Nuclear salesmen to run Australia’s new Resources Rent Tax
BHP Billiton and the uranium lobby are getting ever more powerful in policy-making in Australia.
Julia Gillard’s new Resources Rent Tax will be organsed by two top nuclear salesmen – Don Argus (from BHP BIlliton) and Nuclear Industry Minister Martin Ferguson.
Australia’s top science research body has strong links to BHP, and a chairman, Simon McKeon, who is a climate change doubter.
Australia must act on Climate Change, but Nuclear is Not the Answer
Australian climate could be a “harbinger of change” to the rest of the world. What scientists say we have ahead of us if global warming is not prevented, such as Severe droughts and Fires, are already rife in Australia as climate change warms their already hot environment……
……All eyes will be on Australia in the coming years. It may well show a bleak future for the rest of us, unless we act now to prevent further global warming. Global Warming In Australia: A Climate Changing | Global Changes
BHP, Rio Tinto, aim for rampant ripoff of Australia’s resources
Christina Macpherson 29 June 2010, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto etc paid lip service to Australia’s new Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in temporarily closing their multi-million dollar advertising campaign against the Australian Government’s proposed super profit resources tax.
They might now be back in force – because it’s no holds barred in the corporate mining world.
Do Australians realise that many responsible national bodies, and some international ones, such as the International Monetary Fund, see this resources tax as necessary and fair for Australians now and in the future?
It’s not an idea that’s unique to Australia. Similar taxes are now in existence in South Africa, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Chile, – Venezuela and Mongolia have gone further. Germany is introducing a uranium fuel tax. Perhaps the days of mining corporations’ rampant ripoff of national resources are coming to an end
Australia’s hope for action on Climate Change
The Australian Labor Party used to be inspired by Ben Chifley’s 1949 speech about “THE LIGHT ON THE HILL”.
That light dimmed as decades went by, and things in Australia have been pretty dark – especially for the environment, over recent decades.
Now, perhaps, there’s a glimmer again. Prime Minister Julia Gillard says that she is not intending to promote those ALP power brokers, (whose goal is self-advancement, and bugger the environment – my words, not Gillard’s).
Julia Gillard will fight for a carbon tax. That’s a start, as all thorough students of global warming come up with a carbon tax as the only practical way to start to address Australia’s problem of its immense per capita greenhouse gas output.
Australia’s nuclear waste danger
Obama’s visit later this year may well lead to Australia becoming an international nuclear waste dump – THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY and RADIOACTIVE WASTES – our theme for June 2010 With the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill, the Australian government is setting Australia up for a possible later step in the sorry story of nuclear wastes.
The decision to impose a nuclear waste dump on Northern Territory Aboriginal land has been followed quickly by an agreement between the Australian government and President Obama, on sharing nuclear technology. And this will now be followed by Obama’s visit to Australia – just at the time when 
Obama is in deep trouble over the USA’s growing mass of nuclear wastes.
At the same time, Obama has set up a (somewhat pro-nuclear industry) “Blue Ribbon Panel” to find out what on earth to do with USA’s nuclear wastes
Australia is still signed up to the International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation , (that’s the new name for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership), by which uranium -selling countries agree to take back nuclear wastes from overseas countries
Rudd undermined, but the Resources Tax idea spreads
Pressure from mining corporations like BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, combined with the political ambitions of right-wingers, Bill Shorten and Paul Howe must have played a part in the undermining of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Kevin Rudd might not be a cuddly, warm and fuzzy person, but Rudd had the interests of Australians and their children and grandchildren at heart, in promoting the Super Profit Resources Tax.
BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto etc had at heart the interests of corporate profit, in Australia, but also in other countries. They worried that other government’s might put their people’s future ahead of those corporate profits.
Well – the undermining of Rudd might have come too late – the idea lives and spreads- as for example in Germany – “The German Ministry of Finance, for example, has envisaged an additional €2.3 billion annual “windfall tax” on nuclear operators as part of the 2011 Federal Budget and its financial plan up to 2014.” – Wall street Journal
Julia Gillard – an unknown quantity on nuclear issues?
Writing as the uninformed peasant that I am, I pose the question: “what can we expect from Prime Minister Julia Gillard.?”
I understand that Gillard is supposed to be a member of the “left wing” faction, but that her cause has been promoted by the “right wing”
What does it all mean? As Kevin Rudd vacates the throne, I am reminded of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tale ” Always keep a hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse”.
