Sunday 20 January 2019
Australian Federal Election Campaign 2018-2019: the lying continues......
Trump acolyte
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison
promised a presidential-style election campaign and he is delivering .
Like US President
Donald Trump, Morrison is lying shamelessly……..
The
Guardian, 14
January 2019:
Scott Morrison has
elevated an obscure bill to ban cosmetic testing on animals to one of the top
two legislative priorities for the Coalition in 2019, according to his office.
Speaking to ABC News
Breakfast on Monday, the prime minister cited “environmental legislation …
[that] is important for native species” as among the government’s priorities
for the new year, second only to national security.
There is no major
environmental legislation before parliament and the prime minister’s office was
unable to immediately identify what he was referring to.
Morrison’s comments also
caught conservation groups offguard.
Five hours later, a
spokesman for Morrison told Guardian Australia the prime minister was
“referring to the agricultural
and veterinary chemicals legislation amendment”.
The bill – introduced by
the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, in October – makes
minor changes to the regulatory scheme for agricultural and veterinary
chemicals to provide simpler processes for chemicals of low concern.
The federal policy
director of the Wilderness Society, Tim Beshara, told Guardian Australia the
bill had “stuff-all to do with native species”, a sentiment echoed bythe
Australian Conservation Foundation nature campaigner, Jess Abrahams.
An hour after this story
was published, the prime minister’s office clarified the first statement was in
error and claimed Morrison had in fact been referring to the Industrial
Chemicals Bill 2017.
That bill establishes a
new regulatory scheme including banning animal testing for new chemical
ingredients of cosmetics from 1 July 2018. It passed the lower house and was
introduced to the Senate in October 2017 but appears not to have been debated
since then.
Abrahams said: “As far
as we are aware, the main government policy relating to native species is the
plan for a one-stop shop for environmental approvals, which would have the
effect of weakening environmental protection.”
“The government also has
a targeted review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation
Act for farmers, which could also weaken protection of the environment.”......
In September a Senate
inquiry investigating fauna extinctions heard that a large proportion of staff
working in threatened species management rated
the government’s performance as “poor or very poor”.
The union representing
staff said 91.3% of those who responded to a survey said the government was
doing poorly or very poorly in fulfilling domestic and international
obligations to conserve threatened fauna and 87% believed the adequacy of
Australia’s national environment laws – the EPBC act – was poor or very poor.
Beshara accused the
government of failing its statutory responsibility to fund and implement
endangered species recovery plans. He called on the government to put “some
serious funding towards saving some endangered critters and plants”.
“I am more than happy to
brief the prime minister on what the government needs to do for native species
if he would like.
“He might be surprised
to know that the
Darling River crisis is only one of many ecological crises happening
in Australia right now on his watch. It’s a real mess out there.”
Labels:
elections 2019,
lies and lying,
Scott Morrison
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