Climate change — too important for conventional politics

What do you think? Kevin Rudd rightly says of today’s National Climate Change Summit organised by the Labor Party:

Climate change does not simply threaten the Australian environment - it also threatens Australian jobs and Australia’s long term economic prosperity. Invitations have been extended to the Prime Minister and his Ministers, and State Premiers and Chief Ministers.

Climate change is one of the most significant challenges that Australia and the world will face in the 21st Century. To face this challenge we must come together as a country, a region and a planet to take real practical action on climate change.

Participants include:

Great pic from The Poet in Victoria

On a more personal note

Yesterday morning I spent time with Lord Malcolm, going with him to physiotherapy at the hospice and witnessing how he has virtually no muscles on his legs, and seeing both the determination and the pain as he did some gentle exercises. We then had coffee in the hospice coffee shop, wheeled out to look at Green Park for a while, and then back so he could be sent for another x-ray — some problem with the feeding tube.

Before tuition in Chinatown I had a call from ex-student Ross (class of 1976). We met and had a really good if shortish chat. Here is what one of Ross’s classmates has been up to, having diverged somewhat from Law.

Climate change and our “practical” government

The past 24 hours and more have seen whole forests felled in the production of stories about climate change, with much on the electronic media as well. Perhaps the most sensible person I saw/heard was Dr Tony Haymet, former Chief of Marine and Atmospheric Science at CSIRO, now director of the prestigious Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences at the University of California on last night’s 7.30 Report:

KERRY O’BRIEN: As a close observer of how the science and the politics are finally coming together on climate change, how optimistic are you that the politicians now, that governments, are going to come up with a satisfactory end game?

TONY HAYMET: I’m very optimistic at the moment. I’m very encouraged by what’s happened in the last 18 months in Australia, in the United States, particularly in Europe. Recently we’ve been trying to think through, what is the climate end game? I think most observers would say it’s got to be the biggest emitter, the United States, and the fastest-growing emitter, China, coming together and making a compact that they can feel both comfortable with. I think we feel that if that happened then Europe and India would easily be accommodated into that framework. I think that then invites the question, what’s Australia’s role? We’re two per cent of the problem, we’re two per cent of the innovation system. I think there’s a chance that Australia could be the honest broker in that dialogue. I think both the US and China have great respect for Australia’s leaders and I hope that we can play a positive role there.

Religion: Who Needs It? — The Heathlander

Good heavens: this is the second reference to Jamie Stern-Weiner’s blog in two days! He has written there an entertaining account of a debate at Westminster on “‘We’d be better off without religion.” Jamie agrees we would be, and admired participants in the debate such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and A.C. Grayling rather than their opposition, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Prof. Nigel Spivey and the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton. I am not a Scruton fan either.

It is all very hypothetical though. Religion isn’t about to go away, not in my lifetime or probably in yours. Me, I am a believer in God who does not believe in magic books. So I agree entirely about the dubious morality of much of the Bible, but not of all of the Bible, and ditto for the Quran, though here is an interesting conundrum for the world as Muslims tend to be wedded to the magic book principle even more than Christians or Jews. Rather than go into all that here, I refer you to entries on my archive page under the tag “Bible”.

Hicks pleads guilty — and another matter

The Daily Telegraph here in Sydney has no doubts as you will see on the right and in its editorial today:

IMMEDIATELY after the news broke yesterday that Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks had pleaded guilty to the charge of providing material support to terrorism, his deluded supporters sprang into action.

Just because Hicks had pleaded guilty did not mean he was guilty - far from it.

He’d pleaded to the charge, they insisted, because he’d been forced to do so by his captors.

After five years in captivity, the Hicks cheer squad insisted, he would have been prepared to plead guilty to anything, just to be free of the endless torment to which he has been subjected.

All that time in close confinement could do strange things to a man.

And no less an authority than Hicks’ Camp X-Ray buddy Mamdouh Habib was called on to give corroborative verity to that version of events. And Habib, of course, was not loathe to assist. Hicks would have been forced to plead guilty, Habib insisted, to be allowed access to legal counsel. He - Habib - knew how the system worked. Hicks would have had no choice…

Many will share the views expressed there, or those views will become their views…

Lord Malcolm and the bureaucrats 3

Dear Neil

Clover has asked me to let you know what action has been taken in response to your email about Malcolm’s situation. I am sorry to hear about his poor health.

Clover has asked the Area Director of the Department of Housing to withdraw the notice of termination and review Malcolm’s circumstances and health status and reconsider the Department’s current action.

When the Area Director responds to Clover, she will get back to you and let you know the outcome.

Please pass on Clover’s and our best wishes to Malcolm at Sacred Heart.
Thank you for acting on Malcolm’s behalf to alert Clover to the situation.

Please give me a call if the situation changes or you need other action from Clover.

Regards

Roy Bishop
Electorate Officer for Clover Moore MP
Independent Member for Sydney
58 Oxford St, Paddington NSW 2021 Australia

Glad I voted for her.

