No-one can be surprised about how the first few months of the Morrison government have gone. Any notions of compromise with the centre and left of politics have been dispensed with — it’s the ScoMo way or the highway. The new Senate has left a crossbench of reactionaries and two Centre Alliance “sensible centrists” to guard against the excesses of the Coalition, and so far they’ve shown the resistance of wet paper. The new Progressive Labor Party Under Anthony Albanese’s Leadership has shown us less opposition than the Senate crossbench, caving in repeatedly with the concessions to corporate Australia that Albanese had been talking about pre-election. It goes to show how far the so-called left wing of the ALP have strayed from the flock.

News Corporation has re-energised itself on the back of the election victory, slandering all that challenge the many flaws, lies and hypocritical acts produced by the Coalition and its supporters. Extinction Rebellion is the latest target of their brutal invective, with full-page splashes in The Courier Mail shouting about “feral” protestors holding up traffic and likely putting an unbearable strain on the Newstart purse. Never mind the message, News Corp papers have played the man with nary a discussion on what Stop Adani and Extinction Rebellion have been trying to start a conversation about.

This process of de-legitimisation has worked fairly well, and married up nicely to the new Coalition policy of pretending that climate change action is under control and will definitely not destroy the economy, despite having done zip to stop greenhouse gas emissions rising. It has also been aided by the years of Labor trying to talk out both sides of their mouth on the issue, couching all talk of necessary action within the status quo of capitalist economy and modern society. Having fallen into the trap of making climate action a trade-off, most people who struggle with the costs of day-to-day living certainly don’t wish to amplify the risk to them, if they’re merely getting more of what the current government is doing. The rest who have abandoned Labor have gone full climate denial or to the Greens, who have co-opted the green capitalism and NGO line of solar powered unicorn cars alongside the kind of targets which are an absolute minimum for averting climate catastrophe.

There is no radical program to be found in Stop Adani, and it’s clear there is no mass appeal for it. The pro-coal political forces have effectively neutralised it, to the point where CFMEU members were down at Clermont hurling insults at Bob Brown’s ill-advised caravan, and the mining branch of the Queensland CFMEU spent the entire election campaign trying to get Labor to unequivocally support the Carmichael Adani mine. No-one outside of the urban progressives, environmentalists in regional areas and assorted socialists, anarchists and anti-Indian racists oppose the mine in principle, and the campaign has had a desperate air about it.

A large fault of Stop Adani, as put by a good person in a Facebook post the other day, is its undeniable liberal character. As it was put by this person, the campaign seeks to shut down one coal mine project; it has land rights for the Wangan and Jagalingou people, and land rights as a principle, as an addendum instead of a front-and-centre issue; and it organises small action groups with a central leadership core, with no links to organised labour in the Galilee Basin, central Queensland and Townsville (as demonstrated by the Clermont incident). Its role within the Stop Adani Alliance, a collective effort of NGOs trying to influence climate change policy, cements it as a dead-end for the revolutionary fervour required to smash our current modes of production that perpetuate ecological destruction. People on the streets in Brisbane cannot stop politicians signing off on an application, especially when that campaign will never convince anyone whose mind needs changing, that would threaten their hold on power.

The anticapitalist left must begin anew, restoring class consciousness and

thinking more clearly about which capitalist movements to lead, co-opt and

reject. Co-opting liberal movements that fail to address the real concerns of

workers and their families — and miners on six figures are still workers —

disconnects us from those who care more about concrete realities than abstract

moralising. The neglected space of allying with First Nations people to fight for actual

land rights is an indictment upon our ability to synthesise settler Australian

class struggle with the First Nations’ struggle against the enduring colonial

state resting upon it. The dogged determination of the Andrews Labor government

to impose its will over Djab Wurrung peoples trying to protect their sacred

birthing trees is a perfect example of that inability to build consciousness

and support outside the urban setting — I have hardly heard of any socialist action

there, apart from anarchists supporting the Djab Wurrung campers protecting the

lands. Red Flag has nothing on the embassy, and Green Left Weekly has two

reports on it, buried deep beneath plenty of Extinction Rebellion articles. The

various NGOs have failed to step in and help W & J people fighting Adani in

the courts over native title rights, including the contentious Indigenous Land

Use Agreement shrouded in murky backhanded tactics by Adani to get the numbers,

preferring to fight the environmental approvals. Similarly, we cannot fight

climate catastrophe by focusing our efforts towards politicians. It is

necessary to go to where the visible, concrete struggles are, and support them.

In the Galilee, the Djab Wurrung lands, Deebing Creek, and other sites of struggle

against rampant capitalist destruction, there lies an opportunity to build real

and enduring solidarity with First Nations people, seize the political

narrative on changing our relations with production to stop climate

catastrophe, and demonstrate the futility of left liberal pandering to the

status quo. It only remains to take it, or we will continue to live in the

world of ScoMo — how good are jobs!