Over the past six years, a strong grassroots campaign has been waged to build a solar thermal power plant in Port Augusta, South Australia.
The campaign has brought together diverse stakeholders including local community members, workers, environment groups, unions and the local council. Together they have pushed for coal, the town's traditional energy source, to be replaced with solar thermal technology, which would provide baseload power for the state.
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New research into youth employment by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), released on August 30, has found that young people are struggling to find work and urgently need support.
The survey, conducted by QDOS Research, polled 500 young Australians aged between 18 and 24 in the first half of the year.
Communities across Victoria have won a permanent ban on unconventional gas mining and fracking. It is the first state to do so and sets a precedent for other states and territories to follow.
The Labor state government announced on August 30 it was banning unconventional gas and extending the moratorium on conventional gas until 2020.
More than 1.4 million hectares of the state had been under threat from some form of gas mining — coal seam gas, tight gas, shale gas and underground coal gasification.
Narrabri community group People for the Plains lodged an appeal on August 29 against a decision of the New South Wales Land and Environment Court to uphold the approval of Santos's coal seam gas (CSG) wastewater treatment plant near the Pilliga Forest in north-west NSW.
The approval was given for the Leewoood CSG wastewater plant without an Environmental Impact Statement or public consultation. That approval was upheld by the court on August 1.
Just 10 days after dismissing a challenge from a Queensland traditional owner to the granting of mining leases for Adani's Carmichael coalmine, on August 29 the Federal Court dismissed the application by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) for judicial review of environment minister Hunt’s decision to grant mining licences to Adani.
It can be said that any “international bad press” about Thailand’s military junta generated by the comments from Western governments is welcome — especially when they demand the release of political prisoners.
Independent MP for Cairns Rob Pyne was once again the lone voice in the Queensland parliament against the Adani coalmine on August 30. While 300 people protested in the city centre at 24 hours’ notice, the Queensland Parliament was considering a motion to "support the development of Adani's Carmichael mine". The motion was moved by notorious mining industry apologist Andrew Cripps from the Liberal National Party in the wake of a Federal Court decision in favour of the mine. The vote was 87 to 1, with Pyne the lone voice of dissent.
The Fremantle Council voted 10-1 to drop its annual Australia Day fireworks on August 24 in recognition of how sensitive this date is for many First Nations peoples.
It is worth restating the obvious: modern Australia, like Canada, the US, New Zealand and South Africa, began as a colonial-settler state founded on the violent dispossession of its Indigenous peoples. But Australia is the only one to hold its national day on the very date that marks the beginning of that dispossession.
Pro-choice activists in Queensland have expressed disappointment at the release of a parliamentary report on August 26 that failed to support the bill before Queensland parliament to decriminalise abortion.
“Beyond the amiable, good-bloke persona, [NSW Premier] Mike Baird is an aggressively neoliberal politician, who has quietly privatised dozens of state entities.
The statement below was released by the Philippines-Venezuela Solidarity Network (PhilVenSol) on August 31. It comes after calls from Venezuela for international solidarity against new US-backed destabilisation against the elected government and revolutionary movement.
Thousands of Venezuela's right-wing opposition took to the streets in Caracas on September 1 in a menacing march labelled “the taking of Caracas”.
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