Selling the “resource boom”, (especially uranium) to women
Resources industry seeks more women
ABC News 20 July 09 By Maria HatzakisThe Queensland Resources Council (QRC) says the industry will not be able to achieve the growth it wants without recruiting more women……………….
QRC chief executive officer Michael Roche says female workers are needed to take up trade roles and careers in engineering and environmental sciences.
“The industry will be in a recovery phase very, very quickly and we know we’ll need thousands more people to service the sort of growth that is being planned in the industry and we can’t do it just by relying on the blokes,” he said.
Resources industry seeks more women – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Stand up to Martin Ferguson’s Uranium Push
Send a backyard message to Martin Ferguson
monkeyjedi. blogspot.com 20 July 09Would you allow a secretive US arms company to mine uranium in your backyard? Neither would we!So help us tell our politicians that Australia doesn’t need more uranium mines.It’s easy to approve a new uranium mine when it is out of sight and out of mind – but just because we don’t see a place every day doesn’t mean that we should risk ruining it forever.That’s how the Environment Minister Peter Garrett and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson are able to approve environmentally destructive projects like General Atomics new Beverley 4 Mile mine, 500 kilometres north of Adelaide.
Adelaide.We need your help to send a backyard message to Minister Ferguson, in his home electorate of Batman.
If this acid leaching mine opens, Australia will have five uranium mines either working or approved, with more in the pipeline. Along with the expansion of other mines it adds up to a potential trebling in Australia’s uranium exports – three times the waste, three times the worry, three times the risk.
The Australian Government allows our uranium to be sold to nuclear weapon states such as China. Uranium sold for nuclear power frees up uranium for nuclear weapons so our exports directly or indirectly fuel growing nuclear instability and intensify threats across our region and around the world.
That’s why it’s important to let our politicians know, in their own backyards, that this massive expansion of uranium mining must stop.
Stop the world Mummy, I want to get off…: Send a backyard message to Batman
Martin Ferguson Minister for the Uranium Lobby
The Bulletin 21 July 09
“The Labor Party changed its policy at the 2007 national conference,” Mr Ferguson said.“There is no limit on the number of uranium mines in Australia.“I simply adopt the view it’s only a matter of time and there will be uranium mining in Queensland.”
Ferguson hails next wave of mining growth | Local News | Rockhampton Morning Bulletin
How the media covers the nuclear industry – or doesn’t cover it
The public in USA, Britain, Europe, (even Australia, though rarely)- do have an opportunity to learn of the negative side of the nuclear industry. In particular, we learn of the desperate efforts of the nuclear industry to portray itself as “commercially viable”.
However, do the “customer countries” of AREVA, Westinghouse, BHP Billiton etc – Asian countries learn of this, – does their media cover this? How much of the touted “scramble for nuclear” really mean a scramble of Asian and Middle Eastern governments to get nuclear weapons.
Where the government runs the nuclear industry – well, it doesn’t have to be “commercially viable”
This suits the”First World” nuclear and uranium salesmen who cannot get anyone to invest in their product in their own country. – Christina Macpherson 21 July 09
Away from the media glare, Asean talks nuclear 2009/07/19 Sheridan Mahavera reporting from Phuket
ASEAN is again likely to be known as a group that is better at promoting development among its 10 member countries than promoting noble political principles like the rule of law or protecting human rights.
The idea of having its own human rights body has grabbed headlines in the region but some of the more noteworthy meetings that are going on away from the glare of the media are about how some member countries are going nuclear……………………….Thailand is planning to build a nuclear plant that could cost US$6 billion (RM21.4 billion) and produce 4,000-megawatts of electricity in 2020.
While Vietnam had announced that it would start building two nuclear power plants, each with two 1,000-megawatt reactors, in 2013 in its southern province of Ninh Thuan.
Malaysia has yet to make public its nuclear power plans but Tenaga Nasional Berhad has said it wants to build a power plant by 2025.
Meanwhile, Asean secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan confirmed that officials would be putting the final touches to the China and Australia agreements over the next few days. Once signed, the pacts would create free trade zones between Asean and the two countries. NST Online Away from the media glare, Asean talks nuclear
A Labor loner who has given it all away
A Labor loner who has given it all away The transformation of Peter Garrett from environmental activist to passive government minister is now complete, writes Kerry-Anne Walsh.
- Sydney Morning Herald July 19, 2009
Parachuted into the safe Labor seat of Kingsford Smith in Sydney, Garrett landed in Canberra at the 2004 election and has, in quietly dramatic fashion, been divesting himself ever since of his pre-Labor skin.
Approving the Four Mile uranium mine last week was the starkest example to date of the transformation of Garrett from anti-nuclear and environmental activist to passive government minister. It was an even bigger slap in the face to his past than giving the nod last year to a Tasmanian pulp mill…………………………… It was, after all, only two years ago at Labor’s national conference that he spoke passionately against expanding Labor’s three-uranium-mines-only policy.
“I have always maintained and indeed committed myself to the notion that Australia should be nuclear-free – that our country is as far into nuclear activities as it ever should be,” he spruiked. “I have long been opposed to uranium mining, and I remain opposed to it. I am unapologetic about this. In fact, I am proud of it.”………………..
………….when policy directions collide fiercely with deeply held convictions – if, indeed, they still do – there is always the option of resignation from cabinet……………..
……..The voters who put him there won’t thank him; he’s betrayed them.
Oppose Garrett’s sell out — leave uranium in the ground
Oppose Garrett’s sell out — leave uranium in the ground
Green Left Leslie Richmond19 July 2009
He occupied a (somewhat self-appointed) position as a hero of Australia’s environment and Indigenous rights movements for decades. Yet these days, former Midnight Oil frontman and current ALP environment minister Peter Garrett works overtime to prove his credentials as a defender of big business and the big polluters…………….
……….His latest exercise in political surrender was his approval of the Four Mile uranium mine in northern South Australia. The deposit is the biggest uranium discovery in 25 years. It is just a few kilometres from Beverley uranium mine, the expansion of which Garrett approved last yeat.
Four Mile will be run by Quasar resources, a company owned by US weapons dealer and nuclear energy corporation General Atomics. General Atomics makes the Predator aerial drone vehicles the US is using so effectively to kill civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan……………
…………………Once again, an Indigenous community is being forced to give up its heritage to have access to basic services and living standards. Garrett is dividing a community where people would have expected the Midnight Oil-era Garrett to be promoting Indigenous empowerment and ownership…………………..
………..And he’s accepted that far from being a setback for our country, US forces are, in fact, a positive boon. In 2004, he reversed his long-standing opposition to the US-run Pine Gap military facility. In 2007, he supported the establishment of a new US military spy facility near Geraldton…………….
………….who can know that the resources company Quasar — owned by military hardware company General Atomics — will run the mine without thinking immediately of the potential the uranium will end up in nuclear weapons? The only safe place for uranium is in the ground, undisturbed.
Green Left – Oppose Garrett’s sell out — leave uranium in the ground
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