Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Plutonium blown up at Maralinga, in secret “Vixen B” tests

plutonium238_1Dig for secrets: the lesson of Maralinga’s Vixen B The Conversation,   Liz Tynan, 26 July 13 “……….The tests of far greater consequence were the 12 Vixen B tests, only held at Maralinga  These experiments used TNT to blow up simulated nuclear warheads containing a long-lasting form of plutonium.

Vixen B scattered 22.2kg of plutonium-239 around the Maralinga test site known as Taranaki. This form of plutonium has a half-life of over 24,000 years. The extreme persistence of radiation and the threat of cancer posed by inhaling small particles in dust at the site make it especially dangerous.

The Vixen B tests took place amid total secrecy in 1960, 1961 and 1963. Maralinga’s toxic legacy can be summed up in one word: plutonium. When the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee (MARTAC) reported in 2002 on efforts to remove contamination from the area it said “Plutonium … was almost entirely the contaminant that determined the scope of the [Maralinga rehabilitation] program.”

The British carried out some clean-up operations after Vixen B and provided a report (by British physicist Noah Pearce) in 1968 that made claims about the level of plutonium contamination at the site. The Pearce report provided the technical basis for the Australian Government to release the UK from any further liability for the Maralinga site.

The technical advisory committee later confirmed that the plutonium contamination at Taranaki was wrong by a factor of 10: “A comparison between the levels reported by the UK at the time (Pearce 1968) and the field results reported by the Australian Radiation Laboratory…(Lokan 1985) demonstrates an underestimate of the plutonium contamination by about an order of magnitude.”……..” http://theconversation.com/dig-for-secrets-the-lesson-of-maralingas-vixen-b-15456

July 26, 2013 Posted by | history, secrets and lies, South Australia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Paladin Energy – the Ugly Australian uranium mining company in Malawi

 the British silently stole our uranium and left when their projections did not add up to their whims, and now we have the Aussies who are refusing to deal fairly.

Honestly  I loved Crocodile Dundee the movie but this Aussie corporation turning Malawi land into some ‘plunder outback’ is making me sick 

Killing Malawians through the rotten extractives deals: The case of Paladin’s uranium mining Nyasa Times, by Patrica Masinga, 24 April 13,  Malawi has in the few weeks been engaged by a plethora of stakeholders discussing strategies to revive, or more on the ground, reclaim the benefits that Malawians are been milked of by the so-called extractive industry multi-national corporations.

They call themselves investors, and government believes that the Malawi Development Goals (MDGs – who cares if it’s the second phase) will be boosted, particularly that mining alone through Kayerekera of Paladin Energy Limited group of companies (trading as Paladin (Africa) Ltd in Malawi?) could provide a large economic base.

But that is all a fat lie. Paladin and many other foreign multinational mining countries are least interested to contributing to the Malawi economic growth. They are here to milk the country – exploiting all that it has rich in minerals and dump us when the time is right even poorer.

Imagine, to screw Malawians of their rightful economic gains, the company, incorporated in Australia first listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) on March 29, 1994 under code ‘PDN’, and quickly changed its name from Paladin Resources NL to Paladin Resources Ltd in 2000 and listed under the Toronto Stock Exchnage (TSX) in Canada April 29, 2005, and again changed its name to Paladin Energy Ltd in November 2007 and listed on the Namibian Stock Exchnage on February 2008.

diagram-Paladin-network

By such trends, one is compelled to question the motive, considering also that in Namibia itself the company owns the Langer Heinrich Uranium Mine where it started production in 2008 and has Kayerekera Uranium Mine as its second largest mining venture in this part of Africa acting also as a good supllment to the Langer Heinrich Uranium Mine. Continue reading

July 24, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, secrets and lies, uranium | Leave a comment

Christopher Boyce speaks out on USA interference in Australian politics.

secret-agent-AustFreedom, Flight and The Falcon WikiLeaks Party , 13 July 13 WikiLeaks Party member Gary Lord (@Jaraparilla) interviews Christopher Boyce, whose experiences as a US whistle-blower were documented in the 1985 Sean Penn movie “The Falcon and The Snowman.”…….In 1974, Boyce found himself working in the secretive “Black Vault” communications center of a US aerospace firm, where he had free access to allegedly “misrouted” Central Intelligence Agency cables. And like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden some 40 years later, he became increasingly angry at his government’s covert actions around the world.

