Australia’s religious leaders call on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to act on climate change
‘For the sake of generations to come’: Faith leaders unite on climate change https://www.sbs.com.au/news/for-the-sake-of-generations-to-come-faith-leaders-unite-on-climate-change 26 June 19, More than 150 religious leaders have issued an open letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, urging him to show moral leadership on the issue of climate change.
Faith leaders from across the religious divide have gathered in Sydney to call on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to show moral leadership on climate change.
The joint press conference kicked off with Rabbi Johnathan Keren-Black blowing a ram’s horn to symbolise raising the alarm.
Environmental Advisor for the Council of Progressive Rabbis, Rabbi Keren-Black said the world is facing a “climate emergency”.
Judaism believes that we have a responsibility to be caretakers for God’s world, and we’re not doing a very good job of it at the moment.”
More than 150 religious leaders – including the heads of the Uniting Church in Australia, the Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils, Muslims Australia and the National Council of Churches – on Tuesday issued an open letter to Mr Morrison.
The letter calls on the Prime Minister to make addressing climate change his number one priority.
Australian Religious Response to Climate Change (ARRCC) President Thea Ormerod described climate change as a moral issue that needs to be urgently addressed.
“We have an urgent challenge which we all share, a moral challenge. It’s not just a political issue or an economic issue, it’s also a moral issue and all of us are standing together with one voice today,” she said.
Under the banner of Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, the group is calling for a stop to new coal and gas projects, stopping Adani’s controversial coal mine in central Queensland and moving to 100 per cent renewable energy by the year 2030.
Despite the differences in our faith, we all regard addressing the climate emergency as our shared moral challenge. We stand together for our common home, the Earth,” the letter says.
“Will you and your Government have the courage to agree to this simple threefold agenda? We pray that you will.”
Loreto Sister Libby Rogerson said there is a sacred responsibility to care for the earth and all living beings.
“We are concerned for the poorest and most vulnerable, and it is the poorest and most vulnerable of people and nations that are affected by Climate Change,” she said.
Federation of Australian Budhist Councils Spokesperson Gawaine Powell Davies also attended the press conference, and said climate change is driven by “human foolishness”.
“We have a very sharp analysis of human foolishness which has led us to put greed and short-term benefit ahead of the long-term interests of ourselves and our children, and our grandchildren,” Mr Powell Davies said.
The Grand Mufti of Australia, Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, along with senior Rabbis, bishops and theologians have also signed the letter.
Australia a top G20 leader in subsidising the coal industry
Australia leads the G20 nations’ pack in aid for coal-fired power, SMH Peter Hannam, June 25, 2019 Subsidies for coal-fired power production almost tripled in the three years to 2016-17 among G20 nations, with Australia providing among the largest support, an international study has found.The report by UK think tank, the Overseas Development Institute, found aid for such power stations soared from US$17.2 billion ($24.7 billion) in 2013-14 to $US47 billion in the most recent year. It’s in contrast to pledges made by the 20 biggest economies in 2009 to phase out subsidies to reduce the risks of climate change……
The highest amounts of total support to coal consumption were identified in Indonesia at US$2.3 billion per year, Italy and Australia, both about US$870 million, the US at US$708 million, and the UK with US$682 million, it reported.
“These tens of billions of dollars a year of G20 support to coal are not just locking in the high-carbon
economy and leading to stranded assets, they are also a missed opportunity to support a clean energy transition and to achieve other sustainable development objectives,” the study said……
‘Ecological crisis’
Jamie Hanson, head of campaigns at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said Australia was in an “ecological crisis driven by climate change”.
“Coal is the primary cause of the climate damage that is causing extinctions all over the country, drought and fire that has torched ancient rainforests, and that has killed half the Great Barrier Reef in the last five years,” he said.
“Climate-destroying government handouts to the coal industry defy all logic – especially now, when we know that clean renewable energy is the cheapest form of new power.”
Separately, Australia’s climate ambassador Patrick Suckling has argued at a United Nations conference in Bonn, Germany that the country’s carbon reduction efforts were “having a positive effect”. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/g20-nations-aid-for-coal-fired-power-triples-in-three-years-report-20190625-p5213r.html
Busting the spin of Australia’s pro nuclear propagandists
A Powerful Depiction’: Chernobyl Workers Reflect On HBO Series
ABC’s Media Watch takes aim at nuclear misinformation and bias
The ABC’s Media Watch program last night took aim at Australia’s pro-nuclear propagandists and the extreme bias of Australia’s nuclear ‘debate’.
