Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Crossbenchers put climate on agenda

SBS 20 May 19,  New independent MP Helen Haines says she doesn’t intend to operate in a bloc with other crossbenchers, saying she runs her own race in Indi., The Victorian seat of Indi’s likely new independent MP Helen Haines says she doesn’t intend to operate as a bloc with fellow crossbenchers, but expects they’ll work together on issues such as climate change.

Ms Haines looks set to take the seat that was previously held by independent Cathy McGowan, winning almost 52 per cent of the vote so far after preferences.

It would make her the first independent to succeed another independent in a seat……..

“I’m not operating as a bloc with the other independents. I very much run my own race in Indi,” she said.

“There’s no doubt, though, that we do see eye-to-eye on action on climate. I think climate is the one that we will be collaborating very closely on the crossbench.”……. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/crossbenchers-put-climate-on-agenda

May 20, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, election 2019 | Leave a comment

Voters feared climate policy more than climate change

Election 2019: What happened to the climate change vote we heard about?   https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-20/what-happened-to-the-climate-change-vote/11128128

By Matt Mcdonald  It was supposed to be the big issue of the 2019 Australian federal election: climate change.

A range of polls and surveys had left many analysts, myself included, with the sense that this would be a crucial issue at the ballot box.

The annual Lowy Institute Poll demonstrated stronger support for climate change action in Australia in 2019 than in any previous survey since 2006.

In the survey more than 60 per cent of Australians agreed with the sentiment that “Global warming is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant cost”.

And while a self-selecting sample, those filling out the ABC’s Vote Compass survey consistently emphasised climate change as a crucial issue for them at the election.

Crucially, those identifying it as the most important issue had risen from 9 per cent in 2016 to 29 per cent in 2019.

Advocacy groups and even media outlets also encouraged the view that 2019 was, and should be, Australia’s climate election.

This was prominent in pre-election statements from NGOs like ACF and Oxfam. GetUp! ran this argument strongly before and during the campaign, and The Guardian’s editorial on the eve of the election exhorted all Australians to view the election as an opportunity to vote for substantive action on climate change.

But in the end, we saw a decline in the primary vote for the Labor Opposition, who had announced a more significant reduction target than the Government and a suite of measures — from investment in renewable energy to an energy guarantee — to get there.

And we saw a rise of only around 0.5 per cent of the primary vote for the party with the most progressive and ambitious climate policy: the Greens. More consequentially, of course, we saw the re-election of a Government with limited ambition on emissions reductions.

How did this happen?

While it’s too early for fine-grained analysis, we can draw a few conclusions at this point.

First, the seats where climate change was significant as an issue at the election tells us something. As the most significant political issue for Greens supporters in the election, climate change clearly played a role in the re-election of Adam Bandt in Melbourne, and in strong primary votes for the Greens in nearby electorates of Higgins, Kooyong and Macnamara.

In Sydney, it was clearly prominent in Wentworth (undecided at the time of writing), and most prominently Warringah where Zali Steggall won the seat from Tony Abbott.

In Warringah, not only was the LNP’s position on climate change inconsistent with the views of most in this constituency, but Mr Abbott was (rightly) seen as the chief architect of an extended period of climate inaction in Australia.

Simply put, he was (in Opposition, in Government and in public debate) the chief contributor to the toxic politics of climate change in this country over the past decade.

Mr Abbott’s re-election was, in short, a bridge too far for his constituency.

But in this case and in other inner-city seats, support for climate action looks broadly consistent with a ‘post-materialist’ sensibility.

Here the emphasis on quality of life over immediate economic and physical needs encourages a focus on issues like climate change. But this is a sensibility that speaks to those in higher socio-economic brackets, and principally with higher levels of education.

It isn’t particularly applicable to regional Queensland, for example, especially when constituents in the latter view large scale mining operations as a crucial potential source of income and employment.

Voters feared climate policy more than climate change

Second, the Lowy Institute polling data also tells us something about when climate support rises and falls.

