I’ve just received a first-hand dispatch from the Northern Territory. It contained some amazing stories and photos of election night at our old house in Tennant Creek.

There was a carnival atmosphere throughout the evening but the biggest cheer was reserved for Mal Brough. When it became clear that Mal had been dumped with a huge swing against him, the whole party, a fairly even mix of Wumpurrarni and others, erupted in wild cheering.

The local Country Liberal Party candidate fared even worse. A young fella with a nice face and not much behind it; he had been brought in from the Blue Mountains of NSW and he campaigned hard on the Intervention.

“Make no mistake,” his election leaflets warned. “This election is a referendum on the Howard Government’s strategy for the Northern Territory.” He got his wish and in some booths the CLP attracted a mere handful of votes out of a box of hundreds.

Moving right along, there was more applause even further to the north when the Australian delegation announced at the UN climate change talks in Bali that we will ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

It was a symbolic gesture on the part of our new government to show the world that we are serious about reducing our carbon emissions. The signing part is easy though, like going to the aeroclub and booking a parachute jump. It’s a bold first step but will we freeze in the slipstream at the open door when it’s time to let go?

What if we decide that it’s too far down?

There is a price to be paid to wean ourselves off relatively cheap fossil fuel. The coal companies are quite right when they deride alternative energy as being more expensive and less powerful than their ancient compressed solar power.

The government is going to need all the help it can get to sell the reality of lowered carbon emissions. The tricky part is seeing reduced consumption as a good move when we are continuing to be told by advertising that we should buy even more stuff.

Hopefully, influential community organisations, like the churches, will give their support to our efforts so we might lose the world record for worst per-person carbon pollution of all the peoples on the planet.

The recent remarks of Cardinal George Pell regarding global warming were therefore most distressing when he said he was, “sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes, because the evidence is insufficient.”

The Cardinal would do well to read the words of Galileo’s inquisitors in 1633 as they bullied him into renouncing the heretical idea that the Earth went around the Sun.

Whether we believe in a Creator or just a crazy happenstance we’re all on the same piece of rock hurtling through a mind-bogglingly vast space at 105,600 km/h (give or take a bit of speedo error).

All that matters is whether we leave the joint in better nick when we go out, compared to how it was when we came in.