Tag Archive for 'Peter Garrett'

OMG A ROCK STAR! (former)

Published
by
Anna Winter
1 year, 1 month ago
in Environment and Federal Elections
. 22 Comments

When Michael Keenan first met his challenger for the seat of Stirling, Peter Tinley, he apparently was unable to stop himself from blurting out: “You’re much taller than I expected!” Yesterday, Peter Tinley met a man who is even taller still.

Peter Garrett came to Stirling yesterday, and after bringing the media to Trigg beach, announced that Federal Labor is against cane toads.

CANE toads, or “marching aliens” as Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett refers to them, will be a top priority for a Rudd government.

From Garrett’s press release:

According to the World Conservation Union, the cane toad is one of the world’s 100 worst pest species.

Cane toads devour virtually anything smaller than them. Native animals such as snakes, goannas and quolls are killed by the poison contained in glands behind the toad’s head, when they try to eat cane toads. Northern quolls and yellow-spotted monitors have been heavily impacted and are now considered to be endangered and vulnerable, respectively, to extinction.

He limited his comments to the largely uncontroversial “cane toads bad” meme, turning down the opportunity to comment on the recently-approved Gorgon and Pluto gas projects.

Later that day, shoppers in Mirrabooka Square were treated to a walk-through by the former rock star, where I got to shake his hand!!! He might be an unprincipled sell-out who has, for now, decided to focus on achieving the possible, but he’s still rock-star cool. The man wears a suit like no-one else in Parliament, and… what was I talking about… oh yeah… A Rudd Labor Government will be tough on cane toads.

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Guest Post by Jim McDonald: The election and the arts

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Culture and Federal Elections
. 24 Comments

Cross-posted from Rage and Enthusiasm - Jim McDonald writes:

Now the Prime Minister has stopped playing his demeaning and juvenile game of Guess the Election, and set a date, one thing you can be sure of: the Arts will gain little specific advantage from the election campaign. And then you have to sort out the real promises from the “non-core� promises [the things that can be lied about] that John Howard has introduced into the lexicon.

There is some cause for hope. The Labor Party shadow arts minister, Peter Garrett, announced an Arts policy, New Directions for the Arts, in September. There has been nothing from the Liberal Party. The National Party doesn’t have policy on the Arts, but there will probably be a Coalition policy, but don’t hold your breath for any initiatives for the theatre. The Democrats have an Arts policy and so do the Greens, but these are general in their support of an Australian Arts sector rather than suggesting specific programs.

So, with the ballyhoo of the past few months election speculation, the Coalition comes into the campaign with no clear statement on the Arts. This is consistent with what has happened in the past 11 years.

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All hail Malcolm the Second

Published
by
Mercurius
1 year, 1 month ago
in Federal Elections, Government and Sociology
. 62 Comments

Reprinted with permission from Online Opinion

If we are fortunate, Malcolm Turnbull will be the next Liberal Prime Minister of Australia.

Fear not, dear reader. I shall not subject you to some vomitous hagiography in the style of courtiers such as a David Flint or Alan Jones. In any case, since the Honourable Member for Wentworth has thus far declined to “friend” me on Facebook, such blandishments seem doomed to go unrequited.

I come not to praise Caesar but to examine him, and to consider what lessons we can draw from a life lived so publicly. These lessons I think will explain why Australia would benefit from a turn with Turnbull, PM.

Continue reading ‘All hail Malcolm the Second’

Howard’s clean energy plan hits the fan

Published
by
Brian
1 year, 2 months ago
in Climate change and Federal Elections
. 29 Comments

In Guy Pearse’s book High & Dry he suggests that Howard’s climate change policies are a complete fraud. He suggests that the purpose of the policies is to appear to be doing something when the real effect will be to allow the polluters a free ride as long as possible, to maintain the Australian coal industry and to hold a place for nuclear. To this end he has lied, dissembled and mislead parliament. Renewables are not really a part of his agenda. Pearse tells us:

Meanwhile, according to the IEA, the renewable share of electricity in Australia has fallen from 18.5 per cent in 1970 to 8.3 per cent in 2001 – roughly where it remains today.

