Brisbane Indigenous Media Association sadly announces Passing of Tiga Bayles
98.9FM radio station | 17 April 2016 http://www.989fm.com.au/news/media-statement-from-brisbane-indigenous-media-association-regarding-the-passing-of-tiga-bayles/
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Tiga Bayles, a Birri Gubba Gungalu man and a Dawson River Murri, who died early this morning after a long battle with cancer.
Tiga Bayles – one of the founders and driving forces of the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association’s 98.9FM radio station – was aged 62. …
He was a leading figure in the Aboriginal rights movement, and played a key role in the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games protests, and protests at the Bicentennial celebrations in Sydney in 1988.
Tiga was an early chairman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, and named Queensland Father of the Year in 2005. He raised nine girls, and was Australia’s most prominent – and awarded – First Nations broadcaster.
Among his many honors, Tiga was the inaugural winner of the national Deadly Award for Indigenous Broadcaster of the Year, and his work around decolonisation and invasion was recognised by Amnesty International’s inaugural media awards in 2014. …
Tiga passed away peacefully at his Brisbane home early this morning, surrounded by family and friends.
Details for the funeral of Tiga Bayles, which will be held in Brisbane, will be announced soon.”
Renewable energy target at risk
Projects have been delayed for want of long-term contracts….. (Subscribers only)
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/investment-stalemate-puts-renewable-energy-target-at-risk/news-story/80838e30c7be28be247eba9a38bbf009
St Kilda, Docklands among suburbs under risk from rising sea levels, website claims
SUBURBS such as Albert Park, Docklands and St Kilda would be swamped by rising sea levels if climate change continues unabated, says new computer modelling…. (subscribers only)
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/st-kilda-docklands-among-suburbs-under-risk-from-rising-sea-levels-website-claims/news-story/148c534503911cbadc96ccb1fc969469
Vivienne Waller: Welcome To The Debate: Australia Joins World In 2 Degree Target
This month, the first ever agreement to combat global climate change will be signed at the UN headquarters in New York. …
Australia has agreed to join with the rest of the world to limit global warming to two degrees. Despite this, our Government is acting as though nothing has changed. A global agreement is only as valuable as the effect it actually has on what it sets out to change.
Unfortunately for Australia, the current government haven’t honoured the agreement in anything more than words. https://newmatilda.com/2016/04/10/welcome-debate-australia-joins-world-2-degree-target/
BHP, Vale; Tailings failures haunt miners
Miners around the world are digging bigger tailings pits. The recent Brazil dam collapse won’t be the last.- (subscribers only)
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/bhp-vale-tailings-failings-haunt-miners/news-story/7d61bbbf1dbc54cce54a8a0b2bc099c6
Australia’s anti science legacy from Tony Abbott
Tony Abbott’s harmful legacy lives on in climate silence, SMH April 5, 2016 Peter HartcherSydney Morning Herald political and international editor “………Australia had a bipartisan consensus on climate change under John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. The consensus was that climate change was real and that pricing carbon through an emissions trading scheme was the best way for Australia to respond.
Abbott shattered the consensus. He rode to power a conservative reaction against climate change action. He used it to destroy Turnbull’s leadership and then Rudd’s and, finally, Julia Gillard’s.
Together with his footsoldiers in politics and the media, he succeeded in muddying the public’s understanding of climate change in the process. The conservative reaction intimidated some scientists, news editors and commentators. And Turnbull, in fear of reviving an angry conservative rearguard, has bound himself to the Abbott policy.
The net result today is Australia’s muted debate and confused response to climate change……..
The planet is far from saved from the depredations of climate change; just look at the reef. But the news is not all bad. Australia might even recover sufficiently from the Abbott era to begin to care again.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-harmful-legacy-lives-on-in-climate-silence-20160404-gnxvfy.html#ixzz44ziIxncr
Comparing Britain’s accursed Hinkley nuclear project with South Australia’s nuclear waste dump plan
Valdis Dunis at Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission Watch 2 Apr 16 If the 14 year engineering delay and £5bn cost overruns were not bad enough for the latest nuclear project in the West (in Hinkley in UK), now the Chinese partner brought in last year to fund 30% of the costs has this week pulled out of investing in it anymore.
How sure could we be that those promising to pay SA in advance for storing nuclear waste will stay committed if there are big delays and cost blowouts?
Origin energy buys power from Moree solar farm
Origin Energy’s commitment to buy power from a large solar farm is a sign of the sector’s improving economics….. (subscribers only)
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/origin-energy-buys-power-from-moree-solar-farm/news-story/66256aa47f5de6ab44f21dfe2db61742
Who will benefit from nuclear waste import scheme – international nuclear companies!
The Australia Institute’s chief economist, Richard Denniss, told a public meeting in Adelaide on Mar. 22 that the economic modeling used by the Royal Commission did not stack up and painted an unrealistic picture of the benefits, costs and risks. The assumed price was higher than anyone was paying, and it assumed South Australia would have a global monopoly.
