It’s time that the Australian government declared a water emergency
Declaring a water emergency means putting people before profit, mo https://www.michaelwest.com.au/declaring-a-water-emergency-means-putting-people-before-profit/by Quentin Grafton and John Williams — 1 Nov 19, The current drought in Eastern Australia has focused the attention of all Australians on water but effective policy responses are missing in action. Isn’t it time to call it a water emergency? Quentin Grafton and John Williams report.
The dictionary defines an emergency as “a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action”. If there is a climate emergency – and 330,000 Australians have already signed a petition to the Australian Government to declare a climate emergency – then surely there must also be a water emergency here, right now, in Australia. As in any emergency, it requires that we be told the truth and, importantly, act on the truth.
Political leaders, however, prefer the word ‘drought’ because Australia has experienced it in the past and it is ‘solved’ when the rains come. Politicians cannot be blamed for acts of nature. ‘Drought relief’ also gives politicians the opportunity to pretend to fix the problem while showing compassion for those doing it tough.
Income support in the form of a farm household allowance for eligible households with less than $5 million in assets, and that pays more than $30,000 per farming couple per year for up to four years, is, no doubt, very welcome to those who qualify. Unfortunately, it does not solve our water emergency. In this make-believe narrative, all blame accrues to the heavens.
The current drought began in 2017, and came less than 10 years after the Millennium Drought ended. Yet the nation’s elected leaders are surprised by another major drought. Like rabbits on the road facing the full beam of an approaching vehicle, they seem unable to move beyond last century solutions to respond to this water emergency.
Instead, they announce multi-billion dollar commitments of taxpayer money for dams, many of which won’t be completed for years and would never fill until the drought ends. Water extracted from the dams would also be subject to water extraction limits under the Basin Plan.
So why do Australian political leaders support dam building as a solution knowing that dams don’t make it rain or snow? Is it because they are stuck in the past, trapped in myths or delusions, or asleep at the wheel?
If only this were true. Australia could then solve the water emergency by simply ‘briefing’ the Prime Minister, Premiers, and Water Ministers about the 21st Century solutions to the water emergency.
They could be informed of solutions like comprehensive water accounting so that everyone knows who has the water and what it is being used for. Other solutions include water planning that leaves sufficient water in the dams for people to drink by setting enough water aside for the worst droughts, and water recycling and reuse by communities to reduce extraction. Or even managed aquifer recharge to reduce surface water evaporation, and dynamic water pricing that increases the volumetric price paid when dams have less water — the list goes on.
So what is getting in the way of implementing these solutions? Money, power, and influence. Both rent-seeking and regulatory capture, represent the demand for and the supply of water respectively, and are affecting decision-making that benefits particular interests, rather than the broader public interest.
Rent-seeking is when actions are undertaken by people and organisations outside of government to influence decision-making for self-interest, rather than for the sake of improving the decision. Many forms of rent-seeking are legal in Australia, including lobbying — a multi-billion-dollar business.
Rent-seeking allows privileged access to our elected leaders and advisors to those with the means to get it. For example, between 2014 and 2018 the NSW Irrigation Council had more than 25 water-related meetings with New South Wales Ministers, yet many non-industry and non-irrigation entities had only one meeting. All combined, Indigenous, catchment, and environment entities had just 20 per cent of the total number of ministerial meetings given to irrigation and industry entities in the period.
So what does privileged access mean? Decision-making that the NSW Natural Resources Commission has described, in relation the Barwon-Darling River Water Sharing Plan, that has
“…increased allowance for extractive use at lower flow classes that are critical to the environment. These provisions benefit the economic interest of a few upstream users over the ecological and social needs of the many”.
This decision-making contributed to the dire situation in the Murray-Darling Basin and the massive fish kills along the Darling River in January 2019. Sadly, it is just one of many examples of water decision-making not made in the public interest, and described by the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission in January this year as “gross maladministration”.
Billions of dollars in expenditure on irrigation infrastructure, including the construction of private dams, highlighted in the ABC’s Four Corners program in July 2019 Cash Splash, and supported by evidence in peer-reviewed academic research, shows that such subsidies are likely to reduce return flows from irrigators’ fields to groundwater, streams, and rivers.
Yet, the Australian Government has spent some $4 billion on subsidising irrigation infrastructure in the Murray-Darling Basin without any cost-benefit analysis or even comprehensive measures of the impacts on stream flows.
