Simon Copland

On Monday, 120 people converged on the Leard State Forest in North-West New South Wales to block construction work on the proposed Maules Creek Coal Mine. Stationing ourselves at the main entrances of the forest, we – local farmers, traditional owners and other community members,  environmental campaigners, and those concerned about global warming – stopped work on the mine for the day. Five people were arrested,including 75 year old Raymond McLaren, who had never done anything like this in his life. Yesterday, the protest continued, as two activists locked themselves to a gravel truck, halting construction of the rail spur for the new mine.

Responding to the calls of local community members, this weekend was a gathering of people from all around the country to stop this mine. From young to old and coming from cities as far as Adelaide and Brisbane, we came together to protect our environment, our community, and our climate.

If you want to look at one of the dirtiest, and dodgiest projects around, Whitehaven’s Maules Creek Coal Mine would have to be at the top of the list.

Maules Creek is the biggest new coal mine under construction in Australia. The mine would emit the same amount of carbon pollution annually as the entirety of New Zealand. In the aftermath of the extraordinarily early start to the bushfire season in New South Wales, directly linked to global warming, and the horrible typhoon in the Philippines, which has a death toll in the thousands, projects that continue to pollute at a rate such as this should never be allowed to get off the ground.

But it’s worse than that. The Maules Creek project also sits of the Leard State Forest – a public forest that is highly endangered. The Leard State Forest is a Box-Gum Woodland, a critically endangered ecological community, which is home to 34 endangered species. Visiting the forest you can see the diversity of the community, from the thousands of bats that fly through the night, the snakes and lizards, and the koalas who live in the trees. The mine will destroy the homes of these precious animals, decimating one of the last remnants of these forests that we have left.

And there’s more. The mine will also hugely impact the local community. It will drain up to seven metres from the water table in the area – water farmers in the Liverpool Plains need to sustain their crops. When completed it will also spray 18 thousand tonnes of coal dust into the area, landing onto farmland, local towns and the community.

Yet, with each attempt to discuss these values and to reason with the industry and the Government about the problems with this proposal, the community has been ignored. The mine has been approved with construction allowed to go ahead despite accusations that Whitehaven, the proponents of the mine, have failed to respect the cultural heritage of the Gomeroi traditional owners of the land. Construction is going ahead even after claims that Whitehaven used misleading information to get approval for the mine. In fact, the Government is so determined for this mine to proceed they have recently introduced retroactive legislation aimed at blocking any successful court case against its approval.

The Government, and the coal industry, have laid down their cards. Despite the clouds hanging over the mine, the community opposition, and the destruction it will cause, they will push ahead at all costs. All around the country it is the same picture. Successive Governments have shown their hands –  bending over backwards to get coal mining to push through coal mining at all costs. Whether it is in Maules Creek, the Galilee Basin, or many of the other fossil fuel projects in the pipeline, Governments and industry are doing everything they can to push ahead with these projects.

And so the time came. The time to do the difficult things. The time to stand up and say no. The time to stand up and say ‘enough is enough’.

It is unfortunate that it has to come to this, but we have no choice. When the Government fails, as it has so drastically with this mine and with so many other coal and gas mines around the country, it is up for the community to take a stand.

This weekend was a tough one, but an inspirational one too. Together over a hundred people came together in support a community fighting for what is important – our climate, our water, our land and our future. We came together to do what our Governments should have been doing – protecting these values in the face of a mine that shouldn’t go ahead. And whilst we don’t want to be doing this, unless something changes, we will have no choice but to do it again and again.

The Maules Creek Coal Mine cannot, and should not, go ahead. We are determined to make sure it doesn’t. Join us! 

They say it takes time to learn how to be in Government. In turn it takes time to learn how to be in Opposition. If you were to read the polls at the moment, it would be easy to argue that the ALP have learnt how to do opposition much faster than the Coalition have learnt how to do Government.