Media Watch discussed HBO’s hit miniseries ‘Chernobyl’, which tops IMDB’s list of the greatest TV shows of all time, and took aim at Andrew Bolt and others for trivialising the death toll (discussed here) and for ignoring the broader impacts of the disaster such as the permanent relocation of 350,000 people and the thousands of children who suffered thyroid cancer due to exposure to radioactive fallout.
Dr Jim Green, national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia, said: “Nuclear lobbyists argued that Chernobyl was a result of the dysfunctional Soviet system and that a similar disaster couldn’t happen in Western countries. That argument collapsed with the March 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. Nuclear disasters can happen anywhere and a nuclear disaster anywhere is a nuclear disaster everywhere due to the spread of radioactive fallout. Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout contaminated the whole of Europe and Fukushima fallout reached northern Australia.”
“In addition to their other devastating impacts, nuclear disasters greatly increase the overall cost of nuclear power. The cost of the Chernobyl disaster is estimated at over one trillion dollars [US$700 billion] and the Fukushima disaster could prove to be just as expensive.”
Citing a recent expert analysis, Media Watch noted that nuclear power “doesn’t even get to first base on cost” and took nuclear lobbyists to task for failing to acknowledge the extraordinarily high cost of nuclear power (all reactors under construction in western Europe and north America are estimated to cost $14‒24 billion each while the South Carolina reactor project was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$12.9 billion).
Dr Green said: “Dr Ziggy Switkowski used to be Australia’s most prominent supporter of nuclear power and he led the Howard government’s nuclear review in 2006. But nuclear costs have increased four-fold since then and Dr Switkowski has acknowledged that the window for large-scale nuclear power in Australia has closed as renewables are clearly cheaper.“
“John Howard was no anti-nuclear ideologue yet he had the good sense to ban nuclear power. Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs to state unambiguously that the legislation banning nuclear power in Australia will remain in place,” Dr Green concluded.
Contact: Dr Jim Green 0417 318 368 More information: Last night’s Media Watch segment on nuclear power (video and transcript) A recent detailed article by Dr Green, cited by Media Watch.
Ignorance of the Morrison Government on the scientific and medical aspects of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
Fancy giving the go-ahead the day before the 2019 Federal Election was announced for the Yeelirrie Uranium Mine in Western Australia, with no time for rational and informed input or debate! The fact is that Canadian Cameco, the world’s largest uranium miner and processor, wants to mine this uranium. Our alliance with spurious organisations clearly leads us astray.
To be quite frank, almost all of our politicians are scientifically and medically ignorant and in an age where scientific evolution has become extraordinarily sophisticated, it behoves us – as legitimate members of democracy – to both educate ourselves and our naive and ignorant politicians for they are not our leaders, they are our representatives.
Many of these so-called representatives are now being cajoled into believing that electricity production in Australia could benefit from a new form of atomic power in the form of small modular reactors (SMRs), allegedly free of the dangers inherent in large reactors — safety issues, high cost, proliferation risks and radioactive waste.
But these claims are fallacious, for the reasons outlined below. Continue reading
BHP’s Olympic Dam uranium mine: tailings dump to larger than Adelaide and up to 30 metres high
All BHP Olympic Dam radioactive toxic mine tailings waste must be isolated from the environment for over 10,000 years…
Please consider making a submission to the federal government who are inviting comments on the BHP Olympic Dam Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) 6 project – but only up to cob Friday 28th June, with no extensions (scroll down for info). Tell the fed’s they must not just approve this TSF 6 on the basis of the vested interest BHP Referral documents.