To add to our water woes, more billions of dollars have been allocated to further subsidise water infrastructure, including dams, and announced as a ‘solution’ to the water emergency. Such spending is highly unlikely to generate a net public benefit.
As Rome burns, people in towns like Wilcannia on the lower Darling get their drinking water from 10 litre cartons delivered from the back of trucks. In a desperate cry of help, and defiance, one Barkandji Elder from Wilcannia, Kerry ‘Sissy’ King, has a message for politicians to
“Come out here and see how you feel about living [with no water]. They’ve taken it from the nation that lives off the river system. Come and sit in the gutter with us.”
Australia must stop blaming the river and recognise that capture by special interests has led to this water emergency. It is not simply an act of God; it has arisen from a lack of planning and decision-making that benefit the few at the expense of the many. Neither drought relief nor dams are solutions. Instead, Australia needs its political leaders to lead, to put the national interest first, and to make decisions that place people before profit.
Australian film-makers to join in 10th Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro May 2020
Marcia Gomes de Oliveira shared a link. 2 Nov 19
These filmmakers and producers have already agreed to come to Rio 2020: Peter Kaufmann (Australia), Kim Mavromatis (Australia), Laura Pires (Brazil), Angelo Lima (Brazil), Miguel Silveira (USA/Brazil), Cris Uberman (France), Marcus Schwenzel (Germany), Rainer Ludwigs (Germany), Michael von Hohenberg (Germany), Peter Anthony (Denmark), Michael Madson (Denmark), Lise Autogena (Denmark), Masako Sakata (Japan), Maurizio Torrealta (Italy), Alessandro Tesei (Italy), Amudhan R.P. (India), Tamotsu Matsubara (Japan), Tamiyoshi Tachibana (Japan), Tineke Van Veen (Netherlands), Mafalda Gameiro (Portugal), James Ramsay Cameron (Scotland), José Herrera Plaza (Spain), Marko Kattilakoski (Sweden), Edgar Hagen (Switzerland),Tetyana Chernyavska (Ukraine), Brittany Prater (USA), Ian Thomas Ash (Japan/USA).
Rio’s 10th International Uranium Film Festival is scheduled for May 21st to 31st. Do not miss it!
Climate change is bringing more extreme weather events to Sydney and Melbourne
Hail, cyclones and fire: Extreme weather risks on the rise, SMH, By Peter Hannam, November 1, 2019, Sydney and Melbourne will most likely be exposed to more intense hailstorms, tropical cyclones will track further south and bushfire risks will increase in most of Australia as the climate warms, new research shows.The modelling based on a 3 degree temperature rise is contained in a severe weather report to be released on Friday by IAG, the country’s largest general insurer, and the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research.
“Climate change is not just about the future,” the report states. “There is already solid evidence that there have been measurable changes to weather and climate extremes with the [1 degree of] warming to date.”
Changing insurance claims data are among the indications that major damaging hail events for Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne have already been increasing in the past decade……
Insurance and other financial firms have been reassessing their risks to climate change, prodded in part by international groups such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.
IAG managing director Peter Harmer said there was “an urgent need for Australia to prepare for and adapt to climate change”.
“[It] is critical there is a co-ordinated national approach from governments, industries and businesses to build more resilient communities and reduce the impact of disasters.”
Executive manager of natural perils at IAG Mark Leplastrier said that, apart from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, communities had two main tools to shape the future risk profile: the tightening of land planning and improving building codes.
“There’s a huge opportunity to adapt,” he said……..https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/hail-cyclones-and-fire-extreme-weather-risks-on-the-rise-20191031-p536aw.html
December 2-13 UN Climate Summit in Madrid (Scott Morrison is supposed to attend?)
 UN climate talks to take place in Madrid https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/un-climate-talks-to-take-place-in-madrid/news-story/49630507277946754406e42af4685d2c, Australian Associated Press
November 2, 2019, The United Nations has confirmed Spain will host the organisation’s annual climate conference after Chile pulled out following weeks of violent unrest.
