Pro nuclear stooge Minister Matt Canavan faces conflict-of-interest inquiry
 Matt Canavan faces conflict-of-interest inquiry over $20m club loan, SMH By David Crowe, February 3, 2020 The Morrison government is caught up in another inquiry into one of its own senior figures after Resources Minister Matt Canavan revealed a potential conflict of interest over a $20 million loan.Senator Canavan announced on Monday night he had not declared his link to the North Queensland Cowboys football club at the time it gained the loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility……..
Senator Canavan disclosed the inquiry at the same time he announced he had offered his resignation from the ministry because he would back former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce in a challenge against party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack. The Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, or NAIF, is a key agency within Senator Canavan’s portfolio and was used last year to fund a multi-use training centre at the club……. The inquiry into the loan raises the prospect that Senator Canavan may remain outside the ministry whatever the outcome of the Nationals leadership ballot. The potential conflict has similarities with the resignation of former Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie, who stood down because she had not disclosed her membership of a gun club when the club received money from the sports funding program she oversaw as minister……… https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/matt-canavan-faces-conflict-of-interest-inquiry-over-20m-club-loan-20200203-p53xez.html?fbclid=IwAR2SINUWJoXs791GHHySuwgvYFHG9YJRtCT-qtRYJGdmcVvUeXIBb2_P0yQ |
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Scott Morrison, in the grip of fossil fuel lobby, is wrong about more gas for Australia
So, Scott Morrison, let’s come clean and let the public know that there’s no domestic case for increasing gas extraction. Given that gas extraction threatens landscapes and has a major problem with emissions, it’s better we leave it in the ground
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, surrounded by advisers out of the fossil fuel industry, is stuck in a time warp.
His claim that “there is no credible energy transition plan, for an economy like Australia in particular, that does not involve the greater use of gas as an important transition fuel” is demonstrably wrong. There are many. Continue reading
#ScottyFromMarketing is dodging the need for real action on climate change
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Climate change calls for action, not adaptation, SMH January 31, 2020 Judy Dillon, Garran ACT In the midst of our horrific summer, polls show the majority of people want to see urgent action on climate change, (”PM’s bushfire response must include climate change: experts”, January 30). We don’t want a focus on ”resilience and adaptation” or ”meeting and beating” pathetically low targets with the use of accounting tricks. Emissions are continuing to rise while the Morrison government uses weasel words to pretend they are doing something effective, all while handing billions to the fossil fuel industry.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to sit for a total of 72 days in 2020, so politicians have no time to lose. If they are not prepared to get on with the mammoth task of taking real and significant climate action in the interests of all Australians, and indeed the whole world, then they should get out of the way now so politicians who are so motivated can take their place. Quiet Australians have had enough – we will not be silent. –
– Peter Spencer, Castle Hill The PM is setting up an inquiry that avoids the real cause of of this and future bushfires – climate change. Once again, he gives the impression he is doing something when he is avoiding the real issue. Another opportunity wasted.
Adrian Owen, Killawarra , The PM now reluctantly concedes our continent is warming and drying. By saying the effects of the emissions already in the atmosphere will be felt for decades regardless of any action, he seeks to portray emissions mitigation as a lost cause. He must imagine the public will willingly surrender to warming beyond two degrees. His new focus on resilience and adaptation will lead to the absurd situation in which the coal industry will continue apace while federal government will spend money elsewhere to try to protect the rest of us from the ravages of a warming climate. –
– Mike Reddy, Vincentia After listening to Morrison talk about climate change action, I think his government is focused on hope. Hope that individuals keep putting solar panels up. Hope that the states keep pulling their weight. Hope that the rest of the world reduces its emissions. Hope that no one notices he is doing nothing. Hope that rising sea levels don’t swamp Waikiki.
Graham Lum, North Rocks Barilaro claims that Matt Kean’s comments on climate change are unhelpful and do not represent the whole of government. That may be so, but I suggest they do represent the views of the majority of Australians. -… https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/climate-change-calls-for-action-not-adaptation-20200129-p53vwp.html
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Climate and the Coalition’s new denialism
Nick Feik, In recent months the federal government’s position on climate change has shifted. Not in policy terms: the change has been restricted to its rhetoric. It has a new strategy to avoid responsibility. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has become adept at evading questions on climate change and its links to bushfires and judging by his satisfied expression as he fronted up for ABC’s 7.30 recently, he remains confident he has a form of words that, like armour, journalists will be unable to penetrate…. (subscribers only – or buy the print version) https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2020/01/25/climate-and-the-coalitions-new-denialism/15798708009296
SA Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young slams investment in South Australian uranium mine
Honeymoon isn’t over: SA uranium mine to reopen, The Advertiser, 22 January 2020 A closed uranium mine near Broken Hill will be reopened to seize on a renewed demand, its owner says.
