And for those who know no bounds to the punishment they are willing to accept, you’ll find the senate business, here.

The government has started the parliament day with a flurry of bill introductions in the house.

You can follow along with the house business, here

It is hot enough to melt the Zooper Dooper I’m having for second breakfast, but photographer-at-large Mike Bowers is still out and about like the trooper he is.

He caught this photo on the parliament house lawns this morning.

Politicians across both major parties have spoken about the Queensland floods and the ‘resilience’ of Queenslanders, particularly north Queenslanders in dealing with these climate disasters. Questions have focused on ‘what is being done to help residents’ and ‘mitigation’ and insurance has also been raised (which makes sense seeing how difficult it is becoming to insure against these climate disasters).

But political leaders are not being asked the pressing questions – which is why are they continuing to support fossil fuels when we know the impact they are having on the climate, and why aren’t they doing everything in their power to ensure these climate disasters don’t get any worse (which is the goal by the way – everything you are seeing across the world – that is the new benchmark. It won’t get ‘better’ than that. But if we act, we can stop it from getting worse).

ClimaMeter have looked at the Queensland floods and concluded they were “primarily driven by human-driven climate change, which intensified the meteorological conditions that led to the event”.

You can read the report, here but the main points from the report which led to their conclusions were:

• Meteorological conditions similar to that causing floods in Queensland are up to 17 mm/day (up to 20%) wetter over the coast of Queensland. Additionally, conditions are up to 5 km/h (up to 20%) windier offshore Queensland and up to 1.5 ºC warmer in the present compared to the past. 
• This event was associated with exceptional meteorological conditions.
• We ascribe the heavier precipitation associated with Queensland floods to human driven climate change and natural climate variability likely played a minor role.

But somehow, it never seems to be the ‘time’ to talk about it, does it?

Over in Nationals land and leader David Littleproud seems to think it is 2016 in Trump land and Australia just needs to advocate to ensure its exports are not hit by Trump’s tariffs (a reminder that it is the US importers/exporters who pay the tariff and the US is in a trade surplus with Australia)

Littelproud told Sky News very early this morning:

“Ultimately, we prefer to see a rules-based world trade order that’s served Australia well and served the globe well in getting living standards higher for everybody. So it’s important that we respect those and trade wars don’t actually help anyone. In fact, they add to inflation because they are tax, and ultimately someone has to pay for that. So we’d prefer to see that both countries can sit down. I appreciate that President Trump came with a mandate. He made it very clear, particularly for Mexico and Canada, around border protection that they needed to lift their game.

Otherwise, tariffs have been imposed, but there’s also these tariffs feeding into China, which will have an impact. Now that means that if we get a slow down on the economy, they’ll have a broader impact on Australia. But we may get some short-term gains, particularly out of agriculture.

The last time we saw this, when President Trump was here last time and he imposed tariffs on China, we actually saw increases in commodity prices for ourselves, because China pivoted to Australia, rather the United States. But there are only short-term gains and no one should think that that’s what we should be aiming for. We’d rather see that the rules-based order returns and that problems are resolved and we get on with free trade between our nations, because we’re only a nation of 27 million people and we are a trading nation. And unless we have those that environment created for us, then ultimately Australians will bear the cost of that, ultimately at the checkout.”

John Lyons went on to say:

The interesting thing what he’s saying there prefaces the possible collapse of Jordan and Egypt. Because, they are opposed to this transfer plan. For every reason. They feel they can’t absorb the Palestinians, they believe that the world can’t just say OK, there is no homeland for the Palestinians. But, Donald Trump has a leverage over those two, Egypt and Jordan. They’re essentially kept in place by American funding and military.

If internally, like in Jordan, there’s a huge Palestinian population there now anyway, they’re saying no to this plan, on the weekend, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan – all met and said no – if Donald Trump insists on that, he can also say, then, his leverage is I can pull the funding. If he pulls the American funding out of Egypt and Jordan, they can’t survive in their current state without that.

