Nuclear does not have the answers we need
Blog Post | Blog of Scott Ludlam
Wednesday 10th March 2010, 12:57pm
by RachelPemberton in
Published in The Age 10 March 2010
Nuclear advocates frequently proclaim the need for a public debate about building nuclear power reactors in Australia. Well, last Thursday they got one, staged in front of 1200 people at the Melbourne Town Hall - and they were trounced.
A poll before the debate found an 8 per cent margin in favour of nuclear power. A further poll taken immediately after the debate revealed a margin of 24 per cent against nuclear power - 34 per cent in favour, 58 per cent against.
Terror white paper: shiny new language, same old laws
Blog Post | Blog of Scott Ludlam
Tuesday 23rd February 2010, 1:46pm
by ScottLudlam in
...this blog piece first appeared in Crikey 23 Feb 2010
The counter-terrorism white paper issued today is long overdue. Announced by the Prime Minister in December 2008 as "forthcoming", the release has been delayed several times, presumably to give the government enough time to cleanse the document of any real detail and manage the process of strategic leaks that now seem to routinely precede any major announcement.
While offering the usual generic statements of the obvious, the paper foreshadows a welcome shift in discourse. The government makes important acknowledgements on the root causes of terrorism stemming from poverty and injustice, and states that an open democratic society can promote long-term resilience against the kinds of marginalisation and radicalisation that breed terror networks.
Learning lessons from the monumental and bloody mistakes of the recent past
Blog Post | Blog of Scott Ludlam
Monday 15th February 2010, 6:22pm
by ScottLudlam in
In March 2003, Prime Minister John Howard announced combat operations had begun and Australian troops had crossed the border as the Shock and Awe bombardment lit up Baghdad.
The decision had been made - the invasion was already underway as Howard spoke into the TV cameras, informing Australians that we were at war.
In a democratic nation with a bicameral parliament constituted to decide on matters of state, this call was left up to Howard and his Cabinet. Seventeen people.
Bob's news from Greens around the globe
Blog Post | Blog of Bob Brown
Monday 25th January 2010, 10:37am
by BobBrown in
Some news coming across my desk about Greens colleagues around the world that I thought you may be interested in….cheers, Bob
The German Greens turned 30 years old last week – they now have 68 MPs in the Bundestag! - Story
The French Greens were featured in Newsweek in late December, as France's Constitutional Court threw out Sarkozy's carbon tax. Newsweek speculates that the ruling will lift the Greens vote further in elections in March.
Greens in the Philippines are excited this week that for the first time one of the 10 official Presidential candidates for the Philippines will be a Green! The candidate Nicanor Perlas approached us to help his appeal against the Commission on Elections who had deemed him as a nuisance candidate.
Deadlock on climate action helps no-one
Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
Friday 22nd January 2010, 11:17am
by ChristineMilne in
On December 2 last year, after being blind-sided by the unexpected elevation of Tony Abbott to the Liberal Party leadership, the Rudd government made a hasty announcement that they may well come to regret - that they would bring back their twice-defeated emissions trading bill a third time as soon as Parliament resumed in February.
With the date swiftly approaching, blind Freddy could tell you that the opposition will not support the bills and the government is still making no attempt to negotiate amendments with the cross-bench. The whole exercise is looking like a fruitless, time-wasting political stunt.
This deadlock helps no-one. The community is denied action on the climate crisis, the business community is denied the investment certainty they crave, the government looks increasingly impotent and the opposition looks like spoilers.
There is a solution to this deadlock
Turning a blind eye to China
Blog Post | Blog of Bob Brown
Thursday 14th January 2010, 4:36pm
by BobBrown in
He was a mentally unstable father of five living on the streets of Poland when he was unwittingly lured to smuggle 4kg of heroin into China, say the relatives of Briton Akmal Shaikh, who was executed by lethal injection at the end of 2009.
Shaikh had travelled to Urumqi in 2007 on the promise that he would be made into a pop star with his song Come Little Rabbit, which he imagined could bring about world peace.
After a half hour trial in 2008 he was convicted of drug smuggling and handed the mandatory sentence of death.
Ask your questions on emissions trading
Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
Thursday 14th January 2010, 2:10pm
by TimHollo in
If you're not entirely sure of what the Greens stand for on emissions trading, we have a new detailed feature piece on our website here.
It sets out clearly what we want to see in an emissions trading scheme, how we have attempted over many months to negotiate with the government around their CPRS only to be rebuffed every time, and exactly why we cannot support the CPRS in its current form.
Undoubtedly, many of you will have more questions. This blog post is to give you space to ask those questions which we may not have answered effectively in the feature. We will do our best to answer as many of them as we can as effectively as we can.
Ask away!
Racism does exist in Australia
Blog Post | Blog of Sarah Hanson-Young
Thursday 7th January 2010, 12:15pm
by in
This week has seen tensions between Australia and India escalate, following yet another attack on an international student. Indian authorities have issued a travel warning about increased violence in Melbourne. The Australian Government is in damage control.
While police investigations into the fatal attack of accounting graduate Nitin Garg in Melbourne and the discovery of the body of an unidentified Indian student in NSW are ongoing, the motives behind these attacks remain unclear.
What is certain however is that there is growing disquiet about the way our international guests have been treated. Yet, our Deputy PM, and the acting Premier of Victoria have been quick to dismiss the possibility that racism may have been a factor in why these young people were targeted, attacked and killed.
While it's too soon to determine exactly what happened, to simply rule out the possibility that racism was involved is neither good leadership nor smart diplomacy in an environment of increased violence.
Copenhagen raises the stakes - time for civil society to hold our leaders to account
Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
Saturday 19th December 2009, 11:53am
by ChristineMilne in
So, at last world leaders have agreed on something. They have agreed, essentially, that they lack the will to really do what it takes to prevent climate crisis.
They can all articulate the challenge that we face. They can all stand up and tell a room what they are doing. But almost no leader of a country of any size, with the brave exception of Brazil's Lula, is willing to stand up and offer to do more than they see as the absolute minimum they think they can get away with.
The superficial last-minute statement agreed late in the night gives us no substantive progress on any of the critical issues. It takes us no further, really, than the statements out of the G8 and G29 in recent months.
What it does do, in the context of the warnings from the UNFCCC and others, is highlight how weak the promises of action from the developed world really are. The targets on the table simply cannot deliver the 2C goal.
UNFCCC exposes Rudd's empty rhetoric
Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
Friday 18th December 2009, 10:51am
by ChristineMilne in
For all those who have been convinced by Prime Minister Rudd and Minister Wong's rhetoric that they are fighting for a 450ppm and 2C agreement at Copenhagen, and believe that that is a good start, a leak from the UN Secretariat over here exposes that claim for the fraud it is.
The leak, which can be downloaded here, concludes that, even with the highest pledges on the table from developed and developing countries, the world would be on a trajectory "that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 ppm with the related temperature rise around 3C". That trajectory gives the planet essentially no real chance of avoiding the tipping points which would trigger runaway heating and climate catastrophe.
Perhaps now more people in the developed world will understand why the developing world is unprepared to be bullied by countries like Australia into signing their lives away - literally.