UN Climate Change head Patricia Espinosa said in a statement that the conference, known as COP25, will now take place in Madrid on the same dates – December 2-13. Weeks of violent unrest led Chile to cancel the COP25 and its hosting of the APEC trade talks that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was due to attend in mid-November. The high-profile climate summit is slated to finalise negotiations around rules for the Paris emissions reduction targets – to which Australia has agreed. Countries were going to be encouraged to improve their pollution reduction goals. |
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Coal from six biggest miners in Australia produces more emissions than entire economy
Big emitting companies should be held responsible for the burning of their coal overseas, report says Adam Morton Environment editor, Guardian, @adamlmorton, Fri 1 Nov 2019 Coalmining in Australia by the nation’s six biggest coal producers ultimately results in more greenhouse gas emissions each year than the entire domestic economy.In the latest report to estimate the role fossil fuel businesses play in driving the climate crisis, researchers from the University of New South Wales calculated the total emissions from the coal and gas produced by Australia’s top carbon companies, from extraction to the resources being burned for energy, mostly overseas.
They found the top six coal producers – BHP Billiton, Glencore, Yancoal, Peabody, Anglo American and Whitehaven – were in 2018 linked to 551m tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Total emissions from all activity within Australia were 534m tonnes.
When the list was expanded to include Australia’s 10 biggest carbon producers, adding Chevron, Woodside, ExxonMobil and Santos, the combined emissions from their products was found to be 670m tonnes a year, equivalent to that from about 75% of global air traffic.
The UNSW report follows the Guardian’s global series The Polluters, which revealed 20 fossil fuel companies including BHP could be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era. In Australia, it found a wave of planned developments by major fossil fuel companies across the north would significantly increase the amount of coal and gas the country planned to sell into Asia and could push the Paris climate agreement goals further beyond reach.
The report’s lead author, Jeremy Moss from the UNSW Practical Justice Initiative and a professor of political philosophy, said there was a clear case that big emitting companies, which the report calls “carbon majors”, should be held responsible for the consequences of their products……. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/01/six-biggest-coalminers-in-australia-produce-more-emissions-than-entire-economy
Hotter and drier- Australia’s weather records set to be broken this year
Australia’s annual heat records may melt after hot and dry October, The Age, Peter Hannam, November 1, 2019 Almost the whole Australian mainland is likely to have a warmer and drier than normal final two months of the year, boosting the odds that 2019 will be the country’s hottest on record.
Nationally, maximum temperatures last month were almost 3 degrees above the 1961-90 average used by the Bureau of Meteorology, making it the second hottest October in records going back to 1910.
For the first 10 months of the year, average daytime temperatures are running at 1.88 degrees warmer than the 1961-90 yardstick, placing 2019 well on track to smash Australia’s record anomaly of 1.59 degrees set in 2013, the bureau said. Mean readings are in line with the record, also set in 2013.
October capped another dismal month for rainfall, with an average of 8.3 millimetres – or about a third of the monthly average. That made it Australia’s equal-fifth driest October.
Most of the nation shared the relatively hot and dry conditions. In NSW, for instance, it was the state’s fourth-hottest October – with daytime readings 3.3 degrees warmer than average – and its fifth driest with just a quarter of the usual rain.
So far in 2019, NSW is running at the hottest for any similar period for both mean and maximum temperatures, while having among the five driest January-October periods on record……
The bureau’s latest three-monthly outlook offers little relief for most of the country.
“November and December rainfall is likely to be below average across most of the country,” it said, adding that the relatively dry conditions were likely to extend through to the end of summer for most of eastern Australia.
For November to January, the odds are running at more than 80 per cent for warmer than average days for the Australian mainland…….https://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/australia-s-annual-heat-records-may-melt-after-hot-and-dry-october-20191101-p536mw.html
Scott Morrison’s threats against climate activists – getting a bit sinister
As he rails against activism, Scott Morrison is turning a bit sinister, a bit threatening, The government the PM leads finds activism inconvenient, but it is the same government that has sparked the activism. Guardian, Katharine Murphy Political editor, @murpharoo, Fri 1 Nov 2019 It takes some chutzpah to stand up with a straight face and deliver a speech foreshadowing a government crackdown on protest activity while in the same breath declaring that a new insidious form of progressivism is intent on denying the liberties of Australians.
But Scott Morrison has never lacked confidence.
In the florid prime ministerial tale unfurled on Friday at the Queensland Resources Council (and boy folks, it was a doozy), progressivism wanted to tell you what job you can have, what you can say, what you can think “and tax you more for the privilege of all of those instructions that are directed to you” – which made progressivism kind of busy, and a whole lot more organised and efficient than progressivism generally is.
We could, on Friday, have been treated to a measured prime ministerial reflection on the problems associated with cancellation culture. The Labor frontbencher Clare O’Neil showed this week that conversation can be attempted without everyone losing their minds. We could have had some words to bring the country together.
