Voter priorities look bad for environment
From an environmental perspective, the result of the Australia’s Northern Territory election result was immaterial. The two major parties, Labor and the Country Liberal Party (CLP) were in lock-step on economic development at any cost.
The election result was predicated by voters feeling ‘It’s Time’ for a bumbling Labor administration that had appointed three leaders in as many years and concerns for a ballooning post-COVID crime rate and the rising cost of living. Where did concern for the environment play into voter thinking? For the majority, clearly it was of little consequence.
They were offered two parties that were fully paid up subscribers to opening up massive new reserves of NT gas deposits under 28,000 square kilometres of an area known as the Beetaloo Basin and major commitments to the so-called Middle Arm ‘sustainable development precinct’.
The NT government argued the latter will live up to its descriptor, despite hosting gas production, carbon capture and storage, minerals processing and hydrogen production facilities. Let’s hope the government’s faith is not reliant upon commercially unproven, large-scale carbon capture to balance the carbon books.
Further evidence of environmental disregard has been the reckless granting of artesian water licences to cotton developments, including shifting the territory’s Arid Zone boundary a bit further south to dodge the caps applying to arid lands so some developments could unsustainably access more water. You can bet your little cotton socks that these will not be reviewed under an aggressively pro-development CLP government.
The gas developments make a mockery of Australia’s ambitions for net zero by 2050, unless accompanied by some shifty accounting to exclude any emissions derived from burning exported Aussie gas in international client jurisdictions.
Only about 150,000 people vote in the Northern Territory elections, the small volume of constituents lending itself to more dramatic shifts in polling results than those in other Australian states or federally.
Nonetheless, the Tweedledum-Tweedledee economic and environmental policy settings of its two major parties are a warning that climate action and environmental protection have dropped way down the priorities list for voters and, therefore, for governments.
Some have enthusiastically observed that the CLP comes to power with the Northern Territory on the cusp of an economic bonanza as it sets about exploiting its fossil fuel and artesian water reserves.
That may well be, but we should not overlook the fact that the economic gain will be almost exclusively extractive, with the source of wealth pumped from underground at gigalitres per annum. There is no care or pursuit for a nature-neutral, let alone nature-positive outcome from these developments. The NT is being treated as a frontier land offering tantalising wealth to anyone willing to exploit its natural assets unconstrained.
The Northern Territory hosts some of the world’s last remaining unspoilt wilderness, including the vast unspoilt temperate forests, grasslands and swamps of Arnhem Land and desert landmarks like Uluru and the Olgas. Unfortunately, as human expansion erodes habitat around the globally, experiences of diminishing wilderness are rapidly becoming a privileged pastime for the well-heeled. A sustainable tourism industry in places like Arnhem Land and Central Australia in lieu of extractive industry can never economically equate. Neither it seems, does the intrinsic value of nature.
Development acolytes will argue that the industrial and agricultural footprint of their future advance is but a small geographical part of the Territory and considerably smaller these natural regions, some of which are protected national parks or under indigenous ownership and management.
But this ignores the impact that these activities will have on the brilliantly evolved interdependencies between the NT’s vast wilderness and the dynamic water flows, above and below ground. The Aussie flora and fauna that have evolved over millennia to populate the Northern Territory are now facing a powerful new competitor for their life sustaining water and minerals - human economic ambition.
It is likely that the forthcoming Queensland state election will deliver a similar result. This is an Australian state that also hosts some of the nation’s, indeed the world’s most important natural assets, many of which are under pressure from climate change, agricultural land clearing and run-off, urban expansion and natural ecosystems with reduced connection and viability.
At federal level, the Liberal National Party opposition is doing its best to exploit the electorate’s housing and cost of living anxieties, adding its tried and true, spicy overlay of failing national border security and xenophobia. The Labor Government is politically wedged between its environmental ambitions and its commitment to renewable energy and the economic realities that are dominating the political agenda.
It’s a scene being played out across the western world’s leading democracies. Former US President, Donald Trump’s campaign strategy is based on grievance, blaming the nation’s economic ills on ‘them over there’ - refugees, immigrants, globalists, even parasitic allies. It denies ignores or denies the real factor driving inequality - the failure of neo-liberalism and its blind belief in the capacity of markets and human ingenuity to achieve unending economic growth and prosperity and a mythical trickle-down benefit for all.
The fact that pre-election polls in the United States are even close gives reason to pause and reflect on the place for long-term vision, hope and a remodelling of economics to reduce consumption and live within the parameters set by our natural environment and resources. Thankfully, the Harris-Walz ticket is adopting a more optimistic and fairer take on the future, but its resonance remains unknown until November.
The question is: why should politicians in western democracies care about and prioritise the natural environment if the majority of the electorate does not? For many constituents, it is understandably hard to rise above the existential issues of rising cost of living and housing pressures and dealing with social division and crime to form any clear view of what the world’s liveability and quality of life might look like for future generations.
Sadly, they are sustained by the fantasy and false hope cruelly and remorselessly communicated in the narrative of permanent economic growth. In truth, continuous growth is an exponential function and unsustainable within the constraints of the Earth’s resources and capacity.
Unfailingly, we buy into this illusion. By doing so, we are embedding a cabal of political eunuchs, neutered by our inability to aspire beyond the trivial, the expedient and our endless ambition to extract and consume all within our reach.