The Honeymoon uranium mine in the state’s east “will be Australia’s next uranium producer” following a $93 million restart, its owner Boss Resources says.
The ASX-listed company says the mine “can be fast-tracked to re-start production in 12 months with low capital intensity to seize an anticipated rally in the uranium market’’…..
The Honeymoon project uses “in-situ recovery”, which involves injecting solvent into wells drilled into the deposit, dissolving the uranium, then recovering it at the surface. …..
SA Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the focus should be on renewables, not nuclear energy.
“South Australia doesn’t need to tether itself anymore to the toxic and dangerous cycle of the nuclear industry,’’ Ms Hanson-Young said
“SA is better than this and we are best placed in the world to reap the renewables and green industry revolution.
“Rather than a big new uranium mine, SA needs investment in our clean green energy industry. We should be working towards SA being a net exporter of renewable energy and technologies. ‘Green’ mining and industries like lithium for batteries, green hydrogen and renewable powered manufacturing will create jobs fit for the climate crisis Australia is in.”
Wilderness Society SA director Peter Owen said they would prefer to see investment in the state’s vast renewable resources such as wind and solar.
Former Prime Minister Turnbull scathing about #MorrisonFromMarketing, on the climate issue
Last year, The New Daily revealed the Prime Minister had embarked on a secret trip to Hawaii while fires were devastating Australian communities.
The former prime minister, who has a new book out this year, also slammed the US President Donald Trump for playing a “very destructive” role in the climate debate.
“Trump makes no bones about it. He says global warming is rubbish,” Mr Turnbull said.
“Trump is trying to put a brake on global action to reduce emissions. The lack of American leadership is extremely damaging.
Mr Turnbull also accused his own predecessor, Tony Abbott, of being the nation’s most prominent climate denier in Australian politics, who was joined by others in a shameful “war against science”.
“It is an extraordinarily irrational and self-destructive approach,” Mr Turnbull said.
“The right [wing] in the Liberal Party essentially operate like terrorists,” he said.
“Now I’m not suggesting that they use guns and bombs or anything like that, but their approach is one of intimidation.
“And they basically say to the rest of the party… if you don’t do what we want, we will blow the show up. Famously one of the coup leaders said to me, ‘you have to give in to the terrorists’.” https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/01/23/malcolm-turnbull-scott-morrison-climate-denial/
Australia’s Finance Minister Mathias Cormann spruiks for coal and for Trump at Davos summit
Davos 2020: Climate critics are wrong, says Matthias Cormann THE AUSTRALIAN, 22 Jan 2020
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has declared global perceptions of Australia’s climate action are “false” as he defended both the coal industry and US President Donald Trump in front of world leaders at the Davos summit…. (subscribers only)
Bob Katter hails remote spots as safe for nuclear reactors
KATTER HAILS REMOTE SPOTS AS SAFE FOR NUCLEAR REACTORS
A nuclear reactor could be built in north west Queensland because the uranium deposits are there, the terrorists have multiple different ways to carry out mass killings, and barely anyone lives out there, maverick Federal MP Bob Katter has said…. (subscribers only) Townsville Bulletin, 20 Jan 2020
Bangladesh and Australia- both vulnerable to climate change – but will that stop the coal lobby?
