Thread by @CrankInstitute

Scott Morrison, Sat Jan 29 (while clasping an unlucky koala in front of media): "We love to throw our arms around koalas, & they love to throw their bear arms around us when we get to have a cuddle. What this is about is continuing to throw our arms around our koala population".

Continuing? In the last 20 years, Koala numbers have halved in QLD & dropped 60% in NSW. Land-clearing, drought, & fire mean koalas are currently on track for extinction by 2050.

The $50m is earmarked for monitoring, research, & habitat restoration. The latter's near-pointless without climate action & the previous 2 will confirm we need climate action. There's no mystery as to why koalas are dying. Our climate, farming, & development policies are lethal.

Setting aside accounting tricks, emissions in Aust have risen 7% since 2005. Scott Morrison's assertions of a 20% fall in that period have been repeatedly fact-checked by multiple media outlets, and confirmed as false.

The Morrison admin is populated by multiple individuals drawn from the extractive industries, & unsurprisingly, it's currently aiding the further expansion of fossil fuel production. Bizarrely, even ameliorating the consequences of that expansion is opposed ->

Morrison continues to refuse to purchase the recommended national fleet of large water-bomber aircraft. More than 61 000 koalas are estimated to have perished in the I-Don't-Hold-A-Hose-Mate bushfire disasters of 2019/20. Still, how good are cuddles? The denial goes bone-deep.

Yesterday's event was just another shameless, cynical PR exercise - a thin pre-election pretence from Announceables R Us. Beyond the marketing bullshit, the PM's only truly keen embrace is of dirty-industry dollars and climate catastrophe.

His speech really did scale the heights of insincerity: "These are the practical things that you do when you care for a country, you care for the country itself & you care for its people."
Anyone not needing a bucket after hearing that hasn't been paying attention.
#AusPol2022

One last detail - the $50 mill is spread over 4 years. That covers the full range of projects, nationwide, including $10m for the post-fire promise to count koalas. (For perspective, that's the same amount promised in 2018 for the Botany Bay Captain Cook memorial.) Piss. Take.