Not perfect, but better: why we’re going for Gillard. « The Green Hat, 24 June 2010, What policies does she support for forestry in Tasmania, management of the Murray-Darling Basin, subsidising renewable energy and nuclear power, increasing high-density livingNot perfect, but better: why we’re going for Gillard. « The Green Hat
“…….February 25, 2007 .…….Earlier that day, deputy ALP leader Julia Gillard told the Ten Network that she supported ALP leader Kevin Rudd’s push to dump the ‘no new mines policy”, arguing that an expansion of uranium mining would bring “economic prosperity” to South Australia in particular. Uranium: Leave it in the ground! | Green Left Weekly
Review: Resources tax, GNEP to IFNEC, Renewables
Australia: Mainstream media continues to publicise the billionaires’ revolt against Resources Super Profit Tax – as though it’s going to end Australia’s resources industries. (At the same time, China signing up for long term resources buying). Uranium market remains in the doldrums. ERA’s annual profit halved. Moves in Parliament to get REAL renewable energy legislation. Victorian Labor opposing uranium sales to Russia. Senator Scott Ludlam keeps asking those awkward nuclear questions.
International: USA gets new renewable energy coalition. GNEP rises up again under a new name – International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation (IFNEC). South Africa abandoning Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor project. China selling nuclear reactors to Pakistan, seeing that USA is selling them to India. USA’s proposed Climate Bill is in fact a massive bailout for nuclear industry. Punjab children retarded due to uranium contamination. Anti nuclear protest at APEC. – the week that has been.
Discredited Global Nuclear Energy Partnership resuscitated under a new name
In October 2007 a panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences condemned the plan – the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) as unproven and risky, and concluded that the program, even if pursued, would not be ready in time to deal with the commercial nuclear waste accumulating at 104 U.S. commercial power reactors and the waste expected to be added from any future reactors. The U.S. Senate and Congress were unwilling to pass funds for this grandiose plan.
The GNEP languished, discredited – until now. The same plan is now resuscitated, and re-launched under a new name – The the International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation (IFNEC)
Australian media publicising mining billionaires’ cheating message
On Australian TV we witness the unappetising vision of a bunch of billionaires looking like feral hippies – protesting against the government’s proposed super profit resources tax.
Well, of course – these impoverished underprivileged citizens want to have their 15% minimum profit, pretty much untrammelled by letting us – the great unwashed, and our descendants, get some benefit from this greed and environmental destruction.
It is sad that the Australian public can be conned in this way, due to media that is either bowing to its corporate ownership, or just too stupid or slack to see what is happening.
No wonder BHP, Rio Tinto etc are scared that other governments might get the idea of acting in the interests of their people, rather than of corporations. And it’s happening – – in the nuclear industry, as Germany is about to ring in a similar tax on nuclear power.
Japan’s space junk falls on aboriginal land
Now I ask you – who, other than the Aborigines, would we expect to be delighted about a bit of metallic junk being flung onto their property?
First the Aborigines got atomic bombs, then uranium mining, now radioactive wastes, now space junk…!
Space probe returns to Earth from trip to asteroid, Google hosted news, By TANALEE SMITH (AP) –14 June 2010,”… It is the first time that a spacecraft has successfully landed on an asteroid and returned to Earth……
Japanese space probe to land in Australian outback, news90, June 13, 2010 · “…local Aboriginal elders,.. will fly out in a helicopter to check it has not damaged any sites sacred to the local indigenous people. – (and what if it has? – too late now!)
Radioactive wastes are produced at all stages of the nuclear fuel cycle
The NUCLEAR INDUSTRY and the GLOBAL NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM – our theme for June 2010
From the uranium mine to the final destruction of the nuclear reactor….
Australia-Russia uranium dealings
The machinations have been going on for many years. One way or another, Australian uranium is getting under foreign control – take the current Russian situation. Negotiations with Russia’s Roasatom nuclear tsar, Sergei Kiryienko went on, secretly, between Kiriyenko and BHP Billiton. over many years.
Kiriyenko was to quietly visit Australia, but apparently did not. A former Prime Minister of Russia, Kiriyenko has, in recent years, guided the State nuclear agency, Rosatom, with the aim of becoming the world’s most powerful uranium and nuclear power company.
Review: resources tax, India’s dilemma, oil gusher
Australia: a seemingly quiet week. Obama cancels visit to Australia. Mainstream media continue to ignore Senator Scott Ludlam’s penetrating questioning on matters nuclear – (the taxpayer funded Uranium Council lobby, Muckaty nuclear waste plan, nuclear weapons proliferation..) BHP and Rio spend a sizable little of their massive profits to fight the govt’s super profit resources tax. These corporations fear that other countries might take up the idea too. Union push against health danger of uranium mining.
International: Dow Chemical Company escapes justice after 25 years, and hundreds of thousands of deaths from the Bhopal gas disaster. A portent for India’s nuclear energy future? Meanwhile USA seeks to prosecute BP over oil spill. U.S looks like getting useless Climate legislation. Pointless debate over nuclear bombing as a solution to BP’s oil gush .
The eternal danger of nuclear wastes
THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY AND RADIOACTIVE WASTES – our theme for June 2010. “The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government.” – Thomas Jefferson, September 6, 1789
Half-life is the period of time it takes for a radioisotope atom to degrade to a state having half of its original intensity
As you can see the continued production, use, and dumping of such waste materials as depleted uranium and plutonium, into the world’s air, land, and water leaves a permanent problem for our children, grandchildren. great-grand-children ….
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