Noosa the first Queensland council to declare a climate emergency – Mayor explains why
Why this south-east Queensland council declared a ‘climate emergency’ https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/why-this-south-east-queensland-council-declared-a-climate-emergency-20190724-p52acd.html, By Tony Wellington, July 27, 2019
Frustrated by stagnant policy at the federal level, Australian communities are looking elsewhere for responses to climate change.
Businesses, communities and, increasingly, local governments are stepping up to the plate.
Noosa council declared a climate emergency to send a strong message, according to the mayor.
As the closest tier of government to the people, it’s our responsibility to listen to the concerns of residents, and they are demanding a healthy and resilient future for their children and grandchildren.
The concerns of our communities are not being heard by the national decision-makers. Local governments have no choice but to act as climate advocates for their communities and thus take matters into their own hands.
That’s why we in Noosa shire have set ourselves a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2026 – and our community has jumped on board.
Our modelling shows that, if action is not taken to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, a much larger proportion of our residential and commercial properties will be within the storm tide inundation zone in the year 2100.
In other words, with a projected sea-level rise of 0.8 metres and intensifying weather events, many properties could be flooded in a significant storm or else subject to coastal erosion. We need to plan for this now, not wait until it’s too late.
Noosa recently became the first Queensland council to declare a climate emergency, joining 847 other government jurisdictions across the world who have already done so. We want to send a strong message to higher levels of government that this is the most serious issue facing humankind.
Noosa council is rolling out solar panels and battery storage, adopting a wide range of energy efficiency measures and tackling methane emissions from our landfill. And we are working with our community to reduce emissions at the business and household level. Of course, there is much more to be done. But we’re not alone.
We’re just one of many councils across the country who are rising to the challenge of climate change. From the Huon Valley in Tasmania to Port Douglas in northern Queensland, councils are working together through alliances such as the Cities Power Partnership.
We need to learn from each other and share our knowledge because we’re all in this together. Every local government wants to see sustainable, healthy communities that thrive in the future. And, like it or not, the future is renewable energy. Tony Wellington is the Mayor of Noosa Shire Council
Australia’s right-wing push for nuclear power is really a ruse to promote the coal industry
Wren’s Week: Out with Medicare and in with nuclear power Independent Australia By John Wren | 27 July 2019 “………..In the last week or so, too, there has been an upswing in calls for nuclear power in Australia. Interestingly, the calls are being made by all the old die-hard coal freaks in the Liberal and National Parties. Barnaby Joyce was prominent, with a harebrained scheme to offer free electricity to people whose homes are within sight of the plant.
Nuclear power has also been discussed amongst all the “looney fringe” on Sky News (after dark). The Energy Minister Angus “Watergate” Taylor was put under extreme pressure during Question Time by the Labor Party. He was visibly flustered. Taylor is not a strong performer at the Despatch Box. It culminated with him “not ruling out” nuclear power.
While we argue and debate the pros and cons of nuclear power, we are also continuing to burn coal. It’s a ruse and Australians should not be sucked in by it. Nuclear power is not the answer to Australia’s emissions now. It may have been 20 years ago when it was first mooted, but that time is long gone. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/wrens-week-out-with-medicare-and-in-with-nuclear-power,12941
National Party Member for Gippsland Darren Chester makes reassuring, but rather ambiguous, noises against setting up nuclear power
“No plans” for move to nuclear: MP Latrobe Valley Express, Michelle Slater , 26 July 19,
The Australian Nuclear Association released a paper recommending five nuclear power plants be built in the Latrobe Valley, with the support of a handful of Coalition MPs, including Barnaby Joyce.
He said it was his priority to “secure reliable and affordable energy for Gippsland families, businesses and the farming community”…….
ANA vice president Robert Parker said they had been studying several sites in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, but it had not gone “beyond a broad brush approach at this stage”. ….
Gippsland Trades and Labour Council secretary Steve Dodd said the union did not support nuclear energy due to the amount of risks it presented.
“People talk about clean energy, but you only have to look at Japan and Chernobyl with these massive accidents where people have been evacuated,” Mr Dodd said….
