BRIEF, AUSTRALIA
Family First: love God, hate Earth
Barry Healy
4 July 2009
Family First, the small party based on the fundamentalist Assemblies of God church is carving out a niche for itself as an environmental vandal, at the federal and at state levels.
Senator Steve Fielding posted a report on his parliamentary website on June 19 about his attendance at a climate change sceptic’s conference in Washington DC. He says the “scientific analyses” the sceptics provided “directly contradicted the reasons the Australian government had been giving as the justification for its emissions trading legislation”.
Fielding’s South Australian state parliamentary colleague Dennis Hood has successfully campaigned against cutting SA’s household waste going to landfill. The ALP state government has caved in to his demands.
South Australia has been experimenting with lowering household waste. Fortnightly bin collections have been trialled, combined with green waste collection for composting. However, such a trial was too much for Hood. On May 13 he moved a private member’s bill to kill it.
Hood’s and the Coalition’s grandstanding spooked environment minister Jay Weatherill into backing down on June 30. The ALP government will now legislate to make local councils collect garbage every week, even though evidence shows it will encourage more wastefulness.
