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When the name for Vote Planet’s new federally registered entity FUSION: Science, Pirate, Secular, Climate Emergency went up on the AEC’s website this week, there was a minor Twitter flurry.  Including this one from the election MC Himself!  And this personal fave.  This four-party salad (now five!*) was forced on Vote Planet and other FUSION parties by the ironically named "Party Integrity Bill" passed by LNP, ALP, One Nation. Vladimir Putin is taking notes on this Bill. Targeting micro and minor parties, the Bill tripled party membership requirements for registered political parties without an MP. And the Bill wasn’t grandfathered in, giving only three months to produce an additional 1000 members above an beyond their existing 500 or get de-registered. Almost all affected parties have scrambled into mergers, or have or will be deregistered.  Vote Planet's naming criteria for the new party was that it had the words "Climate Emergency". Perhaps, we should have had more criteria. However, a party name has to not only be noticeable on the ballot but also be recognisable to the members from the different parties when the AEC calls to confirm their membership in the scrambled re-registration process. (But AEC is now checking the name Climate Emergency Action Alliance: Vote Planet with our combined members - long story). When you're a new minor party, even someone making fun of your name is welcome so please keep it coming. The minor parties that formed FUSION each have a policy specialties that create FUSION's broader platform (climate emergency; evidence-driven advancement; secular humanism; freedom of information, and individual privacy and rights) and that help make us more than the sum of our parts. We dream of a large healthy crossbench, populated by independents and other progressive minor parties that can take policymaking back from lobbyists and closed party-room deals and return it to parliament. Please help us realise this at the 2022 election. *FUSION: Science, Pirate, Secular, Climate Emergency has been recently joined by registered ACT party, Australian Climate Justice. 
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Four experienced political parties, each with deep special interests, are fusing to form something more powerful than the sum of our parts. A party determined to secure a safe climate and environment, a humanist society, and free culture - held together by science. This fusion was initially driven by the 'Party Integrity Bill' introduced by LNP and supported by ALP and One Nation, that required minor parties to re-register with three times as many members. The Bill has turned out to be serendipitous - a catalyst for four distinct specialisations to merge and for Fusion to have a deep but far reaching policy platform. We're fighting back — small parties are under attack, so we're becoming a larger party — broadening our membership base, geographical reach, and policy scope. We are becoming: FUSION: Science, Pirate, Secular, Climate Emergency A merger of the Science Party, Pirate Party, Secular Party, Australian Climate Change Justice Party, and Vote Planet. Fighting the dystopia, corruption, and economic inequity of today’s politics, we bring our specialist focuses of the climate emergency, unlocking the future, free culture, and secular humanism to the fore. Climate warriors, farmers, rationalists, doctors, solarpunks, makers, teachers, activists, ethical hackers, community workers, extinction rebels, and public servants - all have combined to create a new light in the Australian political arena. Fighting dystopia. Fusing for a brighter future. Fusion will create a bright future for all Australians.  By Kammy Cordner Hunt
The Northern Hemisphere summer season of 2021 was a terrifying array of catastrophic weather events across 100s of countries on all continents, the likes of which have never been recorded before: heatwaves, wildfires, storms, floods, ice-melts. This is a glimpse of what we are in for. I dread our Australian Summer coming soon. In the midst of all this, the IPCC’s report came out. All of this should shock us into action, but will it? “Action” lies in the hands of governments and those in power. Do ANY governments have the right people in power to act? Will those mighty global corporations (those that wield a power that’s even greater than any government’s) let them act, even if they wanted to? Vote Planet wants people to do just that, vote for people who will make decisions on behalf of our planet’s future, because that is OUR future, and that of every other living thing sharing the planet with us now, and (hopefully) in time to come. Some overseas events during the Northern Summer (due for us in the South this summer?): Heat wave 2021: Climate scientists warn about a new normal (nbcnews.com) Greece fires: Death toll rises as blaze hits holiday resorts | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site Wildfire in Northern Ireland declared a 'major incident' NASA Images Capture Worst Siberian Wildfires in 10,000 Years (sciencealert.com) 46 fires burning across Florida, where risk remains high - South Florida Sun Sentinel - South Florida Sun-Sentinel California crews battle 12 big wildfires | 7NEWS Bush fires in Iceland, page-1 - HotCopper | ASX Share Prices, Stock Market & Share Trading Forum Italy bushfires: Hundreds evacuated as wildfires approach Campomarino (thenewdaily.com.au) Turkey fires ‘like a horror movie’ as blazes hit Mediterranean | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site Greenland experienced 'massive' ice melt this week, scientists say | Reuters Record-breaking June 2021 heatwave impacts the U.S. West | NOAA Climate.gov Climate crisis made deadly German floods ‘up to nine times more likely’ | Climate crisis | The Guardian Belgium, Netherlands and France also hit by deadly flooding NORTHERN ITALY overwhelmed by HUGE HAIL, LANDSLIDES and FLASH FLOODS. It is still ALERT (PHOTOS and VIDEO) »ILMETEO.it (italy24news.com) by Jane Edwards Some unnamed fossil fuel industry evil-doers appear to be threatening to hurt Auspol politicians’ children if the politicians don’t do the fossil fuel industries' bidding. It looks as though this is also happening to politicians around the world. This claim is based on deduction in lieu of direct evidence: blackmail is the only logical explanation for why anyone with some power to avert the coming climate catastrophe, would hurl their own kids into the apocalyptic abyss in coming years, in order to save them from harm today. There’s the slim possibility that some of the politicians remain wilfully ignorant of climate threats but this doesn’t cut it. Even if the politicians thought there was only a 10% chance of a plane crashing, there’s no way they would put their kids on that plane. And our current chance of a ‘Global Climate Catastrophe’ is now way over 50%. It’s worth considering that these politicians are all psychopaths; they don’t care what happens to their kids, or care more for money and power granted by the fossil fuel industry today. However, psychopaths reportedly care about their own fate and these politicians have signed up to a mutual suicide pact, perhaps it is the older ones who think the climate collapse will occur beyond their end of life. A climate campaigner asked Mark Butler, then ALP shadow Minister for Climate Change (he apparently knew too much so was replaced last year), ‘Don’t you love your children?’