Australian Services Union leader Sally McManus has compiled a list of or other attacks on Australians by the Abbott government since the federal election.
Prominent on the list are attacks on refugee rights, workers' rights, public services and the environment.
They include: abolition of the Climate Commission, abolition of the High Speed Rail Advisory Group and formal attempts to wind back the world heritage listing of Tasmania's forests.
The Environmental Defenders Office has been defunded and federal environmental law has been weakened.
At the same time, the Abbott government has approved Clive Palmer's 鈥渕ega coalmine鈥 in the Galilee Basin, which seriously threatens the Great Barrier Reef. Linked to this, the government has also approved the largest coal port in the world, which is in the Great Barrier Reef Heritage Area.
Taken as a whole, these decisions represent a conscious refusal to take the threat of catastrophic runaway climate change seriously. This should be a concern for all as since records began. At a global level, it was the since records began and the 37th consecutive year above the 20th century average.
Heatwaves in most states are a reminder that this problem is real and not going to go away by itself.
This raises the question: is it too late to change? Complex system researcher Brad Werner addressed this question in an academic paper: at the American Geophysical Union meeting in December, 2012.
鈥淭he bulk of Werner鈥檚 talk, as it turned out, was not profane or prophetic but was a fairly technical discussion of a 鈥榩reliminary agent-based numerical model鈥 of 鈥榗oupled human-environmental systems',鈥 ThinkProgress.org reported.
鈥淎ctive resistance by concerned groups of citizens, analogous to the anti-slavery and civil rights movements of the past, is one of the features of the planetary system that plays an important role in his model ... if you鈥檙e interested in averting the scenario in which the Earth is f**ked 鈥 then, Werner鈥檚 model implied, resistance is the best and probably only hope. Every other element 鈥 environmental regulation, even science 鈥 is too embedded in the dominant economic system.''
The Socialist Alliance election campaign for an expected election for the Senate in WA will be conducted in this spirit of popular, grassroots resistance to the capitalist status quo.
We are aiming to 鈥渦pset the apple cart鈥 by calling for the transfer of banks and mines into public ownership. Even with government power, this policy could not be implemented without popular mobilisation at the grassroots level.
But these are exactly the kinds of measures required if we are to take the planet off its current crash course towards oblivion. These measures would go a long way towards breaking the political and economic power of the big corporations and opening up a pathway towards genuine democracy, social justice and environmental reform.
Averting runaway global warming would be reason enough to take this approach but it is worth noting 鈥 as McManus clearly shows 鈥 that Abbott's attacks are not limited to environmental concerns. Likewise, our policy of bringing mines and banks into public ownership is motivated just as much by social justice concerns. It is about transferring wealth, as well as democratic control, from the obscenely rich to the community as a whole.
[Alex Bainbridge is a Socialist Alliance candidate in the expected election for the Senate in WA.]