Polls are now consistently showing the ALP taking the lead against the Coalition, with both Newspoll and Nielson giving them a 52-48 edge against the Government. Given the history of new Governments having strong honeymoon periods, which tend to lead them to polling very strong polling in their first year of Government, this is a remarkable turn around. It is a turn around that puts the ALP quickly into contention for 2016.

I have always believed the ALP have every chance to turn things around in 2016. The Coalition’s victory was one based largely in a vote against the ALP, not in a vote for the new Government. In doing so, the Coalition came in to Government in a very weak position, a position that is being confirmed by new polling trends. Despite this however, two months in, the ALP are getting very lucky. Take a look at the past few months, and in no way are they settling in to opposition.

I mean just look at the two biggest issues of the last couple of months. On the crisis with the Indonesians the ALP has been pathetic at best. When it became known that Australia had spied on Indonesia, the best Opposition Leader Bill Shorten could do was talk about a ‘bipartisan approach’ to the crises to heal the relationship. The ALP has ever since tried to dodge being at all heavily critical against the Coalition on the issue.  And I can understand the concern that because this happened under the ALP’s watch, but in doing so they have failed to kick a massive goal against Tony Abbott. Whilst it was the ALP who did this, it was Abbott’s incompetence that continued the crises – a message that the party could have easily been hammering out every day against the Government.

On the other big test of the Government, climate change, the ALP’s messaging has been convoluted and confused. The party went through a painful process in which no one knew what on Earth its position was going to be, and then when it finally came out with one it included amendments to ‘scrap the tax’ that make their message extremely difficult to consume. The belief seems to be that the ALP needs to ‘remove the noose’ of the carbon tax from its neck, but in doing so it has developed a confused position that looks much more like a political fix than any form of policy coherence. It has continued to succumb to the potential attacks of the Coalition, once again putting itself in the position where it cannot effectively prosecute its position.

Every time they need to take a stand, every time they need to lay into the new Government for their obvious incompetence and radical program, the ALP stammers. It hedges its bets, tries to a find a compromise that ensures they aren’t criticised to heavily, and muddles its way through a weak attack.

And herein lies the problem for the party. The ALP party is not on track for potential success due to an effective turn around into opposition, but rather because of what Tad Tietze has called the ‘auto-unravelling of the right’. The party is in front because the Coalition are losing it. And whilst of course it is still early, if the ALP are not able to fall more comfortably into the role of Opposition soon this could impact both their chances to take hold this lead and take Government back quickly, but more importantly their chances to hold on to Government when they do.

The ALP’s challenge is twofold. They not only need to effectively tackle the incompetence and extreme policies of the Coalition, but they also need to reposition themselves for the future. And that doesn’t mean a repositioning that simply changes some policies, but rather one that changes the shape of their politics – that shelves the failures of the past and presents and new, and fresh alternative. An alternative that effectively challenges the malaise in the current Australian population about politics – a malaise that is following Tony Abbott. The early signs however are not good. The Indonesia saga showed a party unwilling to go on the attack, whilst the ongoing debate on global warming paints a picture of a party that has not learnt from the failure of its past operations.

It’s time for the party to get some mongrel back into them. It’s time to start finally taking some principled stands, to start campaigning for the hearts and souls of all Australians, and to lay into the Coalition where and when they deserve it. And most importantly they need to figure out how to reshape their own politics. If not, they could be giving up their best opportunity to take back Government in the shortest time possible.

This article was originally published on SBS News. Click here to view the original. © All rights reserved.

David Feeney ‏@Feeney4Batman

Liberal- Greens deal to abolish Australia’s debt ceiling? Details to come. There’s a strange political alliance…

As the Greens struck a deal with the Coalition on the debt ceiling last night, ALP members got up to chastise the ‘strange political alliance’. Treasurer Joe Hockey has today had to deny that the Coalition is now ‘married’ to the Greens, whilst Labor members have had a go at both parties for the deal – in particular the Greens for ‘getting in bed with the devil’. Let’s have a look at some more tweets shall we?

