All elections are important, but this one is critical.
From a boring, almost plodding start, this election has gone full nuclear – or anti-nuclear, we reckon. This is an era of wild cards, backflips and nasty fighting between campaigners that sadly are no longer at all surprising. Anything can still happen, and there will be many people gripping their seats on Saturday night.
In climate terms, too, we are on a knife edge. No longer do we hear about the 10 years we have left to turn our climate fortunes around. It’s now or never.
And “never” is far too close for our liking.
The wild cards are not to be taken lightly. As we go to (virtual) press on Thursday, we see other publications forecasting a wipeout for Dutton. But this is no longer an election between the two big parties plus Greens; there’s a multitude of independents in between, and some of them may not be all they seem.
See our coverage this week of both the majors and a smattering of the independents; there were too many to cover fully.
The crazy antics of the American president have shocked the world. But we needed a shock. We were complacent, as we’ve said before, hoping that we could mosey along. We hoped that the market would do all the hard work and incrementally generate the calm, uneventful transition that leaves most of us in our cosy safety zone, while we conscientiously put out the separated garbage, eat less meat and ride bikes – and call ourselves for the good and the green side.
Now, in stark contrast to this idyll, we have a man who shows us what chaos is—our shibboleths trashed in minutes—a new obscenity every day.
Even so, Trump has nothing on what climate change will do.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton must rue the day that he aligned himself with that man. So, to the conservative challenger in the Canadian election who went from rooster to feather duster on the strength of what wild looks like in real life and what unfettered colonialist coveting feels like from the dude himself.
That the world can turn on a dime gives rise to hope.
For quite a while, the climate-trashing/human rights-trashing agenda has been on the rise, with the seductive attraction of its so called “men of steel” who promise salvation because the world is looking economically shaky and people of different skin colour are suddenly turning up at the bus stop.
But now it could be the world is turning again and finding that it can say “no” to destructive policies with growing courage: we want different.
But beware the convoluted disguises that seem to have emerged in this election campaign, and the strategies of some contestants to fling such a huge array of promises that some are likely to find their mark and stick.
The many policy backflips we’ve seen may well be part of a strategy of maximum confusion, especially for those voters who’ve turned up to a focus group and confess they don’t even know there’s an election!
At the same time, it’s been fun to watch the conservative financial media do its own carefully executed pirouettes to reflect the changing mood of Dutton’s confidence and joy at trashing the Voice referendum, to looking increasingly electrified with fear.
We wish we could electrify our buildings and cities with such speed.
And yet, he might still win. Don’t trust anything right now.
Vote early, and vote well. Vote for the planet and for people each and every time. Greens or the deep green teal in your hood, with a preference to Labour.
This first term of the Albanese government has had significant success in renewable energy and other climate-related issues.
With any luck, Anthony Albanese has been biding his time until after Saturday to jump in with alacrity for greater ambition. Because that ambition has been a bit too thin on the ground during his first term, and way too sensitive to offending the miners and the fossil fuelers.
Time’s up for meaningless sensitivities for the people who would destroy us and all we love for the sake of short-term profits.
Mr Albanese, if you offend these people in your second term, and you get a second term, we will have your back. Because, as we’ve learned from Trump, with enough boldness, it’s possible to upend the world. We just need to do it for better outcomes.