Basin plan ignores the environment
Blog Post | Blog of Sarah Hanson-Young
Tuesday 29th November 2011, 9:54am
by ParisLord in
- Environment
- Agriculture
- Biodiversity
- Climate Change Adaptation
- Climate change and agriculture
- Climate Change Impacts
- Climate Change Science
- Coal Mining
- Dams
- Drought
- Environment & Planning Issues
- Fisheries
- Infrastructure
- Land Use Change & Forestry
- Land-clearing
- Lobbyists
- Local Government
- Marine
- Mining
- Murray Darling
- National Parks and related
- Natural Resource Management
- Open-cut Mining
- Planning Laws
- Recycling
- Resource Use
- Salinity
- Sarah Hanson-Young's SA Campaigns
- Senate / Senators
- Trading
- Urban Water
- Water
- Water Trading
What a disappointment. That's what I was thinking upon reading the draft plan released by the Murray Darling Basin Authority yesterday.
Australians pay as Labor digs a hole for itself on tax
Blog Post | Blog of Sarah Hanson-Young
Tuesday 22nd November 2011, 8:55am
by ParisLord in
- Environment
- Employment & Workers’ Rights
- Health & Wellbeing
- Alternative Fuels
- Angela Pamela proposed uranium mine
- Australian Mining Overseas
- Beverley Uranium Mine
- CEO salaries
- Coal
- Coal Mining
- Dental
- Energy
- Energy Efficiency
- Environment & Planning Issues
- Federal System of Governance
- Fossil fuels
- Gas
- Geosequestration
- Health Services
- Lobbyists
- Mining
- National Parks and related
- Natural Resource Management
- Nuclear Energy
- Oil
- Open-cut Mining
- Peak Oil
- Pollution
- Public transport
- Ranger Uranium Mine
- Resource Use
- Roxby Uranium Mine
- Uranium Mining
- Uranium mining in WA
- Yeelirrie proposed uranium mine
The "year of decision and delivery" is quickly coming to an end and the Prime Minister is determined to get the government's mining tax passed through the House of Representative this week before the summer break of Parliament. The Senate would then deal with the legislation when Parliament resumes in 2012.
Australians pay as Labor digs a hole for itself on tax
Blog Post | Blog of Sarah Hanson-Young
Tuesday 22nd November 2011, 8:54am
by ParisLord in
- Environment
- Employment & Workers’ Rights
- Health & Wellbeing
- Alternative Fuels
- Angela Pamela proposed uranium mine
- Australian Mining Overseas
- Beverley Uranium Mine
- CEO salaries
- Coal
- Coal Mining
- Dental
- Energy
- Energy Efficiency
- Environment & Planning Issues
- Federal System of Governance
- Fossil fuels
- Gas
- Geosequestration
- Health Services
- Lobbyists
- Mining
- National Parks and related
- Natural Resource Management
- Nuclear Energy
- Oil
- Open-cut Mining
- Peak Oil
- Pollution
- Public transport
- Ranger Uranium Mine
- Resource Use
- Roxby Uranium Mine
- Uranium Mining
- Uranium mining in WA
- Yeelirrie proposed uranium mine
The "year of decision and delivery" is quickly coming to an end and the Prime Minister is determined to get the government's mining tax passed through the House of Representative this week before the summer break of Parliament. The Senate would then deal with the legislation when Parliament resumes in 2012.
End the shame of locking up Indonesian children
Blog Post | Blog of Sarah Hanson-Young
Tuesday 15th November 2011, 10:27am
by ParisLord in
- Human Rights & Justice
- Family & Community
- International Issues
- Access to Justice
- Alternatives to Prison
- Bill of Rights
- Children
- Community Legal Centres
- Detention Centres
- Disabled Rights
- Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC)
- Immigration
- Judicial Independence
- Judicial System
- Justice System
- Legal Aid
- People with a Disability
- Policing
- Refugees
If an intellectually-disabled Australian boy was detained in an Indonesian prison without charge for two years before being quietly released and deported, Australians would be fuming. They'd be as upset as they are over the boy in a Bali prison on drugs possession charges.
The carbon price is law. Now begins the campaign for serious climate action!
Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
Tuesday 8th November 2011, 3:12pm
by ChristineMilne in
Today we celebrate a huge achievement, with the passage of the Clean Energy Future legislation that finally puts a price on pollution and gets us ready for historical investments in clean, renewable energy, energy efficiency and protection of landscape carbon.
But, in a very real way, today's vote is a new beginning for the campaign for serious climate action, not the end.
This package of bills was designed carefully to have as many points of review as possible, as many opportunities for campaigning as possible, and as much independent expert advice as possible. Critically, it is designed with complete upward flexibility: there is no limit to our ambition if we are ready to aim high.
The challenge now is to build the political will for ambitious, science-based action over the years ahead.