What particularly incensed Boyce, however, were CIA discussions about removing Australia’s Prime Minister from power, along with CIA infiltration of Australian workers unions. At the time, Gough Whitlam was proposing the withdrawal of Australian troops from the Vietnam War and the closure of US military bases including Pine Gap. But Australia was nevertheless a loyal US ally, whom Boyce believed deserved to be treated with more respect. Continue reading

July 23, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Edward Snowden reveals Australia’s role in USA’s spying web

Snowden,-EdwardSnowden reveals Australia’s links to US spy web Hume Weekly, By Philip Dorling July 8, 2013, United States intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has provided his first disclosure of Australian involvement in US global surveillance, identifying four facilities in the country that contribute to a key American intelligence collection program.

Classified US National Security Agency maps leaked by Mr Snowden and published by US journalist Glenn Greenwald in the Brazilian O Globo newspaper reveal the locations of dozens of US and allied signals intelligence secret-agent-Austcollection sites that contribute to interception of telecommunications and internet traffic worldwide.

The US Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and three Australian Signals Directorate facilities: the Shoal Bay Receiving Station near Darwin, the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Facility at Geraldton and the naval communications station HMAS Harman outside Canberra are among contributors to the NSA’s collection program codenamed X-Keyscore.

The New Zealand Government Security Communications Bureau facility at Waihopai near Blenheim also contributes to the program.

X-Keyscore reportedly processes all signals before they are shunted off to various “production lines” that deal with specific issues and the exploitation of different data types for analysis – variously code-named Nucleon (voice), Pinwale (video), Mainway (call records) and Marina (internet records). US intelligence expert William Arkin describes X-Keyscore as a “national Intelligence collection mission system”. Continue reading

July 8, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Uranium miner Paladin among many suspected Australian tax cheats

Advocacy group ActionAid claims poor countries are losing more than $130 billion in tax revenues a year by giving generous tax breaks to big companies, including Australian miners. There are about 240 Australian mining companies with operations in Africa.

Perth-based uranium miner Paladin Energy, came under scrutiny for its tax arrangements in Malawi where it runs a mine in Karonga. A report by the group Norwegian Church Aid alleges there are discrepancies between Paladin’s reported tax and its tax paid. It also alleges other payments by Paladin in Malawi are lower than the company reports.

Paladin has subsidiaries registered in Mauritius and the British Virgin Islands, both tax havens. Last year’s annual report showed the company accumulated losses that mean it will need to make profits totalling $208 million in Australia before paying any tax.

Tax man takes scalpel to energy and resources firms http://www.theage.com.au/national/tax-man-takes-scalpel-to-energy-and-resources-firms-20130705-2phat.html  July 6, 2013 Georgia Wilkins The Tax Office will open 60 cases of suspected tax dodging by Australian and international companies amid global pressure to crack down on profit shifting.

The investigations will add to the 26 cases of offshore restructuring already under review by the government body.

Under scrutiny are companies that deliberately restructure their business to route profits through low-tax jurisdictions or tax havens to avoid paying higher taxes in Australia, often through the use of post box companies or marketing hubs that have little real substance. Continue reading

July 6, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies, uranium | Leave a comment

Hypocrisy ! Australian Pipeline Industry Association wants GAS to be treated as RENEWABLE ENERGY

exclamation-Gas sector wants access to renewable energy support Climate Spectator,  5 July 13 The Australian Pipeline Industry Association has called for gas suppliers to be able to access government support currently available to renewable energy.

In a policy document released today they suggest government establish a technology-neutral energy investment program, allowing renewables, clean coal, gas and any low-emission technologies to compete for investment funds……http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/7/5/renewable-energy/gas-sector-wants-access-renewable-energy-support

July 5, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Australia’s secret nuclear places

Off limits: 10 places you will never go in Australia, SMH, June 17, 2013 David Whitley

pinegap1 “…...Pine Gap While it’s hardly a top secret base, there’s a remarkable reticence to state exactly what goes on at the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility. Located 18km south-west of Alice Springs, it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to learn that this Australian-American military base is used as a satellite tracking station. The large antennas pointing at the heavens give that away. But information on any other intelligence activities conducted at Pine Gap is kept deliberately hidden.