Chris Bowen ‏@Bowenchris4h

So when Tony Abbott said he was on a unity ticket, he actually meant with the Greens on debt. #notwhatyouthinkwepromised

Stephen C. ‏@2FBS6h

I see the Greens have had their “Democrats GST” moment…..gone within 5 years. #DebtCeiling

Latika Bourke ‏@latikambourke3m

Labor’s Kelvin Thomson – Libs debt deal w. Greens bit more than a ‘cup of coffee with another man’ – more like ‘candlelit dinner & flowers.’

It’s funny how quickly we forget. So  just to remind us all, lets have a look at some times when the ALP have joined the Coalition on such a ‘unity ticket’.

The vote to pass new asylum seeker legislation, reopening detention centres of Manus Island and Nauru. 

The vote to excise the Australian mainland for asylum seeker purposes. 

The vote to cut funding to single parents. 

The vote to extend the Northern Territory Intervention.

The vote to extend welfare quarantining. 

The vote to block transparency on matters relating to data retention. 

The vote against a bill to require written permission from farmer before coal seam gas exploration and drilling can occur their land. 

And a few oldies but goodies:

The vote on the post-Tampa migration act – the first bill to introduce offshore processing.

The vote to amend the marriage act to ban same-sex marriages.

The vote to pass the 2005 anti-terrorism legislation. 

Now that’s what I call a strange political alliance.

Originally published in SBS News, December 5 2013

It’s the role of government to fund the public school system, not to fund for-profit schools at the expense of the rest of our students, writes Simon Copland.

It’s very hard to say something like this. But here it goes. In all the furore of the last week about education funding, in many ways, Christopher Pyne was right. Well, at least he was half-right. Although the alternative he presented was far worse and the process he ran a complete shambles, he was right in one thing. We should ‘return to the drawing board’ on Gonski.

The Gonski education reforms have been problematic since the start. Announced in April this year, the reforms, based on the Gonski education report, introduced a needs-based system for education funding. In doing so, the reforms guaranteed that all primary schools would receive $9,271 per enrolled student, whilst high-schools received $12,193 per student (with loadings provided to schools in disadvantaged areas). Importantly, this funding is provided no matter what school students attend – public or private. In other words, whilst the money is provided at a system level it has the real potential to act as a voucher system, with money following students depending on which school they attend. If the flow of students continue towards private schools, this could see significant increases in investment in the private system.

As David Zyngier pointed out after the announcement of the Gonski reforms, this has the potential to significantly increase disparity in spending:

While Commonwealth funding for non-government schools rose from around $3.50 for each dollar spent on public schools, to around $5 dollars between 1997 and 2007, in the past decade government funding has increased by 112% to independent schools.

Despite being touted as “school funding reform”, the government’s announcement this week in fact merely maintained the status quo. What was needed was a bolder political ambition for a fairer system, that doesn’t take from the poor to give to the rich.

This is not what a public education system is about. The maths here is relatively simple – if funding continues at this level to private schools then students who have wealthy parents will be getting a ‘top-up’ – a unique opportunity to have a greater educational experience because their parents are wealthy.

The Gonski reforms will continue the flow of public money into private schools – often private schools that are profit-making machines. That will mean more money into the pockets of wealthy school owners and students, money that could and should be spent to make our public system the best it could be.

Public money should be reserved for our public system. Public money should be reserved to make it the best public system possible, so that all kids, no matter what financial position their parents are in, are able to access the best education. And unfortunately, the ongoing pursual of Gonski does not do that – it perpetuates a system of inequality where how much money you have determines the educational outcome of your kids.

That doesn’t mean that Christopher Pyne’s potential alternative was anywhere near good enough for our school system. At one point Pyne suggested that we should return to the shocking socio-economic model of the Howard era, a policy that perpetuated funding inequality in favour of private schools. But a critique of Gonski is surely needed. Hamstrung from the start, the Gonski review provided us with a funding model that has the real potential to significantly increase funding to private schools, in turn creating an long-term gap between public and private performance.

Gonski is better than the Howard model. But it is not a good school funding model. The job of the Government is to fund a first-class public school system, not continue to fund for-profit schools at the expense of the rest of our students.

