Conflict of interest as mining industry advises Australian Government on coal-seam gas
Coal-seam gas advisers’ links to mining industry exposed BY: NATASHA BITA The Australian May 14, 2012 MOST of the scientists advising the federal government on coal-seam gas pollution have financial links with the mining industry.
Four of the six members of the interim independent expert scientific committee on coal-seam gas and coalmining have a financial connection with mining companies, the Environment Department has revealed…… (subscribes only)
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/coal-seam-gas-advisers-links-to-mining-industry-exposed/story-fn59niix-1226354312451
Who is lying about uranium ? New South Wales Resources Minister, or Queensland Premier
Who is telling the truth? New South Wales Minister for Resources, Mr Hartcher? or the Queensland government?
In fact, both States prohibit uranium mining. New South Wales has recently allowed uranium exploration only.
THE HINDU 4 May 2012, reports that New South Wales Minister for Resources and Energy and Central Coast Christopher Peter Hartcher announced on Friday that both New South Wales and Queensland State governments in Australia had changed their laws which prohibited mining and sale of uranium.
Also Mr Hartcher is quoted “We also respect India’s decision on not signing the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT)” http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3384772.ece
See this article – No plans for uranium mining ban rethink http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-02/no-plans-for-uranium-mining-ban-rethink/3984350?section=business By Stephen Smiley ABC News May 02, 2012 “The State Government says it has no plans to revisit Queensland’s ban on uranium mining.”
Queensland Premier Newman has recently reiterated the position that uranium mining is banned in Queensland.
And as for Mr Hartcher “respecting” India’s decision on the NPT, he is in the minority. Most Australians are appalled at the idea of selling uranium to a country that won’t sign the NPT.
Australia’s Energy Minister pushes for government spying on behalf of energy companies
Protests against coalmining so far have been peaceful. Resources and Energy Department briefings show that only four protests have interfered briefly with electricity generation.
ASIO eyes green groups, The Age, Philip Dorling, April 12, 2012 AUSTRALIA’S leading counter-terrorism agency has been providing intelligence to the federal government on environmental groups that campaign against coalmining.
Greens leader Bob Brown said yesterday it was ”intolerable that the Labor government was spying on conservation groups” and condemned the ”deployment of ASIO as a political weapon” against peaceful protests……
ASIO is exempt from freedom of information laws and is described on
its website as ”the only agency in the Australian intelligence community authorised in the normal course of its duties to undertake investigations into the activities of Australian persons”. Other FOI documents confirm that Mr Ferguson pressed then attorney-general Robert McClelland in September 2009 to see whether ”the
intelligence-gathering services of the Australian Federal Police” could be used to help energy companies handle increasing activity by coalmining protesters….. Continue reading
Contradictory statements on the return of Lynas radioactive wastes to Australia
Lynas had denied reports that the Western Australian government had refused to accept the radioactive waste from the miner’s RM2.5 billion rare earth plant in Malaysia.
“If the (Australian) government accepts waste, why not they (Lynas) stay in own country?” Himpunan Hijau chairman Wong Tack asked. Wong said Lynas Corp was “clearly taking advantage” of Malaysia’s
“loose environmental laws” and “non-functioning administration”.
Australia: No request from Lynas to accept waste http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/australia-no-request-from-lynas-to-accept-waste By Lisa J. Ariffin March KUALA LUMPUR, March 21 — Canberra
has yet to receive any request from Lynas Corp to accept radioactive waste from the Australian miner’s controversial rare earth plant in Gebeng, Kuantan that will be ready this June.
“Australia has not received any request to import residues from the plant,” an Australian High Commission spokesman told The Malaysian Insider when contacted today. Continue reading
Intimidation tactics against climate scientists
“I have been subject to all sorts of personal attacks, threats to my safety, my life, threats to my family, and it’s not just me, it’s
dozens of climate scientists in the US, in Australia and many other regions of the world where our findings are finding that climate change is real and potentially poses a threat to civilisation if we don’t confront that challenge. That represents a threat to certain vested interests and they’ve tried hard to discredit the science, often by discrediting and intimidating the scientists. “
VIDEO http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3454652.htm Climatologist slams intimidation of scientists Australian Broadcasting Corporation Broadcast: 15/03/2012
Reporter: Emma Alberici Climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Centre in Pennsylvania State University Michael Mann joins Lateline.
Transcript Continue reading
Australia’s ex-ambassador reveals fears of “complete chaos” in Japan in March 2011
Mr McLean revealed that Australia and other nations began compiling elaborate evacuation plans amid growing concern and uncertainly as the Fukushima plant began to explode.
The former ambassador confirmed Australia had evacuation plans in place but voiced the uncomfortable truth that, in reality, greater Tokyo (population 35 million) would have been almost impossible to evacuate.
