Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A hilarious week in Australia politics, during which acting PM Michael McCormack has labeled the Aussie Greens leader a “traitor to Australia”, because the green leader wrote to foreign governments dissing the climate credentials the new Aussie OECD head Mathias Cormann.
When Aussie PM travelled to England to meet with G7 leaders, he left National Party leader Michael McCormack in charge. McCormack, an open climate skeptic, is not pulling any punches.
Another hilarious McCormack moment, responding to idiot suggestions to “re-home” the mice plague currently afflicting rural New South Wales and Victoria;
Why is Australia experiencing a mice plague? Mostly its due to Australia’s unstable rainfall – when the rains fall over the desert, thousands of square miles of desert suddenly bloom and produce seed, resulting in a population explosion. But there may be other factors. The last decade or more Australian authorities have waged war against feral cats, even considering deploying deadly robot killing machines to attack feral cats with poison sprays.
I’m guessing the campaign against feral cats has successfully thinned their numbers – with the predictable consequence that there are fewer feral cats to temper our periodic mice plagues.
Will McCormack ever be our full time Prime Minister? Sadly, entertaining as this week has been, it is unlikely McCormack will ever become our full time Prime Minister. As leader of the Nationals, a party with a mostly rural voter base, the National Party is unlikely in the foreseeable future to muster the numbers required to become the majority partner in the ruling federal coalition. But it sure is fun to watch when McCormack or another climate skeptic member of his party is left in charge.
I would love to see Craig Kelly or Malcolm Roberts at the helm.
As for the insane green suggestions of catch and release, perhaps the mice need to be released in to the offices of all Green MPs and in to the trendy suburbs with heavy Green voter infestations.
Yeah, but he’s only taken this position now because he’s afraid of a challenge for the Nationals leadership from a former leader who has been a climate sceptic for a lot longer.
We’ll take a win anyway it comes!
And he’s just been rolled by Barnaby Joyce. An even more conservative voice than McCormack.
” the green leader wrote to foreign governments dissing the climate credentials the new Aussie OECD head Mathias Cormann”
And indeed he had seemed to be a rockribbed sceptic. But Adam can be assured that this is no more:
“I am absolutely committed to ambitious and effective action on climate change. The challenge in Australia, and globally, is not about whether to address climate change, but how this is done in an effective and least [costly] way.”
I guess hell froze over.
Bandt, like Loydo, are uninformed.
It’s poli speak … The play in that is he knows there is no effective and least costly way. So now he gets to object without being labelled as a skeptic and you and Nick just fell for it 🙂
Indeed. In February 2020, Cormann accused the Labor party of making “extremist pronouncements” pledging to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Now, in June 2021,
‘Former finance minister Mathias Cormann has called on the world’s richest nations to develop an “ambitious and effective” plan to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in his first speech as head of the OECD’. (Sydney Morning Herald 2 June 2021).
Looking at Cormann’s actual words when he was in parliament, his main thrust was to attack the Opposition, leaving a degree of ambiguity about his own thoughts on climate.
Anyway, perhaps we just need to get Michael McCormack a new job, maybe with the Greens, and he will publicly change his tune too!
Do we ever know what politicians really think, or is everything they say purely to attack their opponents in order to get their base to keep voting for them? Or, as in the case of Cormann, to keep on side with their new bosses?
Plenty of sceptics out there. Scomo is no doubt one of them as well. But the immediate political considerations will override scepticism considering all the machinations required to survive in the ridiculous world we find ourselves in. You can only afford to talk like Bandt when you are the irrelevant little worm that he is.
Put another way, your comment is rather feeble and meaningless.
Sadly, the left of the Liberal Party are starting to gnaw at Morrison and I think he’ll start to bend.
But now with Barnaby Joyce back as Nationals leader, we may get relief from that?
Nick, the coalition position is technological advance will deliver zero emissions, without needing to impose carbon taxes or other coercive measures. This is consistent with the green position that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, which implies the required technological advances are already here.
Celebrate, you won dude ;-).
Oh, but Nick can’t wait, he’s old already
CSRO and cane toad?
his out there
effective and least costly
ie its NOT effective and will cost a motza, therefore allowing the loophole
time to let people see it wont work
Greens are just communists in disguise, and Adam Brandt fancies himself the new Trotsky.
Are there ice picks in Hell when it freezes over?
Maybe some of them are just commies in disguise, but at least they have a fixed vision and a burning religious fervour to force their medicine down our throats, for our own good, of course. With such pure and altruistic motives, how dare we complain about the pain?
