Liberal National coalition’s “nuclear cowboys”
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‘Crackpot stuff’: Coalition MPs’ call for nuclear power inquiry rejected by Greens, Guardian, Sarah Martin, 5
 June 19, Sarah Hanson-Young says the Nationals who have raised nuclear energy are ‘lunatic cowboys’ The Greens have labelled Coalition MPs pushing for an inquiry into nuclear power as “lunatic cowboys”, pledging to block any move to overturn Australia’s nuclear ban in the Senate.As conservative MPs move to establish a Senate inquiry into nuclear power when parliament returns next month, the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has invited the former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce to debate her in the “town he thinks it should be built”. “Talk of overturning the ban on nuclear power in Australia is crackpot stuff,” Hanson-Young, who is the party’s environment spokesperson, said. “Aside from being a dangerous technology, nuclear power is wildly expensive and would take a decade or more to build. “It would be a funny joke if it wasn’t so embarrassing to have the Nationals, who are in government and who sit around the cabinet table, pushing for this. “These people are meant to be in charge, and they’re running around like a bunch of lunatic cowboys.” The comments from the Greens come after Queenslanders Keith Pitt and James McGrath indicated they would push for a select committee into nuclear power in the first week of parliamentary sittings in July, saying technology has changed since the country last reviewed its prospects in 2006……… The New South Wales deputy premier, John Barilaro, has also thrown his support behind the nuclear push, saying despite the debate over emissions reduction the nuclear “solution” was seen as too “politically risky”. “Now is the right time for Australia to begin a mature and fact-filled conversation on the benefits of nuclear energy,” Barilaro said. The Australian Nuclear Association has supported the new inquiry, saying deep cuts to emissions would be best achieved with nuclear power, with thetechnology cost competitive with coal and gas if carbon pollution is priced. The association’s Robert Parker said removing the ban on nuclear power that currently exists in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act would enable industry to start negotiations with suppliers about building a nuclear power plant at the lowest possible cost. But Hanson-Young said the Greens would be pushing to strengthen the EPBC Act and would fight any moves to water down the ban on nuclear. “We need stronger environment laws that continue the ban on nuclear energy,” Hanson-Young said. “Nuclear energy is an old technology that Australia doesn’t need and has outgrown. We are moving toward a renewable energy future. It’s happening, it’s here and the government should be enabling it, not trying to revisit a dangerous and outdated technology.” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/05/crackpot-stuff-coalition-mps-call-for-nuclear-power-inquiry-rejected-by-greens |
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Australia heads for authoritarian rule, as Federal Police under government control, threatens press freedom
The AFP media raids aim to suppress the truth. Without it we head into the darkness of oppression https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/05/the-afp-media-raids-aim-to-suppress-the-truth-without-it-we-head-into-the-darkness-of-oppression
According to the Australian Federal Police Association’s president, Angela Smith, there was a widely shared feeling across the AFP that the body had “lost autonomy”. “It’s an embarrassing situation,” Smith was quoted as saying. “We look the least independent police force in Australia.”
In the wake of the AFP’s raids on a leading News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst on Tuesday and the ABC on Wednesday, the position of the AFP has gone from embarrassing to deeply disturbing.
Even Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the cheerleaders of the re-election of the Morrison government, seemed in no doubt as to the political purpose of the raid on Smethurst two weeks after a federal election. It was, News Corp said in an official statement, a “dangerous act of intimidation”.
Implicit in News Corp’s statement is that this is not an act of policing, but an act of politics.
What are we to make of two raids in two days as anything other than a symptom of deeply disturbing developments at the heart of our democracy?Smethurst’s story was over a year old. It was about a plan to allow the National Signals Directorate, for the first time, to directly spy on Australians by “hacking into critical infrastructure”.
In a statement the AFP attempted to justify its raid on Smethurst by arguing the disclosure of “these specific documents undermines Australia’s national security”. But how can our knowing about a possible major change to our freedoms as citizens in any way threaten our national security? The AFP doesn’t tell us because there is no argument they can make, only an unfounded assertion that they can repeat, mantra-like.
If mass surveillance is brought in, how will we know about it? Is national security best served by the inevitable abuses of such a scheme about which we are never told and which would go unpunished? Would national security be enhanced or weakened were Mr Dutton to use such powers for political advantage or to enable political persecution without our knowledge?
And if we cannot know the truth of such fundamental matters, what security as a democracy do we have?
If one raid was “a dangerous act of intimidation” what are we to make of two raids in two days – the second of our national broadcaster – as anything other than a symptom of deeply disturbing developments at the heart of our democracy?
The story in this case was not one but two years old, a major exposé of how Australian special forces soldiers had killed unarmed men and children in Afghanistan. On what possible grounds is it a good thing to not know atrocities have been committed by our nation?
