Mathew Abbott is a lecturer in philosophy at Federation University Australia. He is a member of the Victorian Socialists and the National Tertiary Education Union.
At the end of 2020, Victoria’s parliament passed a motion calling for a Green New Deal. But the plan drawn up by Australian Labor premier Daniel Andrews is market-driven and won’t come close to achieving the kind of large-scale public transformation that we need to avert disaster.
Australia has been hit by one ecological disaster after another this year: first the devastating bushfires, then the COVID-19 pandemic. Both are part of the same rising environmental crisis, and without meaningful action, we’re headed toward dystopia.