Picture: Mark Metcalfe
The wolves are at the door. The barbarians are at the gate. In the streets of our major cities, the Visigoths and Vandals come in the form of spotty-faced, badly dressed humans, bearing backpacks, bottled water and moral certainty.
By mid-afternoon, capitalism could be a tyre fire and by the morning, our new overlord could be a 15-year-old girl who likes hip-hop, chatting with friends on FaceTime and global conquest.
In response to the national and global rallies, Australian commentators invoked Stalin, Lenin and Mao. Boil them all up in your Pol Pot and we’re good to go.
More particularly, the arguments went, the spotty-faced ones should be sent to their rooms and be given no Marxist dialectics for supper.
Then it is only a matter of time before we are dragged out of our cars while waiting at the drive through of fast food restaurants, and torn limb from limb. The newspaper boy could be planning to burn our houses to the ground.
It has all got a bit silly.
My question is, when did we become opposed to freedoms of assembly, association, movement and expression?
Hundreds of thousands of the nation’s kids will enjoy these freedoms today and express their fears and frustrations at the uncertainty of their future and that of the planet we all live on.
You don’t have to like it, you don’t even have to understand it, but you should respect it.
Frankly, I don’t think our federal parliamentarians have got a dog in this fight or if they do it is a toothless cavoodle who remains stubbornly asleep on the couch.
When asked about hashtag climatestrike, Bill Shorten had five bob each way, as Bill is prone to do.
“Kids are allowed to have opinions,” he said yesterday. But there was a caveat. There always is with Bill. “In an ideal world, they would protest after school hours and on weekends.”
He went on to say the government had been “On strike about climate policy for the last five-and-a-half years.”
“(Scott Morrison and his government) are really not the best role models for the kids on climate policy, are they?”
I would have thought a former union boss would understand the basic principles of a strike but there you go. His comments were more than an each-way bet. Bill took two fields in the quinella with a complicated boxed trifecta thrown in for good measure.
I’d love to be his bookie.
On the other side of the divide, Liberal senator, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells decided to blame Tony Abbott’s opponent in Warringah, Zali Steggall.
“Why,” the Senator tweeted, “is Zali Steggal encouraging kids to wag school to go to a climate rally? Kids shouldn’t be brainwashed but if they really want to protest, let it be on their own time.”
The federal parliament has sat for a neat seven days in 2019. By the May election, it will be nine days. Over the same period, school students around the country have been in the classroom for 90.
Seven sitting days to date. If our federal parliamentarians took a leaf out of the students’ book and went on strike, how would we know the difference?
Seriously, if the Canberra mob decided to pull the pin, how would we even tell?
According to Finance Minister, Matthias Cormann, wages in Australia should be linked to productivity. By my back of the envelope calculations, the productivity of federal MPs is down a whopping 800 per cent on previous year and that’s not based on an excruciating time and motion analysis but merely on the days they bother to turn up. Yet, at the end of each month the Commonwealth pays your bog ordinary MP a base salary of almost $17,000 and that doesn’t include perks, a car and too may expense allowances to list here.
I could also mention that in the dark days of the August spill last year the doors to the House of Representatives were locked shut because the government feared it would lose its majority on the floor and be hurled off the Treasury benches.
Truth be told, it was more lock out than a strike. But the fact remains, when it comes to our MPs, it is a case of the old teacher’s axiom, do as I say, not as I do.
By the time you read this article, hundreds of thousands of children will have gathered in the nation’s capitals and regional cities. There is bound to be a bit of bad language, amusing and sometimes rude placards and a bit of good-natured hoppo-bumpo with the rozzers.
We shouldn’t be too bothered about this either. It is the job of youth to mock authority. Indeed, if they didn’t do it, I’d be worried. I would fear the generation, sometimes called the i-Generation but more properly referred to as millennials, were nothing more than a race of sullen automatons staring at their phones. That they are to a degree politically active and informed is cause for celebration not condemnation.
A month ago, we had actual Nazis congregating on St Kilda Beach. At the time, I heard no apocalyptic predictions from the commentariat. Indeed, the general view then was that these people, appalling as they are, were entitled to congregate, meander about menacingly and generally be as awful as they possibly can be.
And that view is the correct one. Again, you don’t have to like it, but you should respect it.
By comparison with that ugly little episode, the climate rallies held today will be a walk in the park.
Take a packed lunch, kids. Drink plenty of water. Pack a jumper. Don’t catch a chill. Enjoy your freedoms. Have your say. Oh, and apply sun block. The sun’s a killer these days.
This column was first published in The Australian on 15 March, 2019.