An environmentalist is a totalitarian socialist whose real objective is to revive socialism and economic central planning under the subterfuge of “saving the planet” from capitalism. He is “green” on the outside, but red on the inside, and is hence appropriately labeled a “watermelon.”
Nick, he’s a politician who knows he’ll be “cancelled” by the Green Stasi if he doesn’t trot out some guff about global warming, ooops, climate change, double oops, climate chaos.
But notice he qualifies the green guff with the phrase “least costly way” i.e. let’s toss the green mafia a carrot, but don’t waste too many dollars on it.
If he is that flexible, how can you believe what he said before?
He’s a politician like ALL the others. ‘Nuff said.
He’s a politician, hence I won’t believe a word he says.
Stop reading the guardian rubbish.
Adam Bandt’s PhD thesis was on Marxism, a form of communism
He also had it suppressed by the courts from publication for 3 years. – stating it “may affected his chances of employment and a career”
And yes – he’s a Marxist dog – – – – – The tree-hugging greenies movement got hijacked by the Communists years ago.
“Stop reading the guardian rubbish.”
So do you dispute that he actually said that? The Oz quoted him too; I cited the Guardian because paywall.
An environmentalist is a totalitarian socialist whose real objective is to revive socialism and economic central planning under the subterfuge of “saving the planet” from capitalism. He is “green” on the outside, but red on the inside, and is hence appropriately labeled a “watermelon.”
I love Adam Bandt he is single handed destroying the greens and giving us a lot of humour along the way.
Agreed.Bandt is an asset to fossil fuel industry.He says the most inane things that his Green Party members must squirm.The coal workers feel a lot more secure with him there.
Their vote has not moved past ~ 10% in the 40 years they’ve been campaigning.
They are the party for students and other such folk whose brains are awaiting development.
Numbers of feral cats has no effect on a mouse plague, it is impossible for cats to curtail numbers due to the crazy breeding frenzy. Cats have been seen sitting still with mice running around them as they have no desire to attack any more due to the abundance of the rodents.
There have been numerous plagues in the past prior to feral cat controls. Feral cat programs have more to do with prevention of harm to native fauna populations such as birds and small mammals.
Amazing however is our local PETA organisation screeched for the humane control of the mice numbers with suggestions to relocate them to ‘other areas’ away from farmers crops. Unbelievable niavety and stupidity.
Co-opting PETA and providing them with funding to conduct a pilot project might be an amusing diversion ?
Providing that peta proves their concept using peta properties, including properties of their members.
Seeing the mouse living carpets makes me glad the mice don’t have a taste for flesh, just yet anyway. Apparently they do occasionally eat other mice. Dad’s mates used to farm in Victoria and in the 80s they called the plagues “velvet roads”. Cats could eat their fill and murder as many as they liked but it wouldn’t make a dent.
On the upside, surely the natural predators like owls and snakes would be having a fun time
Rats typically enjoy populations booms when mice increase.
Different than mice, rats eagerly eat meat.
Back when I was young on a farm, we trapped rats.
Typically, the only part of the rat left within hours of getting caught, was a thin strip of skin underneath the trap’s bar.
Rats will also eat any mice they catch, especially mice nests and mice babies.
Rats are readily eaten in China and baby mice are sometimes eaten alive as a delicacy that is supposedly good for one’s health.
Like so many issues, potential solutions are thwarted by problems of logistics.
Are you saying that Australia should bring in more Chinese to deal with the rodent problem … ? … or do you propose they send the rodents to China along with the coal?
Quite possibly the thining of feral cats had no effect. But thinning a predator can’t exactly be beneficial to keeping the prey under control. I guess we’ll never know – its unlikely we will ever hear about any evidence that culling cats does exacerbates mice plagues, if such evidence exists..
If the mice could be relocated, then why not the cats to the same location?
“There have been numerous plagues in the past prior to feral cat controls. Feral cat programs have more to do with prevention of harm to native fauna populations such as birds and small mammals.”
Small mammals like rodents?
Rodents will be part of their diet, but mice can massively outbreed cats.
Feral placentals have a far higher reproduction rate than native marsupials in the same ecological niche, with multiple births. short gestation periods and more pregnancies per annum.
As a result, rodents have a strong representation in the small granivore/insectivore space, feral cats have all but taken over the small carnivore space and feral dogs displaced the native mainland medium carnivores thousands of years ago.
In years when there isn’t a mouse plague (ie most years), feral cats, by dint of population, wreak a terrible toll on birds and small native animals.
Australia’s native fauna including marsupial rodents is quite unique unlike introduced species and under threat from feral cats and dogs. Attempting to control them in such a vast continent as Australia is quite a task especially when such introduced rodent plagues occur.
