Second Term, Same Shit: Labor's Gas-Lit Climate Betrayal

Well, That Didn’t Take Long

Six weeks. That’s all it took for Labor to go from historic mandate to impending, self-interested betrayal. Six fucking weeks ago, Labor was popping bottles while the Coalition was starting its impending implosion. Things, for once, were looking up. The Coalition’s climate-denying, fossil-fuel-fellating politics had been comprehensively rejected by voters who’d had enough of watching their country burn while politicians counted coal lobby donations. Remember that euphoria? That sense that maybe, just maybe, we’d finally get leaders with both the cojones and political capital to fix some real problems.

Well, joke’s on us. While the media were fitfully covering the train wreck that is the opposition like a frothy MAFS viewer, Labor quietly approved Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project extension - a carbon bomb that’ll pump out emissions equivalent to 15 coal-fired power stations for the next 50 years.

Fifty. Fucking. Years.

That’s longer than most of us have been alive, longer than the entire history of the internet, longer than it took us to go from the Wright brothers to the moon landing. But apparently not long enough for Labor to excavate their courage from whatever coal mine they buried it in. Turns out “at least we’re not those guys” was less a promise of transformation and more a technicality - they’re not those guys in the same way that getting stabbed in the front isn’t technically the same as getting stabbed in the back. Either way, the planet’s still cooking while they argue about what temperature constitutes well-done.

The Great Gas Gaslight

Let’s discuss what gift Labor just handed Meg O’Neil and her Woodside shareholders, because the size of this corporate welfare deserves proper attention. The North West Shelf extension isn’t just another gas project - it’s a 50-year commitment to cooking the planet using basically free fossil fuels and returning NOTHING. Woodside gets to keep extracting until 2070, by which time half of the country will be underwater and the other half will be on fire. The Climate Council called this potentially Australia’s most polluting fossil fuel project ever. Ever. Not since last year, not since the Coalition, but in the entire history of this already comprehensively fucked nation’s environmental vandalism. The most sickening part of it is that not only is it an environmental kick-in-the-crotch, but it also takes a massive cultural shit on historically significant Murujuga Rock Art. The party of The Voice can’t help itself but look to silence and ignore a significant Indigenous issue.

And here’s where the pattern becomes crystal fucking clear. Remember those housing promises I wrote about last month? Well, here’s the exact same playbook, just with greenhouse gases instead of house prices. Labor wraps this climate catastrophe in “energy security” rhetoric, bleating about transition fuel and renewables firming - treating the symptom while actively feeding the disease. Just as they refuse to touch negative gearing because it might upset vested interests, they won’t say no to gas projects because it might upset fossil fuel donors. Just as they offer first-home buyer schemes that ultimately inflate prices further, they approve transitional gas projects that lock in emissions for generations. It’s the same political cowardice, the same short-term thinking, the same fundamental betrayal of anyone under 40 who’ll have to live with the consequences. They’re not building houses we can afford, and they’re guaranteeing we won’t have a habitable planet to put them on anyway. But hey, at least Meg O’Neil gets to say she’s making a difference.

The Wealth-Climate Nexus

As I’ve continued to write this blog I’ve drawn on a lot of anger. I have the deep-seated feeling that there is a profound unfairness in our society. When Approval-Albo was re-elected I felt this glimmer of tentative hope that things may start to shift at a fundamental level. That we, as a country, and individuals, as tax-payers could stop subsidising the same class of parasites hoarding property portfolios while young Australians sleep in cars. Check the boards of directors, trace the investment funds, follow the political donations - it’s the same incestuous circle of wealth protecting wealth, and I really thought that might change.

What is becoming increasingly clear, is that the Shit-lite party are now in power and with an opposition that doesn’t know it’s ass from its approved policies, there is little-to-no chance of holding a government to account.

And guess who wears the fallout? It’s the same people already locked out of housing, already struggling with cost of living, already one paycheck away from disaster. The poor will drown in floods while the rich debate fraudulent carbon credits from their hilltop estates. While Labor’s approving 50-year gas projects, they’re maintaining a system where $14.5 billion in fossil fuel subsidies flows to companies already posting record profits, money that could fund the renewable energy transition that would create actual jobs and energy security. Labor isn’t fumbling these decisions - they’re actively choosing to preserve the architecture of inequality that enriches their donors while selling out everyone else’s future. It’s not incompetence; and I wish I could say it was simply complicity. It’s straight up encouragement.

A Mandate Squandered?

Remember my “Carpe Fucking Diem” moment after the election? When I wrote that Labor had “something precious few governments ever receive: a thundering mandate with minimal opposition”? Well, here’s how they’re spending that political capital - approving climate bombs while the excuse machine runs overtime.

Six weeks from hope to betrayal - A new record for selling out.

Here’s the thing: we are genuinely out of time. Not just climatically - though that clock’s ticking louder every day - but politically. Every betrayal like this proves the cynics right about democracy’s impotence. Every time they choose donors over voters, they push us closer to the edge of something darker. We’ve already seen this play out across Western democracies - a slide into fascistic right-wing authoritarianism born from disenchantment with a flaccid, self-interested left. If Approval-Albo wants to rubber-stamp his way through a term of fossil fuel fellatio, if Labor wants to govern like Shit-lite, then they deserve the same electoral extinction they just delivered to Dutton. Pundits say it’ll take six years until Albo and Co. potentially get the boot, but I think we’ll see people lose hope and look elsewhere much sooner. And so they should.

Australians of all walks deserve the hope and transformation promised. It must be realised. Otherwise, you don’t deserve to govern. If you won’t use your mandate, we’ll find someone who will - and we’ll burn this whole rotten system down to do it.

---

Banner image by Black Forest Labs

Model: Flux Ultra v1.1

Seed: Random

Prompt: Soviet constructivist propaganda poster style, grotesque fossil fuel executive as giant looming figure standing over map of Australia, executive in expensive suit counting money while Australia below is split - one half drowning in floods, other half consumed by wildfires, executive’s shadow forms shape of gas pipeline across the country, stark black ink with crosshatching, minimal color palette of blacks, grays with touches of orange flames and blue floods, satirical political cartoon aesthetic, executive has exaggerated features - bulging pockets, sinister grin, tiny Australian people fleeing disasters below, ominous atmosphere