So we’re looking at that press conference at the complete redrawing of the Middle East. It’s the most extraordinary 10 minutes I have seen for a long time.

Speaking of the United States and Donald Trump, the US leader has just met with Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House and held a press conference which the ABC’s global affairs editor (and author of the excellent ‘Balcony over Jeusalem’, one of the books recommended by the Summer Reading for MPs group) John Lyons’ called “the most extraordinary press conference from the White House I have seen”.

Lyons doesn’t mean in the good way.

He reports:

“Two men at the height of their power, essentially saying that a two-state solution for the Palestinians is dead. To have Donald Trump saying how un-liveable Gaza is, it’s a mess now, the explosives, it’s too dangerous. And to have Benjamin Netanyahu sitting next to him, smiling, grinning, sometimes laughing, it’s been America’s bombs often dropped by Israeli jets that have rendered Gaza un-liveable and these two men are now essentially talking…that was the most extraordinary press conference from the White House I have ever seen.

Where Donald Trump is saying, yes, there’s resistance from Egypt and Jordan, but they’ll take them. The Palestinians out of Gaza. He said the other day we’ll clean it out. This is language that no US president and very few in Israel, the far-right in Israel has tried to avoid words like “cleaning out.”

Now, it’s interesting there, I think the new element there was Donald Trump clearly broadening what he sees as his attempt to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza, and who knows, the West Bank may be next. But he kept talking – he was talking like – I was amazed at the language – like he was a real estate developer. “four, five, six different areas, maybe.” Broadening it to four or five different countries he said.

He kept talking about “we’ll build them beautiful houses and sunshine”, like he’s talking about some new outer suburban development.’

Continued in next post

Reading over the hansard from yesterday’s urgency debate on Donald Trump, we are reminded that while democracy may be the best system we have, it certainly isn’t perfect and doesn’t always get it right.

On a related note, here is UAP senator Ralph Babet’s take on Trump (Babet’s life achievements to date have been being reposted by Trump on social media – a high I feel he may be chasing for the rest of his life)

Just leaving this here for the history books.

Babet:

“The Left’s hysterics over President Trump only demonstrate how dangerous the Left really are to the world and to democracy. They complain about President Trump being a populist. What’s wrong with that? What is populism?
It’s doing what the majority of people want you to do; that’s populism. When the Left complain that Trump is a populist, they’re really just admitting that their own policies and their own ideas are so extreme and so nonsensical that nobody wants them.

Then they claim that their lack of popularity is a virtue somehow. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so silly. Donald Trump is not a threat to Australia—he’s not. He’s only a threat to the progressive Left in Australia and all across the world. Those people believe that trashing this great country and their own, wherever they might be— they’re trashing their country with their extreme ideas that nobody wants, nobody believes and nobody can afford.
Do you know what Donald Trump is? He’s exactly what the world needs; that’s what he is.“

We noted yesterday that former Liberal minister turned official lobbyist Christopher Pyne had written an ode to imperialism in an op-ed in the SMH and Age, calling for Greenland to embrace United States ownership for…reasons. Those reasons weren’t actually mapped out, other than some vague references to history where imperial powers have ‘bought’ nations and because Pyne thinks the US would offer the people of Greenland a richer and safer life (based on what evidence, again, is unclear).

Well Tony Wright, who has been covering politics for as longer than I have been able to read, has written a response to Pyne, asking him to check his history

Pyne resorts to precedent and history to support Trump’s wish to take over Greenland, but history, it happens, is a double-edged Viking sword.

Erik the Red’s son, Leif Erikson, is credited with being the first European to make his way to North America, where a Viking settlement was established in Newfoundland, also around the year 1000. Erikson later became chief of the Vikings on Greenland.

Perhaps, rather than Trump’s administration grabbing Greenland, Pyne might instead consider it is about time for the Scandinavians to reclaim America.