More madness, this time in Utrecht.
Indeed.
JTI,
Freedom of association is fine.
Having an opinion is fine.
A strike is a withdrawal of paid labour; attending school is a privilege and a legal obligation (assuming the kid is under the legal age – as is certainly the case of the ubiquitous 10 year old).
Whatever the cause, the opinion of a 10 year old is just that – and using kids of that age is not much better than Palestinians putting kids at the front of violent protests or as suicide bombers.
As you noted elsewhere, they are protected at law in many respects (consent to sex, liability for criminal acts – or acts which would be criminal if committed by adults etc).
What is far more important than a kid having a passionate opinion is the education (as opposed to indoctrination) of the kid with the tools of analysis. Just how many of those protesting understood cost benefit analysis, much less applying it to the problem at hand?
I accept it is not easy-particularly as most of their teachers (and parents) are not capable of doing more than mouthing slogans – much less imparting the educational tool to the kids but that is what education should be about : give the kids the analytical tools and teach them how to use it to make their own decisions in time (and decisions that may change).
Further the persons paying for the kids’ education are typically the combination of parents and taxpayer: I certainly was not consulted or offered a rebate on my taxation contribution!
The individual issue of protest is not relevant (except to those indoctrinated or indoctrinating) – but the principle is.
Wars were fought over taxation without representation. Perhaps an exercise in reductio ad absurdum but in my old age I am getting closer to no representation without taxation!!!!
I would have had more sympathy for schedulng a compulsory essay on comparing and contrasting the arguments for and against abatement including costs (and noting that airconditioning, transport and their electronic devices are paid for with the proceeds of mining while kids in other parts of the world are deprived of all of the above and the opportunity to go to school!).
It doesn’t mean I won’t listen to a kid or respect a well presented argument but right to strike for a student: c’mon it is just a potential student free day for teachers together with more largely uninformed virtue-signalling.
Note I wouldn’t support a strike – except maybe in class from a particular teacher’s prescriptive pedagoguery – even in support of free speech 🙂 but my contrariness is legendary.
cheers
I don’t buy the indoctrination argument. I have personal experience of 16-year-olds and they don’t much like to be told what to do and even less of what to think buy adults in general. In any event it is a pretty grim view of youth, that they are incapable of forming a view without being told what to think.
Hear hear JTI hear hear
Clearly the kids are a lot more savvy to the dangers we face than you are. But then they will be the ones bearing the brunt wont they?
With 95% of the old ice lost in the Arctic in just the last 30 years, you seem to be shockingly oblivious. Unbelievable!
Wow, you are so far out of touch its scary. I would like to take you camping with a bunch of my ‘younger’ associates. They would eat you, your politics, and your sad reasoning that they dont have minds of their own, alive before sunup. You really have no idea at all what young people are truly like.
Do you watch from a distance all afraid? lol
Best thing is most of those 17 and 18 year olds will be voting soon. (ten year olds? where were you looking lol).
Here’s a bet , most of those people you ignorantly label as unknowing wont vote for your dinosaurs like the creepy christian scomo.
You are all beasts of the past, you just dont know it yet. How sad, too bad. Here, I’ll put Perry Como on the record player for you, its almost time for your grandpa nap.
.
ps. Do you get what I did there? Its really awful when someone just disrespects you because of your age, or in your case, I belittle you by alluding to your approaching senility. Not nice is it? The younger people deserve respect too. Their thoughts matter. tsk tsk
Congratulations, your combination of an inability to read and /or comprehend combined with personal abuse will see me depart.
I don’t engage even with people like Darren unless I am paid to do so; I see no reason to waste time on ill-humoured people like you & Dismayed.
Pity as I met some nice people her – and reacquainted myself with another…
Abuse and echochambers appear so much more conducive to some.
Well, your analogising kids being used as suicide bombers and kids being “used” to protest in their own interests is more than somewhat liable to set some people off Voltaire. Times are changing rapidly as catastrophe looms and some might find your polemic just as offensive as the responses.
To quote my uncle Fabian Baptiste/Lautrec in a recent debate on climate change, responding to “……….. there is no need for abuse,”
“Au contraire, the time for abuse is well overdue. The question is, is it time for the pitchforks?”
Dont bring me into your whingeing and whining and blaming of others due to your inability to engage with those that are not obsequious to your remarks. Weak effort. take your tissues with you and hold yourself responsible instead of looking for excuses and others to blame.
Yes, the kids were all primed up with ‘moralis certitudo’ when they hit the streets last Friday brandishing their banners, batons and baseball caps, and pumped to the gills with intuitive probability sufficient for action on climate change, but short on absolute certainty.