Ex-ambassador frustrated by post-tsunami silence BY: RICK WALLACE, TOKYO CORRESPONDENT The Australian March 10, 2012 AUSTRALIA’S former ambassador to Japan has told of his frustrations with the Japanese government for keeping its close partners in the dark about the extent of the damage to the Fukushima nuclear plant at the height of the crisis almost one year ago. Continue reading
Computer bug collecting, by Australian govt spies
Australian spies buying computer bugs: sources, SMH, Cynthia Karena, March 8, 2012 Cyber criminals are not the only ones buying software flaws, say sources. The Australian government is buying computer security weaknesses found by hackers before they are sold on the black market, as part of its defence strategy, claim those at the coal face of cyber security.
“The Australian government has developed these capabilities as part of ASIO, DSD [Defence Signals Directorate], CSOC [Cyber Security Operations Centre] and possibly others. But they are purely for research and defence,” says an Australian security consultant who wishes to remain anonymous.
He says while the government won’t admit it, buying vulnerabilities is an obvious part of “gathering intelligence”…..Stuxnet , a virus that is said to have crippled Iran’s nuclear arms program in 2010, exploited four zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows. Iranian authorities and security researchers believed the US and Israeli governments were behind the attack. http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/australian-spies-buying-computer-bugs-sources-20120307-1ujlb.html#ixzz1of1Wq5TH
A history of dishonesty – Waubra Foundation, Landscape Guardians, and the Baillieu government.
The question we, the voters, need to ask is: ‘how did such a sorry lot with such a transparent and dishonest agenda succeed in bringing the wind industry to its knees thus depriving the public of a chance to reduce our carbon emissions?’
The answer is that no government could have been so easily duped unless it was complicit.
It is clear that the scuttling of the wind industry in Victoria was a deliberate political ploy to appease the coal industry, with the Guardians’ scare campaign simply serving as window dressing to dupe the public into thinking it was all in our interest.
This is the third part of Independent Australia environment editor Sandi Keane’s trilogy on the role of deception in the public debate on global warming. The first part, Deception is our Product, looked at the role of clever PR practitioners hired by the mining oligarchs to trick the unsuspecting into sacrificing their interests for those of their clients. The second part was the handy guide: The Practical Guide to Trickery & Fakery in the Digital Age. This thirdinstalment is the actual case study of Sandi’s investigation of the Landscape Guardians and the Waubra Foundation.
CASE STUDY: The Landscape Guardians and the Waubra Foundation, Independent Australia, 6 March 12, It began early last year, when a mate who likes to argue the toss with me on enviro-issues tipped me off about the anti-wind group, the Landscape Guardians.
The first hint that these people were not the self-appointed protectors of the landscape they claimed to be was the name. No dinky di greenie group would knowingly jump into bed with the notorious UK Country Guardians, with its links to both climate skeptics and the nuclear industry. The pressure group was set up by Sir Bernard Ingham, who was a former press secretary to Margaret Thatcher, consultant to the nuclear industry and an acknowledged “black belt” in the art of spin. Continue reading
USA’s secret plan for criminalising Julian Assange
On Monday, WikiLeaks began releasing more than 5 million Stratfor emails which it said showed ”how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients”.
Revealed: US plans to charge Assange, SMH, Philip Dorling, February 29, 2012 UNITED STATES prosecutors 
have drawn up secret charges against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a confidential email obtained from the private US intelligence company Stratfor.
In an internal email to Stratfor analysts on January 26 last year, the vice-president of intelligence, Fred Burton, responded to a media report concerning US investigations targeting WikiLeaks with the comment: ”We have a sealed indictment on Assange.”
He underlined the sensitivity of the information – apparently obtained from a US government source – with warnings to ”Pls [please]
protect” and ”Not for pub[lication]”. Continue reading
Australia’s uranium industry – open slather for BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine
Uranium mining companies in Australia are in denial. They cited “commercial in confidence” so as not to disclose their contracts and not to reveal which reactors were fuelled with their uranium.
Olympic Dam mine is a dam designed to leak an average of three million litres of liquid radioactive waste a day from the tailings storage facility through decades of mining up to 2050.
The federal and SA governments agreed to surface dumping of the tailings rather than to require best practice disposal into the pit.
Our uranium fuelled Fukushima, David Noonan, The Guardian, 22 Feb 12, Australian uranium fuelled the Fukushima nuclear disaster yet our governments have just approved the world’s largest uranium project in BHP Billiton’s proposed new pen pit mine at Roxby Downs. “We can confirm that Australian obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site and in each of the reactors – maybe five out of six, or it could have been all of them; almost all of them”.
This frank smoking gun admission by Dr Floyd, the Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office (ASNO) in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade came some seven months after the Fukushima crisis had started to unfold. It is quite likely this Australian uranium came from Roxby Downs in SA.
Denial runs deep in the nuclear industry. Continue reading
New South Wales Renewable Energy Guidelines aim to prevent small scale wind energy!
“The Guidelines place incredibly strenuous conditions on the development of wind farms that are
not faced by any other kind of development.
“They appear to have been produced to appease the small anti-wind farm lobby rather than achieving outcomes for the whole community,”
NSW wind farm guidelines shaft clean energy, Green Left, February 16, 2012 The draft planning guidelines for wind farms in NSW, which are now open for public comment, have been labelled inconsistent, too restrictive and politically motivated by environment group Friends of the Earth.
