AQ: Australian Quarterly 89.4 - Oct 2018

Vol 89 Issue 4 OC T–DEC 2018

Why Australia needs a Magnitsky Law

including: Geoffrey Robertson QC | David Ritter | Prof Veena Saha jwalla & more

Beautiful Weather: The social politics of global warming

Big Challenges, Micro Solutions: Microfactories

Cleaning our hands of dirty factory farming

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CONTENTS

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Vol 89 Issue 4 OC T–DEC 2018

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Geoffrey Robertson AO QC & Chris Rummery

The future of meat production is almost here

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Beautiful weather: The social politics of global warming David Ritter

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Book Review The Coal Truth by David Ritter

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Big challenges, micro solutions: Closing the loop in Australia’s waste crisis Prof Veena Sahajwalla

IMAGE CREDITS: Please see article placements

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Why Australia needs a Magnitsky Law

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Excellence in Science Rewarded

Cleaning our hands of dirty factory farming: Bianca Le

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References

2018 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes Assoc Prof Elizabeth New, The RE100 team, Prof Wendy Erber, Dr Kathryn Fuller, Henry Hui, The Sapphire Clock team, Prof Tony Weiss AM & The QuestaGame team

COVER IMAGE: shutterstock.com © ShustrikS & alamy.com © retrorocket

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AQ

a word

‘H

Australian Quarterly

ave you tried to turn it off and on again?’

Since John Howard left office, no Australian Prime Minister has survived from one election to the next.

After a decade of poisoned chalices, late-night knifings, parliamentary chaos, and increasing partisanship, it’s safe to say that treating our democracy like a paralysed computer has done nothing to relieve the paralysis in Canberra. Quite the opposite.

Voters realised this years ago and have punished the major parties accordingly. Now, despite Tony Abbott’s continued insidious presence in parliament, it seems that the penny might have dropped for the Liberal Party, having spectacularly ceded the moral high ground they so righteously held over Labor’s Killing Season.

Meanwhile, Australian science has been chugging along, continuing to turn out world-class scientists and research. With science so readily politicised in parliament and the media, scientists themselves are increasingly required to act as a political voice to warn against our changing climate and the risks to the Reef, agriculture, the economy, and our way-of-life.

As if this weren’t enough, despite being respected as one of the great science nations of the world, Australian science is facing its own existential threats. To name but a few, these include: declining education outcomes in STEM; long-term funding cuts to CSIRO; a lack of sustainable university funding; and little forward-thinking investment in the manufacturing and technologies of the future…

After a decade of the worst of political short-termism, now is the time for a true reset. It is up to whoever leads Australia in 2019 to take a system-level approach to Australia’s scientific, economic, and environmental place in the world.

In this edition several of Australia’s most respected public voices tackle some of these issues, including the eminent Geoffrey Robertson QC, David Ritter, head of Greenpeace Australia, and Professor Veena Sahajwalla from UNSW. Whether it’s climate change, the recycling crisis, or international corruption, we need to change how we see, think, and talk about the challenges we are facing as a society.

The old ways may no longer be the best ways.

Happy reading!

Grant Mills

Editor-at-large

Notes for Contributors AQ welcomes submissions of articles and manuscripts on contemporary economic, political, social and philosophical issues, especially where scientific insights have a bearing and where the issues impact on Australian and global public life. All contributions are unpaid. Manuscripts should be original and have not been submitted or published elsewhere, although in negotiation with the Editor, revised prior publications or presentations may be included.