Simply put, climate concern is at its highest in Australia when there’s a perception (eg 2006, 2019) that the government isn’t doing anything about the issue and isn’t taking it seriously. Conversely, climate concern has been at its lowest as the Government began to pursue substantive climate action, bottoming out when the so-called carbon tax was legislated in 2012.

In this election, Australians were suddenly faced with a prospective Labor Government ready with a suite of measures to tackle climate change.

And they were presented with an account of these measures as a devastating economic blow to Australian prosperity and growth.

However discredited much of this modelling ultimately was, and the broader fear campaign about everything from electricity prices to the end of petrol-based cars, it raised the spectre of immediate economic sacrifice for Australian

We’re already in a climate emergency

So what would it take to make climate change a major political concern in Australia, and a crucial issue in future Australian elections?

A climate emergency, perhaps? The problem with this argument is that by most accounts, we’re in one.

The five hottest years on record have been the past five, natural disasters have increased in intensity and frequency, we’re in the midst of an extinction crisis and the average global temperatures suggest that we’ve almost reached the agreed Paris target for warming: no more than 1.5 degrees.

So the issue is not whether there’s a problem. Rather, it’s how to get Australian policy makers and voters to recognise and respond to it credibly and seriously. It should be easier to do.

We’re confronted more than ever with manifestations of climate change.

The five hottest years on record have been the past five, natural disasters have increased in intensity and frequency, we’re in the midst of an extinction crisis and the average global temperatures suggest that we’ve almost reached the agreed Paris target for warming: no more than 1.5 degrees.

So the issue is not whether there’s a problem. Rather, it’s how to get Australian policy makers and voters to recognise and respond to it credibly and seriously. It should be easier to do.

We’re confronted more than ever with manifestations of climate change.

May 20, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, election 2019 | Leave a comment

Why do politicians appear to believe shock jock Alan Jones on nuclear power? Scott Morrison has his doubts

Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, Steve Dale 20 May 19, I listened to that Alan Jones, Morrison interview (that Wong’s press release references) – Jones was rabidly pro-nuclear (as usual) and Morrison was trying to point out that nuclear is not cost effective. When Alan Jones goes, I wonder how many pollies will drop their support for nuclear power – I think many say they support it just to get on the right side of him.

“Mr Morrison told broadcaster Alan Jones that he would do whatever it takes to bring electricity prices down but when it came to nuclear power, “I don’t have any issues” but the “investment doesn’t stack up”.
He compared nuclear power unfavourably with Hydro Tasmania’s Battery of the nation – a proposal to develop thousands of megawatts of pumped hydro capacity in addition to the island state’s existing hydro capacity to back up rapidly expanding solar and wind power.”
https://www.afr.com/…/scott-morrison-no-issue-with…

May 20, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media, politics | Leave a comment

Independent candidate Zali Steggall’s win in Warringah is a message about need for action on climate change

May 20, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, election 2019 | Leave a comment

Morrison’s reelection is a disaster for the future of the country — and the world

May 19, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, election 2019 | Leave a comment

Australia stuck with pro-nuclear. climate sceptic, government – theme for May 19

The election result was not what was expected. Progressive Australians are still reeling from the shock – of another 3 years of a government whose loyalty is to the fossil fuel industry and to the nuclear lobby.

The Scott Morrison government has no plans, no idea at all, about how Australia might genuinely aim to meet its Paris climate change commitments.

It seems that most Australians were taken in by Scott Morrison’s simplistic message   “I alone can manage the economy, cutting taxes (for the wealthy) is all that is needed” . The message of  Labor and The Greens comprehensive policies did not come across.

A Trump -like victory, a Brexit like victory – grim years ahead for Australia.

The goal of a clean, positive programme for energy, climate, water, and the environment must not be abandoned. Progressive Australians, whether in Parliament, in the Senate, in the media, or in the environmental movement will not give up.