 Despite climate impact, Bangladesh wants Australian coal to fire 29 new power stations, https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/rba-told-to-mobilise-all-forces-to-save-the-economy-from-climate-change-20200120-p53szi.html Bangladesh has been criticised for its ambitious plans to build 29 new coal-fired power stations, but its high commissioner to Australia believes the new projects could be an opportunity for greater trade between the two nations. 20 Jan 2020 , BY BRETT MASON SBS chief political correspondent Brett Mason reports from Dhaka, Bangladesh
Bangladesh’s high commissioner to Australia has urged the Australian government to consider new trade opportunities with the country, including the potential to supply it with 80 million tonnes of coal over the next five years. SBS News is currently in Bangladesh as part of a parliamentary learning tour organised by Save the Children. Speaking to SBS News ahead of the trip, Mohammad Sufiur Rahman said Bangladesh’s controversial plans to construct 29 new power stations over the next two decades would require a “huge quantum” of coal to power them. “We’ll have to source it from places, either Indonesia, or Australia, or maybe South Africa,” he said. Mr Rahman began spruiking the “enormous” export opportunity to the Australian media last year and doubled down on it in his interview with SBS News. “The quality and calorific value of Australian coal is much better in comparison to other sources,” he said. Climate impactBangladesh has the sixth-highest number of current and proposed coal-powered projects compared to the rest of the world, according to environmental advocacy group Market Forces. But the nation is also particularly vulnerable to climate change, with fears a projected half a metre sea-level rise by 2050 could leave 11 per cent of the country’s landmass underwater and 15 million people displaced. Continue reading |
Morrison says NSW minister “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Does Morrison? — RenewEconomy
Morrison misrepresents federal emissions targets and renewables investment while trying to chastise NSW energy minister Matt Kean over climate. The post Morrison says NSW minister “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Does Morrison? appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Morrison says NSW minister “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Does Morrison? — RenewEconomy
Fire fighter’s anger at Scott Morrison, over climate change
cartoon – Reproduced with permission from Mark David and Independent Australia.
The Firefighter Whose Denunciation of Australia’s Prime Minister Made Him a Folk Hero New Yorker, By Amanda Schaffer, January 18, 2020
Since September, millions of acres of land have burned, thousands of people have lost their homes and businesses, and at least twenty-eight have perished.
Morrison’s history of skepticism toward climate change and the government’s record of inaction have infuriated Australians who understand that record-breaking heat and dryness, symptomatic of a warming planet, are fuelling the crisis. On Sunday, Morrison announced an inquiry into the country’s fire response, nodding to the role of climate change but failing to support policies to decrease fossil-fuel use or promote renewable energy……
“Then the wind changed, so the flames were fully involved across the road, and we had to drive the truck through the fire front to get ourselves out. We were driving to stop the fire from going into the village, and we saw a TV-news team down on one of the access roads. It just was a boiling point for me. I said, ‘Are you from the media? Tell the Prime Minister to go and get fucked, from Nelligen. . . . We really enjoy doing this shit.’
“A couple of weeks earlier, the Prime Minister commented that Rural Fire Service members enjoy going out and fighting fires. He’s just got no understanding of what it’s all about. We don’t enjoy fighting bushfires and saving people’s homes. We do it because we have to. He’s got no understanding of what real people in Australia go through. And he doesn’t care anyway. Any real man would never have left the country while his country was in turmoil…….
“Climate change is also a real thing. It’s not something that can be fixed overnight, and the government’s got to make a stand at some stage. Scott Morrison doesn’t even believe in climate change. I don’t think he even considers that we are going through climate change……. https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/the-firefighter-whose-denunciation-of-australias-prime-minister-made-him-a-folk-hero
Liberal Party misinformation on climate change
Notorious climate denier Craig Kelly at it again, Independent Australia, By Steve Bishop | 19 January 2020, Official figures reveal the Liberals’ foremost climate change denying MP, Craig Kelly, resorted to lies and misinformation to dispute factual evidence in his presentation to a Sky News program.Kelly and other MPs such as George Christensen, have helped sabotage the Federal Government’s climate change policy to a point where it is viewed as the worst in the world.
Just examine the absurd whoppers Kelly told in claiming most of the U.S.’s hottest years on record had occurred in the 1930s.
He used these lies to justify an even bigger lie: Here’s a transcript of Kelly’s snake-oil claims:
……… The United States’ climate records are kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
I have searched the records, which go back to 1895, and can find no statistics to support Kelly’s claims.
The only set of figures which bear any resemblance to Kelly’s fake news are for one-off freak temperature extremes in each state……….
All Australians should be concerned by Kelly’s lies because he has the personal backing of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who intervened before the last election to ensure the climate change denier was selected as the candidate for Hughes.
This gives Kelly credibility with the ridiculous right of the party when coal-loving Morrison, as PM, has to appeal to a broad church….. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/notorious-climate-denier-craig-kelly-at-it-again,13501
Australia led the world in climate action, in 2012 with the Gillard Labor government
Who to Blame for Australia’s Bullshit Approach to Climate Change https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/dygvjy/who-to-blame-for-australia-coal-mining-lobbyists-fires-bushfires-bullshit-approach-to-climate-change
Look these coal lobbyists in the eye. Remember their names. By Royce Kurmelovs, 16 January 2020,
Now people are asking: “why?”
