Felix Herbener

FALSE PRIDE IN COAL The way Clermont locals reacted to the Bob Brown Stop Adani convoy is evidence of the lack of environmental science awareness and defecit of future focussed politics in Central Queensland. I lived there, there is nothing proudly patriotic about coal on beaches and coal dust on windowsills. There is nothing proudly Australian about the sickening pollution of minerals extraction and refinement. There is nothing beneficial to the local economy about jobs for a few, and poverty for the rest of the community. Central Queensland is a hopeless place where the glum fossil fuels factories pollute the skies and drug addiction and poverty defines everyday life.

POOR EDUCATION IS QUANTIFIABLE BY SOCIAL HARM Lack of adequate social welfare and chronically underfunded state schools and deregulated universities has lead to generations of Australians with inadequate literacy, poor numeracy, and sub-tertiary sociopolitical awareness. The corrosive effect of neoliberal 'reform' (cutbacks to social spending) to increase the wealth of the richest few is quantatively provable by social harm measured by poverty, mental illness, and suicide.