But after a brief touchdown in the goat’s cheese circle, which was somehow intrinsically hostile to mining in ways that weren’t really unpacked (and perhaps that might have been risky, given Morrison was addressing a business lunch where goat’s cheese might, accidentally, have featured) – we arrived, unexpectedly it must be said, at the sneering apocalypse.
Morrison warned that a new breed of #RadicalActivism™ was the on the march, “apocalyptic in tone, brooks no compromise, all or nothing, alternative views not permitted – a dogma that pits cities against regional Australia, one that cannot resist sneering at wealth creating and job creating industries, and the livelihoods particularly of regional Australians including here in Queensland”.
Apart from this being overhyped, high-velocity bollocks, it pays to remember right at this juncture that the actual purpose of Morrison’s address on Friday was to foreshadow a government crackdown against forms of activism and protests that the Coalition and the mining industry finds inconvenient.
So, just in case this unclear, let me spell it out: we were being treated to the spectacle of a prime minister teeing off against intolerance while in the same breath foreshadowing his own bout of government sanctioned intolerance – the type where police might be involved, and people might be bundled away in vans.
Yes, that happened. I saw it, because the prime minister’s speech was broadcast outside Queensland. It wasn’t always clear that Morrison knew the audience looking on at lunchtime on Friday might be broader than the residents of central Queensland, but it was broadcast nationally. To the south-east corner of the sunshine state, and Sydney, and Melbourne.
Unremarked in this stirring presentation was the fact that climate-related activism is building right at the moment, both at the community level, from the schoolkids to the grandmas, and also at the shareholder level, in large part because the Coalition has invited it.
The government who finds this activism inconvenient is the same government who has sparked the activism, given its purpose and salience and traction, because of its own woeful record on climate change……..
Apart from the perversity of a government railing against a set of conditions it has, itself, created, there was also the curiosity about carbon risk, which was presented implicitly by Morrison as a fiction of progressivism, #RadicalActivism™ and the sneering apocalypse. ………
This strange diktat will be news to the regulators – the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission – who are calmly out in the marketplace warning stakeholders on a regular basis to get their houses in order or risk being stranded in the inevitable transition, who present carbon risk as what it is: a threat to financial stability in Australia.
They’ll be astonished to learn they are the unwitting tools of the deep progressive state, co-opted by the noisy Australians. Shh, no one tell them.
This strange diktat will be news to the regulators – the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission – who are calmly out in the marketplace warning stakeholders on a regular basis to get their houses in order or risk being stranded in the inevitable transition, who present carbon risk as what it is: a threat to financial stability in Australia.
They’ll be astonished to learn they are the unwitting tools of the deep progressive state, co-opted by the noisy Australians. Shh, no one tell them. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/01/as-he-rails-against-activism-morrison-turns-a-bit-sinister-a-little-bit-threatening
Shire of Leonora deputy president says no thanks to foreign nuclear waste pitch
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Leonora was identified as a prime candidate in WA for a dumping site similar to a facility being built in Finland, where a 2km-deep tunnel would be drilled to store bentonite clay-sealed copper cylinders full of radioactive waste.Speaking on Channel 7’s Flashpoint on Monday night, Shire of Leonora deputy president Ross Norrie said he didn’t feel there was any amount of money that could convince residents to get onboard plans for a global nuclear waste dump.
