The Institute of Public Affairs has a radical plan for Australia
So what, exactly, is on this think tank’s wish list?
- Public broadcasting – gone. The ABC to be broken up and sold off, SBS to be fully privatised.
- Corporations to be allowed to make secret payments to political parties.
- Medicare gone for most Australians.
- A return to WorkChoices, just by another name.
- The clean energy fund and the renewable energy target – scrapped.
- Funding for sport and arts – including the Australian Institute of Sport – axed. Same for science, with the CSIRO to be privatised.
GetUp! to date on the IPA’s radical plans for Australia http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/getup-to-date-on-the-ipas-radical-plans-for-australia/ 11 April 13, Tony Abbott has said ‘Yes’ to many of the IPA’s 75 radical policies to transform Australia — but which ones? Progressive thinktank GetUp! is concerned, writes Graham Jackson.
Not-for-profit community campaigner GetUp! is another independent group highlighting the stark contrast between the Institute of Public Affairs recent indulgent dinner and the austerity plans it has for Australia. With Margaret Thatcher’s death and legacy currently in the news, GetUp’s recent email to its members (reproduced in part below) provides a timely reminder that arrogant Thatcherism is still alive and well. Call it whatever name you like, but the IPA ‘vision’ for Australia is a dog eat dog world. The alternative vision embraces the idea of community. What kind of country do we want? September 14 will provide the answer. Continue reading
Western Australia- Aboriginal and Community use radio to inform about uranium mining
Active Radio – not Radioactive http://nuclearfree.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/active-radio-not-radioactive/ Aboriginal and comunity representatives have today launched a state wide radio campaign highlighting the risks posed by uranium mining in WA. www.votenuclearfreewa.org
The campaign features a series of advertisements to be played on radio stations from the Kimberley to Kalgoorlie ahead of the March 9 state election that describe planned uranium mining as ‘today’s asbestos’ and condemn the use of Royalty for Regions subsidies to private uranium projects. The ads have been produced by the West Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, a network of Aboriginal, environment and public health representatives and organisations concerned about the long lasting and negative impacts of uranium mining on communities and country.
The ads are set to run on commercial, community and Indigenous radio stations across the Kimberley’s, Goldfield’s and the Pilbara.
“WA has an abundance of clean energy resources and resourceful people, our future is renewable not radioactive,” said WANFA spokesperson Mia Pepper.
“The Liberal and National Party’s plans for uranium mining have been flying under the radar so we have decided to put the issue on the airwaves.” Continue reading
THE AUSTRALIAN’s Graham Lloyd misled readers on the truth about global warming
it does not accurately represent Pachauri’s thoughts on the subject – namely that as discussed in this post, global surface temperatures have plateaued (though over the past decade, not 17 years), and that this in no way disproves global warming.
To hear what Pachauri actually thinks about global warming without first passing through The Australian’s filter, you can listen to interviews with him on Radio Australia and ABC News. Also see a similar debunking of this myth by The Australian Climate Commission.
Did Murdoch’s The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming? 25 February 2013 by dana1981 As we have discussed many times at Skeptical Science, although the warming of global surface air temperatures has slowed over the past decade due to a preponderance of La Niña events, the rate of heat accumulation on Earth has not slowed at all. In fact over the past 15 years, the planet has accumulated more heat than during the previous 15 years (Figure 1). That’s global warming.
Unfortunately many people (often even including climate scientists) mistakenly equate the warming of global surface air temperatures with global warming. That is simply inaccurate. Approximately 90% of global warming goes into heating the oceans.
So the reality is that global warming continues unabated. Despite this reality, an article by Graham Lloyd in The Australian (paywalled) claims that the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri agreed that there has been a 17-year pause in global temperature rises. Unfortunately we don’t know exactly what Pachauri said on the subject, because Lloyd did not quote him directly (which is a red flag). Continue reading
Paladin, Ashurst – now Roger Helbig trys to shut down Antinuclear – we must be having an impact
Here’s what Roger Helbig sent me today: ” Your first immediate action is to take my name out of your
e-mail subject line. I have already advised WordPress and I will make
every possible effort to take down your WordPress blog and eliminate
your ability to ever have another WordPress blog.” along with a lot of other threats of legal action.