Submissions may be subject to peer review. Word length is between 1000 and 3000 words. Longer and shorter lengths may be considered. Articles should be written and argued clearly so they can be easily read by an informed, but non-specialist, readership. A short biographical note of up to 50 words should accompany the work. The Editor welcomes accompanying images. Authors of published articles are required to assign copyright to the Australian Institute of Policy and Science, including signing of a License to Publish which includes acceptance of online archiving and access through JSTOR (from 2010) or other online publication as negotiated by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science. In return, authors have a non exclusive license to publish the paper elsewhere at a future date. The inclusion of references and endnotes is the option of the author. Our preference is for these to be available from the author on request. Otherwise, references, endnotes and abbreviations should be used sparingly and kept to a minimum. Articles appearing in AQ are indexed ABC POL SCI: A Bibliography of Contents: Political Science and Government. The International Political Science Abstracts publishes abstracts of political science articles appearing in AQ. Copyright is owned by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science. Persons wishing to reproduce an article, or part thereof, must obtain the Institute’s permission. Contributions should be emailed to: The Editor at info@aips.net.au

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Editor: Grant Mills Assistant Editor: Stephen Burke Design and production: Art Graphic Design, Canberra Printing: Newstyle Printing, Adelaide Subscriptions: www.aips.net.au/aq-magazine/ subscribe enquiries to: Stephen Burke, General Manager, AIPS, PO Box M145, Missenden Road NSW 2050 Australia Phone: +61 (02) 9036 9995 Fax: +61 (02) 9036 9960 Email: info@aips.net.au Website: www.aips.net.au/ aq-magazine/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/ AQAustralianQuarterly ISSN 1443-3605 AQ (Australian Quarterly) is published by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science.

This project is supported by the Commonwealth Government through a grant-in-aid administered by the Department of Finance and Deregulation.

ACN 000 025 507 The AIPS is an independent body which promotes discussion and understanding of political, social and scientific issues in Australia. It is not connected with any political party or sectional group. Opinions expressed in AQ are those of the authors.

Directors of the Australian Institute of Policy and Science: Leon R Beswick (co-Chair) Andrew Goodsall Maria Kavallaris (co-Chair) Jennelle Kyd Suresh Mahalingam Ross McKinnon Peter M McMahon Sarah Meachem Peter D Rathjen

ARTICLE BY: David Ritter

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Beautiful weather: The social politics of global warming It is late one afternoon on a weekend in July and I’m sitting on a bench in Sydney Park. Built on the remains of the heavy industrial site that used to dominate the location, the spread of trees and grasses, carefully designed children’s play areas and regenerated waterways over a grand forty acres, is a tactile reminder of what a government acting in the common good can do, when investing in our shared wellbeing.

n one of the park’s corners still stand tall chocolate-coloured brick chimneys and domed kilns from the brick works that used to hold sway over this land, now as anachronistic as ancient plinths. The parkland itself is an open place where friends and strangers gather and bump along, remembering out how we do that thing called society, together, in practical terms.

“Would you mind if I sat there?” “Is this your child? She fell over and was calling for you.” “Any chance I could borrow your bike pump?” There’s the lightest of breezes and the mid-winter sunshine feels glorious on my bare arms. Overhead, there is blue in every direction.

Two early-thirties women walk past, one pushing a stroller, the other laden with basket and bag, which I imagine have been lightened by the eating of the picnic they once contained. I catch a snatch of a familiar phrase, as one says to the other: “we’ve been really lucky; it’s such beautiful weather, for winter.”

Yes, such beautiful weather.

As it happens, Sydney’s July in 2018 is full of what we would conventionally understand as beautiful weather, incredibly fortunate for the time of year. According to the Bureau of Meteorology:

image: © Sardaka-Wiki

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Big challenges, micro solutions: Closing the loop in Australia’s waste crisis

Governments and industry around Australia are desperately grappling with the growing waste and recycling problem that has resulted from China’s ban this year on imports of foreign waste. The ban has resulted in large increases in stockpiles around the nation; meanwhile prices for waste such as glass are at a low point (it is now cheaper to import than recycle glass) and government emergency funding packages and reviews are underway to work out solutions.

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his crisis has brought into sharp focus that Australia’s waste is Australia’s problem, at the very same time that consumers, more than ever, are seeking to reduce environmental impacts and create more sustainable outcomes across all areas of our society.