Reflecting on the catastrophic failure of the opinion n polls that consistently predicted a Labor win , I realised the deep division in Australia between the (mainly city-dwellers) and rural Queensland.  We who see ourselves as “progressives” are in general,, followers of ABC and SBS, readers of The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, and our friends on social media.  The ABCs “Vote Poll” reflects only opinions of ABC viewers, not Australians as a whole.

The unpalatable fact is that most Australians get their information from commercial TV and Murdoch media. Their realities are the struggle for jobs and just managing from day to day. They simply are not getting the facts.

The challenge for progressive campaigns is to get across the message that renewable energy supplies jobs, while coal is being increasingly automated, as well as other messages on the vital importance of managing water supplies, and of saving our one great river system.  Action on climate change is essential for quality of life in rural Australia –  but this is a message that has not come through to people there.

May 19, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, election 2019 | 2 Comments

What is needed is a war on climate change: why are people not voting Green?

Climate crisis demands war footing, but we won’t even vote for the Greens,  https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-election-2019/climate-crisis-demands-war-footing-but-we-won-t-even-vote-for-the-greens-20190516-p51o38.html, By Elizabeth Farrelly
May 18, 2019  The world’s children are demanding that we forget the past and look to the future. Hope? “I don’t want your hope,” says Greta Thunberg, the deadpan Swedish teen who inspired the climate strikes. “I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear.” We’re moved, watching this stuff, but are we listening? Will we act?

A recent poll puts climate change atop Australians’ list of perceived threats, with almost two-thirds of us believing it’s situation critical. This is scarcely a surprise, given the unignorable increase in intensity of heatwaves, cyclones, fire and drought, the unassailable axiom that all economies need ecology and the unwelcome news that atmospheric CO2 this week topped 415ppm for the first time in human history – not to mention the kids and their climate strikes. What is surprising is how few of us will vote accordingly.
The evidence is mounting – for climate change, but also for official acceptance of it by our hopelessly laggard institutions. In February, the NSW courts made history by rejecting the Rocky Hill coalmine (in part) for its climate impact. This is huge and will ripple far and wide through the system. Almost more astonishingly, even the NSW government – although still frantically building motorways and increasing coal exports – now thinks it might find room for a little climate change department  within its voluminous but dowdy skirts.
So climate-consciousness is now commonsense. Yet still the party most devoted to it – the Greens – is generally seen as radical and nonsensical. Even those who vote Green do it, one suspects, more as heartfelt protest than from a genuine desire to see the Greens take government.
This anomaly derives both from public misperception of the party and from the party’s refusal of anything resembling discipline in its public persona.
 Leaving parties aside, briefly, what if we did vote for climate? What if, today, a miracle occurred across Australia and we decided, en masse, neither to stuff our ballot-papers down the dunny of rusted-on tribal loyalties nor engage in our usual election scrabble for the goodies, but to vote instead for climate commonsense, for survival? How would that shape the policy agenda?

Chief Justice Brian Preston’s long and scholarly judgment on the Rocky Hill mine is instructive here, noting with refreshing candour that government is tasked to guard the public interest, that this is not served by climate destruction and that the precautionary principle is required by law to be applied to all State Significant Projects.

“The Rocky Hill Coal Project,” wrote Preston, “will yield public benefits, including economic benefits, but it will also have significant negative impacts, including visual, amenity, social and climate change impacts and impacts on the existing, approved and likely preferred uses of land in the vicinity … which are all costs of the project.”
This is important, setting as legal precedent the self-evident fact that climate destruction is a very real cost and yet another way in which the public is routinely required to foot the bill for private gain
Which is the only reason climate change has been allowed to rampage on. We talk much about costs of mitigation and – obvious riposte – the far greater cost of non-mitigation. But there’s a critical difference. Mitigation costs are payable immediately and by the rich, whereas the cost of failure is payable later, by the poor.