Voices of the Valley president Wendy Farmer was sceptical about the viability and safety of nuclear power and described the idea as a “brain fart” and an “expensive pipe dream”.
“We can use the existing energy grid with renewable energy much faster and cheaper than nuclear without the risk of a spill,” Ms Farmer said.https://www.latrobevalleyexpress.com.au/story/6292224/no-plans-for-move-to-nuclear-mp/
To add to its safety problems, ANSTO has had to increase prices for nuclear medicine from the Lucas Heights reactor
Troubled ANSTO raises nuclear medicine prices, THE AUSTRALIAN, SEAN PARNELL, HEALTH EDITOR,JULY 26, 2019 Australia’s nuclear medicine sector has been hit with price hikes of up to 9 per cent from the government manufacturer despite months of supply problems, safety concerns and breakdowns.
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation provides the domestic supply of nuclear medicine, likely to be needed by one in two Australians during their lifetime, and also wants to ramp up its exports.
But amid calls for Australia to also embrace nuclear energy, ANSTO’s reputation has been tarnished by problems at its Lucas Heights facilities that have even required it to rely on imports.
Most recently, after heaters for hydrogen converters failed, ANSTO was forced to bring its new $200 million plant into service before it had all the approvals. Two workers were then exposed to excess radiation, forcing its closure, and yet another investigation by the regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.
An ANSTO spokesman yesterday confirmed the nuclear medicine sector had been asked to pay more than 3-9 per cent more for products…….
Some customers have been lobbying federal Industry, Science and Technology Minister Karen Andrews to intervene. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/troubled-ansto-raises-nuclear-medicine-prices/news-story/208ee20abacac04f304e45960bd963b4
First nations rights and colonising practices by the nuclear industry: An Australian battleground for environmental justice
PDF of full article available on request (jim.green@foe.org.au)
First nations rights and colonising practices by the nuclear industry: An Australian battleground for environmental justice Jillian K. Marsh and Jim Green
The Extractive Industries and Society July 2019
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X18302491
Abstract
This paper highlights current events and original research to explore the tensions between First Nations, industry and government in the context of uranium mining and nuclear waste management in Australia. We outline challenges faced by Aboriginal Australians in their role as custodians of the land, and as community leaders. A critical examination of some of the barriers to First Nations empowerment includes government engagement through legislation and practices that have repeatedly resulted in dispossession and disempowerment of Australian Aboriginal Traditional Owners. Laws ostensibly designed to provide rights and protections to Aboriginal people are repeatedly curtailed or overridden to facilitate nuclear projects—in particular radioactive waste repositories and uranium mines. We argue that existing measures provide feeble rights and protections for Aboriginal people as laws have repeatedly produced outcomes that favour government and industry and deny Aboriginal rights to sovereignty. Our research highlights patterns of colonial oppression that transgress human rights, and frames mining and nuclear waste in a way that lacks a decolonisation strategy and are based on industrial violence. Theoretical understandings of Indigenous sovereignty through a decolonising lens will highlight Indigenous standpoints, the continued contestation of Indigenous peoples’ customary land rights, and the limitations of post-colonial environmental justice.
…
Conclusions
The government and industry approach to environmental and cultural justice sits uneasily with the principle of free prior and informed consent enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The government approach lacks credibility based on the idea that consultation is somehow an equivalent and acceptable form of a consenting process. Continue reading
Rio Tinto moves to own Ranger remediation
Rio Tinto moves to own Ranger remediation, Matthew Stevens, Jul 26, 2019
https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/rio-tinto-moves-to-own-ranger-remediation-20190725-p52ape
In pushing Energy Resources Australia towards a potentially controversial capital raising Rio Tinto has moved to take greater ownership of what is arguably the most important mine retirement and clean-up in Australian resources history.
The task ahead is the required $830 million remediation of the Ranger uranium mine, which sits in a necessarily excised pocket of the United Nations World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.
Ranger has been operated by Energy Resources Australia through its often controversial 40-year life. Through that time ERA has been majority owned by Rio Tinto or its Australian forebear, CRA. Currently Rio owns 68.4 per cent of ERA.
