'Black Car'

And The Bankers Come To Take Your Farm

We live on a continent of drought and fires. That's the catch-cry of conservative politicians who always seem to get so much mileage from visiting affected areas and giving handshakes and hugs to the people whose lives have been crippled by the effects of droughts and fires. It's no exception today, same as it ever was in the 2000s, the 1990s, and the 1980s - just a little worse.

The astounding thing is that Climate Change was always a factor in each drought as they progressively got worse and longer. And each time a politician from the National Party would pipe up and say this was not the time to be talking about Climate Change, trying to hose down serious discussion about perhaps-maybe-possibly Australians having to radically re-orient how they interact with this continent. Nothing that could threaten our feeble self image could be allowed on the table for discussion.

This time with these droughts and fires, we heard Michael McCormack with the tried and tested "now-is-not-the-time..." rhetoric early in the bushfire crisis but he was quickly confronted by the reality that the combined terror of these drought and bushfires were unprecedented and firmly pointed a finger towards the impact of global Climate Change. He had to recant and he had to mention the unspeakable reality. It's a notable moment in Australian politics, long overdue.

It's a sad state of affairs for the Nationals because the one thing the National Party is supposed to be doing is siphoning off the fruits of government to unfairly help rural constituents, and yet the help they probably needed the most was to acknowledge reality for what it was. And each time there had been droughts and fires, and the issue got swept under the carpet, it passed the issue on to the next generation of politicians. The hand grenade got passed along and finally exploded in the face of Michael McCormack.

Heaven only knows how many farmers lost their farms waiting for the skies to open and for the drought to break when odds were, they would be waiting longer than the previous floods or be subjected to larger, ever more unthinkable fires. And you have to think about that moment when the farmers saw the black imported car driven by the bankers, coming to take their homes.

This is a song about that moment that kept happening all over, and somehow the rural constituency kept voting in the National Party.

There is no curing stupid except through death and disaster.





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