Australia will join its carbon price scheme with Europe’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) by 2015. The decision means Australia’s future carbon price will be set by a European market notorious for fraud scandals, consumer rip-offs and a seven-year-long record of failure.
Australia
Thousands of building workers have left worksites across the Melbourne CBD to support a picket line at a Grocon site after police tried to violently break it up this morning.
Police used capsicum spray and horses on the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union picket line. The picketers held their ground and the police retreated once more building workers started to arrive.
Below is footage taken at the picket line, at the intersection of Lonsdale and Swanston Streets, by Geelong Trades Hall Council secretary Tim Gooden.
Civil rights lawyer Rob Stary has called for a Senate inquiry into Australia's role in the war in Sri Lanka. Stary defended three Australian Tamil men charged with terrorism offences in 2007. He said such an inquiry would look at the reasons for the decision to prosecute the three.
Stary made the call when delivering the Eliezer Memorial Lecture at Monash University on August 26. The lecture is held annually in honour of Professor C J Eliezer, a leader of Australia's Tamil community who died in 2001.
The Socialist Alliance NSW released the statement below on August 24.
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“Constructing an eight-lane motorway extension beneath Parramatta Road will ultimately just lead to bigger traffic jams,” said Pip Hinman, Socialist Alliance candidate for WALI (north ward) in the September 8 Marrickville local government election.
‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would.’ — Alice in Wonderland
And so the electricity debate unfolds in Tasmania — a world of its own, where everything is nonsense.
The Arid Lands Environment Centre and the Environment Centre Northern Territory released the statement below on August 8.
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The Arid Lands Environment Centre (ALEC) and the Environment Centre NT are calling for a moratorium on approvals for non-conventional gas extraction and fracking while the review of the NT Water Act is underway.
OK, nobody panic or anything, but it seems another key plank in Gina Rinehart's plot to destroy the Earth has been given the green light. Gina Rinehart's multibillion-dollar Alpha coal mine and rail project in central Queensland has been granted federal government approval, ABC.net.au said on August 23.
The Refugee Action Coalition released the statement below on August 24.
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The Refugee Action Coalition has welcomed the government’s announcement to immediately increase Australia’s refugee intake to 20,000. But the government could and should have increased the intake without re-opening Nauru.
“The bitter pill of violating refugee rights on Nauru is not going to be sweetened by increasing Australia’s overall intake,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition.
In recent months, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has taken to highlighting the role of state electricity utilities in pushing up power prices. Average power bills have been rising rapidly — 69% over four years in NSW.
The independent Gonski review, commissioned by the federal government into school funding, was released in February. It concluded that Australia is investing far too little in education and that in our wealthy country there are many schools that are underprivileged.
It also concluded that our education system is not fair — that our school system is stacked against the disadvantaged, while it gives the most privileged the most advantages.
The Tasmanian Greens have proposed the “biggest reform in the Tasmanian electricity sector since the dams were built", in its response to an expert panel that reviewed the state’s electricity industry earlier this year.
About 80% of the Tasmania’s electricity comes from hydro power, owned by Hydro Tasmania. This is sold to Aurora, the only retail company in the state. Another company, Transend, owns the distribution network. All three are government business enterprises.
Friends of the Earth and Quit Coal released the statement below on August 24.
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While it is a vindication of the community’s concerns about the harmful impacts of coal seam gas mining, today’s announcement by the Baillieu Government of a moratorium on coal seam gas fracking is inadequate to protect Victoria from the negative impacts of coal seam gas development.
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