Not long after Melbourne’s recent earthquake a few wags leapt on Twitter to blame Australia’s carbon price for causing it. Greens Senator Richard Di Natale made the same joke in parliament a few days later.
Australia
Australia’s parliament voted to set up the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) on June 26. The law was backed by Labor and Greens MPs. Mainstream environment groups have welcomed the initiative, saying the CEFC will make $10 billion available to fund clean energy.
With the dire warnings from climate scientists about the need to cut carbon emissions quickly, such a big investment in clean energy sounds like a good thing. But there is a catch: most of the money won’t be spent on clean energy at all.
“Whether I look at manufacturing, or I look at the climate emergency, it’s our generations, the ones alive now, that have a responsibility," said Dave Kerin, a founder of the Earthworker Cooperative, explaining the driving force behind the group’s key project.
Kerin spoke in a new video about an upcoming tour of workplaces to promote Earthworker’s plan to set up Eureka’s Future workers cooperatives.
The newly opened Yongah Hill detention centre in remote Western Australia is “probably one of the most secure facilities in the entire network,” immigration media manager Sandi Logan said on June 25.
The new detention centre is about 90 kilometres north-east of Perth, about five kilometres outside the rural town of Northam. The $125 million centre was a disused army barracks and will house up to 600 male asylum seekers.
It is now fitted with electric fences, “scale-proof” walls, cameras and bars on most windows, said an AAP reporter who visited the site.
The Sydney Socialist Alliance released the statement below on June 29.
* * *
A team of three experienced Socialist Alliance activists will stand in Marrickville Council’s north ward at the upcoming elections.
Socialist Alliance, which is contesting the elections on a platform of Power to the People, is a social justice and ecological party.
“Councils should be extensions of the community”, said lead candidate Pip Hinman.
About 200 people met on June 28 on the steps of Parliament House in Victoria to oppose new coal projects in the state.
Speakers spoke out against expanding the brown coal export industry, which would triple Victoria's contribution to greenhouse gas pollution.
The star of the event was “billionaire” Twiggy Palmcock, representing “the forgotten voices of mining magnates”.
He said all coal is good coal, and offered to dig coal mines in a bowl shape for the “Greenie farmers from Bacchus Marsh”.
Stop CSG campaigners in the Illawarra are celebrating the NSW government’s confirmation that coal seam gas drilling cannot take place in the Illawarra at this time. Stop CSG Illawarra spokesperson Jess Moore told WIN TV News on June 25: “This is huge news and shows the power the Illawarra community has to affect change.”
Opponent's of Victoria's coal industry took their message to the steps of the state Parliament House on June 28. Speakers at the rally said they opposed the state's new coal projects, including a brown coal export industry, which would triple Victoria's contribution to greenhouse gas pollution.
Since the deaths of asylum seekers when two boats headed to Australia capsized, parliament has been locked in a debate about how to “save lives”. But the “debate” is framed in such a way to ensure that more lives will be lost and more refugees victimised. ALP and Coalition MPs are pushing a policy of refugee “deterrence” designed to simply move refugees somewhere else.
On June 22, a boat carrying about 200 refugees capsized on its way to Christmas Island. Another vessel capsized on June 28. So far, reports say at least 91 refugees have drowned and others are still missing.
Billionaire mine-owner Clive Palmer has applied for one of his Queensland companies, the Yabulu nickel refinery, to be allowed to dump millions of litres of toxic water into the Great Barrier Reef.
The Steve Irwin Reserve on far north Queensland’s rugged Cape York faces the threat of mining, under new moves to water down the previous Bligh Labor government’s Wild Rivers law.
Liberal National Party state environment minister Andrew Powell released a paper on June 27 for a new management plan, which is expected to replace Wild Rivers laws on at least four far-north wilderness rivers.
Ivanhoe sacks workers despite ‘mining boom’
Gold and copper mining company Ivanhoe has said it will axe 50 jobs, or about 20% of its 280 workers. The move dents the mining industry's loud claims about its benefit to the Australian economy and jobs.
- Previous page
- Page 723
- Next page