“The price assumptions are optimistic. But the main problem is that it is based on above-ground storage for 20 years. If you had to build the hole (for underground storage) first, you’d never make it add up,” Denniss said on Adelaide radio station FIVEaa.
Denniss said the institute’s analysis showed the primary beneficiaries of a waste dump in South Australia would be international nuclear power companies.
Those opposing the dump include environmental organizations, traditional Aboriginal custodians of the land and the Australian Greens political party, with Greens Senator Robert Simms deriding the dump’s economics as “pure fantasy.”…….
Woomera contamination
Nuclear involvement in this part of Australia already has negative associations. Between 1953 and 1963, South Australia was the location for a series of British nuclear bomb tests, first at Emu Field and then at Maralinga, 800km northwest of the state capital Adelaide, in the vast military testing zone known as the Woomera Prohibited Area.
The Maralinga site was contaminated by radioactive material, and although clean-up work began in 1967, it was not completed until 2000. The traditional Aboriginal custodians of the land, the Maralinga Tjarutja people, were paid compensation for the damage in 1994. Some British and Australian service personnel involved in the tests and some Aboriginal inhabitants developed radiation-related illnesses.
Since 2010, Australian defense personnel involved in the tests have been eligible for compensation and healthcare benefits related to their medical conditions, but so far, only a handful of the 1,800 Australian veterans still alive have received compensation……
Once Commissioner Scarce delivers his final report on May 6, the state government will begin a process of extensive community engagement that will run into August. After that, Weatherill and his colleagues in cabinet will prepare a case to take to state parliament by the end of the year. Any move to set up a nuclear waste facility would require new legislation…….
In his interim report, Scarce said the commission’s key finding was that most aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle were economically unviable in South Australia for the next 10 to 20 years, apart from the storage and disposal of high-level waste from around the world.
He said such a facility would be “commercially viable” and the “highly profitable” storage component could be operational in the late 2020s.
According to an economic model prepared for the Royal Commission by Melbourne-based consultants Jacobs MCM, total project revenues would be A$257 billion, based on managing 138,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from power stations (about 13% of the projected global total) over its lifespan, and 390,000 cubic meters of intermediate waste.
Jacobs MCM said “significant revenues” could commence 10 years from a decision to launch detailed investigations.
‘Pure fantasy’
Robert Simms, Australian Greens senator for South Australia, described the cash windfall depicted in the commission’s interim report as “pure fantasy.” He said it failed to adequately consider that making South Australia “the world’s largest nuclear waste dump would be a costly and dangerous burden for future generations.” He also said South Australia should be embracing renewable energy rather than getting further involved in a nuclear industry that “flatlined last century.”
A poll of 1,077 South Australian residents conducted in March for the left-leaning think tank The Australia Institute found 37% of voters supported an international nuclear waste dump, while 48.5% were opposed and 14% were undecided.
The institute’s chief economist, Richard Denniss, told a public meeting in Adelaide on Mar. 22 that the economic modeling used by the Royal Commission did not stack up and painted an unrealistic picture of the benefits, costs and risks. The assumed price was higher than anyone was paying, and it assumed South Australia would have a global monopoly.
“The price assumptions are optimistic. But the main problem is that it is based on above-ground storage for 20 years. If you had to build the hole (for underground storage) first, you’d never make it add up,” Denniss said on Adelaide radio station FIVEaa.
Denniss said the institute’s analysis showed the primary beneficiaries of a waste dump in South Australia would be international nuclear power companies.
Queensland: Solar funding switch to hurt state
ANNASTACIA Palaszczuk says large-scale solar projects across Queensland have been left in the dark under changes to two key climate funds…. (subscribers only)
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/premier-says-solar-funding-switch-to-hit-regional-queensland-hardest/news-story/72d667016a059b3c5f16dd5fae9fa011
Turnbull’s ‘climate of confusion’
Turnbull’s election ‘trickery’ simply creates a climate of confusion Canberra Times March 26 2016 Richard Denniss “…….And then there’s climate change. No policy issue has generated more heat and less light than how best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. Tony Abbott transformed a technocratic debate about the best way to design a carbon price into a culture war. It put him into The Lodge, but put Australia back a decade.
Climate change will provide the clearest test of whether Turnbull is running on Abbott’s platform or on his own. “Direct action” is very much Abbott’s policy. Indeed, Turnbull once said the best thing about it was that it was easy to repeal. But while unwinding the direct action policy might be administratively simple, it will not be politically simple. Abbott will make sure of that. So what is Turnbull to do?
Luckily for Turnbull, the Climate Change Authority was set up by the Gillard government to help advise the Parliament on both Australia’s emission-reduction targets and the best policy mechanisms to achieve them………
So two days before the date Turnbull says any double-dissolution election will be held, the Climate Change Authority must report on the most efficient ways for Australia to meet it emission-reduction goals. Given that everyone is more committed to climate action than Abbott, one would imagine that any new direction on climate policy could only be an improvement for Turnbull and Australia.