This article was originally published on SBS News. Click here to view the original. © All rights reserved.

On Monday, British Diver Tom Daley publicly came out to tell the world he was dating a man. Daley has faced persistent rumours that he is gay, and in a Youtube video he declared that he had met a man and started dating him a few months ago.

Note that I didn’t call Daley gay. That’s because, if you watch the video Daley didn’t call himself gay either. In fact, he said that he still ‘fancied girls’. He is just currently dating a guy. Look through most of the coverage though and you wouldn’t have got this message. Most headlines screamed ‘Tom Daley comes out as gay’. Even a piece in Mammamia yesterday, which spoke about how it is important that being gay shouldn’t define who you are, constantly spoke about Daley being gay. The piece, which had the URL ‘Tom Daley, Gay Diver’, even spoke about how he still ‘fancied girls’, and that was a great thing. As the author said:

What’s great is that Tom says he still fancies girls. I think that’s brilliant. Today, it is far more socially acceptable to sit somewhere on the spectrum of sexuality than it ever was. I love that he’s owning that.

It’s amazing how it can be great to be able to ‘sit somewhere on the spectrum of sexuality’, but the moment you start seeing or sleeping with someone of the same sex we have to place the ‘gay’ label onto you. Apparently he ‘sits on a spectrum’, which is great, but that spectrum still only has two labels – gay or straight. Labels such as ‘bisexual’ as rest still apparently impossible to utter.

Tom Daley didn’t come out as gay – not as far as I know. If anything, even though he didn’t use the term himself, he would be identified as ‘bisexual’. And it is about time we stopped ignoring bisexual as a legitimate sexual label. Just because you are a man that has sex with men, doesn’t automatically mean you are gay. Just because you are a woman who has sex with women, doesn’t mean you are automatically lesbian. There are a range of labels people place onto themselves, and all are just as valuable as the binary ‘lesbian/gay’ and ‘straight’ that we are determined to place onto people.

Sexualities are identities more than anything. And bisexuality is a genuine form of sexuality and identity expression. If we want to be excited about people being able to express themselves along the spectrum of sexuality more, then we have to start treating bisexuality as a genuine expression of sexual desires, rather than an ‘aberration’ or ‘confusion’. We have stop automatically applying the ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ label on to people, and instead allow people to identify in their own way.

Tom Daley, as far as I am aware, didn’t come out as gay.

Originally published in SBS News, December 4 2013

After years in opposition, the Coalition knows the attack playbook by heart – and it’s determined to avoid the same tactics being used against it, writes Simon Copland.

In his time as Prime Minister John Howard was known to actively engage in Australia’s History Wars. Coming into office Tony Abbott seems to be taking a leaf from his book. This time however, he’s not trying to re-write the history of the British colonialism, but rather of his own Government.

For example, Mr Abbott recently removed a significant chunk of his most controversial speeches from his website. This includes some of his famous speeches, including ones in which he declared ‘climate change is crap’, that we should simply put a tax on carbon to solve climate change, and a speech in which he declared that abortion was “a question of the mother’s convenience”. In the education sphere, in the lead up to Christopher Pyne’s announcement that we would ‘go back to the drawing board’ on education funding, the Education Department scrapped all references to the Gonski School review on its website. It seems as though Gonski has been officially rubbed from Government records.

The moves are cynical at best, or actively destructive at worst. This is a fundamental attempt to hide from their words of the past, clearly an attempt to avoid any type of “there will be no carbon tax under a Government I lead” sort of criticism. And you can see why. After declaring that there would be no surprises under a Government he leads, Abbott has been full of surprises – a ‘boulevard of broken promises’.

But it goes beyond trying to hide from scrutiny of broken promises. The Government’s acts of silence have also moved to shield itself from any criticism of the promises they’re keeping – criticism it happily laid onto the ALP. Moves to silence the debate around asylum seekers for example, whilst potentially having real positive impacts, is clearly designed to stunt any criticism of the Government’s policy – the very sort of criticism the Coalition gave out on an almost daily basis. It is an attempt to hide from its actions, and therefore hide from scrutiny of what it’s doing. The Government has even tried to deny its destructive role in the previous Parliament, and move to stop the ALP from being able to use similar tactics. This is a cynical attempt to hide from the tactics and scrutiny it laid onto the ALP over 100 times in the last Parliament.