Relocate the cute little things far from the food source so they can starve in peaceful dignity out of sight, and simultaneously make room for millions more to breed here. PETA compassion and common sense knows no bounds.
Moving mice to browner pastures is just a pilot program before they move on to the humans who pay taxes. Greens will protect the unproductive unto death.
Maybe relocate them to the local PETA headquarters?
I disagree with Eric Worrall’s assessment of Mr McCormack’s ‘positioning’ here: The Leader of the Nationals is stupid and unfit for leadership for his – in political effect – promoting the harmful extremists of the left by naming them. [His naming them consolidates their support in their ‘blue ribbon’ electorates, and strengthens their vital Senate potency .] His mistake may be driven by the fact that his own position on “climate” is pathetically compromised. Mr McCormack demonstrates that he has zero capacity for effective communication where it counts. Real leadership in the Australian democratic electoral environment requires spokesmen and spokeswomen to present – persistently and emphatically – their own policies and concrete accomplishments. And Barnaby Joyce – regardless of his policy positions – is widely thought to be the best “retail” politician in the country. [And the Nationals’ blocking of Barnaby’s return to leadership would simply confirm the Nationals’ self-inflicted irrelevance to Government policy formation.]
I met him once, in person I thought McCormack was a dick. But this week’s parliament has provided a lot of entertainment value – Bandt practically had steam coming out of his ears 🙂
Many thanks for this response, Eric. Re ” … in person I thought McCormack was a dick” : Sadly, his quality is common in our most powerful institutions.
Doubt on the cat front.
Mouse plagues have been a feature of Australia since colonisation
Ah the law of unintended consequences.
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/french/unintconseq.html
“Why is Australia experiencing a mice plague?”
Import cane toads, cats, rabbits…oh wait! The gestation period of a mouse is about 3 weeks. If there is plenty of food and water, you get a “plague”.
Introduced species with no, natural, predator, you get a “plague”. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done bar starving them of food and water.
It’s like “leavers” on steroids. 😉
…. and foxes.
This is great and all, but the problem is that this guy is seen to be an extreme “denier”, yet he still skirts along the line that CO2 drives climate. None of these people have a clue about the physical world and science. They are lawyers and real estate agents. They have big mouths but can’t make fire.
culling feral cats has ZERO to with bloody mice!
good harvests grain on paddocks left and large on ground storage all help feed the little sods
and they breed fast and in great numbers
having lived through 12mths + of a plague in SA in 93 I am amused that now its a mental health and much concern scenario
back then? no one much gave a damn except for crop losses
we just had to learn to sleep in the daytime and stay awake bashing mice all night for the duration
the health issues lost food etc were NOT even mentioned
That the ‘angry little green man’ had to keep looking at his notes is all you need to know………
I refuse to take anything PETA says seriously unless they are also having a topless protest.
Then I still refuse to take them seriously, but at least watch… for… ummm… science.
As an outside observer (living here in the UK), that Green MP looks like a solid gold twat. Where did he get that ridiculous 4 degrees number from? He’s just as daft as our resident Green loonie MP here in the UK, Caroline Lucas. Laughing at Caroline has become a national sport.
Not to worry. I’m sure Australia’s predatory animals, e.g. snakes, ‘Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii)’, crocodiles, monitor lizards and all sorts of predatory birds will respond with population booms.
I understand the common brown snake loves mice.
Maybe, Australia can employ the greens and eco-loons to track predator/mice populations, that is, first hand field research?
You funny person, greens don’t like venturing into nature. If they did, they wouldn’t live in the middle of big cities like Melbourne.
I hate mice. They are nothing but little walking toxic waste dumps. Show them no mercy!
Mice? Cane toads? Rabbits? Cats? At least the ‘Roos are native. Now it’s climate they are trying to control? You’d think they would learn their lesson by now about messing with nature.
Here is a well done video made by Sky News Australia which makes salient points in the argument against CO2 driving warming. Morner and a few others are in this interview. … https://www.youtube.com/user/SkyNewsAustralia/videos
This is great to see as this is a major news site for Australia, meaning that a good number of citizens can listen to the arguments being made.
Nothing to see here. Mice plagues are cyclical.
“Will McCormack ever be our full time Prime Minister? Sadly, entertaining as this week has been, it is unlikely McCormack will ever become our full time Prime Minister. As leader of the Nationals…”
Well, that didn’t last long
#DillSpill
The ABC😂😂
Are you saying that McCormack is still leader?
Would be the most profound thing I’ve ever heard come out of McCormacks mouth.Take a bow sir.
It’s not impossible. Australia is still the only country to actually lose a Prime Minister. It could happen again….