But a plan to fill the $400 million or so gap between what Ranger’s remediation is expected to cost and the cash that ERA has at hand to pay for the big clean-up could quite easily see Rio creep to a position that would see the mine operator fully absorbed by the mother ship.
ERA revealed extended discussion with Rio Tinto over how the funding gap would be filled has ended with its Anglo-Australia overseer insisting the only path was for Ranger’s operator to make a renounceable rights issue.
Rio Tinto has committed to take up its full entitlement and to underwrite the balance of any issuance if alternatives are not available.
The erstwhile uranium miner told its minority owners that it is “considering the size, structure and terms” of any potential rights issue “having regard to the interests of ERA as a whole”.
While that is an appropriate expression of independence, the most unlikely outcome here would be an ERA board populated by Rio Tinto appointees will end up doing anything that does not concur with the parent’s view of the company’s future.
The minority question
The most likely question ahead, then, for minority shareholders is going to be whether or not they double-down on a failed punt and back the rights issue needed to sustain the long, costly wind-up of their business?
Whatever the size, structure and terms of the raising Rio Tinto wants ERA to make, it will be material to the minority owners. ERA’s current market capitalisation is $130 million. So tapping the market for even half the shortfall could prove definitively dilutive for those unprepared to throw funds at a business destined to disappear.
In most circumstances this course might be cause to wonder at whether or not this pathway might represent a level of minority shareholder oppression. Rio Tinto’s pitch though is the exception to the rule.
ERA stopped being a miner five years ago and hopes its future might be extended were dashed a few years later when Rio Tinto found itself unable to support the Ranger 3 underground expansion, a conclusion we revealed first in April 2015.
Presently ERA’s only recourse to income is through processing uranium from stockpiled ore. That production will end in 2021 and ERA has a legal obligation to safely close the operation by 2026. The cost of remediation will endure at least half a decade beyond that and so too will the risk to reputation and social licence of any and all shortcomings of that effort.
Quite sensibly, Rio Tinto assesses it fully owns the risk of any failure or future non-compliance. It is regularly reminded of that inescapable reality by the anti-uranium activists, by the increasingly power ESG lobby and by governments state and federal.
RELATED: Rio Tinto worried about ERA’s Ranger uranium mine
The funding proposal sketched out on Thursday announces those warnings were unnecessary. Rio Tinto really does want to own Ranger’s remediation.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese asks “Where would the Liberal Coalition like nuclear reactors to be placed”?
Anthony Albanese MP https://www.facebook.com/AlboMP/posts/2531261843574579– 25 July 19
This week, the Government said they had an “open mind” about nuclear power in this country. If they really mean that, where on this map are they going to build it? Because these locations haven’t just been pulled out of some hat. These are the locations that the nuclear industry says a nuclear power plant would need to be located.
And if they want to build these things, every single Australian – from Geraldton to the Gold Coast – deserves to know where.
Union opposes nuclear power because it is uneconomic and dangerous
Wake up and smell the radiation. Nuclear is not the answer https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/wake-up-and-smell-the-radiation-nuclear-is-not-the-answer/news-story/dc3ea481d9d6083a9c6b391268f6d078m Allen Hicks, 24 July 19
State Development Minister Cameron Dick says that Nuclear power would gut Queensland
Nuclear power would gut Qld, minister says https://thewest.com.au/business/markets/nuclear-power-would-gut-qld-minister-says-ng-s-1957385, Sonia KohlbacherAAP, Wednesday, 24 July 2019
A senior Queensland politician has shot down a push by a handful of federal politicians to reconsider nuclear power.
The state’s energy and farming sectors would be gutted if Queensland played host to a nuclear power plant, State Development Minister Cameron Dick told a budget estimates hearing on Wednesday.
Mr Dick was responding to several coalition MPs who want to explore the viability of nuclear power, which is banned under federal law.
“A nuclear power plant would be a disaster for industry, for jobs and for growth in our state,” Mr Dick said.
“We’ve got new energy industries, industries that will create jobs for our children, that will be completely gutted by this proposal.” Mr Dick said nuclear power would run renewable energy sources out of town at a time of significant investment, strangle efforts to build a hydrogen industry and require massive government subsidies to get off the ground.
