The Australian Labor Party’s Embrace of Climate Wokeness: A Betrayal of the White Working Class, By James Reed
As Paul Walker argues today at the blog, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), once the stalwart defender of the working class, has increasingly alienated its traditional White working-class base by adopting a progressive, globalist ideology that mirrors the "climate wokeness" critiqued in outlets like Watts Up With That and The Daily Sceptic. Drawing on Friederike Otto's Guardian article, which rebrands climate change as a "crisis of justice" rooted in inequality and colonialism, this blog piece argues that the ALP's alignment with such narratives represents a profound betrayal of its core constituency. By prioritising elite-driven climate moralism, mass immigration, and identity politics over the economic and cultural concerns of White working-class Australians, Labor has abandoned its roots, leaving workers to face job losses, wage suppression, and cultural displacement while fuelling populist backlash.
Otto's Guardian piece epitomises the "Church of Climate Wokeness," a term coined by critics to describe the shift from empirical climate science to moralistic crusades. She argues that climate change is not merely a physical problem but a symptom of global injustice, tied to supposed patriarchal and colonial structures. This pivot from equations to emotions—where weather events are framed as indictments of Western capitalism—resonates with the ALP's current trajectory. Under leaders like Anthony Albanese, Labor has embraced climate policies that echo this narrative, such as aggressive Net Zero targets and renewable energy mandates, often presented as moral imperatives to rectify historical inequities.
Labor's 2022 election platform, with its commitment to a 43% emissions reduction by 2030, aligns with globalist frameworks like the Paris Agreement, which Otto's rhetoric implicitly supports. Yet, as Watts Up With That notes, such policies sideline testable science for "secular encyclicals" that moralise rather than analyze. For the White working class, this translates to tangible losses: coal and gas jobs in regions like the Hunter Valley and Central Queensland are decimated, with 2023 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing manufacturing and mining employment at historic lows (6.7% and 1.2% of total jobs, respectively). Labor's promise of "green jobs" remains elusive, with renewable projects often employing skilled migrants or urban professionals, not retrained miners.
The ALP's climate agenda, steeped in the justice rhetoric Otto champions, prioritises global obligations over local workers. High immigration, a cornerstone of Labor's economic model, exacerbates this betrayal. The Department of Home Affairs reported 518,000 net overseas migrants in 2022-23, with international student numbers hitting 166,840 in February 2025. These inflows, justified as boosting GDP, flood low-skill job markets, suppressing wages in industries like construction and retail—sectors where white working-class men are overrepresented. A 2024 Macrobusiness.com.au analysis estimates that migration-driven labour supply has kept real wages stagnant for a decade, with median weekly earnings at $1,300 in 2023, barely above 2013 levels when adjusted for inflation.
Housing, a critical working-class concern, is another casualty. The influx of migrants, coupled with Labor's failure to curb foreign property investment, has driven median Sydney house prices to $1.6 million in 2025, pricing out young workers. Social medias posts decry Labor's "woke obsession" with climate and diversity as a distraction from this crisis, accusing the party of "selling out Aussies to global elites." The ALP's climate policies, such as land-intensive solar and wind farms, further strain regional communities, displacing farmers and inflating rural costs without delivering promised economic benefits.
Like the British Labour Party's disconnect, as described by Jo Phoenix, the ALP's embrace of climate wokeness alienates its base through cultural moralising. Otto's framing of climate as a justice issue—tied to racism, sexism, and colonialism—mirrors Labor's rhetoric on issues like the 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum. The Voice, pitched as a step toward Indigenous justice, was rejected by 60% of voters, with strong "No" votes in working-class suburbs like Penrith and Ipswich. This reflects a broader rejection of Labor's focus on symbolic gestures over practical concerns, a sentiment echoed in Professor Phoenix's critique of British Labour's trans rights obsession.
Labor's climate narrative, steeped in globalist guilt, dismisses the White working class's lived experience. Regional voters, reliant on fossil fuel industries, see Net Zero as an attack on their livelihoods, not a moral crusade. The ALP's 2024 push for offshore wind farms, for instance, sparked protests in Wollongong, where fishers and workers feared job losses and environmental damage. Yet, Labor MPs like Tanya Plibersek framed opposition as backward, echoing Otto's disdain for those who question the "justice" paradigm. This elitism, akin to The Guardian's "latte-laced righteousness," paints workers as dinosaurs, unworthy of the party's enlightened vision.
The ALP's climate wokeness parallels the dangerous WHO-Big Tech alliance, where unelected elites and corporate powers shape narratives to control behaviour. Just as the WHO seeks a "health online collective" to embed health messaging in digital platforms, Labor collaborates with global institutions like the UN and corporate green lobbies to push climate policies. The 2025 COP30 preparations, highlighted in UN News, underscore this, with Australia pledging $300 billion in climate finance for developing nations—funds that could address domestic housing or job retraining. Social media posts criticise Labor's "globalist sell-out," noting that such commitments burden taxpayers while multinational energy firms profit from subsidised renewables.