There was no hint of philosophical scepticism on display as they unwittingly embraced the epistemological argument that belief does not have to justify an assertion of knowledge (or lack thereof). They had no doubt been well briefed on the conundrum of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics where mathematical certainty and inadequacy of evidence are juxtaposed.
Yes, an absolute bounty of blissful ignorance.
Oh to be so young again!
You selfish old dufferss are just plain wilfully idiotic! Hypnotised by the garbage dispensed by the AGW denying bitches for the fossil fuel industry. Blissful ignorance is right where you are at.
True. You probably wrote simple English back then.
shush carl my arthritis is killing me today
I think that many are not so much resorting to ‘moralis certitudo’ as to the precautionary principle, CotC. Similarly, it may well be that some are acting in blissful ignorance, but I suspect many others are not.
Frankly, I would prefer to see young people with some passion rather, than a bland determination to be corporate lawyers or accountants.
NFY, I would much rather prefer to see those who are largely responsible for educating the “young people”, especially in science, reading and maths, to concentrate on lifting their UNICEF report card score for performance much higher up the table than where they presently sit at 39 out of 41 nations.
Fantastic piece JTI and I wholeheartedly agree.
Around the world in over 90 countries there was over 150,000 youngsters taking it to the streets & that’s inspirational!
I’d like to give them all a big collective hug for taking action when zero action is being taken by the ‘adults’ to even attempt to address the threat to their futures. They’re learning the science & the inevitable consequences of ignoring the signs, so if this was the only way for our youngest generation to be heard, then I absolutely respect that.
Justifiably they just need long-term safety as they already know climate change will impact them the most, the very people who have contributed the least to the situation.
“We’re fighting for our lives.” 💚
Great sentiments Bella. Tragically we’ve thrown the kids under the bus .
Theres no getting out of this . I find it hard to believe how quickly the situation has gone to s&%t. . Until five years ago I thought it would be a hundred years before we lost so much ice , in retrospect it’s pretty obvious that all that heat was going into the oceans.
I’ve given up guilt at not having tried harder by dedicating my life to raising awareness. It wouldn’t have made any difference at all getting between a dog and its bone.
As McPherson says, “we were born into captivity.” I would add, as a consequence we were born into stupidity, most of us will live and die and never realise it.
But hey! Give ’em heaps anyway.
Yairs, in retrospect a lot of things are pretty obvious. In just 5 years you realised how wrong you got it, what will you be spruiking in 2024? With that sort of guesswork no wonder you don’t make any difference. And you find it hard to believe…???
Take up fishing, Jean the times will suit you (and you won’t even have to cook ém!).
Yes, I got it wrong. I hopelessly underestimate the impact on the ice.
It is far far worse than I thought it would be. And a year or so ago I thought or hoped we had twenty years left, and it looks like I’m wrong there too.
In 2024 if we are still here I will be spruiking “I told you so you bloody morons ……………. ” and quoting Einstein. “There are only two things that are infinite, human stupidity and the universe………………………… ”
I don’t think you will be spruiking much at all in 2024 Milton, realisation will have been thrust upon you and you’re not going to like it.
It’s so simple to understand Milton if only you would stop digging for a denier angle & just listen to the scientific consensus.
97% of intelligent scientists, who have studied the facts & figures for their entire careers, say we are in serious trouble of our own making.
I’m not willing to blithely dismiss their findings on the limits of human survivability if our polar ice caps completely melt.
There’s no putting them back. Do you get that?
Exactly how many extreme weather events will it take across the globe for those who refuse to give credibility to the science, to stop this bizarre obfuscating over what you can’t bear to believe? Do the fires followed by snow then floods, droughts & earthquakes etc etc not ring any warning bells? Science confirmed that mass extinctions happen & they have happened because something tipped the scales.
There’s no dealing with politicians or corporations who profit from fossil-fuels because they don’t have the decency to give a rats a**e about my son & his young family having any kind of future on the unliveable planet they wilfully destroyed.
Fair enough, Bella. How’s your carbon footprint?
http://theconversation.com/its-time-to-wake-up-to-the-devastating-impact-flying-has-on-the-environment-70953
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMGXp4Mt-Ec
“When asked about hashtag climatestrike, Bill Shorten had five bob each way, as Bill is prone to do.”
“Kids are allowed to have opinions,” he said yesterday. But there was a caveat. There always is with Bill. “In an ideal world, they would protest after school hours and on weekends.”
Why does this not surprise me Mr. Insider, our “PM In Waiting” God save us all.
As for Nazi’s I didn’t know we still had them in Australia.