Key Recommendations are provided along with two Briefing papers prepared for Friends of the Earth Australia (FoEA) and available on-line:
“BHP seek a Toxic Tailings Expansion without a full Safety Risk Assessment” (DN, June 2019, 3 pages)
https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/ODM-Tailings-Briefing-22June2019.pdf
and
“Migratory Birds at Risk of Mortality if BHP continues use of Evaporation Ponds” (DN, June 2019, 3 pages)
https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/ODM-Migratory-Birds-BHP-Evaporation-Ponds-22June2019.pdf
A set of Key Recommendations on these issues to put to the federal government:
1. The Olympic Dam operation be assessed in its entirety with the full range of project impacts subject to public consultation
Given that uranium mining at Olympic Dam is a controlled “nuclear action” and Matter of National Environmental Significance (NES) under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), the integrity of environmental protection requires that the entire Olympic Dam operation be subject to impact assessment so that regulatory conditions can be applied “to consider impacts on the whole environment”. Continue reading
The reason Australia doesn’t have nuclear power: the workers fought back
The movement’s real strength always depended on its grassroots – on the willingness of activists to defy the rightwingers in Labor and the unions, even to the extent of facing arrest.
The reason Australia doesn’t have nuclear power: the workers fought back https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/the-reason-australia-doesnt-have-nuclear-power-the-workers-fought-back Jeff Sparrow Workers have been fighting uranium mining for decades – the environment needs mass civil disobedience @Jeff_Sparrow 24 Jun 2019
What do Clive Palmer, Tony Abbott, Cory Bernardi, Barnaby Joyce, Mark Latham, Jim Molan, Craig Kelly, Eric Abetz and David Leyonhjelm have in common?
No doubt many answers will come to to mind. But whatever else unites them, they all support nuclear power.
Jim Green from Friends of the Earth Australia, which compiled the above list, says that nuclear energy now functions more as a culture war troll than a serious policy, not least because the people who want atomic solution to climate change are usually the same people (as the group above illustrates) who don’t believe climate change requires a solution at all.
Despite the best efforts of Queensland conservatives, Australia will not go nuclear. The former chair of Uranium King, Warwick Grigor, says flatly: “No one is going down that path in the foreseeable future.” Even industry boosters see nuclear power stations as feasible only if the government introduces, um, a carbon tax, a proposal to which the culture warriors would react like vampires to garlic.
Nevertheless, progressives should discuss nuclear energy and climate change, if only because the campaign we need against coal can learn from the historic struggle against a different mineral. Continue reading
Production at Australia’s only nuclear medicine facility halted after ‘safety incident’
Production at Australia’s only nuclear medicine facility halted after ‘safety incident’ Production has ceased and an urgent investigation has been launched after two employees at a newly opened Australian nuclear medicine facility at Lucas Heights were exposed to an unsafe dose of radiation late last week.Just two weeks after it was granted a licence to enter into full domestic production, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto) has confirmed production at its new $168m nuclear medicine facility has been halted after “a safety incident” on Friday morning.
Ansto said three of its workers were “attended to by radiation protection personnel” after the incident, in which contamination was detected on the outside of a container holding 42 millilitres of the radioisotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99).
Two of those workers received a radiation dose above the legal limit roughly equivalent to a conventional cancer radiation therapy treatment, an Ansto spokesman said……
Located at the Lucas Heights nuclear facility in Sydney’s south, the $168m nuclear medicine facility was announced by the federal government in 2012 with the goal of tripling Australian production of Mo-99, the parent isotope of Technetium-99m. …..
It is the second contamination scare at the Lucas Heights facility in only a few months.
In March three staff at the Lucas Heights nuclear facility were taken to hospital after they were exposed to sodium hydroxide when a cap came off a pipe in the nuclear medicine manufacturing building. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/24/two-workers-exposed-to-unsafe-radiation-dose-at-lucas-heights-nuclear-facility
Lithium is valuable for many clean devices, but we can’t just ignore the wastes from its mining
Enormous lithium waste dump plan shows how shamefully backward we are SMH, Emma Young, 25 June 19 Emma Young covers breaking news with a focus on science and environment, health and social justice for WAtoday. We are all – well, all of us who are privileged enough – existing on a spectrum somewhere between “concerned” and “downright panicking” about human impact on the environment.
Western Australia holds some of the world’s richest known lithium deposits and now has an emerging industry to process that lithium here, not just ship it to China as previously done.
It’s part of a plan to make us more than just the world’s quarry; a bigger player in an industry promising big money, and bring jobs and industry to the South West.
