As the hours tick down to the polls closing tomorrow evening, and this god-awful election farce comes to a merciful end, it's "make-your-mind-up" time. Many will have done already, but as Kevin Rudd desperately insists, three per cent are still thinking and many of those won't decide until they're in the booth. Thats about 350,000 people. If you're one of them, here's maybe something to think about.
There is of course no end of issues to wrestle with, not least the question about whether or not the Government deserve another term. Very few people can deny that the Labor party have made a right royal pig's ear out of the mandate they were given in 2007, have stuffed-up a lot of things up and their leadership shenanigans have been an embarrassing circus.
However, their stimulus spending through the GFC was inspired; and Disability Care is an historic reform.
On many of the issues the parties converged somewhat hypocritically in the last few weeks. Labor adopted a Coalition position on Refugees they railed against in opposition; while the Coalition adopted Labor's Education funding reforms - albeit half-heartedly - despite opposing them rabidly most of the year. The NBN - albeit important - is a fairly nuanced argument.
But on one issue there is clear blue water between the two parties, and it is very, very important. It is the future of the very planet we live on.
Tony Abbott has made this a "referendum on the Carbon Tax" but in many ways it is actually a referendum on Climate Change itself. As we all know, Mr Abbott believes Climate Change science is "crap". His "Direct Action" plan is laughable - a few boy scouts planting trees is not going to save the earth. Even if it stood a chance of doing so, the meagre funding of it is capped. Direct Action should be called "Lip Service". As Bernard Keane writes,
"Direct Action won’t meet that 5 per cent target – it won’t come close, not by the normal maths used by most of us, and certainly not according to any independent analysts who have vetted the policy. Indeed, Direct Action will make a negligible impact on reducing emissions."
He has of course repeated ad nauseam that he will "scrap the Carbon Tax" - described by the International Energy Agency as "template Legislation" and which evolves into an Emission Trading Scheme next year under Labor. In so doing he removes a price on Carbon which the consensus of experts agree is the only mechanism for effectively reducing emissions. In addition, he has announced he will scrap the Clean Energy Fund - essentially a Government funded Venture Capitalist body designed to incubate Clean Energy innovation and entrepreneurs. Under this scheme Australia could have become a world leader in Green Technology. Both of these essential policies will be history within the year if The Liberals win office tomorrow.
(I'm not talking about the Greens because I'm still angry about their blocking of the ETS in 2010 and the trouble that caused.)
Anyone living in Sydney knows this has been the warmest winter since records began and the summer head of us will be a scorcher. Those who are parents must fear for the future of their children, and their children's children. If these policies are implemented, in 80 years' time - after the ice caps have melted and the sea levels have risen - many will look back at the Election of 2013 as the moment Australia went fatally backwards.
If you can't give Labor the House of Representatives, then at least for the sake of the planet - don't give the Liberals the Senate.