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Utterly brilliant for the way it captured the pointless stasis of existence, Groundhog Day was so successful the movie's title has become entrenched in the language.
If a situation is said to be Groundhog Day, it means it's repetitive and unpleasant. Anyone caught in a Groundhog Day time loop just wants to see it resolved. They want to move on.
People living in the Illawarra and South Coast of NSW last week felt the crushing monotony of Groundhog Day when for the second time in a month rain tumbled down in record volumes.
Low-lying areas were flooded, sinkholes appeared, the rivers ran brown and swollen and already damaged roads were made worse. Human lemmings once again had to be plucked to safety from submerged cars after ignoring countless warnings not to drive through floodwaters.
If it felt like we'd been here before, we had.
The mayor of Shoalhaven just south of the Illawarra took to the airwaves to plead for action on climate change. Her local government area had been pummelled by 15 natural disasters since the 2019 Black Summer fires, all caused by catastrophic rain events. Events now so frequent, one wonders if they're events at all or simply the new normal.
The clouds parted on the weekend and the sun came out but it was still Groundhog Day. Punxsutawney Pete made sure of that.
We awoke on Saturday morning to the feeling we were back in 2009, when the climate wars were raging. If climate change wasn't "absolute crap", as Tony Abbott said that year, the 2030 emissions reduction targets Australia had committed to with the Paris Agreement were, according to the opposition leader.
The nation groaned like Bill Murray waking to 'I Got You Babe' for the umpteenth time when Punxsutawney Pete rewound the climate change clock. Here we go again, another grinding climate election.
We shuddered as we remembered Dutton in 2015, the last of his hair on his featureless head in full retreat as he joked beneath a hot mic about Pacific islanders being late. "Time doesn't mean anything when you're about to have water lapping at your door," he chortled. It was the same year Tony Abbott signed the country up to the Paris Agreement.
Punxsutawney Pete has a strange relationship with time himself. By his own admission his distant and costly nuclear dream is at least 15 - more likely 20 - years away when action is needed now. He's said he'd reveal the details of that policy before the May budget. That time has come and gone, as Labor loves pointing out day after laborious day.
And Pete's short-term memory of his party's performance at the last election appears shot. He's forgotten those inconvenient teals, bankrolled by the Climate 200 group, who savaged his party in its safest seats in 2022. Groundhog Day at the next election could see even more blue seats turn teal.
You could sense the surge of electricity when Monique Ryan, the teal who toppled Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong, rubbished the Coalition's dumping of Labor's legislated 43 per cent by 2030 emissions reductions target.
Not all of us, however, welcome the rinse-and-repeat politics. In Queensland, NSW and Victoria, where even the recent El Nino delivered more rain than we could handle, the water is already lapping at the door.
Punxsutawney Pete can play 'I Got You Babe' over and over but all that will do is remind us of the Groundhog Day to which he's condemned us.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Has Peter Dutton taken a political risk by saying he'll dump our 2030 emission reduction targets? Did you think the climate wars were over? Have you seen the effects of climate change where you live? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Peter Costello's exit from Nine Entertainment days after an altercation with a journalist will see deputy chair Catherine West take on the job of steering the media company through a rocky patch. Ms West will step into the job after the former federal treasurer quit after being accused by the reporter of assaulting him at Canberra's airport on Thursday.
- Supermarket giant Coles has announced a temporary limit on egg purchases as cases of bird flu spread in Victoria. A limit of two cartons per customer has been placed across all stores nationally except for Western Australia.
- An attack on the US Consulate in Sydney by someone wielding a small sledgehammer in the middle of the night is "not the Australian way", Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says. Nine windows were damaged with the hammer and red inverted triangles - a symbol sometimes used by pro-Palestinian activists - were spray painted on the doors of the North Sydney building about 3am on Monday.
THEY SAID IT: "Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins." - Edith Wharton
YOU SAID IT: The demise of Peter Costello after the Canberra Airport incident confirms what the rest of us already know. No one likes a Bargearse.
"You would have to be blind not to see what actually happened, and either way, not to at least, turn around and ask, 'Are you OK, mate?' and help him up," writes Sally.
Margaret writes: "Costello certainly didn't do himself any favours by his actions. You are so correct in your description of him - the smirk and a bargearse. Too used to getting his own way all the time."
"I don't remember Bargearse but I certainly recognise the type," writes Sue. "I am sure Costello could have handled himself better. I try not to think of Liberal or Coalition politicians, present or past, but my recollection of Costello is not of a polite and well-mannered person, and certainly not a humble one. Aggressive, in-your-face questioning by journalists never appealed to me, either as a journalist or audience, but that is a personal stance and in many situations the verbally aggressive approach generates a response otherwise not forthcoming."
Arthur writes: "The journalist is guilty of assault and possibly Peter Costello also. Shoving a microphone in someone's face, shouting questions and blocking his or her passageway is assault even if no physical contact happens. Information obtained under such circumstances is nearly always heavily biased, incomplete and of no use to anyone except editors hungry for slander and articles intended to destroy a person's character. Such behaviour has no place in Australia or any civilised society. Shame all round."
"Well said," writes Carol. "Reminds me of another politician, remember Iguanagate? Belinda Neal, another bullying politician. It took a young, honest, divorced mum with two tiny boys to tell the truth about the incident. The famous sentence, 'Do you know who I am?"
Old Donald writes: "I'm a rusted-on Labor voter and I loathed the smirk that characterised Costello but that breed of young reporters who 'grace' our commercial TV channels are in general a revolting and apparently inane lot. 'Are ya sorry, Joe?' we hear hurled at a mass murderer, or 'Do ya hate all men, Michelle?' etc., etc. Mics shoved in faces has become a sickening part of these reporters' apparent briefs. So I suspect there is a point at which these ghastly leeches get under anyone's guard. They would mine!"