The Coalition seems desparate to avoid all the tactics they used ruthlessly against the ALP over the past few years. They’re doing everything they can to take away the opportunities of attack – removing past incriminating evidence, changing the parliamentary rules, and hiding important information.

And whilst I am not a fan of much of what the Coalition did in the past few years – the ruthless attacks on character and the constant destabilisation – the Coalition is showing itself to deserve a taste of its own medicine. Recent policy backflips on issues like Gonski deserve a ruthless attack – the sort of attack Abbott laid onto the ALP for the carbon tax. The Governments tactical moves in Parliament and on asylum seekers show a weakness that deserve to be exploited.

Maybe all these actions are happening due to a sense of guilt. Guilt in what they did in the past, and guilt of what they know is coming in the future. But they can’t get away with it. The Coalition is trying to hide from the attacks it used so effectively for the past three years. They don’t deserve that luxury.

This article was originally published on SBS News. Click here to view the original. © All rights reserved.

Originally published in The Sydney Star Observer, December 2 2013

EVERYWHERE I look, bareback sex seems to be new the new trend with gay men. On Grindr, Manhunt, Scruff and Gaydar men are often asking for “raw sex”. There are even dedicated sites.

Bareback parties are a new and exciting trend. We have to take off the condom to make sex “raw” and “exciting”. How fucking stupid!

A report from a little while ago from the Kirby Institute showed a marked increase in Australia of STIs, with HIV infections increasing by a whopping 10 per cent. After years of successful campaigns to reduce the levels of STIs, the trend is now reversing, and at a very worrying pace. The research said that the gay male community is one of the reasons for this.

Professor David Wilson said: ”HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was. With good, effective treatments, it can keep people alive to almost a full life expectancy. So I think it’s perhaps a little bit of complacency that’s set in.”

He continued: ”Unfortunately it does appear that, particularly in the gay community, condoms are not being used as much.

“And we’re seeing that particularly among the young men, those in their twenties, those that weren’t exposed to a lot of the public health campaigns of the eighties and nineties.”

I repeat, how fucking stupid!

I mean, I get it. I understand that we don’t see HIV as a life sentence anymore. As someone in my 20s, I missed the campaigns that were around in the 80s – the campaigns that made it clear how bad these diseases can be. With this perception I guess I can see a mindset in which bareback sex is seen as a risk worth taking. I can see how you could think that it makes sex more exciting, more worthwhile, more thrilling.

But really it is just a stupid thing to do.

There is nothing edgy, exciting or enthralling about STIs. They are serious. They have real life impacts hurting you and the people around you. HIV is an infection that requires life-long treatment treatment that can often have very negative side-effects. Other STIs can cause infertility, reduced sexual performance and other often very painful symptoms. There is nothing at all edgy, exciting or enthralling about that.

And because of that there is nothing ‘vanilla’ about wearing a condom. It isn’t about taking away the excitement of sex, or even making it less enjoyable. It isn’t about being boring or ‘taking away the fun’. It is about making sure you don’t catch a disease or infection that could stick with you for life. It is about making sure that one sexual encounter doesn’t leave you with a life-long disease or illness.

The bareback sex trend is stupid. And it should be called out as such.

It’s as simple as that. For yourself, your family, and your friends, just put on a fucking condom.

“He killed his partner Rachel in front of her three children and today Mark Stephen Pringle walks free after just five years behind bars.

Now, Rachel’s grieving family are terrified he could come after them.”

This was the headline story of A Current Affair (ACA) last night. In the segment ACA presented the story of Rachel, a woman who was killed by her husband, Mark Pringle five years ago. Pringle was yesterday released on bail. The team interviewed Rachel’s sister and brother-in-law who were outraged that he had been released so early and were now ‘fearful’ for their lives.