Of course most of this is hydro.

Pearse makes a very good case to support his views in a closely argued 400 plus pages. The question now is whether Howard has finally got it or whether we have here more of the same.

Continue reading ‘Howard’s clean energy plan hits the fan’

The next six weeks

Published
by
suz
1 year, 3 months ago
in Environment and Federal Elections
. 39 Comments

Malcolm Turnbull, as Minister for the Environment, has granted himself a six-week extension to further consider the Gunns pulp mill proposal.

Six weeks eh? If some commentators are correct and John Howard goes straight from the last APEC meeting to Government House to call an election, the Commonwealth’s Gunns decision is effectively postponed until after the election. Would Turnbull be brazen enough to postpone like this and then say yes to the pulp mill immediately after an election (if they won) or is this a sign that he’ll actually block the pulp mill? Either way, he’s given himself some leverage over the Tasmanian state Labor government and over Peter Garrett - leverage that will no doubt come in handy in an election campaign.

As Phil commented in a recent LP post on this,

I think we’re all about to find out how much Turnbull wants to be PM. There is no way some pipsqueak premier in the pocket of an industry that has no real future on the island is going to get his/their way.

Will he throw Gunns and Lennon under a bus? You bet.

Pollies rewrite climate science

Published
by
Brian
1 year, 3 months ago
in Climate change and Politics
. 62 Comments

Is the Prime Minister aware that the climate change report from four Government MPs, including the Member for Tangney, released today’s states “The evidence that human beings are changing the global climate is certainly not compelling” and, “another problem with the view that humans have caused warming is that warming has also been observed on Mars, Jupiter, Triton”?

Prime Minister, what planet are these Government MPs on?

To that question from Peter Garrett our Prime Minister replied:

On the planet inhabited by people who hate the Australian coal industry.

While the PM continued to spruik his carbon trading scheme (a draft paper will be released in September) four of the six Liberals on a parliamentary committee on geosequestration dissented on the link between human activity and global warming. This is an embarrassment for Howard, the new convert to AGW trying to compete with Labor in this policy area.

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The Indigenous emergency goes legislative: Update

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Authoritarianism, Ethics, Federal Elections, Howardia, Indigenous, Law and Poverty
. 33 Comments

As a quick update to my last post, I’d like to draw folks’ attention to two informative posts from Cam at Polemica - one which reproduces Peter Garrett’s speech in Parliament yesterday, and one which links to Parliamentary Library digests [pdf] on the bills passed by the House of Representatives.

The Senate Committee noted that these emergency bills do not change any laws “relating to violence or sexual abuse in Indigenous communities”, that there was no consultation with indigenous groups and that “most concerning feature of the Bill is the symbolic message that it sends to the judiciary, and the judicial uncertainty it may create”. Such is emergency governance [as] it becomes a series of adhoc decisions by the executive.

I think we can say clearly and authoritatively that this is bad governance.

It’s an absolute disgrace that these bills are being rushed through parliament without proper scrutiny given their importance. Mal Brough predictably responded to this argument on Lateline with “every night we wait, another kiddie is sexually abused”, and showed his true colours by dismissing the notion that people might have any rights to challenge the government in the courts and embracing paternalism. The outcry that greeted the proposed suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act in 1998 when the Wik legislation was passed appears to be much muted almost ten years on, with very little criticism of the actual suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act involved in these bills. The degree to which we as a nation have accommodated ourselves so easily to rank authoritarianism and a flagrant abuse of legal protections and civil rights should be a matter of shame for all of us - not least the leadership of the ALP, who really are under an obligation as an opposition to at least point out what’s occurring. That’s been sacrificed, of course, in the race for electoral gain, just as the legislation is motivated largely by electoral gain.

Uranium enrichment

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 5 months ago
in Energy, Environment, International, Nuclear and Politics
. 51 Comments

Uranium enrichment seems to be the topic of the day today, with a collection of stories covering a rather frenzied reaction to two pieces of news dug up by a 7.30 report report. Firstly, that Australia had a “secret uranium enrichment program” in the 1970s and 1980s. Secondly, that a new company, with former researchers from that program, is in the early stages of feasibility assessment for a commercial enrichment plant in Australia.