But we have run up against a reality, in the very recognisable area of the Ferguson Valley: a reality predictable, yet startling.
Lithium mining will leave its own scars on a landscape already littered with tens of thousands of abandoned mining voids, pits, equipment and piles of tailings – and create its own waste.
In WA’s South West, processing of spodumene ore from the Greenbushes lithium mine will result in 600,000 tonnes per year of waste material being dumped – or ‘stacked’, if you want the euphemism – only 3.5km outside the charming little town of Dardanup.
Let me repeat that: 600,000 tonnes per year.
The application has offended the residents who already put up with dust, rubbish and runoff from the existing and already enormous landfill site.
To them, it’s on the nose.
And it’s not just sand and dirt. It’s waste of a kind so new to Australia that they had to get samples from China to find out what to classify it as.
Cleanaway submitted to the EPA that it was inert and non-toxic waste.
Yet no sustainable market exists for its reuse.
“By storing tailings in dedicated storage cells, in the event a sustainable market for reuse was developed, the material might one day be recovered,” it submitted, optimistically, to the Environment Protection Authority considering its proposal.
Somehow, I find it hard to believe that it is any miner or processor’s priority to find or develop such a market.
Queensland’s nuclear cowboy MPs join One Nation’s Marlk Latham to push for nuclear power
Nationals MPs urge rethink on nuclear, THE AUSTRALIAN GRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR, 24 JUNE 19, Scott Morrison is being asked to support a full investigation of nuclear energy in Australia.
Queensland Coalition MPs Keith Pitt and James McGrath have drafted a letter to the Prime Minister together with proposed terms of reference for an inquiry, which will be delivered this week.
The letter will call for a review of advances in nuclear energy including small nuclear reactors and thorium technology, both of which could produce less radioactive waste than existing nuclear plants.
Commercial investigation of nuclear energy will require that a ban on considering the technology be removed from the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Mr Pitt said that the nuclear issue was “a debate we are ready to have”.
“In our view the technology has moved on and small modular reactors and thorium need to be investigated,” Mr Pitt said.
…….. Critics of nuclear energy claim it would be unable to compete economically with renewable energy and storage.
……. The Morrison government has been reluctant to consider changes to the EPBC Act on nuclear power. But the act in its entirety is up for statutory review this year.
……. The Nationals MPs expect a public review to take from 18 months to two years.
The call for a national inquiry coincides with a review into the potential of nuclear power in NSW, to include former federal Labor Party leader and newly elected One Nation MP Mark Latham.
Mr Latham has introduced a bill in the upper house of the NSW parliament to repeal the uranium mining and nuclear ban in the state.
A parliamentary inquiry will be held by the eight-member, multi-party Standing Committee on State Development of the upper house. Mr Latham will be a member of the committee.
An issues paper is being prepared by the NSW Parliamentary Research Service for public release. The committee will call for submissions and is likely to conduct public hearings as early as September. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/nationals-mps-urge-rethink-on-nuclear/news-story/4c5c90a4b49f890dba49a10444f1294d
Robert Parker still pushing the fantasy that nuclear power could be viable in Australia
Australian Nuclear Association vice-president Robert Parker joins Jane to discuss the future of the industry in Australia.
Australian States taking the lead on energy policy, as renewable energy generates more Queensland jobs than coal does,
It’s ironic, perhaps, that in an election cycle where a number of regional Queenslanders voted for the promise of blue-collar jobs, backing the party that backed the Adani coal project, renewables generated more than 13,000 actual jobs in construction, with a lot of that activity in north Queensland.
Liberal states in talks to revive Turnbull’s dumped energy policy In Canberra, a month on from Scott Morrison’s election victory, there is talk of feasibility studies for a new Queensland coal plant, and a nascent nuclear debate. But if we shift our vantage point to Adelaide, Australia’s near-term energy outlook looks very different.
Dan Van Holst Pellekaan, the Liberal energy minister, is talking about South Australia hitting 100% net renewables by the 2030s. When asked to explain what that means, he tells Guardian Australia “producing more renewable energy in South Australia than we need for our own consumption and exporting the surplus”.
There is no talk of coal, apart from the inevitability of its displacement.