Unless you work there, you’re not getting in. Road signs nearby are very clear about this. And don’t think about a scenic flight overhead either – there’s a no fly zone……..

Ranger-retention-damThe Ranger Retention Pond

An absolute shoo-in for the title of Australia’s least appealing swim, this large billabong on the cusp of Kakadu National Park is one you can’t dip a toe into anyway. That’s probably a good thing – even though the local wildlife seems to be treating it as an idyllic wetland refuge.

To protect from possible contamination, by law, all water that falls on the Ranger Uranium Mine site has to be kept there. And during the wet season, that’s a hell of a lot of water.

It’s not just potential radiation that’s the issue, however – traps by the side of the pond indicate that saltwater crocodiles have taken up residence in there. Prime snorkelling territory it is not……..

Map-Woomera-Prohibited-AreaThe Woomera Prohibited Area

Across the wilds of outback South Australia, an area the size of England is kept cordoned off from the public so that the Australian defence forces and various arms manufacturers can practice blowing things up.

The Woomera Prohibited Area is divided into zones. Some are only out of bounds for part of the year. But the red zone just to the north of the Stuart Highway between Woomera and Glendambo is a complete no-no, full of old bits of metal you really don’t want to pick up……http://www.smh.com.au/travel/off-limits-10-places-you-will-never-go-in-australia-20130617-2odqj.html#ixzz2WdHD8s4m

June 18, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

REneweconomy exposes the lies of the anti wind farm lobby

text-exposing-liesHow wrong can a press release for an anti-wind rally be? REeweconomy By    12 June 2013 It’s time for another installment of Count the Whoppers. You may remember that we started this occasional feature a year ago with Max Rheese of the mischievously-named Australian Environment Foundation and Australian Climate Science Coalition, funded by the IPA and Heartland Institute respectively, and his fourteen whoppers in less than 1,700 words. We continued it in November with Senator John Madigan’s party policy on wind energy (subsequently removed), where he managed only 10 whoppers, but did it in a quarter of the words, 364.

This time the target in our sights is the anonymously written blog stopthesethings.com (STT). wind-farm-evil-1This site is setting new lows in the anti-windpower astroturfing arena, featuring new posts daily attacking all aspects of wind energy and the people associated with it with imaginary data and unpleasant prose. The author has been anonymously vilifying members of the wind industry, researchers into wind energy and proponents of wind energy for nearly six months.

It’s become the go-to echo chamber for Australian anti-wind power activists, and attracts regular comments from the few but impressively vocal anti-wind activists in Canada, the USA and the UK. Unsurprisingly, the Internet quality rating service Web of Trust gives STT very poor marks indeed.

STT is trying to mobilise their small but angry readership to rally at Parliament House in Canberra on 18 June and has issued an anonymous media release to publicise it. They’ve lined up a remarkable number of current and retiring politicians who don’t seem to be fazed by the vitriol, lack of facts or the anonymity of the organisers. These include: Senator John Madigan, retiring MP Alby Schultz, retiring Senator Ron Boswell (all of whom are challenged by climate science) and, oddly, Senator Nick Xenophon who used to hold a rather more fact-based view of wind energy. They also have a handful of others, including a barrister and a fact-challenged radio ‘personality’ to round out the slate.

Unsurprisingly, given their website’s quick-and-dirty approach and the track record of anti-wind campaigners on this front, the presser is chock full of whoppers. For those interested in reading the full statement, please see the complete text at the end of this article.

Wind Reality 1: Wind energy is saving Australian consumers money….. Continue reading

June 13, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Paul Langley investigates Australian govt’s cover-up of Maralinga atomic radiation deaths.

highly-recommendedA Message to Australians from the British Government Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog 25 May 13 “The Royal Commission does not answer the questions that arise from the deaths and injuries resultant from the repeated nuclear bombing of Australia by Britain.”

Dr Cutter of the Aboriginal Health Service, Alice Springs, testified that mass deaths of Aboriginal people occurred at the time. There are reports of mass graves. Britain took 10 years to not answer the question of the location of the mass graves….” http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/a-message-to-australians-from-the-british-government/

Maralinga signChristina Macpherson 25 May 13,  I highly recommend this article, in which  Paul Langley reports on his own research into the effects of the Black Mist fallout cloud of 1953. One court case proved injury to a claimant, but the legal proceedings in this case have been suppressed from the record.