. Because why would anyone that knew so much about global warming and loved their children promote the suicidal target of Net zero by 2050 as safe? In response to the question, Mark Butler immediately lost his measured cool (by all accounts for the first time ever), demonstrating that he does in fact love his kids, but more immediate threats than a global catastrophe hang over him and his children . So how should we save a chamber full of MPs suffering under the most vicious blackmail imaginable? Easy: we vote them out. Then the blackmailers have no hold on them. Just as with any spy blackmailed into being a double agent, we need to replace these MPs immediately with those who have not yet fallen under the searing hand of the fossil fuel industry.  By Adrian Whitehead So sorry to hear about the floods in Europe. Best wishes to all those affected and condolences to those who lost loved ones and friends. Similar floods in 2002 followed by the European heat wave in 200, triggered the start of my climate campaigning. What was obvious back in 2003 was if we didn't want these events to occur with increasing frequency and severity, we needed to cool the planet immediately. Our slogan back then was Zero Emissions Now. Eighteen years later the world is planning for 30-50+ years of increasing devastation through the adoption of the suicidal target of net zero emissions by 2050. Net Zero won't even stop the heating because of the degradation of natural systems that are also now heating the planet (loss of carbon from soil, forests, methane from former permafrost, loss of the summer Arctic ice etc). This 2050 target is immoral, unethical, and to be blunt, a crime against humanity. Society as we know it will collapse if we do not do better. What we need now is an emergency speed program with three key foci:
We call this Emergency Mobilisation. Our ecology is already collapsing, the collapse of our societies has started, global food production will be pushed to the point where there is not enough food to feed the world. The world's poor will starve and suffer first. This future is not set in stone, but to avoid it we must take on our existing politicians and their corporate backers. Our current politicians have shown again and again they are not mentally equipped to deal effectively with the climate emergency. If you are in Australia and want to play a part in saving us all please join us at voteplanet.net and help us at the next federal election - this election is one of our last chances to make a real difference and avoid the warming levels that will push us to collapse.   By Andrea Otto
I want to talk about habitat and in particular our native animals and their reliance on trees. Many of our birds and most of our tree dwelling animals rely strongly on hollows. I think we need an education campaign around hollows because so many people don’t know or understand the interconnection between our birds and animals and hollow trees. It takes around 80 years for our trees to produce a hollow for our smallest inhabitant. As the tree grows so do the hollows. The home is then too big for that smaller critter and so it moves out and that hollow is then used by something bigger. Even hollows on the ground are important as they provide habitat for many small mammals, reptiles and invertebrates along with fungi’s and other plants. When we understand this, it isn’t hard to see that the loss of old trees is one of the main reasons that Australia extinction rate is so high. Protection of our old trees is paramount to native species survival including our own. Australia is one of the worst developed countries in the world for broad scale deforestation; an MCG area of forest or woodland is cleared every two minutes, killing countless native birds and animals. Vote Planet land use policy includes ceasing land clearing, instead subsidising land owners to regrow and maintain forest, and ceasing logging native forests. Please read more on our policies page. By Jane Edwards For a chance at a future, we need to be acting like the house is on fire. Governments have been promising incremental change for three decades, over which time greenhouse gas concentrations have dramatically increased, increasing warming impacts and setting off all the major feedback loops (tipping points) that were theoretical when governments first started promising incremental change. We need to be reducing greenhouse gas concentrations and reaching huge net negative emissions. It’s all doable and can only be good for us in by any measure, though not so good for the balance sheets of people emitting obscene amounts of greenhouse gases and mining coal and gas.   We save the planet not via suggestive ‘economic signals’ but by hands on steering down the right path:
We achieve a safe future by dropping the ponzi scheme of perpetual GDP growth. Instead we adopt a model such as Doughnut Economics (image on right). The idea that we shape society to live within the limiting boundaries of climate change, pollution, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss etc. while maximising societal wellbeing measures across housing, equity, education, political voice, etc. So simple, so far removed from what we are doing. What the hell are we waiting for? Naturally, feel free to facebook like articles on a government taking an incremental step in the correct climate direction, but point out how far they are from where we need to be. Read more on Vote Planet's policy page. If the government was serious about energy policy for the country as a whole and the need to cut emissions then Climate Emergency Action Alliance–Vote Planet has the following suggestions for how to spend $600 million:
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