In June, the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications Inquiry into Waste and Recycling, released its report.1 It is a sobering read.

There are a number of commendable recommendations within the report, including its ‘headline’ recommendations to ban single use plastics by 2023 and a call for a national

ARTICLE BY: Professor Veena Sahajwalla image: © Kevin Dooley-Flickr

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IMAGE: Sergei Magnitsky – the murdered lawyer for whom Magnitsky laws are named.

Why Australia needs a Magnitsky Law The Helsinki Summit between US President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin represented a nadir in US foreign policy, with Trump preferring to believe Putin rather than his own intelligence services over claims Russia subverted the 2016 US General Election. As if this act of diplomatic humiliation wasn’t bad enough, Putin also singled out an American-British human rights activist he asked be surrendered to Russian authorities, in return for allowing the FBI to interrogate those Russians under indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

ARTICLE BY: Geoffrey Robertson QC and Chris Rummery

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hat could possibly have provoked a Russian President to single out an individual during such a high-level diplomatic meeting? The same President who has been accused of green-lighting the poisoning of a former Russian double agent on British sovereign soil, of ignoring international condemnation for his annexing of Crimea, and who has shown a blatant disregard for accepting any culpability for the shooting down of flight MH17?

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Cleaning our hands of dirty factory farming

Cleaning our hands of dirty factory farming: The future of meat production is almost here The hashtag ‘vegan’ has been used over 64 million times on public Instagram posts alone. Long gone are the days where identifying as vegan was associated with malnourished, tree-hugging, red paint-splashing protesters. Instead, clever marketing and increased consumer awareness has turned veganism into a multi-billion dollar industry over the past decade, one that extends beyond food and into make-up, clothing, toiletries and healthcare.

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ARTICLE BY: BIANCA LE

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owadays, you’ll be hardpressed to find a trendy cafe or restaurant that offers mushroom risotto as its sole vegan option.

Veganism appeals to a generation of health and ethically conscious millennials, particularly in an era where self-identity is often expressed via and

Cleaning our hands of dirty factory farming

As someone who has tried to go vegan, then vegetarian, then flexitarian, then ‘meatless Mondays’, the potential for an ethical, sustainable, eco-friendly meat alternative seems like the only way.

Image: © Scott Bauer - US Dept of Agriculture

per capita, and there are no signs of this demand for meat waning.

It is clear that the current ways of producing meat and dairy products are unsustainable and inefficient.

Twenty-six percent of Earth’s habitable land is already used for livestock grazing, and a third of croplands are used to produce feed for livestock.2 Furthermore, the calorie input to output ratio for meat production is an economist’s nightmare; it takes 9 calories of feed to produce 1 calorie of chicken meat, and that ratio gets higher for pork and beef. The remaining 8 calories of feed is converted into energy required to keep the animal alive and produce feathers, bones and other internal organs not consumed by humans.3 How

are we are expected to feed 9.7 billion people by 2050 using these existing methods?

When I first heard about clean meat, images of raw mince squashed inside a petri dish on a sterile laboratory bench didn’t do much to stimulate my appetite. But as someone who has tried to go vegan, then vegetarian, then flexitarian, then attempted ‘meatless Mondays’, the potential for an ethical, sustainable, eco-friendly meat

I could never go vegan.

Meat is still too cheap, convenient and delicious for me to completely give up, despite the countless documentaries I’ve watched.

IMAGE: Insert

(more importantly influenced by) social media. Celebrities, body builders, social media influencers and animal activists alike have all helped move plant-based diets beyond a health fad and into the mainstream.

However, I could never go vegan.

Meat is still too cheap, convenient and delicious for me to completely give up, despite the countless documentaries I’ve watched and articles I’ve read exposing the inhumane, wasteful and environmentally unsustainable industry of modern day factory farming and animal agriculture. And I am not alone – global meat production has increased by 15% in the last ten years1 in response to both the growing world population and increased consumption of meat

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