Langley has first-hand witnesses of the radiation injuries, to civilians and military, and of government suppression of information on this.

Yet by 2006 the higher rate of cancer among nuclear test veterans was confirmed by the government’s own survey.
Langley’s efforts to uncover the facts about Aboriginal victims’ health, following exposure, were met with blocking. Yet Langley knew that documents did exist, discussing this, in correspondence between Senator Chaney and the South Australian Health Commission.

He reports that all the medical records of the Maralinga radiation victims treated at Port Augusta hospital have mysteriously disappeared, as have also exposure dose records of all Australian Service Personnel. Langley assumes that these records do exist, but are now held in the UK, by the Ministry of Defence.

Langley’s conclusion – “the Australian government was a fifth column in this nation on behalf of the British government.”

May 25, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Australia’s pharmaceutical benefits, Internet rights, at risk in secretive TPP negotiations

highly-recommended Hear-This-wayAudio  The secret trade deal that could let multinationals sue states  ’ http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/trade-talks/4689004   RN Breakfast  Presented by Fran Kelly 14 May 2013  Cathy Van Extel The latest round of negotiations for the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership starts today in Lima, Peru. The TPP is a multinational trade deal involving 12 countries, including the US and Australia, and if finalised it will account for 40 per cent of the global economy. Cathy Van Extel reports that the logo-anti-TPPoutcome of the Australian federal election is likely to have a big impact on the terms of the deal. The latest round of negotiations for the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership is kicking off in the Peruvian capital of Lima today.

The TPP is a multinational trade deal involving 12 countries including the US and Australia. If finalised it’ll account for 40 per cent of the global economy.

The trade talks are heavily shrouded in secrecy—and critics are concerned the TPP will benefit multinational corporations at the expense of existing labour and social protections.

The US has been pushing for an agreement by October this year and the Australian federal election is likely to have a big impact on the terms of the major trade deal. The wide ranging trade deal has been under negotiation since 2010 behind closed doors, and that’s a worry for critics like Jane Kelsey, professor of law from the University of Auckland and an activist academic.

She says it’s being rushed through with no public scrutiny.There’s going to be a huge amount of political pressure brought to bear on the negotiators in this round because they have set an informal deadline for signing a deal, or at least something, at the APEC leaders’ meeting in Bali in October,’ Professor Kelsey says. ‘However, the negotiations are still stuck on a number of key points and so there will be quite a bit of public posturing and quite a lot of pressure behind the scenes.’ Continue reading

May 16, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Busting the anecdotal “evidence” of the Waubra anti wind energy campaign

Anti-wind groups and others hostile to renewable technology wish to deem anecdotal evidence inscrutable – consequently, they must accept all claims of health effects, no matter how improbable. If those professing this fallacy were bound by a scientific framework, this attitude would be indefensible.

Wind farm sickness: anecdotes versus evidence KETAN JOSHI ABC  7 MAY 2013 Anedotes are concerning, but should not be immune to scrutiny. A family’s experience of illness they attribute to a local wind farm is concerning, but is no substitute for medical research and hard evidence. “……

“I know this lady and her husband, as I’ve said, I’ve known them the majority of my life, and, this woman looks twenty years older than her husband now……This woman is absolutely tormented by the things, and she’s got two of them, near her. There’s only two turbines.”

YouTube– Australia DLP Senator John Madigan, Booroowa District Landscape Guardians Meeting, May 2012

Fear spreads better with a dash of human tears. As you visualise a weeping mother, her voice wavering as she speaks, the impact is instantaneous and potent. Millions of years of natural selection breathe life into the visceral salience of human suffering. Our ancestors, dwelling on the savannah, knew that the cost of ignoring a potential threat could be very, very high………..

astroturf-wind Anti-wind lobby groups (such as the Waubra Foundation, headed by ex-GP Sarah Laurie) travel to communities facing wind farm developments, and present direct testimony from individuals attributing a range of symptoms to the presence of wind turbines. Anecdotal evidence is their key instrument in spreading fear of wind energy.

