You can tell the cricket season is upon us when Pat Cummins (Australia’s test captain) makes his first climate change funding announcement.
Don’t bother him with pesky questions about our pretty fragile chances of retaining the Ashes against the freshly patriotic Poms in a month or so. Oh no, let’s stick to the climate script.
What an almighty wanker. I suppose it makes a change from the Gazan pontifications of Cummins’ underperforming team mate, Muslim Khawaja. But not an especially pleasant change.
Cummins is a climate grifter who has just helped to garner 50 million taxpayer dollars to put solar panels on sporting change rooms, and such.
Cummins is the founder of something called Cricket for Climate. You could not make this up.
It used to be said that being the test captain was the second most important job in Australia. The most important was said to be the prime minister. AI search says:
The statement that Australian cricket captaincy is the second most important job in the country is a well-known, often-repeated cliché and a form of hyperbole, particularly originating from former Prime Minister John Howard. While the Australian Test captain holds a position of enormous prestige, responsibility, and public scrutiny, this comparison is primarily a cultural nod to the captain's symbolic role as a national figurehead. The position's significance is rooted in Australia's deep-seated passion for cricket, with the captain serving as a leader and role model who faces immense pressure from the public and media.
A pretty good summary, as it happens.
Never has a combination of two incumbents so demeaned each of the top two positions. My God, what a depressing country this is.
The perfect combo was Menzies and Bradman, of course. For one game only, as it happens. (Technically, Bradman was not the test captain during either of Menzies’ premierships). Ming persuaded The Don to come out of retirement to captain the Prime Minister’s XI in the early 1960s. Bradman hit a four then got out. He was in his mid-fifties by then, so we can forgive that. It was at Manuka Oval, where I made my (ignominious) first grade Canberra debut some thirteen years later.
We had Menzies and Richie Benaud, too. High quality.
To think of either Menzies of Bradman putting out a joint media release announcing money to “fight the climate” beggars belief. Cummins did … with Chris Bowen. Ah, the company we keep.
Bob Hawke and Alan Border make a pretty good pair of captains. It was the excellent Bob who revived the Menzian tradition (after a hiatus from 1965 to 1984). The PM’s XI match launched the test career of the cult-followed David Boon, among others. It has remained a fixture of the summer calendar since.
(One of my more enjoyable moments was listening to disco music in the early eighties at Canberra’s legendary Private Bin Bar (where a few years earlier I had met and had an instant first date with my wife) after a PM’s XI match featuring the West Indies. Witnessing Joel Garmer dancing with a mid-five-footer girl was a sight to behold, as was the lengthy queue of females lining up for an audience with the great Viv Richards in a darkish corner).
Howard and Steve Waugh were a pretty good combo as well. Howard was famously a cricket tragic, whose own tragic off-spin bowling was infamously captured on film. You cannot unsee that delivery. Waugh has his post-career causes, but they tend to be about actually helping the under-privileged, done without fanfare and non-performative. Then there came the wonderful, and wonderfully straight, Mark Taylor, who succeeded Waugh and who continued the tradition of excellence in the number two job.
But I digress.
The lunatic Bowen’s press release said:
Community sport has always inspired Australians to come together and tackle big challenges. Taking action on climate is no different. We need a Team Australia moment, with everyone part of acting and adapting on climate and energy to help meet these challenges head on.
Australians know what climate change means to our way of life and want their kids to have the same opportunities they’ve had for healthy, connected lifestyles through sport.
Upgrading local sporting facilities, whether with new lights so we can play or train more at night, or solar panels that mean more money for equipment rather than bills, helps empower communities to secure what matters and inspire Australians to seize the potential of the energy transformation at home.
It is all pretty sick-making.
It is typical of these elites of the political class to claim to speak for Australians. Claiming that Australians know what climate change means for our way of life is a bit like Greg Sheridan at The Australian endlessly saying that Australians don’t like Donald Trump. In each case, the efforts to conscript everyday Australians into the ideological moments of these midwits bespeaks an arrogance that is galling to those of us who see through the childish memes and who have reached independent conclusions about whatever narrative is being shaped.
Such statements (by Bowen and Sheridan) can be translated as “I believe in climate catastrophes and so should you” and “I don’t like Donald Trump and so shouldn’t you”, respectively.
To add insult to injury by signing up the Australian taxpayer to “chip in” for this garbage is yet another argument for tax minimisation as a counter to governments breaking the Lockean social contract.
These are the people running out country. They are traducing the rights of farmers and country people in the name of renewable energy. They are admitting that “the transition” will cost at least half a trillion dollars. That is getting up there with Covid scam money. They are aligning with fellow climate grifters like Cannon-Brookes to build batteries and windfarms that will kill our wildlife. They are lying through their gleaming, capped teeth all the while.