How is our national security threatened by revealing crimes done in our name? Surely we are best served as a nation by a military that we can be confident acts within certain boundaries that are deemed acceptable in war and does not go beyond them?
In all this we cannot pretend to be surprised. The repression and culture of lying, deceit and evasion of public accountability that cloaked previous Liberal governments’ refugees policy is now coming home to haunt us all.
It was after all under Scott Morrison’s stewardship of the immigration portfolio that the notorious section 42 of the Border Force Act was enacted, allowing for the jailing for two years of any doctors or social workers who bore public witness to children beaten or sexually abused, to acts of rape or cruelty. The new crime was not crime, but the reporting of state-sanctioned violence on the innocent.
National security was invoked then to justify the enforcement of a national silence over what were no more or less than crimes.
And so it is again.
The consecutive timing of these acts represents not just a moment when a government crackdown on journalism began. The method may be to intimidate any whistleblower or journalist who would wish to reveal crimes committed by our government or in the name of our government.
But the aim is to suppress the truth.
And without the light of truth shining on what happens in public life we head into the darkness of oppression.
The Morrison government will soon seek to assume the high moral ground by diverting public discussion to the need for religious freedoms. But until I see Hillsong being raided by Dutton’s stooges, with the feds occupying their offices, accessing all their phone and computer records, I am not buying any of it.
This is a new government uninhibited, and it would now seem, unhinged. It does seem extraordinary that two cases, each of long standing, would immediately after an election, suddenly be activated to this level of public attention without ministerial knowledge. And yet, we have Dutton’s word it is not so. And were a news organisation subsequently to report, based on government documents, that the truth is otherwise, who knows who might come knocking on their door in the interest of national security?
Under his home affairs super ministry, Peter Dutton has more overt and covert power than any minister in our history. And this week officers of his ministry have been willing to use their powers recklessly against those practices that make us a democracy.
After the raids of the last two days, Australians would be justified in feeling fearful about their future. The politicians who might speak for us have long ceased to do so. And the journalists who still can, now risk everything if they publish political secrets that may be in our interests to know but are in our political masters’ to keep hidden.
The Morrison government could not have signalled its turn to the new authoritarianism that is poisoning so many other democracies with any clearer message. Get ready for the future, because it may already be here.
Extraordinary Federal Police action! Raiding ABC offices and home of a News Corps editor
Mr Dutton’s office yesterday referred all queries to the AFP and did not responded to a list of questions from news.com.au from early this morning.
“Minister Dutton must explain what he knew about these two raids … freedom of the press is an essential component of our democracy.”
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Australian media is bracing for more “heavy-handed” Federal Police raids, after extraordinary searches of the ABC and a News Corp editor’s home. https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/federal-police-raid-abc-offices-in-sydney-over-a-2017-story-about-afghanistan/news-story/3bb1fbe51571d757ca05bb8da0b763d1 Shannon Molloy 5 June 19, Australia’s media industry is bracing for more “heavy-handed” raids by the Federal Police, following the extraordinary searches of the ABC today and a journalist’s home yesterday. Several officers remain inside the Sydney headquarters of the public broadcaster, trawling through more than 9200 items in relation to reports published two years ago regarding alleged unlawful killings and misconduct by Special Forces troops in Afghanistan. It comes just a day after the Canberra home of Annika Smethurst, political editor of News Corp Australia’s Sunday newspapers, was stormed by seven AFP officers who spent seven hours poking through her personal items, including her underwear drawer. Claire Harvey, deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph, said she was concerned more journalists would be targeted in what was clearly an attempt to intimidate. “All media organisations should be concerned about who’s going to be next,” Harvey said on ABC News today. “There will be more raids. That’s inevitable. There are plenty of stories I can think of that the government might be targeting next.” The AFP raids, which News Corp Australia — publisher of news.com.au — has described as “outrageous and heavy-handed”, “aren’t about a genuine search for information”, Harvey said. “Seven Federal Police officers spent several hours going through every drawer in (Smethurst’s) home, the kitchen drawers and underwear drawer. Her cookbooks, they went through every page. “It’s interesting they haven’t searched Annika’s office. “This is a really chilling example of what happens when government thinks they aren’t going to be held to account.” The incredibly broad scope of the search warrant executed at the ABC’s offices today should be a concern for all media organisations, Harvey said. STORIES THAT SPARKED CRACKDOWN Continue reading |
June 5 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “How Utility Schemes Make Customers Pay $1 Billion A Year To Bail Out Dying Coal Plants” • Big electric utilities are cooking their books to get customers to bail out old plants, as they push to keep operating costly, dirty, and dangerous coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants instead of using less costly […]
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1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 