29 October 2025 This past weekend, I attended a Writers’ Festival where, while discussing the proposed massive expansion of Woodside Energy’s gas operations in Western Australia, a well-known independent Senator advised we should write to our elected representatives in parliament.   His response reflects conventional wisdom: if you want government to do something, write your representatives a letter. If thousands of your fellow citizens write the same thing, the thinking goes

By Robert C. Hinkley 16 October 2025 "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." --Winston Churchill People are slowly coming to recognise that democracy has a big problem: its failure to govern the behaviour of the most powerful among us. The result is severe and growing harm to the public interest, not just regarding the environment, but the public health and safety, the dignity of employees and the

(Note to readers: I am re-issuing this piece from four years ago because it is as timely now as it was then. You're encouraged to substitute "Belem" for Glasgow and "COP30" for COP26. All else applies today as it did back then.) “Participants in the UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change in Glasgow next week should realize the source of global warming isn’t the continuing emission of GHGs. The emissions continue because of a more basic problem.”   By Robert C. Hink