Labor's reliance on corporate and academic elites mirrors the WHO's influencer-driven propaganda. Universities, now "immigration mills" per Leith van Onselen, churn out climate justice research that informs ALP policy, often funded by green NGOs tied to global finance. This creates a feedback loop where workers' concerns are drowned out by curated narratives, much like the WHO's algorithmic boosting of approved voices. The result is a party disconnected from its base, preaching justice while ignoring the injustice of job losses and cultural erasure.
The ALP's betrayal has fuelled a populist backlash, as seen in the rise of One Nation and other great parties. The 2022 election saw Labor's primary vote drop to 32.6%, with One Nation polling 5% in Queensland, a working-class stronghold. This mirrors Professor Phoenix's warning of British Labour becoming "dinosaurs" by ignoring public sentiment. Workers, feeling betrayed by Labor's climate moralism and economic neglect, are drawn to figures like Pauline Hanson, who promise to "put Australians first." A 2024 Australian Financial Review poll found 62% of blue-collar voters believe Labor "no longer represents them," citing immigration and climate policies as key grievances.
The Australian Labor Party's embrace of climate wokeness, exemplified by the justice-centric rhetoric of Otto's Guardian article, marks a total betrayal of the White working class. By prioritising globalist climate agendas, high immigration, and elite moralism over jobs, wages, and cultural identity, Labor has abandoned its founding mission. The economic toll—stagnant wages, housing unaffordability, and job losses in traditional industries—compounds the cultural alienation felt by workers dismissed as backward for questioning Net Zero or multiculturalism. Like the WHO-Big Tech alliance, Labor's alliances with global and corporate elites erode democratic accountability, paving the way for populist revolt. Unless the ALP reorients toward its working-class roots, it risks permanent irrelevance, leaving its former base to chant a new gospel: one of resentment and rebellion against a party that forgot them.
Electoral/political comments authorised by Arnis J. Luks, 13 Carsten Court, Happy Valley, SA
"Oh Guardian, thou unerring oracle of elite anguish and latte-laced righteousness, what have you conjured this time? A new revelation from the high temple of emotional climatology: climate change is no longer about physics, but "a crisis of justice." Yes, really. The headline of Friederike Otto's latest opus in The Guardian shrieks like an undergraduate activist with a bullhorn: "Climate change is not just a problem of physics but a crisis of justice." Because when your models don't model reality, and your predictions flop harder than a tofu burger at a Texas BBQ, simply pivot the narrative—from science to sociology.
When in Doubt, Moralize
The opening line is a tour de force in climate sanctimony:
"My research as a climate scientist is in attribution science. Together with my team, I analyse extreme weather events and answer the questions of whether, and to what extent, human-induced climate change has altered their frequency, intensity and duration.
In other words, Otto is in the business of telling us that every flood, drought, or oddly warm Tuesday is your SUV's fault. Attribution science, for the uninitiated, is the art of retroactively blaming the atmosphere's every sneeze on Western industry, by way of probabilistic hand-waving wrapped in opaque jargon. What used to be called weather is now "anthropogenic signal detection."
From Equations to Emotions
The article quickly departs from any pretence of physics, diving into the deep end of social justice with a straight face. Otto writes that early scientists didn't address these questions not because the models were junk (which they were), but because of a sinister silence born from… wait for it… "colonialism." I kid you not.
Why grapple with the pesky uncertainties of nonlinear dynamics when you can just call the jet stream racist?
Magical Thinking in the Church of Climate
As always, The Guardian isn't content to merely spread alarmism—it needs to moralize. The piece does not present testable hypotheses or falsifiable predictions. No, it sermonizes. It's less a scientific article and more a secular encyclical. Climate policy, per Otto, must now revolve around "inequality," "justice," and probably crystal chakras and composting feelings too.
Why stop there? Let's redefine thermodynamics as a tool of oppression. After all, who's to say entropy isn't just a white cis-male construct?
And Speaking of The Guardian…
Ah yes, The Guardian, the newspaper that treats every bout of drizzle as a sign of impending planetary doom and every economic policy as a chance to redistribute guilt. This is the same outlet that warns of "climate collapse" while offering 30% off annual subscriptions in the same breath.
It's the news equivalent of a street preacher shouting about the apocalypse, then handing you a coupon for organic lentils.
Their entire climate section reads like a steampunk Bible study group—high on drama, low on data. They're obsessed with "justice" not in the classical sense (you know, crime, evidence, courts), but in the modern performative sense, where "justice" means whatever the loudest graduate student in the room says it does.
Virtue First, Questions Never
So here we are, folks. In 2025, climate science—at least as defined by The Guardian and Dr. Otto—is no longer about testable claims or rigorous skepticism. It's a morality play. A political campaign. A never-ending guilt-trip wrapped in a rainbow flag and printed on recycled hemp paper.
And the next time a cyclone hits Bangladesh, don't ask about air pressure or ENSO oscillations. Just nod solemnly and chant the new gospel: It's a crisis of justice.
Because in the Church of Climate Wokeness, science has left the building—and feelings now run the thermostat."
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