An Open Letter to Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia
Editor’s Note:
Scott Morrison, first elected to Parliament in 2007, became the 30th Prime Minister of Australia on 24 August 2018, following two “backbencher coup” attempts to oust Malcolm Turnbull, the first of which failed. Neither attempt was instigated by Morrison. He now leads the Liberal Party of Australia, which represents the conservative side of Australian politics. The party has two main factions, one with a centre-left agenda bowing heavily to political winds of the time, and the centre-right. Turnbull was centre-left; the instigator of the coup (Peter Dutton), was fired up by the political right, and Morrison became the compromise candidate who becalmed both sides.
The next federal election will be held on 18 May 2019.
The Hon Scott Morrison
MP for Cook, NSW
Prime Minister
Dear Mr. Morrison,
I reside in your electorate of Cook. However, my letter to you is not about local matters, but about a strategy to counter the intrusion of postmodernist philosophy into politics, which has forced you and your colleagues into appeasement and dog-whistle tactics.
The party’s actions and founding documents contradict each other. This departure of action from mission is happening across many fronts.
Such a retreat is a grave error that will permanently damage your and your party’s credibility. With many voters, this has already occurred; your party’s membership numbers are on a steep decline. I believe this is because the party’s actions and founding documents contradict each other. This departure of action from mission is happening across many fronts, but here I use ‘climate change’ as one illustration.
In its foundational document, the Liberal Party expresses a classical liberal agenda:
“We believe:
“In the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples; and we work towards a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative.
“In those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy – the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association.
“That, wherever possible, government should not compete with an efficient private sector; and that businesses and individuals – not government – are the true creators of wealth and employment.
“In short, we simply believe in individual freedom and free enterprise; and if you share this belief, then ours is the Party for you.”
Wonderful words, and occasionally they’ve been echoes in excellent rhetoric such as your coal-o-phobia speech in Parliament when you were the Treasurer. That, together with your choice of Angus Taylor (who has expressed similar sentiments) as Energy Minister, suggests that you are sceptical of claims that fossil fuel usage is alarmingly warming the planet.
You should be encouraged by the news that President Trump proposes to form a Commission on Climate Security. You would be aware that several pro-science organisations have expressed strong support for this initiative.
I quote from their letter to the US president:
“In our view, an independent review of these reports [official reports relating to climate] is long overdue. Serious problems and shortcomings have been raised repeatedly in the past by highly-qualified scientists only to be ignored or dismissed by the federal agencies in charge of producing the reports. Among major issues that have been raised and that we hope the commission will scrutinize: the models used have assumed climate sensitivities to CO2 concentrations significantly higher than recent research warrants; the models used have predicted much more warming than has actually occurred; predictions of the negative impacts of global warming have been made based on implausible high-end emissions scenarios; the positive impacts of warming have been ignored or minimized; and surface temperature data sets have been manipulated to show more rapid warming than has actually occurred.”
“The conclusions and predictions made by these reports are the basis for proposed energy policies that could cost trillions of dollars in less than a decade and tens of trillions of dollars over several decades. Given the magnitude of the potential costs involved, we think that taking the insular processes of official, consensus science on trust, as has been the case for the past three decades, is negligent and imprudent.”
In other words, these organisations, and the president himself, are well aware that the ‘Deep State’ (the bureaucracy, the media, public universities, most public intellectuals, government agencies including NASA, the CIA, and agencies that track weather) have been working against the Trump Administration to service a New Left narrative that fossil-fuel-based industrial activity is causing immediate, calamitous, and irreversible damage to the earth’s ecosystem.
The strategy I propose for you is to confront the Australian Deep State, and the people, with the unvarnished truth.
Unlike what Col. Jessep says (“You can’t handle the truth”) in A Few Good Men (1992)—the fictional character whose position perhaps you may fathom yourself to be in—the people can handle the truth.
Unlike what Col. Jessep says (“You can’t handle the truth”) in A Few Good Men (1992)—the fictional character whose position perhaps you may fathom yourself to be in—the people can handle the truth. They deserve it, regardless.
Here are the interesting results of a CSIRO survey published in 2015: Among Liberal voters, a full 72% did not believe that human activity is causing climate change. For your Coalition partners, the Nationals, the figure was 78%. Among Labor party voters, 45%, and even among the Greens, 24%, had not bought the story sold by the mainstream media.
Source: ABC, CSIRO
And yet, among the hundred-odd political parties vying for a Senate seat this Federal election, I have heard only two minor party leaders (Senators Bernardi and Hanson) openly express the sceptic view. There may be a few more.
There are three possible explanations for your party’s choice to hide a well-reasoned, forcefully articulated perspective:
- The sceptic view is not shared across the party.
- Fear of the electoral-outcome power of the media.
- Belief that voters will reward for lip service and for keeping the money wastage for appeasement smaller than the opposition’s.