This humble little website is now in the company of some much more illustrious sites. For example – “It has come to our attention that an 
individual by the name of Roger Helbig, has been going to great effort to damage our reputation” http://www.salem-news.com/
There are dozens more .. you see, Roger Helbig makes a profession of harrassing and preferably shutting down, any voices that criticise the use of depleted uranium.
Also
Murdoch press – THE AUSTRALIAN – caught out on climate change error
The Australian corrects the record on climate change Crikey, CATHY ALEXANDER | JAN 17, 2013
The national broadsheet has issued a correction for a recent story which claimed rising sea levels were “not linked to warming”. Read what was in the story, and what was wrong with it, here.
The Australian has issued a rare correction on climate change, for a story which claimed rising sea levels were “not linked to warming”.
The story, which appeared under an “exclusive” tag on Tuesday and was written by environment editor Graham Lloyd, was based on a recent scientific paper in the Journal of Climate. Lloyd wrote that “the latest science on sea level rises has found no link to global warming”.
Crikey read the research paper, looked into Lloyd’s three articles on the subject, and highlighted inaccuracies in the way the research was presented(read Crikey’s stories here and here). A correction appeared in The Australiantoday, and the original story has been taken down….
The Australian has been criticised in the past for running stories which some perceive as misrepresenting the science on anthropogenic climate change, but it has rarely issued corrections on its climate change stories.http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/17/the-australian-corrects-the-record-on-climate-change/
Story of David Bradbury’s nuclear/uranium journey on film
A first wave of David Bradbury’s critically acclaimed filmography is now available for immediate streaming video on ScreenZone.tv:
http://www.screenzone.tv/products/jabiluka
http://www.screenzone.tv/products/hard-rain
http://www.screenzone.tv/products/public-enemy
http://www.screenzone.tv/products/blowin-in-the-wind
ON THE FRONTLINE: A ScreenZone interview with David Bradbury, 15 Jan 13 “……DB: My current film examines the three stages of the nuclear film cycle on a very personal level. It started when I met an aboriginal woman called Isabelle Dingamah (sic) about four years ago, and I started to film her story. She is one of the traditional custodians of the land at Roxby [Downs]. As a little girl she’d had the British atom bomb dropped on her and her family when she was 18-months-old. It’s kind of Shakespearian.
It’s unfolded organically, which is how I make my documentaries, and filmed as I go. Continue reading
Australia’s media quality and independence down the gurgler if Murdoch/Abbott win 2013 election
Firstly, there will be no legislation to inhibit the absolute freedom
of the press in Australia. They will be able to print any damn thing
they want. Truth will be shredded and thrown out the window, personal
privacy of targeted individuals will be rampantly invaded and their
characters destroyed.
Murdoch will insist on selling the ABC
Australia will never again abstain in a U.S. promoted vote in the
United Nations. Australia will return to lockstep the US in
international affairs.
If Rupert Murdoch wins in 2013 , (includes video) Independent
Australia, 29 Dec 12
Rodney E. Lever provides a chilling preview of what will happen if
Rupert Murdoch gets his wish and Tony Abbott & Co win the Federal
election next year. LET’S JUST PUT our thinking caps on for a minute
and imagine what Australia would be like if Rupert Murdoch gets his
wish and in 2013 installs a coalition government led by Tony Abbott,
Joe Hockey, Julie Bishop and Mal Brough. Continue reading
Murdoch’s AUSTRALIAN news compares wind energy proponents to paedophiles!
The day The Australian died, Independent Australia
28 December, 2012
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky reports on the exchange that finally,
completely, destroyed Australia’s national newspaper credibility.
“………In May 2012, The Australian ran an opinion piece by Mr James
Delingpole in which he riled against wind energy under the title:
“Wind farm scam a huge cover-up.”
Wind turbines actually constitute an increasingly important tool in
our arsenal of alternative energy to wean the planet off fossil fuels;
however, Mr. Delingpole begs to differ. Among other arguments, Mr.
Delingpole cited an unnamed Australian sheep farmer’s opinion that:
“The wind-farm business is bloody well near a paedophile ring. They’re
f . . king our families and knowingly doing so.”
