The Australian government of cowards has wiped every mention of Australia from a United Nations climate report. The online campaigning group GetUp! of more than a million members have made a television advertisement to expose the truth. “One incredible donor has agreed to match every donation we get today dollar for dollar,” the group claims in a call-out to chip in. The right-of-centre coalition government of Liberal and National parties, headed by multi-millionaire, Malcolm Turnbull, has forced the UN to scrub every mention of Australia from the damaging report, “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate”, arguing openly that publication would scare off tourists.
The online platform of Britain-based The Guardian newspaper has published the description of the dire condition of the Great Barrier Reef expunged from the report at Australia’s insistence.
Australia is the only inhabited continent not mentioned. Will Steffen, one of the scientific reviewers of the axed section on the reef, said Australia’s move was reminiscent of “the old Soviet Union”.
Steffen is an emeritus professor at the Australian National University and head of Australia’s Climate Council. He was previously executive director of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme, where he worked with 50 countries on global change science.
“I’ve spent a lot of my career working internationally,” Steffen said. “And it’s very rare that I would see something like this happening. Perhaps in the old Soviet Union you would see this sort of thing happening, where governments would quash information because they didn’t like it. But not in western democracies. I haven’t seen it happen before.”
The news comes less than a year after the Australian government successfully lobbied Unesco to not list the Great Barrier Reef in its list of “World Heritage Sites in Danger”.
The independent, grass-roots community advocacy organisation writes in its appeal for funding the ad: “They've gutted our renewable energy industry. They've forked out billions to big polluters. Scientists say our Great Barrier Reef could become terminal in five years. Now, these cowards are trying to bury the truth.
“Why? Because a new poll shows that two-thirds of Australians don't think the Coalition's doing enough on climate change.
“They may be able to silence the UN, but they can't silence us. We've quickly designed a TV ad to expose the truth about government's climate record straight to swing voters in the marginal seats the Coalition are most afraid of losing.
“It's a straight up attack ad. Put simply, we made it to cost them votes.”
GetUp! say they’ll air the ads in the most damaging places possible to prove “the political price of their deplorable inaction”.
The election is on July 2. “That gives us five weeks to stop the Coalition's spiteful war on our planet.”
The activist organisation, which groups more people than all the Australian political parties put together, says they’ve already had “sensational success” with another Great Barrier Reef ad running in marginal seats.
“Thanks to donations from GetUp members, awareness of coal's impact on coral bleaching rose dramatically in the key battlegrounds of Brisbane and the North Queensland coast! Let's go even harder.”