“These guidelines talk about NSW planning to help Australia meet its the 20% by 2020 Renewable Energy Target, but at the same time could pose severe restrictions on the options available to achieve that,” said Ben Courtice, renewable energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth.
“The Guidelines refer to a NSW Renewable Energy Action Plan to be released in 2012, but pre-empt any such planning by placing a severe restriction on wind farms. The guidelines admit that wind energy is the cheapest form of renewable energy.” Continue reading
Australian Professor Bob Carter opposed carbon tax, was paid by polluting industry front group
Scientist accepts ‘cash for climate’, The Age, Ben Cubby February 16, 2012 A PROMINENT Australian scientist has rejected as offensive any suggestion he is doing the bidding of a US climate-sceptic think tank that is paying him a monthly fee. Confidential documents leaked from inside The Heartland Institute, a wealthy think tank based in Chicago and Washington, detail strategy and funding for an array of activities designed to spread doubt about climate change science, paid for by companies that have a financial interest in continuing to release greenhouse gases without government interference. The think tank has now issued a statement saying the strategy and budget documents had been stolen, and claiming one of them was faked……
Among the documents that Heartland does not claim to be faked, is a budget showing payments to selected scientists.
One of the recipients of funding is Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University, a geologist and marine researcher who spoke at the “convoys of no confidence” protests against the carbon price last year alongside the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, and writes columns for News Ltd newspapers.
The documents show Professor Carter receives a “monthly payment” of $US1667 ($1550) as part of a program to pay “high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message”.
Professor Carter did not deny he was being paid by The Heartland Institute, but would not confirm the amount, or if the think tank expected anything in return for its money……
Altogether, more than $US20 million had been spent funding and co-ordinating the activities of climate sceptics and bloggers since 2007, the documents suggest.
Other cash recipients include Anthony Watts, the leading US climate sceptic blogger, who is to receive $US90,000 for his work this year. Programs slated for funding include new curriculum modules that teach science from a climate-sceptic perspective, to be sent to US schools……
This year, the document says Heartland would “approach dozens of companies and trade associations that are actively seeking allies in this battle.”
The organisation’s funding comes from 1800 donors, including many manufacturing and resources businesses, and also drug companies….
The documents were first published on a Canadian website, DeSmogBlog, which monitors the public relations efforts by some industry groups to discredit climate change science.
“An important message here is for the media to learn how to recognise this co-ordinated attack on science and to see through the PR pollution that Heartland and its network creates to cast doubt on climate change,” said the website’s executive director, Brendan DeMelle….. Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/scientist-accepts-cash-for-climate-20120215-1t7ho.html#ixzz1mbkNwIA9
The crooked campaigns of Fred Singer and Co to hoodwink the public on Climate Chnage
THE PLANET VS EAST BUMCRACK*: THE CORRUPT SCIENCE OF DR FRED SINGER Independent Australia: By Sandi Keane, 28 May 2011 http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/environment/crackers-3-fred-singer-and-the-non-conserving-neo-conservatives/ “…….In Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s thorough inquisition into this public deception, Merchants of Doubt, Dr Fred Singer, Singer is confirmed as one of a small cadre of scientists who were, and still are, responsible for hoodwinking the public, time and time again. With strong industry and conservative political connections, they ran an effective campaign to mislead the public over a period of four decades. ….
“tea money” – Australian mining companies’ bribery in Africa and Asia
The US Securities Exchange Commission is investigating BHP Billiton for possible violation of anti-
bribery laws. The company has been under scrutiny after it was revealed it paid $1 million to the Cambodian government to secure a mining project in 2006. A senior Cambodian minister later described the payment, which has been unable to be traced, as ”tea money”…..
Firms tell of possible bribes, The Age, Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie, February 14, 2012, SEVERAL large Australian public companies have provided federal police with information implicating themselves in possible foreign bribery offences.
The Age understands companies involved in mining, exploration and other sectors in Africa and Asia have discovered possible evidence of overseas bribery during recent internal audits…. Documents released by the federal Attorney-General’s Department to The Age under Freedom of Information laws show that in May last year Australia had four active foreign bribery investigations. Continue reading
Japanese nuclear cult Aum Shinrikyo and its Australian activities
Aum In Australia Aum also launched a scheme of exploring the uranium mines in Australia. …… They also formed two Aum companies – Mahaposya Australia Pvt Ltd and Clarity Investments Pty Ltd – as front businesses to cover up their true activities…
Aum Shinrikyo In Pursuit Of Nuclear Weapons – Analysis, Eurasia Review by: Muhammad Jawad Hashmi February 2, 2012 Aum Shinrikyo has an apocalyptic belief 
structure where the world is divided into two opposing forces, good and evil. Shoko Asahara, who is leader of the cult, firmly believes that they will prevail after the apocalypse and are motivated to trigger the apocalypse because their own salvation depends upon fighting the final fight and eliminating the enemy. The prospect of nuclear war shaped Shoko Asahara’s concerns to preach that Aum followers would be the only survivors of a coming Armageddon.
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
15 April – Zoom –Nuclear Power is Not the Solution
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual
A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Host Contact Info: australia@icanw.org
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 