Firstly, the “secret enrichment program” hasn’t been secret for a long time. Amongst other places, you can get an outline of the work in Rod Barton’s book The Weapons Detective, which was published a couple of years ago. Not to mention that, separately, Silex Systems invented their own enrichment system which may be the most efficient enrichment technology in the world - they recently sold the rights to General Electric and they’re currently building a test plant in the United States. More interesting, however, is the idea that somebody is actively considering building an enrichment plant in Australia. It’s impossible to judge, at this stage, the seriousness of this particular proposal, but given it’s unlikely to be the last it might be worth untangling some of the issues surrounding uranium enrichment in Australia.

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The original L-platers

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Federal Elections and Politics
. 44 Comments

From today’s Crikey email:

When the Coalition toned down their relentless and fairly ineffectual attack on Kevin Rudd and turned their attention to his front bench, commentators and Labor MPs dismissed this tactic as born of desperation.

Not so. The Howard government knows the potential devastation of such an attack – it was the tactic they most feared from Labor in 1996, a tactic that was never used.

It pays to have a long memory in politics.

Continue reading ‘The original L-platers’

Garrett in PM’s sights

Published
by
Brian
1 year, 5 months ago
in Climate change and Politics
. 44 Comments

On Sunday morning munching the muesli I was not amused to read Glenn Milne’s article suggesting Peter Garrett will be a major target in the election campaign.

There’s nothing wrong with this in principle. It depends whether the campaign is based on lies. Not straight out bare-faced lies perhaps, but distortions designed to mislead.

It is.

Continue reading ‘Garrett in PM’s sights’

What limits the right to strike? Guest post by Chris White

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 6 months ago
in Federal Elections, Howardia, Industrial Relations and Politics
. 8 Comments

Chris White has a BA Hons/LLB from the University of Adelaide. He was a union advocate for 27 years, first with the AWU and LHMU and then at the UTLC of SA as Secretary. He is now a labour law researcher living in Canberra. He is a long-term ALP member who can be contacted at whitecd at velocitynet.com.au.

This is a guest post. It is lengthy but the right to strike issues are interesting.

On first hearing at the ALP conference, Kevin Rudd’s IR policy Forward with Fairness is well-crafted. It rejects Howard’s unfair individual contract bargaining and has a modest, fair collective workplace-bargaining system. The new 10 legislated and 10 award minima applying to employees is the legal safety net to turn around current exploitation. I liked the new umpire Fair Work Australia. It is innovative, as long as it adopts the principle of equity, deals on merit with grievances and has non-legal processes, abolishing the excessively legalistic WorkChoices. New workers’ collective bargaining rights for enterprise agreements, with a last resort right to strike, is important in the ALP’s policy. The workforce must have a chance to legally negotiate wages and conditions and advance their economic and social interests.

But I was staggered to hear Kevin Rudd’s restrictions on the right to withdraw labour at the National Press Club on 17/4/2007 before the ALP conference. This was headlines! Maybe corporate lobbyists had been in his ear.

Continue reading ‘What limits the right to strike? Guest post by Chris White’

They’re at it again…

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 year, 8 months ago
in Environment, Federal Elections, Government, Media and Policy
. 24 Comments

Labor’s New Right Fifth Column (in the form of the Forestry Division of the CFMEU) is attempting to have Labor’s National Platform amended to rule out any further reservation of forests for conservation purposes. As one might expect, this move is being backed by some enthusiastic, and characteristically mendacious and inept, barracking from the Murdoch Press.
Continue reading ‘They’re at it again…’

Resisting the urge to use Midnight Oil lyrics and song titles as blog tags

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 9 months ago
in Economics, Media, Music, Policy, Politics and Poverty
. 11 Comments

I am. Nobody else does.

I was scratching my head to try to explain, after Labor put nucular (as Anthony Albanese pronounces it) power stations, and alleged dodgy deals with rich mates on the media agenda yesterday, why Peter Garrett declined the chance to go on lateline last night, allowing Ziggy Switkowski to put the pro-case instead. Perhaps Peter was boning up on property prices. As part of a radio interview when he was questioned about whether he was a millionaire, Garrett asserted that almost everyone who owned a house in Sydney was a millionaire.