Yes, that did appear exactly as quoted in The Australian. Continue reading
Surprise, surprise, the Murdoch press pushes Climate Change Denialism
Biased newspaper reporting on the carbon pricing mechanism, The Conversation, By David Karoly, Christian Slattery, Kathryn Townley and Kerrie Haria Adams from University of Melbourne.) 18 Dec 12,
The Australian print media have been criticised for inaccurately reporting the carbon pricing mechanism (CPM), and in some instances for actively campaigning against the Gillard government. Research from the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, before the start of the carbon price, reinforced these claims. It found an overwhelmingly negative coverage of the carbon price by News Limited papers in a study of ten national newspapers.
Following the introduction of the carbon price, an undergraduate research team from the University of Melbourne has confirmed these findings in an analysis of The Age, Herald Sun and The Australian.
We found that these newspapers are contributing to an uninformed and inadequate public debate on the carbon price and Australian climate change policy…….
The carbon price follows logic set out in the Stern Review. It advocates for investment in climate change mitigation now, to ensure continued economic prosperity and minimise later economic costs from climate change impacts or delayed climate change mitigation.
Not only was this fundamental argument barely mentioned, discussion of climate science was almost non-existent. This is critical to public perceptions of the carbon price, as without reinforcing the motivations for introducing such a policy, readers are less likely to believe it is necessary….
the overall media coverage does not discuss the need for action on climate change, nor does it balance the short-term economic costs against long-term gains. http://theconversation.edu.au/biased-newspaper-reporting-on-the-carbon-pricing-mechanism-11373
Origin and Energy Australia – ignorant critics of wind energy community acceptance
But for Origin and Energy Australia to assert that there isn’t a social license to operate for wind farms in this country is preposterous given their small part in actually developing wind projects
What would Origin and EnergyAustralia know about wind?, Climate Spectator, 21 Nov 2012, Tristan Edis
Origin Energy and EnergyAustralia (formerly TRUenergy) were on the front page of The Australian newspaper yesterday claiming the renewable energy target couldn’t be met because of community opposition to wind farms.
According to Origin Energy, wind farms are causing greater angst in the community than coal seam gas. And Energy Australia felt the around 300 MW of wind installed each year was “already testing the limits of community acceptance.” EnergyAustraia’s CEO Richard McIndoe was cited by the newspaper as claiming that the social licence wasn’t there to ramp up construction of wind farms.
This sounded rather interesting because I regularly talk to people heavily engaged in developing wind farms. These people attend community meetings, talk with local landowners, and deal with planning approval hearings – and this is very different to what they’ve told me. Every one of them of course has a horror story to tell about some particularly challenging people they’ve had to deal with in getting planning approvals. Often these people live several kilometres from the nearest turbine, or even outside of the local community, such as just about everyone involved in the Landscape Guardians and the Waubra Foundation.
But they generally find that if you take the effort to consult extensively within the community, you can get a large proportion of the community on-board. So it poses the question – do Origin and EnergyAustralia actually know what they’re talking about?… Continue reading
What a uranium company CEO thinks of the Australian media
Funny – I go through the uranium so-called news each day. What I find there is a succession of obvious handouts from the uranium lobby, presumably to grateful journalists, who don’t bother to check the accuracy of these uranium market forecasts . Article after article has glowing predictions for the financial boom to come, (just a little later) from investing in uranium.
Nearly every article concentrates on China.And, I think to myself. Do these uranium dreamers ever consider that the Chinese might be intelligent? That they might notice how unpopular nuclear power has become globally, and the reasons why (- economic, and safety). Yes, China is reported as planning to expand its nuclear power programme. Oh goody! They might want our uranium! But what if China wakes up to the dismal outlook for nuclear, elsewhere.
But never mind. The Australian media dutifully regurgitates the China uranium-buying boom to come, – no mention of the other countries (especially India’s political mess over nuclear power). We carefully ignore the nuclear decline in Germany, Switzerland, USA, UK, even France.
However, the poor old uranium lobby still thinks itself to be hardly done by Australia’s government and media.- Christina Macpherson
Marathon Resources Chairman , Peter Williams, lambasts Government on resources industry attitude – today’s A.G.M. 22 Nov 12,
“……..The overwhelming influence of environmental and heritage activists and bureaucrats in South Australia in recent years, supported by Government, has seen the pendulum swing far away from balanced development and economic growth….