Or so the rich (people and countries) like to think. But unless they want, metaphorically speaking, to clean their own toilets they – and especially their kids and grandkids – are umbilically linked to the poor. On anything more than a five-minute time-frame it’s all interconnected. There is no Planet B.

So how would it look, this Green Centre policy platform?
Naturally there’d be a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, where our still-considerable smarts (despite what we’ve squandered during neoliberal decades) go to capture that vast natural resource, the sun. Every vehicle is electric, most freight is transported by solar train and every horizontal surface not devoted to growing food – be it desert, paddock, rooftop or road – is photovoltaic, generating energy for local use.
With mining thus reduced (and fracking banned), farmland is no longer under siege and the great river systems begin to recover. Petrochemical fertilisers and pesticides, being CO2-intensive, are also phasing out so industrial-scale farming – which kills more than it grows – is dwindling. Instead, regenerative agriculture reappears, building soil and re-planting trees in a way that both enhances water-retention and sequesters CO2.
Such agriculture, necessarily smaller in scale, requires more human input – in particular, intellectual. So country populations are again flourishing. To enhance walkability and urban vitality but also to reduce energy consumption, these towns, like the big cities, have set boundaries, further protecting precious foodlands from sprawl.
To achieve this, under scrutiny from a new federal Independent Commission Against Corruption, political donations have been banned and elections are publicly funded. This has lessened the skewing of politics towards large corporate interests  leaving governments genuinely interested in what people think.

In places where people rejected tower-living, the need for medium density, and for people to like it (since now the developers are not running the show), has placed extra emphasis on both design and consultation.

With the loosening of the developer stranglehold, self-help and co-operative housing has also flourished. The resulting communities, prioritising street life and walkability, render people more engaged and also fitter. Epidemic obesity and diabetes have reduced, paving the way for changes to the health system that shift the emphasis from gargantuan, energy -guzzling, waste-spewing mega-hospitals to smaller local hospitals where sunlight and fresh air reduce energy and enhance healing.

It’s not a pipe dream. It’s not even radical. It simply acknowledges that grabbiness and tribal loyalties are irrelevant. Thunberg told the UN, “we had everything we could wish for and yet now we may have nothing.” Justice Preston puts it more drily. The costs of mining will “exceed the benefits”.

This is war. We’ve a common enemy, measurable in °C, and a common goal – survival. To win we must act with the focus, haste and unity of a war effort.

May 18, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, election 2019 | Leave a comment

Why is UK govt covering up the records on nuclear bomb tests in Australia in the 1950s?

May 18, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, secrets and lies, wastes, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Mineral wealth, Clive Palmer, and the corruption of Australian politics 

May 17, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, election 2019 | Leave a comment

NSW State Labor parliamentarians Walt Secord and Janelle Saffin fight One Nation’s push for nuclear power

Secord and Saffin fight One Nation over nuclear power https://www.echo.net.au/2019/05/secord-saffin-fight-one-nation-nuclear-power/?fbclid=IwAR1kVyvdy4J_DhZi_kbM5DAQQ5OI8rujTpkNoHgutlrmwyFndVbiF1w1b9g–16 May 19, NSW State Labor parliamentarians Walt Secord and Janelle Saffin have vowed to work together to fight One Nation senator Mark Latham’s legislation to set up a nuclear power industry in NSW.

The Uranium Mining and Nuclear Facilities (Prohibitions) Repeal Bill 2019 was the first bill introduced by Mark Latham into the new State Parliament on May 7.

It reads: ‘a bill for an Act to repeal the Uranium Mining and Nuclear Facilities (Prohibitions) Act 1986 and make consequential amendments to other legislation’.

In 2012, the then-O’Farrell government (Liberal/National) passed the Mining Legislation Amendment (Uranium Exploration Bill) 2012 to allow exploration for uranium in NSW. At the time, the Liberal-Nationals claimed that it would only allow exploration and not the creation of an industry.

Secord and Saffin say that Mark Latham’s bill follows a push last year by Nationals leader and Deputy Premier John Barilaro, to establish a nuclear power industry in NSW.