Lord Malcolm and the bureaucrats 2

Perhaps, as Marcel Proust points out, the Housing Department people are not heartless as such… Note the following visit a few minutes ago, and there were two from the same source yesterday afternoon.

It has since come to my attention who this kindly disposed visitor was; I have removed the image in case identification might prove too easy from the Sitemeter data therein…

That visit continued as I wrote…

Lord Malcolm and the heartless bureaucrats…

It is no secret that Lord Malcolm is very seriously ill, though he has so far refused to succumb… He has in fact pulled off a number of near miracles, such as Saturday’s impossible trip to the Air Show in Victoria, from which he is now recovering, a process he says himself will take a while. He is at the moment in the Sacred Heart Hospice, and has been mostly in St Vincent’s Hospital or the hospice since April 2006. One by one many of his friends have dropped by the wayside when it comes to support and/or visiting, a phenomenon that is understandable if regrettable. Just a few of us are left. None of us knows how long the process will take. I for one was surprised Lord M made it into 2007, and some at the hospice, I am told, were surprised he was still alive when he returned to the hospice last week.

Lord Malcolm at work three years ago.

Post against stereotypes…

I am at the moment wading through the white-hot prose of Londonistan. It was good then to drop in on Madhab al-Irfy, Irfan Yusuf’s more Islamic blog: Prayers for Allison Sudrajat (14 March 2007). Allison was the AusAid worker killed in the recent plane crash in Indonesia.

Tomorrow at 1:30pm, after dhuhr prayer, Canberra’s small Muslim community will join friends and family of Allison Sudrajat for a traditional Muslim janaza (funeral) prayer service followed by burial…

Read the post and think “Muslim humanitarian” for a change…

Watched The Joy Luck Club again last night

I like Amy Tan’s work. Two of her books were listed in my Best Reads 2005! I first saw the movie of The Joy Luck Club (1993) with M and others back in 1993 and we both cried… Last night I cried again; it’s that sort of movie. When I wrote From Yellow Earth to Eucalypt (published by Longman 1994-5) I quoted one Lim Toom Wei from Sydney University:

Contrary to the unreserved praise gushing forth from many teary ‘politically correct’ intellectuals, this film is full of stereotypes and straightforward hogwash, What else can you make of the opening voice over that claims that in China, a woman’s worth was measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch? Though only most, but not all, of the female leads in this film conform to the soft-spoken, submissive Oriental-woman stereotype, all the significant male characters are truly despicable… On the other hand, the only significant, meaningful, loving, and ultimately successful, relationships in the film were between two of the daughters and their respective handsome white husbands. Not only are stereotypes retold, new ones are also created in this film.

Lord Malcolm’s trip to Victoria

I expect to hear from Sirdan later this morning how this quite amazing trip worked out yesterday. Sirdan was accompanying him. When I visited Lord Malcolm on Friday he was psyched up for it, albeit still in the Hospice and with a feeding tube down his nose…

Later

Just got that call. They made it and it went well except Lord M ran out of steam about 1 pm and needed medical help, which was on site at the Air Show. They got back to Sydney safely. I am having lunch with Sirdan later today. No doubt I will hear more then. Lord Malcolm himself (by phone) says he had a fantastic day.

And later

After lunch at the Porter House Irish pub Sirdan and I visited Lord M, but he was too exhausted. Happy though. He really was given royal treatment at the Air Show yesterday. Sirdan’s part in that venture can’t be praised too much. He and Lord M did something almost everyone thought was impossible.

Voted, melted, and saw wildlife in Surry Hills

So here I am back from tutoring in Chinatown and voting in Riley Street. And is it ever hot! Daylight saving ends tonight, yet at 2pm it was near enough to 35C here in Surry Hills. (That’s 90+ for those who use F still.) On the way to tutoring I saw the biggest flock of cockatoos — right near Central Station — that I can ever recall seeing in Sydney. There must have been a hundred of them. They seemed to fill the space between Central and the buildings on the corner of Elizabeth and Foveaux. Strayed in from points west because of drought?

I took that from Charlie Moores’ Bird Blog, on a page well worth looking at showing Sydney’s Botanical Gardens.

That was quite an Aboriginal moment too, as somewhere in Central someone was playing the didgeridoo giving the whole scene a rather magic quality — well giving that to me at least.

And then I voted. Yes, not Labor. Yes, not Liberal…. In neither House.

Carnage at the polls…

… for the NSW Libs? Yet to be seen, of course, but see my last pre-voting entry on Journalspace: Debnam’s solo flight to disaster ….

Two shameless plugs…

Not that they are needed.

Last night’s ABC News devoted a substantial arts segment to the play Parramatta Girls by Alana Valentine, currently at the Belvoir Theatre. I have met Alana on occasions. The play is directed by Indigenous Australian Wesley Enoch (whom I have never met) who was mentioned here earlier this month. There is a substantial feature article, Home truths, in the Sydney Morning Herald.