Coalition on climate change

John Connor, CEO of The Climate Institute, writes: Re. “PromiseWatch 2013: climate change and carbon pricing” (yesterday). Crikey’s Climate Promise Watch 2013 makes some important points on the Coalition’s climate policies that need clarification. Firstly, the Coalition’s formal position is that it supports the same 5% to 25% 2020 emissions reduction targets and conditions as the government.  The Coalition supported the second Kyoto commitment, which has these, and Greg Hunt to his credit always talks of targets in the plural. While the Coalition and the ALP at times just like to focus on the 5%, the real test of both their policies’ credibility should be their ability to reach the 25% target.

Secondly, the Coalition is trying to characterise as unchanged their support for the 2020 “20% Renewable Energy Target”. The real promise to watch is whether they support the legislated 41,000 GW target for large scale renewables as recommended by the Climate Change Authority and now the government. Finally, their Emissions Reduction Fund is supposed to be worth $10 billion till 2020, not just the $3.2 billion in the forward estimates.

Importing clothing, exporting morality

Paul Johanson writes: Re. “Is there blood on your T-shirt? Questions from Bangladesh’s tragedy” (Tuesday). The issue of manufacturing being moved to the cheapest possible location, regardless of the violations of human rights and simple dignity involved, is not a new one. Nike and other manufacturers were beset by activists 10 or 12 years ago for the same reason. Sounds like the problem has just moved around now — as soon as one country gets decent labour laws and minimum wages, the clothes makers move to a new low-cost country. It was China for a while, then it was Vietnam, now it sounds like it’s Bangladesh and Cambodia.

Naomi Klein was writing about it in “No Logo” in the late 1990s  She talked about factories that exclusively employed young women because they didn’t complain as much, moving them on when they got a bit “old’, and in some cases even issued them with contraceptives so they wouldn’t become pregnant and effect production. There are people doing factory inspections these days, but this has also led to the wily entrepreneurs creating model factories, and much larger and less pleasant shadow factories.

It actually takes work to not buy clothes that were made in a sweatshop. The group Adbusters actually went to the trouble of creating its own brand and finding a unionised factory in Portugal to make ethical shoes.  There are other groups trying to do the same thing, like (the apparently now defunct) Union Denim in the US, and the people at Etiko. It’s a sad state when the market has gravitated towards the lowest-cost manufacturing so we in the first world can enjoy a cheap T-shirt that may well have been made by a child. We’ve exported our pollution to China and our morals to… who knows where.

Nauru and The Salvation Army

Bruce Haigh writes: In December 2012 I wrote an article critical of the involvement of the Salvation Army in seeking to “ameliorate the condition” of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Islands. I said the Salvos were wrong to think that they could make a difference to the physical and emotional needs of asylum seekers in those detention centres.

On April 29 ABC’s Four Corners ran a story, “No Advantage”, about conditions on Manus and Nauru islands. Major Paul Moulds, the head of the Salvation Army mission to Nauru and Manus islands, appeared in that story. In a complete about-face he said conditions in the detention camps were not conducive to the wellbeing of asylum seekers. Others employed by the Salvation Army on the islands, and a doctor, fired after expressing his concerns, were forthright in their condemnation of conditions.

Moulds wrote in response to my article: “The Salvation Army is continually advocating directly to the government for improvement in facilities and conditions, and we have seen positive response.” The Salvos have been paid $75 million of taxpayer money, with nothing to show for it except a spate of resignations by Salvation Army staff working on the islands.