They also say that Mr Barilaro also completed a taxpayer-funded visit to the United States where he was drumming up interest in US investors to build nuclear reactors in NSW. At the time, 18 sites were identified as possible sites for nuclear power plants in NSW– including a 250km stretch of coast from Port Macquarie to north of Grafton.

Fight against nuclear power

Mr Secord, who is Shadow Minister for the North Coast and Upper House deputy Opposition leader and Ms Saffin, who is the Country Labor MP for Lismore said they would fight the bill.

‘This is the next step in the development of a nuclear power industry in NSW,’ said Mr Secord said. ‘It is no coincidence that the first piece of legislation to come from the new parliamentarians was a bill to set up a nuclear power industry. 

‘The Berejiklian Government has always supported a nuclear power industry.’

Ms Saffin said that the North Coast community is clear and has spoken. ‘They do not want to see nuclear reactors in NSW. We fought them on CSG and unconventional gas and we will fight them on nuclear power.

‘North Coast primary producers pride themselves on the quality of their goods and their clean and green reputation,’ she said. ‘The National Party Leader’s obsession with building nuclear reactors would jeopardise this hard fought for advantage for local producers on the North Coast.’

Saffin says nuclear reactors would tarnish NSW’s clean and green image, and threaten the reputation and emerging markets of many north coast primary industries.

‘Nuclear power is a distraction from real long term energy solutions that provide the cheapest and most sustainable forms of electricity for the community and business – which is renewable energy,’ she said.

‘The NSW Coalition Government has always harboured dreams of nuclear power plants in NSW, having first proposed a site for Jervis Bay on the South Coast in the 1960s’.

May 16, 2019 Posted by | New South Wales, politics | Leave a comment

Resources Minister Matt Canavan has failed to comply with an order to process information about the nuclear waste dump plan

Susan Craig
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/

• Sally Whyte Federal Politics
Resources Minister Matt Canavan has failed to comply with an order to process a freedom of information request by the Information Commissioner, with concerns the chance for scrutiny will be lost after Saturday’s election.
Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick first requested access to parts of the minister’s diary at the end of 2017, seeking information about who the minister met with regarding the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility at Kimba and Hawker in South Australia.
Resources Minister Matt Canavan may avoid scrutiny if he loses his job on Saturday. The two towns are proposed locations for a nuclear waste storage site, and Senator Patrick said he wanted to know who was being consulted over the plans.
The request has been bogged down in bureaucracy for 18 months, culminating in an order on March 25 by Information Commissioner Angelene Falk to process the request within 30 days.
Senator Patrick has heard nothing from the minister’s office, despite repeated attempts by the Information Commission to contact the office. He is concerned the minister could dodge scrutiny if the Coalition loses the election and Senator Canavan is no longer minister.
Under a precedent set by the former information commissioner in 2013, if documents are requested from one minister, and then the minister changes, the documents are considered no longer subject to Freedom of Information laws because they are not held by a current minister.
“If Minister Canavan holds out until Saturday and the current polling correct, it is likely that he will have successfully avoided
disclosure, but in a manner contrary to law and in contravention of the Prime Minister’s Statement of Ministerial Standards,” Senator Patrick said.
Senator Patrick also believes the failure to obey the information commissioner’s order shows disregard for the law.
“The minister disobeying the lawful direction of the Information Commissioner shows a complete lack of respect for the Information Commissioner and my constituents,” Senator Patrick said.
“This sort of conduct shows the Coalition’s complete disregard for openness and transparency and to the FOI regime.”
A spokesman for the minister said Minister Canavan’s office received a large volume of requests under the FOI scheme.
“All applications are processed with adherence to the law, and
mindful of the other workload that must also be completed at the same time as processing FOI requests,” he said.
“This FOI request is being completed and all transparency
requirements will be met.”
Gaining access to ministerial diaries has been a fraught legal frontier for transparency advocates, with former attorney general George Brandis fighting a three-year legal battle to keep his diaries under wraps. The 34 pages of printouts from his Outlook calendar were released after he was threatened with contempt of court proceedings

May 16, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, Federal nuclear waste dump, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

News Corp – a propaganda machine for the mining industries

Veneer of ‘impartiality’ no longer needed

When it was founded in 1923, News Limited concealed its mining company connections at the same time it promised the public that its news would be “independent” and “impartial”.