This is stated explicitly by Peter Quinn, a South Australian barrister who regularly represents anti-wind lobby groups:

“That experience is in itself, evidence. If you dragged in thirty people from Waubra, twenty from Waterloo and put them in a court room, to talk about the loss and the suffering, it will support a claim to obtain an injunction against any wind farm being proposed”

The implication is quite clear – anecdotal reports and emotional recitations are powerful tools in the fight against wind farm developments. Consequently, a large number of claimed health impacts, attributed to wind turbines, exist in the public domain.

Chapman began compiling these symptoms in early 2012. His list grew rapidly – it currently numbers 216, and features a bewildering array of symptoms, involving adults, children, cattle, sheep, chicken, dogs, peacocks, cats, pigs, earthworms, crabs, goats, crickets and horses (pdf).

These symptoms are collectively referred to as “Wind Turbine Syndrome” (WTS), originally coined by Nina Pierpont (a paediatrician married to an anti-wind activist). It has become the fundamental claim of groups working to stifle the development of renewables in Australia.

The ‘disease’ is not recognised by any medical authority in the world. It is purportedly caused by infrasonic (less than 20 Hz) noise from wind turbines. The South Australian Environmental Protection Agency recently measured levels of infrasound near wind farms(pdf), and compared them to rural and urban environments. Wind farms had some of the lowest recorded levels in their study. Some of the highest levels of infrasound were recorded inside the EPA’s office in Adelaide.

Importantly, research conducted by Professor Simon Chapman of Sydney University seems to show that complaints of ill-health seem to cluster around wind farms that have been subject to the presence of anti-wind lobbyists. Continue reading

May 8, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies, Victoria, wind | Leave a comment

Is John Howard lying about the reasons for going to war in Iraq?

Howard-coffinHoward ignored official advice on Iraq’s weapons and chose war SMH, April 12, 2013 Margaret Swieringa  Former prime minister John Howard’s justification this week on why we went to war against Iraq in 2003 obfuscates some issues.

I was the secretary to the federal parliamentary intelligence committee from 2002 until 2007. It was then called the ASIO, ASIS and Defence Signals Directorate committee – which drafted the report Intelligence on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Howard refers to this committee in his speech justifying our involvement in the war.

The reason there was so much argument about the existence of such weapons before the war in Iraq 10 years ago was that to go to war on any other pretext would have been a breach of international law. As Howard said at the time: ”I couldn’t justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime. I’ve never advocated that. Central to the threat is Iraq’s possession of chemical and biological weapons and its pursuit of nuclear capability.”

So the question is what the government knew or was told about that capability and whether the government ”lied” about the danger that Iraq posed. At the time, Howard and his ministers asserted that the threat to the world from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was both great and immediate. On February 4, 2003, he said Saddam Hussein had an ”arsenal” and a ”stockpile” and the ”illegal importation of proscribed goods ha[s] increased dramatically in the past few years”. ”Iraq had a massive program for developing offensive biological weapons – one of the largest and most advanced in the world.”……

None of the government’s arguments were supported by the intelligence presented to it by its own agencies. None of these arguments were true.

Howard this week quoted the findings of the parliamentary inquiry, but his quotation is selective to the point of being misleading.

What was the nature of the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction provided to the government? The parliamentary inquiry reported on the intelligence in detail. It gathered information from the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Assessment. It said:

1. The scale of threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was less than it had been a decade earlier.

2. Under sanctions that prevailed at the time, Iraq’s military capability remained limited and the country’s infrastructure was still in decline.

3. The nuclear program was unlikely to be far advanced. Iraq was unlikely to have obtained fissile material.

4. Iraq had no ballistic missiles that could reach the US. Most if not all of the few SCUDS that were hidden away were likely to be in poor condition……

The committee concluded the ”case made by the government was that Iraq possessed WMD in large quantities and posed a grave and unacceptable threat to the region and the world, particularly as there was a danger that Iraq’s WMD might be passed to terrorist organisations.

”This is not the picture that emerges from an examination of all the assessments provided to the committee by Australia’s two analytical agencies.”

Howard would claim, no doubt, that he took his views from overseas dossiers. But all that intelligence was considered by Australian agencies when forming their views….. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/howard-ignored-official-advice-on-iraqs-weapons-and-chose-war-20130411-2hogn.html#ixzz2QIaBzFWL

 

 

April 12, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Australia’s uranium industry seeks to weaken safeguards about radioactivity

exclamation-The group wants the commission to explicitly recommend the EPBC Act be amended to remove uranium mining and milling from the Radiation-Warning1definition of “nuclear actions”……

 uranium prices have fallen since Japan’s Fukushima disaster led many nations to rethink nuclear power programs.