“They are offering big bucks to store it, but I think Finland and Norway are way more advanced with their storage projects,” he said. “The feeling was, no, we are not going to accept nuclear waste from offshore and currently the policy is we don’t any way.” Leonora has been touted as a local nuclear waste storage site due to the proposed Azark Project at Clover Downs Station 15km out of town. Mr Norrie said the Shire was only interested in storing waste produced locally, such as at the proposed Yeelirrie uranium mine, and from Lucas Heights in NSW. “The storage facility we are talking about is one of the safest going,” he said. “We need to be around the table because we do have Australia’s largest deposit of uranium.” Australian Nuclear Association president Robert Parker said safety would not be a concern if a global waste storage was built in the Goldfields. When they drill down into the rock and they go down 500m they check that water hasn’t moved for millions of years,” he said. “If that water has not moved, and they can verify it hasn’t, then that (nuclear waste) is going down there and it is not coming back ever. “It is a certain, sure, engineered solution to the migration of these old bits of waste through the environment.” Former Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said storing the world’s nuclear waste near Leonora would be disastrous. “The reason the industry asks for remote high isolation sites … is they know the engineered containment will leak,” he said. “How will you explain that to Aboriginal people or crew who live in these remote mining towns or remote communities that the reason you are trying to put it as far from centres of population as possible is that you know the stuff is going to leak.” Reform WA president Daniel Nikolic said economic benefits of nuclear waste storage were big. |
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South Australia – the nuclear wasteland state
South Australia – the wasteland state, SEBASTIAN TOPS, PORT LINCOLN TIMES OCTOBER 17 2019 South Australia’s Nuclear Citizens’ Jury had many researched reasons to say ‘no’ to another’s (nuclear) waste.“Have Your Say” on nuclear waste dump – just a window-dressing exercise by the Australian govt
Kazzi Jai No Nuclear Waste Dump Anywhere in South Australia, 30 Oct 19, In today’s Transcontinental paper on page 4 there is a half page ad for “Have your Say on the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility”. It says…
In November and December 2019, the Australian Government will survey businesses and neighbours of the proposed sites to determine if they support hosting the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in their community. These surveys are in addition to the Flinders Ranges Council Community Ballot (Mon 11 November to Thurs 12 December 2019).
Also, anyone can make a submission by 12 December 2019 to radioactivewaste@industry.gov.au
It then says in bold letters at the bottom “Further information, including an ‘opt-in’ process for surveys, is available at www.radioactivewaste.gov.au/have-your-say”
But alas – it only goes to https://www.industry.gov.au/strategies-for-the-future/managing-radioactive-waste page……..
So….is there something sneaky going on here??
The presumptive flip side to that is therefore The Minister has already determined everyone else will NOT be detrimentally affected & so not worth greater effort. LMFAO https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/
Australia’s secret hazardous radioactive military leftovers
Tim Bickmore No Nuclear Waste Dump Anywhere in South Australia. 30 Oct 19, I wonder if the ‘National Maritime Collection’ is one of the DIIS 100+ sites?
The ARPANSA 2019 Annual Report states “… the engine from the Wessex has hazardous (radioactive) substances and poses a risk to staff”: & it is being removed – therefore the ‘(radioactive) substances’ would be headed for the national suppository.
What other (radioactive) military left-overs will DIIS release from hidden fields once the scapegoats have been herded?
Australian company Worley Parsons joins the international throng trying to sell nuclear power to Saudi Arabia
Australian company WorleyParsons will provide consultancy services including project governance, resource management, project services, training and compliance across the full scope of the large nuclear power plant (LNPP), small modular reactors and nuclear fuel cycle.
 US confirms nuclear energy talks with Saudi Arabia, https://www.power-technology.com/comment/us-confirms-nuclear-energy-talks-with-saudi-arabia/ By MEED 30 Oct 19, Riyadh will have to sign an accord with Washington on the peaceful use of nuclear technology for US firms to participate in the projectA senior US official has confirmed that Washington is in talks with Riyadh about supporting Saudi Arabia’s planned nuclear programme.
Speaking in Abu Dhabi on 26 October, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry Perry confirmed that talks were ongoing. Continue reading |
Australian government rejects call for help from Julian Assange’s legal team
Why is it that the Australian government is so helpful to Australian murderers and drug dealers imprisoned overseas, but so relentlessly unhelpful to an Australian whose only crime is to tell the truth?
Assange legal team asks for Australian government help amid growing health fears, https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/assange-legal-team-asks-for-australian-government-help-amid-growing-health-fears-20191028-p534xw.html, By Rob Harris
The WikiLeaks founder has been held in HM Prison Belmarsh since his April 11 arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had lived in asylum for almost seven years.
Australian officials told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday that diplomats had not heard back from Assange’s lawyer since writing to her last week asking that she raise with him their offer of consular assistance.
The 48-year-old is fighting US attempts to extradite him to face 17 counts of spying and one of computer hacking in relation to WikiLeaks’ release of thousands of classified Pentagon files regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Barrister Greg Barns, an adviser to the Australian Assange campaign, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald his UK lawyers on Friday requested consular assistance following a recent inquiry from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
“Julian’s lawyers are asking for the Australian government’s assistance in dealing with their client’s inhumane conditions in Belmarsh prison which has led to, and is continuing to cause, serious damage to Julian’s health,” Mr Barns said.