Red-letter day in fight against warming
Blog Post | Blog of Sarah Hanson-Young
Tuesday 8th November 2011, 8:12am
by ParisLord in
- Environment
- Climate Change & the Zero Carbon World
- Alternative Fuels
- Arctic Ice Melt
- Baseload renewables
- Biodiversity
- Bioenergy
- Carbon accounting
- Climate & Social Justice
- Climate Change Adaptation
- Climate change and agriculture
- Climate Change Impacts
- Climate Change Science
- Climate Refugees
- Dams
- Drought
- Emissions Targets
- Emissions Trading and carbon tax
- Energy
- Energy Efficiency
- Environment & Planning Issues
- Feed-in Laws
- Fossil fuels
- Garnaut Review
- Geothermal Energy
- Great Barrier Reef
- Green Carbon
- Hydro, Wave & Tidal Energy
- Infrastructure
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC)
- Just Transitions
- Mandatory Renewable Energy Target
- Murray Darling
- National Parks and related
- Natural Resource Management
- Pollution
- Renewable Energy
- Sea Level Rise
- Solar Photovoltaic Energy
- Solar Thermal Energy
- Sustainable Cities
- Trading
- Waste
- Water
- Wind Energy
- Zero Carbon
Today will be a great day for Australians who have waited years for their government to take our warming planet seriously.
An historic vote
Blog Post | Blog of Bob Brown
Wednesday 2nd November 2011, 10:51am
by DavidParis in
Great excitement! Last night the House of Representatives passed my private member’s bill to remove federal ministerial veto power over Territory laws*.
It is the first Australian Greens bill ever to pass Parliament and become law.
No longer will a single federal minister be able to step in and --with the stroke of a pen and without reference to Parliament -- dismiss laws passed by the democratically elected representatives of the Territory Assemblies (as the Howard government did when it overrode the civil partnerships laws passed by the ACT Assembly five years ago).
This bill has passed thanks to you and the 1.6 million Australians who voted Greens last election and thanks to the support of the Chief Ministers of the Territories, the Gillard government and the Independents, and the four Greens elected to represent Canberrans in the ACT Legislative Assembly.
It is a great day for the Australian Greens and great day for democracy! Raise a glass!
If you are near Canberra next Tuesday, please come to the Senate to see the historic carbon price package pass into law. Click here to rsvp or for details to watch online.
* Territories Self-Government Legislation Amendment (Disallowance and Amendment of laws) Bill 2011
Tasmanian forest conservation under threat
Blog Post | Blog of Bob Brown
Wednesday 2nd November 2011, 9:55am
by AlisonHetherington in
Yesterday in parliament the Minister for Forestry, Senator Ludwig, confirmed to Christine Milne what has been apparent from months of inaction: the Tasmanian and Australian governments do not intend to uphold all the conservation goals of the Tasmanian forests intergovernmental agreement.
The Tasmanian government as part of the agreement was supposed to stop ALL logging in the 430,000 hectares of forests identified by environment groups. This area was supposed to have been placed in informal reserves immediately.
Independent experts were brought in to look at the options for logging outside the 430,000 hectares but had very narrow instructions on how to do so. In response, a meeting of the governments, unions, environment groups, sawmillers and industry representatives asked the experts to take a more expansive view on stopping logging in the 430,000 hectares and to report back to the group.
If the government cannot find areas to log outside of this area then it is supposed to pay out the contracts for the wood.
But in parliament this week Senator Ludwig revealed that the government intends to agree on a list of areas that can continue to be logged in the 430,000 hectares. This is a direct breach of the intergovernmental agreement signed by the Prime Minister and Tasmanian Premier (see Christine Milne's Senate question and speech: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/dailys/ds011111.pdf).
The intergovernmental agreement was negotiated in good faith and should be adhered to. This about face on the conservation goals of the agreement is not acceptable. Both governments need to ensure all the conservation goals of the intergovernmental agreement are observed, just as those measures aiding unemployed workers, contractors, Forestry Tasmania, and Gunns have been.
On the war in Afghanistan. Senator Scott Ludlam
Blog Post | Blog of Scott Ludlam
Tuesday 1st November 2011, 3:17pm
by GiovanniTorre in
Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (October 31st, 17:04):
I rise to add my condolences to those of my colleagues on all sides of the chamber concerning the horror that occurred on the weekend and to pay my respects to the three fallen Australians whose sacrifice is appreciated by all of us. Also to the Afghan interpreter, who was killed, and the many who were terribly injured, our thoughts are with them and their families. It is worth noting in passing, with a sense of sadness, that we do not speak to the names of each of Australia's fallen troops now because there are so many. We stand in silence in acknowledgement of their sacrifice but simply do not have time as a parliament to speak to them all as we used to-32 in a decade and a third of them fallen in only the last 12 months. If there has been such progress, if things look as wonderful on the ground as Senator Feeney has been describing, it appears that the violence that our troops have been exposed to is only getting worse.
Qantas ignores passengers in union-busting tactics
Blog Post | Blog of Sarah Hanson-Young
Tuesday 1st November 2011, 7:56am
by ParisLord in
For years Qantas has marketed itself to the world with the Peter Allen song, "I still call Australia home."