Of course, there is another view of the fifty million in climate money. It might also be seen as pork barrelling and sucking up to sporting clubs in the way of so much of the community grants revolution in Australian fiscal policy and practice. Pork barrelling with a twist of climate. I don’t know which government invented community grants, which typically get absorbed by the management of the scamming NGOs created to administer them. But whoever it was, they have added a whole new chapter to the public choice book of governance corruption.
Here is Cummins:
I'm really excited to see the support from the Federal Government. It's going to make a big difference for so many local sporting clubs across the country, helping them stay open, manage energy costs and be more resilient.
This funding means more play, fewer cancellations, and stronger communities. Clubs are where so many of us grow up, make mates, and stay active.
With extreme weather hitting harder each year, now's the time to future-proof our clubs with solar, batteries, and all-weather solutions. This is a great example of taking action and what we can achieve when government, communities, and sport all work together.
This is just the beginning, and we invite Australian business to get involved.
This is just the beginning? Really? Is Pat going to be returning the climate grant troughing on a regular basis.
By the way, Pat, saying that extreme weather is “hitting harder” each year, is, not to put fine a point on it, bullshit. The only question is whether you, a climate ignoramus, know it to be bullshit. If not, you should do your homework. If you know it is bullshit, then you are a scammer and a liar. And not worthy of the high office that you occupy.
Then we have this from Bowen:
The Government wants to see the private sector step up and partner in futureproofing community sport -- energy companies, banks, installers and equipment providers can all play a role to multiply the impact of this investment.
So, not content with fleecing taxpayers, you also want to fleece shareholders.
Cummins, on his website, says:
When we come together as one team, we can all make a difference.
https://www.cricketforclimate.org/
There is no “team climate”. There never was. We do not all fall for hoaxes. And make a difference? One hundredth of one degree over a century worth of difference.
This is the model of democratic governance that we now have. Two multi-millionaires run the two top jobs. I think Albo has had over a dozen properties to his name. And not because he has moved a lot. Aidan Devine has done the research:
https://www.realestate.com.au/news/bold-moves-that-got-pm-anthony-albanese-a-88m-property-empire/
Pat’s last house purchase cost him more than my last house purchase:
Pat Cummins purchased the Bronte property known as Figtree House in early 2021 for approximately $9.5 million. The luxury Sydney home features five bedrooms, a designer garden by Peter Fudge, a Hamptons-style kitchen, and a heated swimming pool. The Victorian manor is located minutes from Bronte Beach and offers ocean views.
At least Cummins is good at his day job. The same cannot be said of Albo.
They lecture you and me about what to think about a totally made-up problem. Then they raid the Treasury to fund their fantasy. And they co-opt community organisations in their scam. And invoke “team Australia”. All on the back of a non-mandate to govern, with Albo getting all of thirty something per cent of the primary vote last May. Government by press release. With quotes from the Australian cricket captain. Duly and breathlessly reported by our corporate media. And all tied up with the bow of “collaboration”. Let a hundred cliches bloom.
Co-opting sporting leaders for political purposes is the oldest trick in the book, as well know.
(It didn’t work out so well with the voice, though. In that case, we-the-people had a vote! That trick might be wearing thin. The voice referendum jumped the shark in all sorts of ways. But with climate grifting, we simply have no say. Since both sides of politics, at least at the time of writing, are signed up to the lies of net zero).
In the spirit of the times, perhaps Muslim Khawaja will transition to become the first ambassador to the Palestinian non-state, after his final test series this summer and his inevitable, much feted retirement ceremonies.
Rudyard Kipling’s book, Captains Courageous, has, surely, never had a less appropriate adaptation that the one I have provided here.
Paul Collits
19 September 2025
Heated swimming pool indeed. Man, these people are hypocrites. It's pretty much all over, red rover for Australia.
On cricket, I always thought it'd be more interesting if it had; a) three or four live, five-metre saltwater crocodiles on the pitch, and b) two bowlers bowling at once from opposite ends.
On the climate con, the Caucasian-capitalist-created catastrophic carbon-caused climate calamity, it's provably nonsensical using first-principles physics.
CO2 absorbs outgoing longwave infrared radiation (heat) as photons at 14.8 microns wavelength (Planck’s Law).
The temperature of absorption at 14.8 microns is -80 degrees Celsius (Wien’s Displacement Law), which is found in the lower stratosphere, well above the troposphere where weather exists.
Minus 80 degrees Celsius is 95 degrees lower than average surface temperature.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics proves heat doesn’t flow from cold zones to hotter zones.
CO2 cannot “trap heat.” It can only delay outgoing heat momentarily so high up in the atmosphere it’s irrelevant.
Atmospheric CO2 is contingent upon seawater temperature (Henry’s Law).
Only the sun has the energy to heat 1.335 billion cubic kilometres of water.
To control Earth’s climate, you must control the sun.
The “climate debate” is now and always has been political and anti-scientific.
The whole narrative is meant to transfer our wealth to the globalists while destroying our nation.