Lip service or not, notions of balance and the public interest were important then. This was because News Limited’s founders knew that respect was an important precondition for influence, and that newspapers had to be responsive to the communities they served in order to attract a wide audience and prosper.

News Corp’s recent behaviour suggests it now sees such notions as quaint.  

The secret history of News Corp: a media empire built on spreading propaganda https://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20May%2016%202019%20-%201310512227&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20May%2016%202019%20-%201310512227+CID_373319b1d6127aa702c8cac26d83d7d2&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=The%20secret%20history%20of%20News%20Corp%20a%20media%20empire%20built%20on%20spreading%20propaganda Sally Young
Professor, University of Melbourne, May 16, 2019, News Corp must have been startled to find itself becoming one of the major issues in this election campaign. But this is just another sign that, in recent years, the company’s ability to read the public mood has gone wildly off-kilter.

From attacking the decision of the jury in the sexual assault trial of Cardinal George Pell to last week’s Daily Telegraph attack on Bill Shorten using his deceased mother as ammunition, there are mounting signs of panic and folly at one of Australia’s largest media companies.

With the media and political landscape shifting rapidly around the company, there is a feeling akin to the last days of the Roman Empire.
Rupert Murdoch is winding back after six decades building up an Australian, and then global, media empire. The Murdoch family has retreated from buying up assets and instead become a seller, offloading, for instance, 21st Century Fox to Disney last year.

If the next generation of Murdochs starts looking to sell unprofitable assets, the Australian newspapers have reason to be concerned. Because they are no longer financially valuable to the newly slimmed down company, the Australian papers seem to be trying to prove their worth by being politically useful while they still can.

Since 2013, the News Corp papers have become more politically aggressive, with some adopting the shrill, cartoonish and openly-partisan approach of British “red top” tabloids. During the 2019 election, News Corp journalists – past and present – have spoken out against the company’s determined barracking for the return of the Coalition government.
Academic Denis Muller recently called News Corp a “propaganda operation masquerading as a news service”. Remarkably, this statement neatly encapsulates how News Corp actually began.

Continue reading →

May 16, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media, reference | Leave a comment

The UK has a national climate change act – why don’t we?

May 16, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, election 2019 | Leave a comment

Distinguished Australians, and over 60 scientists press the government for immediate action on climate change.

 SBS 16 May 19 A group of more than 60 scientists and experts have penned an open letter to the next Australian government, calling for immediate action on climate change.

A group of more than 60 Australian scientists and experts are calling on the next government to prioritise action on climate change.

The 62 experts, including Nobel Prize winners and former Australians of the Year, have penned an open letter to politicians, which features a prominent graph showing Australia’s emissions have been rising since 2014.

“The consequences of climate change are already upon us – including harsher and more frequent extreme weather, destruction of natural ecosystems, severe property damage and a worldwide threat to human health,” they wrote.

“The solutions are all available to address climate change, all that is missing is the political will.”

The group includes former Australian of the Year and Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty, former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley and former premier of Western Australia Carmen Lawrence.

“Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising, moving the country further away from its Paris Agreement obligations,” the letter says.

“Whichever party wins government on Saturday, urgent action on climate change must be a top priority for the 46th parliament of Australia.”

Climate change has emerged as a top issue of the federal election ……https://www.sbs.com.au/news/pm-says-climate-goal-will-end-lib-conflict

May 16, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, election 2019 | Leave a comment

Australia’s opportunity to become a low carbon, renewable energy, superpower

May 16, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | Leave a comment

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