get treatlers off of their habits is to present them with something they think is better, like slowly making public transit trips faster than driving.
Another is regulating the treat out of market viability so that it doesn't look like it's your fault, just a business failing and people would move on to whatever alternatives were available.
these aren't communist organizing and methods, but we're supposing a secret communist got into a bourgeoise position of power somehow and the tools at your disposal under those circumstances aren't a vanguard or organized masses so we shouldn't expect it to look like the revolution.
you'll get shit on from the left while doing it because it won't be fast enough and you'll look and sound like a socdem in the process but executive power or enough seats in parliament to make demands of a coalition government can make material improvements to peoples' lives.
I know we are all for green energy, but what part of coal makes it contradictory to build up as an alternative to oil? Coal is likely domestically found in Australia, and they produce consistent power (as long as you have time to install it, about 2-3 years), while green energy can take about a month or two, with the caveat of capitalism eating itself through cheap electricity if over-installed and it being expensive to supply batteries (thus private installation of solar on top of factories instead)
I predicted private coal and green energy stocks would steadily rise as conflict continued, specifically because of this
Coal and petroleum are not really competitors with each other because it’s only during the most extreme highs of grid power demand that petroleum generation makes any sense at all.
Like, maybe a few weeks a year it is really viable to burn diesel for electricity during absolute peak demand, but really the contribution of petroleum for grid power generation is a footnote. Close to irrelevant.
The competitor for coal is natural gas, solar, wind, and hydropower.
Emphasizing investment in coal does not come at the expense of petroleum generation because it barely exists. Investment in coal power comes at the cost of renewables.