The nuclear push is being led by Hinkler MP Keith Pitt with the backing of Senator James McGrath, while other MPs within the ranks of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government have failed to dismiss it when probed.
Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor noted the ban when asked to rule it out in federal parliament on Tuesday.
“We’re not focused on the fuel source, we are focused on the outcome,” he said.
Mr Taylor said there were no plans to overturn the ban.
Senate moved to call on Senator Canavan to explain nuclear waste dump plan – size of dump, and types of wastes
24 July 19, Sarah Hanson Young has a motion in parliament today re the rumours about a larger dump site
Senator Hanson-Young: moved —That the Senate—
- notes that recent reports that the proposed nuclear waste dump site in South Australia will be expanded, covering at least 160 hectares, an increase of 60%, are deeply troubling given the lack of consultation; and
- calls on the Minister representing the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Senator Canavan, to provide a full explanation of the current plans for the nuclear waste dump site, and to clarify exactly how large it will be and what level of waste it will hold.
News South Wales South Coast touted as the place to site a nuclear power plant
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Is nuclear power an energy solution that could come to the South Coast? Bega District News , Albert McKnight ,23 July19,
Nuclear power has again become part of the national conversation and South East NSW is still being touted as a potential location to install a plant. Earlier this year Nuclear for Climate Australia said NSW could host 10 nuclear power plants and reiterated how the South Coast was a place of interest as a construction site. Under its proposal it states the South Coast has potential if included with other power plants that could be built at East Gippsland, the Snowy Mountains or Jervis Bay.
While it states the coast has many sites with “good access to once through sea water cooling” – running a large amount of water through a power plant’s condensers then discharging it into a waterway with only a small amount of evaporation – an extensive grid upgrade would be required for a 2.2GW plant. …… While federal and state laws do not allow the development of a nuclear power industry, several MPs want this changed according the Sydney Morning Herald, and at a recent conference the NSW Nationals passed a motion stating the party’s support for nuclear energy in Australia. Deputy Premier and Member for Monaro John Barilaro has been vocal about the need for a conversation around the technology for years, last month saying it was “guaranteed baseload energy with zero emissions, no fossil fuels and probably the cheapest cost to the average Australian household”. He said last year he attended a global seminar in the US on the next generation of nuclear energy systems called small modular reactors (SMRs), which are are smaller in size than conventional reactors and can be placed in remote areas without the need to feed directly to the grid. “Given their size and efficiency, their waste is minimal (new advancements in technology continues to address the waste issue) and compared to reactors of bygone eras, they are becoming very affordable,” he said. But Electrical Trades Union national secretary Allen Hicks said there were significant safety risks associated with nuclear power and the cost to construct, maintain and dispose of nuclear waste far outweighed any perceived benefits. “If Barilaro was being honest, he would tell people that nuclear is not a viable option without massive taxpayer subsidies which would see Australians’ good money thrown after bad,” he said. “The best option for cheap, clean and safe energy for Australian workers and consumers is for unions, industry and government to work together on pursuing a just transition towards renewable energy.” https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/6288083/is-nuclear-power-an-energy-solution-that-could-come-to-the-south-coast/ |
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Continuing problem of radioactive waste at Hunters Hill – contamination from old uranium processing site
Key points:
- The area on Sydney’s north shore was the former site of the Radium Hill refinery, which closed in 1915
- Residents have fought for decades to have the Government remove the contaminated soil
- A plan to keep the waste in “cells” on site has been rejected and labelled a “temporary” fix
Several properties on Nelson Parade at Hunters Hill have been built on land contaminated by the former Radium Hill uranium processing plant in the 1900s.
Residents have spent decades urging the government to remove the affected soil, which the NSW Environment Protection Authority found was contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons, coal tar pitch, arsenic and lead.
The Council has now voted against a recommendation by its own consultants to “encapsulate” the low-level radioactive material in cement “cells” and store it onsite.
Philippa Clark from the Nelson Parade Action Group said residents felt the plan would make their lives worse.
“The cells will make the stigma permanent, our anxiety increased, trapped in unsaleable homes.
