For most of the country the mining boom is a good news story of mining royalties and economic resilience that has carried us – so far - through the turbulence on world financial markets. However from close-up in the coastal Pilbara, the resources boom has distorted the local economy beyond recognition. Some are making and taking a great deal of money out of the region; others are struggling to survive.
On my recent visit to Karratha, I heard incredible stories from angry and frustrated people. A modest four bedroom house now sells for more than a million dollars and rents are out of control, stretching from $1500 - $2800 per week. People are sleeping in cars, tents and clapped out caravans, with temperatures soaring regularly into the 40s through much of the year. Petrol is nudging $2 per litre and fuelwatch is a joke when the nearest alternative servo is hundreds of kilometres up the road. Women in labour rush to the Karratha hospital only to be told to drive three hours to Port Hedland because there are not enough nurses and doctors. Continue Reading »
This piece was originally published in today’s Crikey email.
In the coming months before the emissions trading legislation comes before the Senate, the Rudd Government needs to think hard about what it is trying to achieve.
Does it plan to buy into the lowest common denominator populism of the Coalition? This approach drags the debate backwards, undermines the global climate fight, and risks alienating a significant portion of Labor’s own base who voted for leadership on climate.
Or will it lead from the front, inspiring Australians to embrace this challenge to rebuild, upgrade and retool for a zero emissions future? Will it appeal to people’s best instincts, articulating a positive vision of preparing ourselves for the future by investing in a systemic roll-out of energy efficiency, mass transit and renewable energy?
The final answer will be in the 2020 target that is promised in the legislation by the end of the year, but the signals from yesterday’s Green Paper were decidedly worrying. Continue Reading »
The Rudd Government’s Emissions Trading Green Paper can now be downloaded from the Climate Change Department website here.
I’ve been trying to get to do a post on this since 12.30, but I’m alone in the office with Christine and the phone’s been ringing off the hook - which is a good thing!
The upshot is that the Government has put their foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. The leak this morning about essentially keeping petrol out of the scheme (raising the price with one hand and dropping it by the same amount with the other!) is symbolic of the whole thing. An emissions trading scheme is about driving new investment, but this proposal would protect existing coal investments, shutting the door on efficiency and renewables and mass transit and alternative fuels.
Professor Garnaut is likely to be very unimpressed indeed today. His hard work has just been utterly trashed.
In an update on our previous post, we now have more information on the two Greenpeace activists who were arrested in Japan following a four-month investigation into activities onboard the Japanese factory whaling ship and what happens to the whale meat that is processed following their ’scientific’ research.
Greenpeace intercepted one of many boxes of whale meat smuggled off the Nisshin Maru disguised as personal baggage, exposing the fact that choice pieces of whale meat were being given to certain crew members for personal gain and that Japanese taxpayers were footing the bill. Once the Greenpeace investigation had been finalised, all the evidence - including the box of whale meat, was handed to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor, who began a formal investigation.
The Australian Greens are extremely concerned that these activists are being held without charge by Japanese police; it would appear these actions are politically motivated to shut down the successful Greenpeace campaign. It is hard to think otherwise when the Japanese Authorities sent in forty police to raid the Greenpeace offices and seize all computers and financial records. This is a disproportionate reaction to this matter.
This piece was first published yesterday by Larvatus Prodeo.
Massive upheaval is occurring to Australia’s standard employment conditions and minimum wages, with little to no understanding or public attention.
The ‘award modernisation’ process currently underway in the AIRC, following a request from the Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard, will impact on all Australian workers … either directly through loss of conditions or indirectly through lowering the base from which agreements can be made.
While the Rudd Government likes to compare its IR policy with Work Choices (…so it can say things are slightly better than they might have been), a better way of evaluating their policy is to look at the industrial relations system that existed in Australia before the aberration of Work Choices. On this test the Government is failing to provide adequate protection for workers.
Surprisingly, when it comes to stripping awards, this ALP Government is going further than Howard and Reith were able to (before the Coalition had the numbers in the Senate) in reducing award conditions and fundamentally changing the nature of the award system. Continue Reading »
So the day after tomorrow (ah that hoary old Hollywood chestnut…), Penny Wong will finally release the government’s Green Paper, to which Professor Garnaut is one of many ‘inputs’. Most of the others being big business.