The South Australian renewables export plan relies on a new interconnector with New South Wales. Van Holst Pellekaan says if the proposed interconnector is approved, there are opportunities to construct large-scale solar and wind farms in the north-east of the state, on pastoral land, adjacent to the transmission equipment. “Then we start to displace coal in NSW,” he says. “It’s not just about a bit of renewable energy making a difference … that’s where you start to get a really big win on emissions reduction.”
But pushing ahead with that kind of progress is much easier if there’s a national framework driving the transition. Post-election, Van Holst Pellekaan wants Canberra back at the table being collaborative, implementing a coherent energy policy.
What the South Australian doesn’t say, but is obvious to people who know how the Coag energy council works, is the states can force this issue if they choose to.
If they can agree among themselves about what needs to happen, they can create a framework setting out the rules of the road even if the commonwealth resists.
Liberal states drive energy policy reboot Continue reading
Climate change bringing sea-level rise to Victoria’s low-lying towns and suburbs
Rising sea, erosion to wreak havoc in low-lying suburbs: report, The Age , By Benjamin Preiss and Adam Carey
Other places at risk include areas around Queenscliff and Barwon Heads on the Bellarine Peninsula; the south-west Victorian towns of Port Fairy and Portland; and Tooradin, Lang Lang and Seaspray in the state’s south-east.
A report tabled in Victoria’s Parliament last week examines the myriad threats to the state’s fragile coastline, painting an alarming picture of damage to the environment and suburban Melbourne if no action is taken.
The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council report cites a 20-centimetre sea-level rise by 2040 and between 40 centimetres and one metre by century’s end.
Sea-level rise will lead to more frequent inundation of low-lying areas, loss of coastal habitat, cliff, beach and foreshore erosion,” the report says.
“Climate change will also put pressure on ageing coastal infrastructure and ultimately impact on feasibility of living in or developing some coastal locations.”
Increasing storm intensity, coupled with rising seas, will cause extensive erosion of the Victorian coastline by 2040, the report says.
“The most extensive area vulnerable to erosion by 2040 is the Gippsland coast,” it says. “Other coasts at risk include west of Portland, beaches in Port Phillip Bay between Mordialloc and Frankston, and the coast between Cape Paterson and Cape Liptrap in South Gippsland.”
Sydney City Council. Mayor Clover Moore to declare city climate emergency
Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said Australia’s largest city needed to step up and show global leadership, especially given the failure of “successive federal governments (which) have shamefully presided over a climate disaster”.
Liberal Sydney Councillor, Craig Chung, one of two Liberal councillors who plan to oppose the motion, told The Australian while he supported action on climate change, he strongly objected to Ms Moore’s “hysterical, catastrophising” message.
“Language like climate emergency, climate catastrophe and extinction rebellion do nothing to further reasoned and rational debate,” Mr Chung said.
“If we learned one thing from the May 18 (federal) election, polarised fear mongering is not what the community want. The electorate expects us to take action, debate clearly and rationally about solutions, stop weaponising language and to deliver measurable and tangible outcomes for all Australians.”
Mr Chung said he would be proposing an amended version of the lord mayoral motion, stripped of all its “hysterical elements”.
Ms Moore said the nation was now experiencing such extreme weather “91 of the hottest places on Earth were in Australia”.
She said heatwaves across the country were now five times more likely, and “even more alarming — they start earlier, become hotter and last longer”.
“Seventy per cent of the world’s emissions are generated from cities, so the action city governments take is absolutely critical,” Ms Moore said.
Ms Moore has asked Council to call on the Federal Government to respond urgently to the emergency, by reintroducing a price on carbon to meet the Paris Agreement emissions reduction targets, and establishing a Just Transition Authority to ensure Australians employed in fossil fuel industries find appropriate alternate employment.
“Successive federal governments have shamefully presided over a climate disaster, and now we are at a critical juncture — we face a climate emergency,” she said.
“Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased for four consecutive years. It is clear that the current Federal Government’s policies are simply not working and I call on council to declare a climate emergency, step up our efforts to hold the Federal Government to account. “With 96 per cent of NSW still drought affected, our farmers and rural communities are being decimated by drought, suffering from water shortages and extended bush fire seasons, witnessing unprecedented fish kills and the death of once mighty river systems.”