“The proposal is silent on all of those impacts.
She said most Hunters Hill residents knew nothing of the latest plan by Property NSW as few residents were formally notified and it was on exhibition over the school holidays.
The existence of the radioactive material, in the soil for over a century, was discovered 53 years ago and remains unmanaged.
The Council and residents want the soil removed altogether but an earlier proposal to send it to a waste facility at Kemp’s Creek in Sydney’s West was abandoned after a backlash from the local community.
There is no other waste facility in the state licenced to handle the material and a national radioactive waste management facility is yet to be established by the Federal Government.
Ms Clarke told Monday night’s council meeting that if the radioactive material was stored onsite at Hunters Hill, there was no guarantee it would be moved later when suitable off-site storage becomes available.
Former Hunters Hill mayor Richard Quinn also urged the Council to reject the proposal.
“Whilst we might wish to see progress at last and endorse this [proposal], the onsite encapsulation component of this report I believe cannot be accepted,” he said.
“It’s contrary to the best practice in sustainable remediation, and it’s not unreasonable for this community to expect anything less than best practice.”
Resident John Akin thought the Council had no choice but to accept the proposal, saying those pushing for outright rejection “overlook the health risk from the waste being left in its current uncontrolled state”.
But Mayor Mark Bennett said Property NSW told the Council during a meeting that the majority of Hunters Hill ratepayers were against the encapsulation option.
“It will be interesting to see what the Government decides to do as a result of this … it’s a decision of the Government at the end of the day.
“My opinion is we should not vote for encapsulation because I think it could be a permanent solution without any guarantees that it’s an interim solution — I can’t support it.”
Last year the NSW Government announced $30 million to fully remediate the land after a parliamentary inquiry a decade ago.
Adani’s Carmichael coal mine surviving on lifeline from Indian parent company
Key points:
- The company responsible for the Carmichael coal mine has current liabilities of more than $1.8b versus current assets of less than $30m
- The auditors signed off on the company being a “going concern” because of a 12-month guarantee from the Indian parent firm
- Accounting expert Sandra van der Laan says “effectively on paper they are insolvent. I wouldn’t be trading with them”………
The more immediate concern is Adani Mining Pty Ltd, the Australian-registered company which is the proponent of the Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin.
Adani Mining recently provided ASIC with its financial accounts to March 31.
As a private company, the subsidiary is only required to release reduced financial statements with limited detail — but enough to raise red flags for Professor van der Laan and other critics.
The accounts show the owners have contributed less than $9 million in equity to the business and total liabilities exceed total assets by more than half a billion dollars.
Current assets of less than $30 million are swamped by current liabilities, due over the next 12 months, of more than $1.8 billion.
“Adani Mining is in a very fragile, even perilous, financial position,” Professor van der Laan observes.
‘They will never pay any material corporate tax in Australia’
Adani is now going it alone and “self-funding” the Carmichael mine after failing to secure loans from banks or government wealth funds.
Although the mine has been scaled down to an initial 10 million tonnes a year output, rather than the mega-mine of 60 million tonnes a year it has approval for, the price tag for building it and an accompanying railway will still be a multi-billion-dollar sum.
Even for a man as rich as family patriarch Gautam Adani, it is no small ask.
But in the tangled web that is the Adani Group, there are ways.
Adani’s ports business is the most profitable part of the empire, headed by the Bombay stock exchange-listed company Adani Ports SEZ.
It is currently raising more than $1 billion in debt on global markets.
Whether or not concerns about the solvency of various Adani companies or funding for the Carmichael mine are well-founded, the promise of a company tax bonanza from the Queensland mine seems destined to remain unfulfilled, according to Tim Buckley.
Already, accumulated losses mean that, if the mine is built, Adani Mining won’t pay company tax for many years in Australia and may never do so — like the Abbot Point Coal Terminal, which has paid little to no company tax under the ownership of Adani.
“They have carry forward losses that mean the first $1.5 billion of profit are corporate tax free,” says Mr Buckley.
Senate voted on Press Freedoms – Matter of Public importance
Press Freedoms – Matter of Public importance Senator Sarah Hanson-Young
Antinuclear 