Honest Government Ad | Anthony Salmonese’s Surprise

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Here is the latest Honest Government Ad you've helped us to produce

Honest Government Ad | Anthony Salmonese’s Surprise

No you're not dreaming, we published our last HGA about Canada's election only last week, and we're back already with another episode this week. Booya

That's coz we're working as hard as we can leading up to the election, to help keep people informed about what's going down.

And unfortunately, what went down a fortnight ago in the last sitting week of Parliament - while everyone was focusing on the Budget - was some downright utter fishfuckery, as Labor and the Coalition voted together (again) to ram through laws that weaken our already weak Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999).

Why? Because for once, our shit (Howard-era 1999) Environment Act, was in danger of doing what it should be doing: protecting the environment, and a unique threatened species, from a destructive industry: salmon farming in Tasmania. So of course our major parties kindly stepped in - not to enforce the Act, but to change the laws to protect the salmon industry.

And whilst the reason given for this is to save salmon jobs (if that was the aim, those $37M dollars in subsidies could have paid out every one of those workers in Macquarie Harbour), those salmon jobs are just an excuse for weakening our environmental laws, by making it harder for communities across Australia to legally challenge environmental approvals - including coal and gas developments, land-clearing, logging etc. Which of course is an attack on Australians' democratic rights.

(Our PM knows this. Because when he was in opposition, and the Coalition tried to introduce similar amendments to our Environment Act, he gave a valiant speech saying, “the right of citizens with standing to challenge their governments in court is a fundamental pillar of a robust democracy. We must not set aside this principle...")

I was really pissed off when I saw what went down (as you can probably tell). So I did what I always do to stay sane: write an Honest Government Ad about it!

If you want to know more about this story, I've included a bunch of links in the YouTube video description. If you only watch one thing, make it this press conference led by Andrew Wilkie MP (Independent for Clarke), featuring statements from other MPs, Neighbours of Fish Farming, as well as Peter George who is running as the Community Independent for Franklin: ground zero for the toxic salmon industry.

And if you missed it, here's the HGA we made last year featuring our mate Punters' Politics about this government's failure to strengthen our EPBC Act.

I'm going to take a couple days' rest and then we'll get stuck into the next HGA. I think we can squeeze in at least one more before the election - what do you think?

Until then, take care!

Giordano & team

PS. Sorry for not sharing the audio preview for this HGA as I normally do. In trying to get as many episodes done in a short time, I didn't have time to arrange the preview on this one. Apologies.

PPS. We'll publish the video to the other platforms in the morning. In the meantime, you can watch it on our YouTube channel:

Honest Government Ad | Anthony Salmonese’s Surprise