Miners seek radioactive rethink, BY:ANNABEL HEPWORTH  The Australian , April 08, 2013 URANIUM miners have demanded changes to laws so that the “mild” radioactivity that is unique to the sector is no longer a trigger for federal environmental assessments.

The Australian Uranium Association — whose members include BHP Billiton and the operator of the Ranger mine at Jabiluka in the Northern Territory, ERA — says that uranium mining and the milling that makes yellowcake should no longer be defined as a “nuclear action” under the federal law known as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Continue reading

April 8, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies, uranium | Leave a comment

Larissa Waters busts the deceptions in the coal seam gas advertising

Waters,-Larissa-Senator-1

The old parties at both levels of government are so wedded to the mining industry that they are approving coal seam gas projects as quickly as possible with gaping holes of data left missing.

No state or federal government has ever knocked back a coal seam gas project.

What we need is a moratorium on coal seam gas mining until we fully understand its impacts on groundwater, the climate and food production. All indications are that those impacts will be unmanageable, and when we have clean energy alternatives that don’t threaten food production, it’s a no brainer.

Buying time, but not buying hearts http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/04/05/3729905.htm LARISSA WATERS ABC  t5 APR 2013 The risk to Australian farmland from CSG is not worth taking, says Larissa Waters.

Full-page advertisements by mining companies do nothing to persuade ordinary Australians that drilling for coal seam gas is completely safe. HAVE YOU COME ACROSS the full-page newspaper ads that Santos has taken out this week? They’re in response to the Four Corners expose of the dangers of the coal seam gas industry – that same program which Santos refused to speak to.

The advertising spree by the coal seam gas company is a desperate and obvious attempt to try and buy a social licence, which the community has so far refused because of the risks this industry poses to our water, farmland and climate.

But even with its massive advertising budget, Santos can’t get past the weight of serious public and scientific concern about this high-risk industry.

Three quarters of New South Wales voters oppose CSG exploration on agricultural land, as shown in a Fairfax surveythis week. As a Queensland senator and the Greens coal seam gas spokesperson, I constantly hear that same opposition loud and clear in my home state. And I hear it from our expert scientific bodies, who say we don’t understand the long term impacts of coal seam gas on our water resources, and could be doing damage to the water table which will take hundreds of years to fix, if it’s fixable at all.

Australians aren’t buying the big-mining spin because the facts are simply not on the industry’s side. Here are a few facts that were conveniently left out of Santos’ ad. Continue reading

April 6, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Fossil fuel lobby- Liberal Party- Institute of Public Affairs’ plan to stop action on climate change

logo-IPA-wolf

Moran’s document should be seen as a “chilling preview” of what was to come under a future Liberal government

The IPA’s plans to abolish climate change action in Australia Independent Australia 26 March 13 A LEADING Australian free-market think tank with close ties to the country’s conservative Liberal Party has revealed its plan for climate change – abolish it.

Aside from the current Labor-led government’s mud-wrestling over its leadership, all opinion polls point to a landslide victory for the Tony Abbott-led Liberal Party at the next election, which has been set for September.

The Institute of Public Affairs, a leading promoter of climate science denial and misrepresentation, has revealed its recommendations for the next government in a document outlining budget cuts. The plan was written by Alan Moran, director of the think tank’s deregulation unit.

IPA-Advert

The document made the pages of The Australian newspaper but the report did not mention the document’s detailed plans to obliterate all climate change functions in the country’s public sector. In one section the document outlines the think tank’s recommendations for public sector departments. In delaing with the future of the “Climate Change and Energy Efficiency” department, Moran writes simply: “Abolish”.

Pretty much every other federal government function to administer climate change policy, research global warming, ensure sustainable development or support renewable energy gets chopped under Moran’s plan. Many publicly-funded research programs and agencies are either chopped entirely or cut to the bone.

As well as abolishing the country’s climate change department, the IPA plan would also scrap the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and cut research into sustainable development and climate change carried out in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (the IPA plan also suggested a departmental branch responsible for plain packaging legislation should also be abolished, not surprising given that British American Tobacco has been a recent funder of the IPA). Continue reading

April 3, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies | Leave a comment