‘Integrity’, it seems, finds a hushed voice mostly in the private, air-conditioned offices of the ‘party room’. For example, former PM Tony Abbott’s quote that “climate change is absolute crap” just crept through to audible, but only inside the party room. Never in public, never when in power, did he take on the real battle. He was too meek, and, much later, when relieved of the need to appease the New Left, the real Abbott surfaced. Now he says:
“In what might be described as Ridley’s paradox … it’s climate change policy that’s doing harm; climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm.”
“A market that’s driven by subsidies rather than by economics always fails. Subsidy begets subsidy until the system collapses into absurdity.”
“We are still sacrificing our industries and our living standards to the climate gods to little more effect.”
That candour got him noticed even in the American heartland.
Yet again, wonderful words, but as prime minister not so long ago, Abbott agreed to waste about $3.2 billion of taxpayer money on ‘absolute crap’ to appease the climate gods with an ‘Emissions Reduction Fund’. He failed to stop or even speak out against the subsidies to the so-called renewables and the compulsion on energy retailers to buy renewable energy, at an arguable cost to the economy in the hundreds of billions. He didn’t even try to close down the government-funded $10 billion ‘Clean Energy Finance Corporation’.
Prime Minister, unlike President Trump’s initiative with respect to the United States, you have not sought to remove Australia from the Kyoto agreement. You now propose to squander another $2 billion in a ‘Climate Solutions Fund’, and ‘allocate’ $1.4 billion of taxpayer money for a new hydro project in Tasmania yet to be identified.
Do you now believe that the private sector is unable to identify an economic hydro-energy investment opportunity? Your party’s stated belief says “… wherever possible, government should not compete with an efficient private sector; and that businesses and individuals – not government – are the true creators of wealth and employment.”
Oh yes, we heard the dog-whistle. The money is only ‘allocated’ as a necessary sacrifice to Lord Gaia at election time and may never be spent.
But the electorate’s ability to detect plain-speak may be much greater than what Canberra assumes it to be.
But the electorate’s ability to detect plain-speak may be much greater than what Canberra assumes it to be. Hence, the bleed of votes you suffer to One Nation. And to the Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers party. Shoot straight if you want to stop the bleeding (pun intended). Leave aside the mix of adulterated opinions within your ‘party’, the CSIRO survey numbers about unconvinced voters should embolden you to tell the absolute truth as you see it. Imagine yourself in the witness box of a courtroom when speaking to the public. Sworn to speak the truth.
“… survey numbers about unconvinced voters should embolden you to tell the absolute truth as you see it.
A non-invasive first step might be to announce the right person to a newly created post of ‘Chief Climate Scientist’, say, someone like Ian Plimer. And back it up with the intent to form a panel of relevant scientists unprejudiced by the government-research-fund bias. And promise to the electorate in this campaign that your party, if re-elected to power, will heed the recommendations of this panel.
I take it that you are familiar with how the climate religion has long since jettisoned any modicum of science it may once have represented. For your colleagues who are not fully up to speed, I recommend Greenpeace-founder-turned-whistle-blower Dr Patrick Moore’s devastating critique in this short video; I did have the pleasure of interviewing him (refer transcript). The Australian website Galileo Movement is also another excellent source.
Perhaps the Berejiklian victory in NSW and the One Nation NRA scandal has encouraged you to ponder that a ‘centrist reflector of an amalgam of views’ could now win The Lodge.
In a battle between truth and falsehood, there’s no middle ground—the half-truth is a lie.
It’s possible, Prime Minister, but, in a battle between truth and falsehood, there’s no middle ground—the half-truth is a lie.
Power resides, not in Canberra, but in ideas that shape a culture. Doctrines and perspectives arise in universities, percolate through to schools and the media, and infuse the day-to-day discussions of the citizenry. As long as the whole education sector is free to discuss any and every wicked notion, an entire generation won’t come of voting age, indoctrinated into a false ideology. You justly criticised the schoolchildren on strike who were missing classes to protest against ‘climate change’. Now this may be your last opportunity to win by openly confronting the forces of Postmodernism aligned against Western Civilization—see, for example, It’s Time to Confront the Climate Racket Head-On.
You deserve our sympathy for having been blindsided by your own Deep State.
For example, recently, the publicly-funded James Cook University sacked Professor Peter Ridd for expressing a view exposing the nature of postmodernist ‘activist’ science. Ridd sought redress in court. Reportedly, government-owned media (ABC and SBS) were conspicuously absent at Ridd’s trial. The whole time. Imagine their ‘shock and horror’ coverage if a professor had instead been fired for stating that human activity causes harm to the Great Barrier Reef.
Postmodernist views are glorified, opposing speech suffers ridicule, or intellectual exile, academic freedom is trashed, while the party in power keeps enshrined the words “freedom of speech”—but only on paper. That’s why, Prime Minister, I’m taking the liberty of making this an ‘open letter’. Because this struggle for retaining, dare I say, re-creating, a seat of Western Civilization on Earth, is global.
The world is watching: Your actions. Not your words.
Vinay Kolhatkar
Sydney, Australia
5 April, 2019
About the Author: Vinay Kolhatkar
« How Keynes Put a Ticking Time Bomb Under Capitalism The Times Labels Corporate Climate Deniers Psychopaths and Murderers »