The SA Government’s actions in the North Flinders have jeopardised the State’s reputation as a safe place for resource investment…. “
Limiting the News – THE AUSTRALIAN twists a story to climate denialism
The Australian skews climate science… again, Independent Australia, 20 November, 2012 The Australian newspaper continues its relentless misrepresentation of climate change science. Graham Readfearn reports. “COOL spell to chill hearts of climate activists,” says the clickbait headline in yesterday’s The Australian (19/11/12).
The story, a reprint from the Sunday Times’ Jonathan Leake, is just the kind of editorialised-opinion-disguised-as-news which The Australian has become known for whenever it reports about climate change.
Let’s have a look through this piece; it begins:
THE world’s climate has cooled during last year and this year, temperature data from Britain’s Met Office reveals — just before this year’s talks on cutting global greenhouse gas emissions.
The figures show that, although global temperatures are still well above the long-term average, they have fallen since the record seen in 2010. The findings could prove politically sensitive, coming ahead of the UN’s climate summit in Doha, Qatar, where the global system for regulating greenhouse gas emissions faces collapse.
The threat comes because the Kyoto Treaty, under which developed nations pledged to cut their carbon emissions, expires at the end of this year. Doha is seen as the last hope of securing an extension.
In such a febrile situation, any data casting doubt on climate scientists’ predictions is potentially explosive.
Come again?
…. The findings could prove politically sensitive …. any data casting doubt on climate scientists’ predictions ….
I would challenge Jonathan Leake to find any climate scientist who in the peer reviewed literature – or anywhere else for that matter – has “predicted” that global temperatures will rise uniformly year upon year. This only becomes “politically sensitive” if the politicians in question accept this sort of spoon-fed misrepresentation of the science.
Given that 2012 will probably end up as another year in the top ten warmest years ever recorded (something the Met Office predicted back in January), actually reinforces what the climate scientists have been “predicting” rather than casting doubt on them.
Not only that, but the expert from the UK’s Met Office which Leake quotes, Peter Stott, even spells out for Leake why the strawman argument Leake went on use in his story was wrong.
However, it is such a short period that it is scientifically meaningless. Climate change can only be measured over decades — and the records show that the world has warmed by 0.75C over the past century….
Australia’s public liars being exposed
IPA falsifiers fear fact checking fad Independent Australia 19 November, 2012 Serial deceivers, the Institute of Public Affairs, appear decidedly nervous about the prospect of fact checking coming to Australia, reports Alan Austin.
WATCHING the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) become appalled at the threat of fact checking coming to Australia has been one of this year’s more entertaining media experiences. Writing on The Drum online last week, IPA research fellow and (according to his bio on The Drum*) editor of the IPA Review, Chris Berg claimed fact checking – that is, ensuring what is written is actually true – is
‘…appealing in principle. It is disappointing – even futile – in practice.’
Well, of course it is ― to the IPA. Its Review almost rivals The Australian for distortions and falsehoods. Almost. Its writers almost match Andrew Bolt for fabrications. Well, no, not really………
Even pro-Republican Fox News called Romney and Ryan out on their multiple fabrications.
Steve Benen’s influential website meticulously documented Romney’s porkies throughout the 2012 presidential campaign. He ended up with a total of 917 by election day ― a tally that would make even Australia’s “Lying Rodent” blush.
Most commentators assess this to have been a factor in the huge win for President Obama. How significant it was, of course, impossible to measure.
More urgently for Australia’s IPA, recent focus on the lies of their pal, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, has coincided with a dramatic fall in his approval rate to new record lows. Just coincidence? Again, hard to be certain. But the IPA is nervous……
Fact checkers are required primarily for calling out lies — deliberate statements of falsehood, made knowingly by politicians, the media and public commentators.
Australia, the USA and Britain today are rife with fabricators.
Journalists lie about public figures, about climate change and about Aboriginal people.
The IPA routinely fabricates and distorts in its advocacy on behalf of its undisclosed clients on tobacco marketing, internet privacy, climate change, controls over shonky charities and many other matters.
These are profound challenges facing Australia, the USA and Britain. Fact checkers can help us deal with them. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/business/media-2/ipa-falsifiers-fear-fact-checking-fad/
Australian media more interested in Julia Gillard’s shoes, than in the dangerous uranium deal with India
The opening up of nuclear trade with India — first by the US in 2008 and most recently by Australia — has broader implications. It fundamentally changes the proliferation equation for other countries.
The most dangerous lie peddled by industry and by the Australian and Indian governments is that India has a strong track record of nuclear non-proliferation.