While it won’t be anything like final design, and it won’t include any emissions targets or trajectories, the paper should give us a much better idea of what the government’s thinking is on emissions trading. We’ll have more of an idea of whether it’ll be something The Greens can support with amendments. The signs thus far are that it should be supportable, but there is still the chance that it’ll be so full of holes that we’d be better off without it.
Here’s some notes we’ve put together on some of the key issues with emissions trading that we’ll be looking out for.
To be environmentally and economically effective, the Green Paper must:Continue Reading »
ABC TV watchers amongst you may have seen the promos already for Christine Milne on the newish Q&A program this Thursday night, July 10, at 9.30 pm. She will be on the panel, focussed on ‘Welcome the new Senate’, with Senator Helen Coonan, Minister Craig Emerson, author Linda Jaivin and everybody’s favourite opinionated columnist, Andrew Bolt.
As well as watching the program, please think about asking questions of Christine and the other panellists - about the Senate and balance of power, about the Garnaut Review, about appropriate responses to climate change, peak oil and the transport crisis, or anything at all that interests you!
Go here to submit a question online. Or you can SMS a question during the program to 197 55 222 - costs 55c including GST.
In the wake of the release Professor Garnaut’s draft report this morning, Stateline WA ran a well timed piece this evening on the nuclear industry’s unsightly scramble for a place at the climate change table. The piece used clips from a film I produced last year titled ‘Climate of Hope‘ which reviews the nuclear fuel chain and exposes the nuclear industry’s reliance on fossil fuels. The alleged ‘nuclear renaissance’ just isn’t happening. The renewable energy stats I quoted in the film are already out of date - the wind industry installed ten times more capacity worldwide last year than nuclear power. It’s time Australia kicked the fossil/nuclear habit once and for all.
This was published in Crikey this afternoon. My release from today is here.
Professor Garnaut’s much-awaited Draft Report [huge file here if the Garnaut website is still down] is, in general, strong on the architecture but terribly weak on the big, over-riding issue – preventing runaway climate change. His policy prescriptions are completely out of step with his science.
When we were looking for a transformative vision to take Australia into the post-carbon world, we got an incrementalist approach with a slow start and even a step backwards on the 2050 target.
Wonderfully uplifting news today that Colombian Green presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, has been freed! Betancourt, who had been taken hostage by FARC revolutionary guerillas 6 years ago, was finally released in an apparently extraordinary operation with no loss of life or even injuries.
I personally didn’t meet her when she was in Australia shortly before her capture, but many of my friends and colleagues did. One of those, of course, Bob Brown, who is a friend of Betancourt, had this to say this morning. Another, my old friend and colleague, Dan Cass, posted a moving post to his blog this afternoon. And Guy Rundle ended his US08 Crikey article today with this comment:
“those released included Ingrid Betancourt, head of the Colombian Green Party and former Presidential candidate, who was abducted in 2002. She was almost certainly betrayed to the FARC by the right, who now hold government, as she was on track to be the first Green party President in the world. Just before she was taken in 2002, she was in Australia for the global Greens conference. Her children were in hiding, in another country, and she made it clear that her abduction or death back in Colombia — from either the right wing militias or the FARC — was only a matter of time.
You don’t often come face-to-face with courage itself, but that was one time, and everyone who met her that weekend felt that. To a degree, that touched and changed my life and that of others. To hear that she’s alive is news of a joy so unalloyed, a joy the quality of which, politically at least, I’d almost forgotten. The what and why and how will all emerge later, and most likely everything will be diminished but for now Ingrid Betancourt emerging alive from the jungle will do to be going on with. Ya es de dia.”
For most of the country the mining boom is a good news story of mining royalties and economic resilience that has carried us – so far - through the turbulence on world financial markets. However from close-up in the coastal Pilbara, the resources boom has distorted the local economy beyond recognition. Some are making and taking a great deal of money out of the region; others are struggling to survive.