Have they not heard as yet that Adolf is dead?
I do remember a total fool called Ross May in Sydney who called himself a “Nazi” but he was 19 shillings short of the full Pound.
Great read as always, Mr. Insider, bless the Schoolkids of today.
Millions of people worldwide, over 1.5 million people in Australia yet we still have the old mostly white males claiming it is some sort of UN or green, left wing, hipster latte sipping gay muslim or some other group conspiracy. We hear members of the Australian Government daily using terms like those above, latte sippers, inner city hipsters, lifter and leaner’s, enterprising and envious etc etc, this ever lurching to the right coalition in their efforts to save a handful full of seats in QLD are prepared to burn the Nation to the ground.
Just as the coalition use race based politics to incite fear, division and hatred they deliberately run misinformation campaigns on climate science to push their toxic ideals.
pathetic, no surprises, historical evidence
I love the kids expressing their viewpoint as I was encouraged to do from the age of about 12, back in the sixties in the UK. And express it I most certainly did. On coming here in 1969 I was surprised at the docile political attitudes. In 1972 during the “It’s Time” I supported Gough and my desk was shifted to the back corner of the office. I also told, in1996, a very powerful trade union leader when he said it was back to the fifties, I replied “Yeah the 1750s!” So I say to those kids this week “Keep the faith, kids, you’ll be voters next election!
I object to children being used by adults for political purposes no matter what the cause is. If this was some students actually organizing this, I might be fine–but we know this wasn’t a grass roots exercise.
I want no children holding up signs about beheading people who blaspheme Allah. No children outside abortion clinics with pro or anti signs, and no children with signs blaming the PM for climate change.
A 14 yr old kid was the originator. Perhaps you no longer have the ability to learn or choose not to. The youth still want to learn and are teaching the avaricious bboomer generation what it is to benevolent. .
Political purposes! WTF. These are intelligent young people protesting against lack of action on what is clearly an impending catastrophe. Who else is going to do it? The supposed wise older generations have done SFA, worse, much worse than useless prevaricators and deniers.
“I want no children holding up signs………………….. ” Really who the %&$% are you that what “you” want has any weight? What you dont want is having to face up to the reality that happened on our watch. What you want or dont want is now irrelevant. Boo hoo ! Get used to it , you aint seen nothing yet.
You keep saying children like they were all toddlers. The majority of those ‘children’ were near voting age adults. Look out, your are being so offensive, I cant tell you, how dare you say they dont have the right to express their opinions.
To equate this with heinous parents using their kids to hold up beheading signs. Wow, just, wow.
Join the other ignorant ‘old farts’ on the bench. Your pampers and a dressy gown are on the way!
I heard of one school whose kids went on strike and not only had a walk in the park but also collected litter. Well done.
The first Earth Day in 1970 we went on a school-sanctioned clean up led by our Junior High science teacher and we cleaned rubbish (and a large snapping turtle) out of a local creek. Our science teacher–a hippy-type from San Francisco with a by-God VW microbus–got us to actually do things, not just shout meaningless slogans. Now there’s a lesson for these kids.
Right on Dwight! Of course the slogans are meaningless to you. But yes, clean the rubbish and a Snapping Turtle out of the local creek you little snots and shut the %&$# up! How dare you put your survival before our fat energy portfolios you selfish little sods!
There’s a bit of the Walter Mitty retrospective about you too I think Dwight.
If they were picking up litter, it shows who they really are Milton, just good young people concerned for their own futures.
You’d be amazed to see how many kids come to our Marine Debris clean-up days around this country. I’ve seen primary school children excited to play a role in clearing our beaches of discarded rubbish, from plastic bottles & straws to fishing lines to cigarette butts & other washed in garbage that fills our oceans.
These gloved-up little champions are as dedicated as anyone else so you can’t tell me they don’t get that human-beings have wrecked their environment. Todays teens are more switched-on to everything including catastrophic global events via the internet so it’s entirely possible they know more about CC than any armchair warrior ever will.
I hope you realised that I was supportive of these kids. And as I have a 13 yr old and a 19 yr old I’m pretty switched on to the abilities and strengths of kids. Heaven forbid but the eldest doesn’t even believe in God and he’s too fit and muscly for me to belt some faith/sense into him! For what it’s worth the school I mentioned was where the kids went when younger. It’s an independent, progressive, no fixed seating, no bells, no uniforms etc, “child centred” type place – ie blood expensive and a little too left leaning for my taste! But our kids are sports minded and academic geniuses (veritable renaissance types) and for the parents they had a better class of wine/beer and a nibbles platter to die for!