The language in the story was telling. The killer was a monster. He committed a vicious crime. Even if he got twenty years in jail it wouldn’t have been enough.

We hear it a lot. The family who is upset and terrified at the conviction given to someone who has murdered or hurt one of their kin. The emotional parent, sibling or friend standing on the steps of a court decrying a judge for going too light on a criminal. The community ‘demanding’ more justice for someone who has committed a crime.

Now, I’m not here to comment on this particular case. I don’t know enough about the crime, nor the reasoning for the sentence given. I’m also not here to criticise Rachel’s family or any other family for having their say. I can understand why they are upset at Pringle’s release. I can only imagine what they have gone through and what they are feeling at this point of time.

But this ongoing media outrage about our justice system – whether from the over the top sort of shows at A Current Affair, or even just the headline stories from the good old trusted ABC, has got to stop.

If you were to watch the constant stream of stories in our media about the justice system you would be under the impression that to punish and to punish heavily is the only point of our courts. An eye for an eye – make anyone who commits a crime pay as much as possible – put anybody and everybody in jail for as long as possible. This is an extremely dangerous way of treating our system. Our system is about much more than punishment. Punishment is clearly an element, but there is a lot more to take into account. There is a need for rehabilitation as well, and an element of using the system to reduce crime. And in doing so judges and parole boards need to take into account many different elements when sentencing a criminal – their mental state, the level of the crime, their level of remorse, their chance to re-enter our society without threats to others etc etc. It is these complex elements that we must take in to account to achieve the outcomes we desire.

Do they always get it right? Probably not. But this sort of coverage hurts any chance to deal with these very complex issues. It captures people in vulnerable positions – people who are rightfully upset at the circumstances – and hauls them up to speak to the media at times when they often should be left alone. And in doing so it breeds fear and terror about crimes and criminals that is often unfounded. It creates a story of criminals who are never able to be rehabilitated and should never be given the opportunity – something that is not just bad for criminals, but is bad for a community that should want to reduce prison rates and crime itself.

And in doing so this coverage jeopardises one of the fundamental bases of our democratic system; the independent judiciary. We have developed a judiciary in the way we have on purpose – to ensure fair trial and conviction of those who have conducted crimes and to allow for all the goals of the justice system, whether they be punitive or rehabilitory to be played out. But when we play into fear of criminals we jeopardise this – pressuring judges and politicians to focus solely on punishment – something that is good for no one.

There are very good reasons we do not let those associated with crimes to play the role of judge or jury in their conviction. People who are closely involved in these crimes are obviously emotionally caught up in what happened. They are caught up in the loss of a loved one, emotionally wrapped in the trauma they have experienced. And in doing so they are understandably unable to disconnect themself from the crime, see it with outside eyes and lay a judgement that takes into a account the sort of factors we should be thinking about when sentencing a criminal.

And whilst we may think it is important to tell the story and viewpoint of those who have lost someone to a crime, when it comes to hauling them up around sentencing and the treatment of a criminal it just does more harm than good. It not only captures people in extremely vulnerable positions, potentially harming them in the long run, but it also puts our judiciary on trial. This can lead to pressure on politicians to intervene when they shouldn’t, or more importantly the harassing of judges and courts who are doing what they should be doing – taking into account a range of factors to decide on how criminals should be punished for their crime.

There is a time and a place for those who have lost loved ones to publicly tell their story about the crime and the trauma they have gone through. That time and place is largely in the courtroom. Trial by media however helps no one. It captures people in extremely vulnerable positions and puts our judiciary on trial in ways that are dangerous for our society.

Originally published in SBS News, 21 November 2013. 

Australia’s refusal to adequately engage with its nearest neighbour over the phone tapping scandal is a new expression of neocolonialism, writes Simon Copland.

The fallout from the Indonesian phone tapping controversy has hit a new level after Susilo Bamban Yudhoyono announced that Indonesia would suspend all co-operation on defence and people smuggling with Australia. At the surface it could potentially seem like an overreaction. But when you look at the way the federal government has treated recent standoffs, it makes absolute sense.