His supporters say he is being kept in solitary confinement and is allowed out of his cell for only 45 minutes a day. At a court appearance last week, he appeared gaunt and disorientated.
Assange was due to be released on September 22 but was told at a court hearing last month he would be kept in jail because there were “substantial grounds” for believing he would abscond.
The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) passed a motion at its national conference on Saturday calling for the Australian government to do “all it can” to bring Assange home and resist US attempts to extradite him.
ALA national president Andrew Christopoulos said it was an important issue about the rule of law and protecting an Australian in a vulnerable position overseas.
“This is about standing up for the rule of law, fairness and the freedom to expose wrongdoing,” he said. “The reported decline of Julian Assange’s physical and mental health heightens the need for urgent government intervention. The government has intervened in cases like this before and should do so in this circumstance.”
If the case goes to a series of appeals, Assange could remain in a UK jail until at least 2025.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne last week acknowledged the publicity around the case and that Assange had high-profile and loyal supporters. She said it was important to let the legal process run its course.
“He has been offered consular services … like any other Australian would,” Senator Payne told the Senate committee. “I think it’s important to remember that as Australia would not accept intervention or interference in our legal processes, we are not able to intervene in the legal processes of another country
Australia’s media under threat
“Media outlets have faced attacks in the form of centralisation of private ownership, funding cuts to public broadcasters, and potential prosecution of journalists, including News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst.”
One of the report’s authors, Geoffrey Watson, SC, former counsel assisting the Independent Commission Against Corruption, said he had been shocked by how quickly the brutal type of politics that evolved in the United States and the United Kingdom, and partly led to the ascendancy of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, had taken root in Australia.
“One day you see the judiciary attacked and the next someone in the media,” said Mr Watson, who is a director of the Centre for Public Integrity. “On the third day it might be the CSIRO, they even attack our scientists. Some people don’t recognise it as the same problem, but it is all part of the same disease.”
He said the effectiveness of the media in Australia as a watchdog was not only threatened by personal and legal attacks by the government, but by regulations that had allowed ownership of newspapers to be reduced to an effective duopoly.
The report, entitled “Protecting the Integrity of Accountability Institutions”, said that a range of institutions – including the judiciary and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the public service, integrity commissions such as the ICAC, statutory authorities such as the Human Rights Commission and the Fair Work Commission, and the CSIRO – had all been targeted in recent years by interested parties seeking to undermine their independence and public trust.
“These institutions are important not only because they ensure actual accountability, transparency and good governance but because they build confidence and trust within the Australian community,” it said. “When this confidence and trust is diminished, divisiveness and conflict increase. This impacts social cohesiveness and the economy, and the welfare of all Australians suffers. Ultimately, as international experience has shown, it is a threat to democracy itself.”
It cited as examples of interference attempts by federal ministers to influence the Victorian Court of Appeal in 2017 terrorism cases, sustained funding cuts and personal attacks on the ABC, and the de-skilling of the public service through the outsourcing of up to 50 per cent of government departments to contractors.
The report listed a series of principles that needed to be respected in order to protect the independence of the threatened institutions. They include protection from political retribution, secure and sufficient funding, secure tenure of senior officials and public access to advice to the government from accountability institutions, as well as the creation of an effective federal integrity watchdog.
The Centre for Public Integrity, a independently funded think tank, was formed earlier this year in part to champion the case for a such a body. The report comes in the midst of a campaign by Australian media, including the Herald and The Age, to defend the public right to information in the face of increasing attempts by government and government agencies to suppress information, prosecute whistleblowers and criminalise legitimate public interest journalism.
ABC challenges the validity of Federal Police raids
We don’t want any sensationalist headlines,’ AFP 
allegedly told ABC, https://www.theage.com.au/national/we-don-t-want-any-sensationalist-headlines-afp-allegedly-told-abc-20191028-p534ux.htmlby Michaela Whitbourn ,October 28, 2019 —An Australian Federal Police agent told the ABC it wanted to avoid “sensationalist headlines” such as “AFP raids ABC” before it seized a raft of documents from the broadcaster’s Sydney headquarters, the Federal Court has heard.
The ABC is challenging the legal validity of the search warrant authorising the June 5 raid by the federal police on its offices in Ultimo and is seeking the return of documents seized at the time. Continue reading
1 This month
4 November – Will AUKUS keep us safe – at what cost?
the Commissioners of the AUKUS Public Inquiry present their findings at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. iview.abc.net.au/show/national-press-club-address
Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