Garrett’s downplaying of his wealth has been picked up on by Andrew Leigh:

Ahem, no. The median house price in Sydney is $520,000.

Maybe we should put this one down to the big guy being wrong-footed, but if you want to be taken seriously on questions of inequality, it helps to know - and admit - your ranking on the income ladder. (PG, a hint: the median income is probably lower than you think too).

If Labor’s shadow cabinet thinks that the middle-class owns million dollar houses, I can’t help wondering what their election strategy to target mainstream Australia is going to look like.

Andrew links to a paper on tax he wrote, which makes the very important point (on p. 6 of the pdf) that policy is often distorted because journos, pollies, pundits, execs, and the like earn a hell of a lot more than most Australians.

Continue reading ‘Resisting the urge to use Midnight Oil lyrics and song titles as blog tags’

The Green Ghost Game - A Devine Comedy

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 year, 9 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Environment, Federal Elections, Levity and Media
. 56 Comments

In last weekend’s Australian, Frank Devine wrote a column which, even by the standards of the Murdoch stable’s anti-enviromentalist op-ed hacks, was surpassingly silly.

The column began:

The big task for Labor in this election year is to nullify the curse of Richo. The particular Richo curse to which I refer (in case I haven’t made myself perfectly clear) is his 1990 greening of the ALP.

and goes on to bewail the baleful influence of environmentalism within the ALP and the political system as as whole, of which former Federal Environment Minister Graham Richardson was allegedly the vector.

Now I don’t say that this column is surpassingly silly because I disagree (obviously) with its politics and analysis. I say it is surpassingly silly because it gets so many basic facts hilariously wrong.
Continue reading ‘The Green Ghost Game - A Devine Comedy’

Captain Ahab sends round the grog and nails his coin to the mast

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 year, 9 months ago
in Climate change, Environment, Federal Elections, Policy, Politics and Trade
. 6 Comments

Today’s Age carries a report on internal Labor divisions over its climate change policy.

I have sent a letter to the editor which encapsulates a number of points I and others have made at LP. The text is as follows:

Some comments are in order regarding internal Labor divisions over its climate change policy.

Firstly, there will be no repeat of the 2004 Tasmanian forests situation because Rudd is not Latham, and because the Mining and Energy Division of the CFMEU, unlike that union’s Forestry Division, is not dealing under the table with Howard government ministers to campaign against the ALP’s environment policy. Visit the Mining and Energy Division’s website and you will find endorsement of the ALP’s greenhouse policy, support for the Kyoto Protocol and an electoral enrolment campaign under the slogan “Kick Out Howard”.

Secondly, Peter Garrett was simply being honest with his comments about the long-term future of Australia’s coal industry. Most of our coal is mined for export, so it is nonsense to pretend that the industry can keep expanding if our major customers move to a carbon-constrained economy.

One suspects the unnamed MPs quoted in your report are either greenhouse denialists or people who have the same mindset towards environmentalists as Captain Ahab had towards Moby Dick. Both such character types are known to exist in the ALP.

Update: This morning on ABC News Radio, Christian Kerr commented that some Federal Labor MPs are very keen, albeit anonymously and off the record, to condemn the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division over its greenhouse policy discussion paper which I have previously commented on and linked to. He also asserted, without offering any evidence, that a gap has opened up between the union and mining workers over the issue.

On the first point I have no doubt that Kerr is correct. Such sentiment would be coming from the denialists and the Captain Ahabs, and probably also from MPs linked to unions with which the CFMEU is competing for coverage in the mining and energy sector.

On the second point I have to be sceptical. There is nothing in the discussion paper which can be construed as making any concessions in terms of accepting reduced activity or employment in the coal industry. In any case the union’s structure - which is arguably as democratic as any union’s in Australia - should ensure that any such gap which arises will be quickly filled.

Finally, a further indication of the role the Mining & Energy Division is likely to play in this year’s Federal election can be found here.