The false choice between a carbon tax and direct action delivered good politics for Abbott but a poor policy debate for Australia……..
Last year, federal Labor committed itself to a 50 per cent renewable energy target. Here in Canberra, the ACT Labor government has committed itself to a 100 per cent renewable energy target. Neither policy requires a carbon price to drive significant change. Both are popular in the electorate.
Turnbull has committed himself to “driving innovation” but, to date, he’s had to tiptoe around the link between supporting new renewable energy, electric cars and battery technologies for fear of enraging backbenchers like Abbott and Cory Bernardi. A carbon price, or a “penalty price” for firms who don’t undertake enough “direct action”, would allow him to fund a lot more innovation.
New energy-efficiency standards for cars and houses can just as easily be framed as solutions to declining air quality and rising energy costs as they can be called climate policy. Are policies to encourage energy efficiency “direct action” or are they “wasteful climate policy”? The answer is not just in the eye of the beholder, but in the tone of the salesperson.
While the timing of the election and the climate authority’s next report are now beyond Turnbull’s control, the shape and tone of his government’s climate policy is not. The Prime Minister has stumbled badly on tax policy and has abandoned control over the timing of his first election. He can’t afford to be pushed around by Abbott on climate policy if he is to retain the public’s respect. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/turnbulls-election-trickery-simply-creates-a-climate-of-confusion-20160325-gnr23y.html
The impossible dream: free electricity sounds too good to be true. It is
The impossible dream: free electricity sounds too good to be true. It is A plan to produce free electricity for South Australia by embracing nuclear waste sounds like a wonderful idea. But it won’t work.Dan Gilchrist, 11 February 2016 Source: The Australia Institute
A proposal to establish a global nuclear waste industry in South Australia would fail to secure 90% of the imported waste, leaving an expensive and risky legacy for the state, according to this report.
http://apo.org.au/resource/impossible-dream-free-electricity-sounds-too-good-be-true-it
(Link provided here for downloading the full 26-page report. It can also be downloaded at: http://www.tai.org.au/content/free-nuclear-power-fantasy-report.)
Scepticism on Australian govt’s Clean Energy Innovation Fund
essentially it is removing funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and really I guess constraining it in terms of its ability to provide capital grants to the sector into the future.
Government to set up billion dollar clean energy fund— ABC Radio http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-23/government-to-set-up-billion-dollar-clean-energy/7268746 The Federal Government is starting up a $1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund which it says will support the development of renewable energy technology. It will be run by the Government’s existing clean energy bodies, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Environmental groups are sceptical about the proposal.
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: The Federal Government is starting up a $1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund which it says will support the development of renewable energy technology. AM understands it will be run by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency or ARENA. Both bodies had been slated for closure by Tony Abbott but it now appears his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, is set to keep them open.
But environmental groups are sceptical whether the fund will do what it’s supposed to do.
Michael Edwards has this report.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: The coal-fired power station in the South Australian city of Port Augusta is soon closing down. Locals are now looking to the sun to provide their future energy needs.
DANIEL SPENCER: So with the coal station in Port Augusta, they’re closing it now in less than eight weeks’ time. The community’s been campaigning for a large scale solar thermal plant with storage to be built there to create new clean jobs as well as on-demand clean energy.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: That’s Daniel Spencer from the Repower Port Augusta Campaign. He says the proposed facility would cost $100 million but its long-term benefits would make it well worth it.
DANIEL SPENCER: A project like this would create a thousand jobs during construction and 50 well paying permanent jobs that are ongoing. But it would also be the first of its kind here in Australia. So there’s all the run-off impact, the tourism benefits and also the opportunity for South Australia to create a manufacturing supply chain to help create more of these plants built in Australia.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: This ambitious project could benefit from the Government’s new Clean Energy Innovation Fund.
The Government has confirmed that it’s establishing the $1 billion fund to help renewable energy technologies.The Environment Minister Greg Hunt says an example of a project could be a large scale solar facility with storage in Port Augusta. Continue reading
Election July 2nd?
Hot autumn might catch out a denialist government
Crikey, BERNARD KEANE | MAR 15, 2016 The intensely warm start to autumn across the eastern states appears to have prompted a rise in belief in climate change and the need for Australia to do something about it — one that might catch out a government that appears to be doubling down on the Abbott government’s wilful inaction on the issue.
With an unseasonable autumn heatwave across much….(subscribers only) http://www.crikey.com.au/2016/03/15/hot-autumn-might-catch-out-a-denialist-government/
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/2352741955560
15 April – Zoom –Nuclear Power is Not the Solution
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual
A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Host Contact Info: australia@icanw.org
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 