For pure, circular destruction of wealth, happiness and prosperity, it doesn’t get much better than this. Not long back Greenpeace and co were busted for planning a six million dollar campaign to disrupt and delay the coal industry — and today The Australian reports that three of the major organisations involved received close to $750,000 from the government, for “public climate change activities” raising doubts about whether public funds had been misused.
The Nature Conservation Council (NSW), Environment Victoria and the Conservation Council of Western Australia have received grants of $211,000, $213,215 and $319,420 respectively for public climate change activities since last December.
Environment Victoria and the Conservation Council of WA confirmed yesterday they had backed the development of the anti-coal campaign.
The coal miners are an industry that is legal, employs 40,000 people directly, provides the fuel for more than half our electricity and generates about $13b in tax dollars for the Australian government.
Now if the NGO’s wanted to explain to the rest of us why we ought to decide to reduce our coal mining, that would be fair enough, but they aren’t trying to convince us with reason or debate, they’re trying to disrupt a legitimate economic activity, and manipulate the legal system any which way they can. The headline title of the Greenpeace-CoalSwarm-Greame-Wood-Foundation project was not “Saving the Environment” it was “Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom”, as if that in itself was a worthy goal.
It appears to be economic vandalism and propaganda by any other name.
Last week the Australian Taxation Office announced that Greenpeace would remain listed as a charity, and would be “tax exempt”. So if the Coal sector earns money while it provides an essential service, it needs to contribute to the national government. If Greenpeace earns money while it destroys jobs, slows projects, clogs the court system, and helps make electricity more expensive, they get a free ride on the Australian Taxation system.
MEMO to Tony Abbott: when you need to cut government spending, you know where to start. Not just with those grants but with the whole Department of Climate Change.
Gongo– stands for “Government-Organized Non-Governmental Organization. Used by undemocratic governments”…