The answer, for many, is that we’ve begun a long and unnerving slide into a world of supercharged weather. The CO2 humanity had been pumping into the atmosphere for decades is now affecting our seasons in precisely all the ways we were warned. For Australia, that means hotter summers with less rainfall, which is exactly what 2019 delivered.
Australia just sweltered through its hottest year on record with temperatures averaging 1.52C above the 1961—1990 average, according to data from the Bureau of Meteorology. This came after an unprecedented period of drought across much of the country’s east, which unsurprisingly led to widespread fires.
But even if the science is clear, the reality seems lost on those who hold the country’s highest political offices. When confronted with the suggestion his government was not acting in a meaningful way on climate change, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has simply said he “did not accept that” and insisted, like his Minister for Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor, that Australia has been “doing its part”.
he truth is that Australia is the fourth largest coal producer in the world, and has relied on tricky accounting practices to book progress toward reducing its carbon emissions while actually doing the bare minimum.
Because of this, Australia was recently rated 57th on a list of countries for its handling of climate change—placing it just slightly above Iran with its oil-dependent national economy.
And yet just eight years ago, Australia was leading the world on climate change action. In 2012 we’d achieved what many pundits believed was a political impossibility. Australia had levied a tax on carbon that forced an almost immediate drop in the country’s CO2 emissions. That was until a new conservative government took power and repealed the carbon tax a short two years later.
PM under pressure as Coalition changes tune on climate change
PM under pressure as Coalition changes tune on climate change , Daily Telegraph , 19 Jan 2020
Prime Minister Scott Morrison could be facing a cabinet revolt on climate change with the horror bushfire season sparking new calls for action from his own top-ranking MPs…. (subscribers only)
Scott Morrison probably intransigent on climate policy
If the bushfires won’t force climate policy change, we need to circumvent Scott Morrison. Guardian, Lenore Taylor The cabal of Coalition denialists calling the shots are still impervious to facts. But it’s not yet time to despair @lenoretaylor, Fri 17 Jan 2020 It’s time to face a dreadful truth. If this bushfire crisis, this nation-wide trauma, can’t loosen the denialists’ grip on Coalition climate policy, then maybe nothing will.
That would mean everyone sifting through Scott Morrison’s verbiage for signs that he might really be intending to change direction is searching in vain, because he’s just trying to talk himself out of political trouble.
It would mean everyone patiently pointing out that the prime minister could quite easily “evolve” his current policies into something that actually reduced Australia’s greenhouse emissions could save their breath, because that isn’t the kind of evolution he is considering.
And it would mean there’s no point reprising the facts, that Australia’s emissions are flatlining, not falling, that we could seize an economic advantage in a low-carbon world and at the same time help the globe avoid the all too obvious costs of inaction. The Coalition cabal who apparently still call the shots thinks climate science is “voodoo”. They’re impervious to facts. They are already threatening, via anonymous quotes to the Australian, to “blow the place up”. Again. Just like they’ve been blowing up national climate action for more than a decade.
And as this week’s Guardian Essential poll showed, despite the widespread sense that the fires are a tipping point, despite global outrage at the self-defeating stupidity of our policies, despite the world’s largest fund manager ditching thermal coal, despite the wave of grief and anger from around the world – even from James Murdoch – it’s still not clear that Australian public opinion will force this government to change.
Sure, Morrison’s mishandling of this crisis has cost him. His overall approval ratings have dived but his numbers have held fairly steady in his base. The strategists – who always pay more heed to those numbers than to other benchmarks, like, say, a country in ashes – no doubt believe that, with enough confusing obfuscation about “meeting and beating” targets, enough revising of the figures, enough serious practical efforts to help burnt-out communities, and just enough rhetoric conceding the reality of global heating, all will be well in time, without promising to do anything about it. All will be well for the poll numbers that is. Not for the nation.
This is not, repeat not, an argument for abandoning the arguments in favour of climate action. It is not a counsel to cop out in despair. …………
Maybe, under the current political pressure, something will give. But we’ve been fooled before and there’s no time to be fooled again. So that means it’s time to think of ways around the federal Coalition’s intransigence, because those deniers will never be swayed, and we can’t allow them to dictate our future. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/17/if-the-bushfires-wont-force-climate-policy-change-we-need-to-circumvent-scott-morrison
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 