Mainstream commentary on net zero emissions ignores the science and buys into the Coalition’s political conundrum about how it comes back from the brink. Alex Bainbridge argues that Labor needs to do more.
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Grassroots movements have gotten us to the point where governments can no longer deny climate change is happening. Pip Hinman argues that those movements have to grow to avoid being sucked into false solutions.
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So if the government's bill excising the entire Australian mainland from the migration zone is passed in parliament, I guess we will all be unAustralian. That is one insult used by politicians to describe anything they don't like will now lose its force. Forget Aboriginal people protesting on Australia Day, logically there can surely be no more unAustralian act than legally declaring Australia unAustralia. -
Federal immigration minister Chris Bowen announced plans for a new 1500-bed detention facility on March 3. It is to be located at Wickham Point, an industrial area 35 kilometres south-east of Darwin. The March 4 NT News said the Darwin Airport Lodge, which currently houses refugees, would also be expanded by 400 beds. This would bring Darwin’s total detention capacity to 2900, making the city the largest detention location on the mainland — larger even than the notoriously overcrowded Christmas Island facility. -
The second suicide in little more than two months took place at Villawood detention centre on the night of November 15. Ahmad Al Akabi, 41, was found by fellow detainees hanged in a bathroom. After spending more than a year in the Christmas Island and Villawood detention centres, his asylum application had been rejected twice under the off-shore processing system that was found to be invalid in a recent High Court decision.