At the weekend, thousands of Newcastle locals and people from across Australia will join grassroots community organisation Rising Tide, on Worimi and Awabakal waters, for the People's Blockade of the world's largest coal port.
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Those attending will disrupt coal exports for two days to demand the halt of new fossil fuel projects, and the introduction of a 75 per cent federal tax on fossil fuel export profits to pay for community and industrial transition, and climate loss and damage overseas.
The climate movement acknowledges that our right to protest is the inheritance of a long and often bitter struggle by organised labour.
As an activist I know that anyone who fights for their community - and for others - is motivated by love and justice, burning in their heart.
Newcastle is a union town and on May Day I'm proud to march in solidarity beside the MUA, CFMEU, and a long list of staunch unionists - as a law student, I'm particularly grateful to the NTEU campaigners fighting for better teaching conditions.
Rising Tide stood with ETU members at Eraring power station to call for the Net Zero Authority this April, so I also know our backyard is where tensions between a coal-fired past and an uncertain transition are felt the most.
This tension was not created by coal industry workers providing for their families, nor by everyday citizens alarmed about the looming climate crisis after experiencing the hottest year in 100,000.
This tension was created by fossil fuel companies that profit at the world's expense. A 75 per cent tax on profits is a bargain for corporations literally driving humanity to the brink. Let's make them pay.
Adrian Blundell-Wignall, former advisor to the OECD Secretary-General on Financial Markets and Enterprise Affairs, recently called for an export tax on coking coal, to inject funds into domestic transition and incentivise green innovation internationally.
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This is far from unprecedented - Norway has taxed the profits of its lucrative petroleum industry at a cumulative 78 per cent since 1996. That wealth is redirected to a national pension fund now worth more than $A1.9 trillion - for the benefit of citizens, not corporate interests.
By contrast, not only did Hunter coal giants Yancoal and Glencore (among many others) pay no income tax in 2021-2022, the Australia Institute reported our government gave $11.1 billion in spending and tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry in 2022-2023 - a sum more than 14 times greater than the Disaster Ready Fund used to respond to bushfires and floods.
At The Australian's Economic and Social Outlook Conference on November 2, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the $40 billion of government spending earmarked for transition wasn't enough to ensure we meet our already inadequate climate targets - and he's right.
As the Australian Council of Trade Unions boldly demands a $100 billion Australian Renewables Industry Package - why does Labor instead treat polluters and profiteers to vast handouts of public money in a climate crisis, while simultaneously crying poor on transition spending?
The ALP is captured by the fossil fuel industry. Fearing a repeat of Kevin Rudd's ousting, where the Labor party room conceded to a $22 million media campaign run by mining corporations against Rudd's resource super profits tax, Albanese and Chalmers are attempting to transition away from fossil fuels without upsetting the fossil fuel industry - but there's no way out of climate crisis the coal bosses will like.
If Albanese won't stand up to polluters, the people will. We can't be bought by business or dethroned by a party room.
Crucially, funds recovered from our fossil fuels must be spent on industrial diversification and community transition, especially for ever-neglected yet rightfully proud coal communities, like Singleton and Muswellbrook, that have powered Australia for over a century.
The Hunter Jobs Alliance, UON's Institute for Regional Futures, and many community organisations are already charting regional paths to transition on modest budgets.
Let's just fund the thing.
Power in a democracy comes from below, so we're told. It's how we won the 40-hour work week, women's suffrage, and civil rights.
Rising Tide aims to put democracy into practice. To the executives of fossil fuel companies profiteering from the destruction of my future, I say this: the People's Blockade is a warning shot. It's time to make polluters pay.