The Lord Mayor, outlining the City of Sydney’s action on climate change since 2008, committed to accelerate work in the development of its strategic plan till 2050.
“We set a goal to reduce our emissions by 70 per cent by 2030, and — following the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 — we set a more ambitious goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050”, she said.
“We became Australia’s first carbon neutral council in 2007, and as of June 2017, we’d reduced emissions in our own operations by 25 per cent. By 2020, we will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, allowing us to meet our 2030 target by 2024 — six years early.”
According to the International Climate Emergency Forum, over 600 jurisdictions in 13 countries have now declared a climate emergency. The Climate Emergency Declaration campaign in Australia is supported by over 50 climate action groups, including the International Climate Emergency Forum, Extinction Rebellion, and Greenpeace Australia.
Environmental groups are now considering a legal challenge To Queensland’s approval of Adani mine
Queensland approval of Adani plan ‘unlawful’, say environment groups Activists consider legal challenge, saying rules related to source aquifer have been compromised, Guardian, Ben Smee@BenSmee 23 Jun 2019
The Queensland environment department may have acted “unlawfully” when it approved of Adani’s groundwater plan, in the process backing down on a longstanding requirement that the miner provide definitive proof about the source of an ancient desert spring.
Environmental groups are now considering a legal challenge to the approval, partly because the state’s Department of Environment and Science (DES) appeared to negotiate a last-minute compromise with Adani rather than applying strict conditions.
The DES insisted on Friday that it had not changed its position when granting approval for Adani’s groundwater dependent ecosystems management plan – the final hurdle that will allow the company to begin construction of the Carmichael coalmine.
But documents obtained by Guardian Australia, and an email sent by a DES spokesman on 9 April, indicate that the department softened its interpretation of a key requirement in the politically charged weeks before clearing the proposal.
The email of 9 April says the department believed the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia had highlighted “uncertainties” about whether Adani had identified the source aquifer of the Doongmabulla Springs complex.
“Based on the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia report, it would appear that a number of uncertainties remain, including whether the (groundwater plan) definitively identifies the source aquifers of the Doongmabulla Springs Complex, which has always been a requirement for state approval,” the email says.
Four days after the federal election, the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, insisted on a timeframe for DES to make a decision about the groundwater plan. When the clock ran out on 13 June, Adani’s plan was approved, and DES had subtly changed its language.
It said Adani had “sufficiently” identified the “main source aquifer”. The miner’s conditions require it to identify the “source aquifer(s)”……. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/23/queensland-approval-of-adani-plan-unlawful-say-environment-groups
Northern New South Wales MP – “NO nuclear power – not on my watch!”
Not on my watch” – MP fuming over backing for nuclear power – Gold Coast Bulletin, 21 June 19,
A NORTHERN NSW MP says she will fight tooth and nail against nuclear power after a southern Gold Coast politician said she was open to considering the divisive energy source.
Member for Richmond Justine Elliot pointed to a recent Sky News interview involving Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews, the Member for McPherson.
Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy Mark Butler seized on the comments and said it was another example of senior Liberals supporting nuclear power.
“Scott Morrison needs to make his position clear,” he said.
The back-and-forth over the issue prompted Mrs Elliot to weigh in and reaffirm her “longstanding opposition to nuclear power”.
“Our community on the North Coast does have a major issue with nuclear energy and I stand with them in opposing any nuclear power plants in coastal communities like ours on the NSW North Coast,” she said.
The Labor MP said she had a clear message for LNP Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
“As the local Federal MP my message to the Prime Minister is – no nuclear power – not on my watch,” Mrs Elliot said.
“The Liberal National government needs to come clean on their plans for nuclear power and reassure our community that it won’t become home to a nuclear power plant.
Mrs Elliot was adamant the northern NSW community “don’t want it in our area”.
“I stand committed in my opposition to nuclear power and under my watch the North Coast will never become home to a nuclear power plant,” she said.
Mrs Elliot added nuclear power plants could not legally be built in Australia and she said the pressure was on Mr Morrison to “take real action to end the energy crisis that has emerged under the Liberal National Government”.
“So far, all the Liberals and Nationals are promising in energy is expensive new coal-fired power stations and a growing pressure from Ministers such as Karen Andrews, for Australia to pursue even more expensive nuclear power,” she said.
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 