The Gillard government has no intention of seriously addressing any of the proliferation, safety, security and regulatory problems, nor does it care about the repression and murder of peaceful citizen protesters in India.
India’s Abysmal Nuclear Record, By Jim Green, New Matilda, 18/10/12 http://newmatilda.com/2012/10/18/indias-abysmal-nuclear-track-record
While the media focuses on Julia Gillard’s stumbles, India’s clunker of a nuclear industry stays unexamined. But hey, what’s a bit of nuclear proliferation between friends? Jim Green from Friends of the Earth on the South Asian nuclear arms race
According to Gemma Bailey, writing in the Australian Financial Review, Prime Minister Gillard has a cunning plan. She will ensure that Australia’s uranium supply treaty with India contains strict conditions on the safe use of the nuclear fuel. The plan, we’re told, “is intended to neutralise opponents who highlight that India has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
If only that were true. Here’s Gillard’s real plan: trot out tired old lines about strict conditions and hope that journalists will regurgitate them without question. For the most part, it works. A number of media organisations have run an Associated Press piece which asserts as fact that Australia “sells uranium only … under strict conditions”. Michelle Grattan has twice used her Fairfax column to remind us about John Howard’s cricketing abilities, but she remains silent about the weapons proliferation issues at stake with the uranium deal.
Fairfax’s National Times ran what was essentially a propaganda piece by Professor Amitabh Mattoo from the Canberra-funded Australia India Institute. And the day before Labor’s National Conference debated uranium sales to India last year, the Sydney Morning Herald published a column by the Lowy Institute’s Rory Medcalf downplaying the risk of proliferation. The Lowy Institute — which prominently lists uranium miner BHP Billiton as a funding partner — refused to run a critique of Medcalf’s column on its blog.
At stake is the nuclear arms race in South Asia and broader, global nuclear proliferation concerns. As Ron Walker, a retired Australian diplomat and former Chair of the Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said last year: “I am horrified that the media have not explained the enormity of this proposal.”
India is at least as culpable as its neighbours in fanning the nuclear arms race in South Asia.
Despite the evidence, THE AUSTRALIAN newspaper claims that wind power does not help reduce CO2 emissions
Wind power abates greenhouse gasses in the UK, why should we believe Lloyd and Cumming’s claims that, for some reason, it is not working in Australia. See Beyond the bluster: Why wind power is an effective technology by the UK Institute of Public Policy Research.
The Australian’s Graham Lloyd pushes hard against the winds of change Independent Australia 10 September, 2012 The Australian newspaper – and its environment editor, Graham Lloyd, in particular – have a vendetta against wind power, says Dave Clarke, who reviews their latest unbalanced report. GRAHAM LLOYD, the ‘environment editor’ for The Australian has got together with Hamish Cumming, an opponent of the proposed Mortlake Wind Farm, to write a creative and imaginative piece about wind power and carbon dioxide emissions.
An environment editor who has a grudge against one of the world’s most successful forms of renewable energy must be quite a rare bird. But for an employee of the Murdoch News empire it is probably a wise career choice. Opposing the huge and powerful fossil fuel/mining industry would not be good for Lloyd’s future prospects in that system.
Lloyd relies heavily on what he calls Cumming’s ‘two year analysis of Victoria’s wind farm development’, but does not say where or how this analysis has been published, nor can I find it on the internet.
They claim that, while Victoria’s wind farms have displaced a significant amount of Victoria’s coal-fired power, this has not resulted in any less greenhouse carbon dioxide being generated by said coal-fired power stations. Lloyd and Cumming claim that when the wind blows and Victoria’s wind farms are generating at a high level, the coal-fired power stations cut back their generation, but go on polluting the atmosphere at the same rate as they would at full power.
What they are implying, but not saying, is that the coal-fired power stations are so poorly designed, poorly managed, or simply so inherently inflexible that they cannot reduce their rate of pollution, even when they are generating less power!
Where Lloyd and Cumming get really creative and imaginative is in claiming that this is not any fault of the coal-fired power stations, but of the wind farms. Somehow we are to believe that the (alleged by Lloyd and Cumming) failure of Victoria’s coal-fired power stations to reduce their emissions in response to reduced demand on their generation is all to be blamed on the wind power industry. Continue reading
1 This month
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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