National Generators Forum wants major Australian emitters to be given greenhouse get-out-of-gaol-free card

In January this year the National Generators Forum wrote to the Ganaut Climate Change Review recommending that, in any future national carbon trading scheme, major energy companies using conventional dirty production methods be given consideration by way of "appropriate allocation of permits" "to recognise past investment made in good faith".

In other words both public and private energy suppliers would like a free pass on much of their existing infrastructure and production practices. Even though these suppliers could have made an informed decision to apply mitigation measures anytime in the last ten to twenty years.

Such a free pass would also involve considerable dollar compensation to the Forum's 22-strong membership.

It seems that the National Generators Forum is quite happy with the notion that the poor will bear a disproportionate burden when it comes to predicted increased energy costs, but it is less than happy at the thought of its own members bearing any financial burden at all.

Changing and lengthening the Australian minority years

I see the media has been reporting on the idea of extending the school leaving age.

Last year Victoria increased leaving age to 16 years of age. Matching South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania.

In West Australia it went up to 17 this year.

Now there's talk of raising it to 18 in New South Wales, so that all students would leave high school and become legal adults all in the same year.

Across the board there also appears to be a debate about raising the legal drinking age to 21 years. Which would leave the young adult in the strange position of being trusted with a right to vote in governments but not to drink an alcoholic beverage.

I'm not knocking the desire to see the young receive a reasonable level of education or discourage alcohol abuse, but it almost looks like we are trying to extend our concept of what childhood is again.

If we keep this up a 'child' will be anyone under 30 years. Rather a tiring thought for all those working parents out there.

North Coast action group speaks out on NSW coastal freight corridors

Climate Change Will Make the NSW Coastal Freight Corridors Unsustainable

On 27th November 2007 in the case Walker v Minister for Planning [2007] NSWLEC 741, Justice Peter Biscoe of the Land Environment Court ruled against a coastal development at Sandon Point, on the NSW south coast on the grounds that it will be likely to suffer from coastal flooding as a result of Climate Change. He found that the NSW Planning Minister had failed to consider "whether changed weather patterns would lead to an increased flood risk in connection with the proposed development in circumstances where flooding was identified as a major constraint on development of the site".
A part of his judgement relating to Ecologically Sustainable Development Principles
covers 49 pages and follows the history through the United Nations and other world forums of these principles which relate to, inter alia, preserving biodiversity and taking inter generational responsibility to ensure current developments are sustainable and will not impose an unnecessary burden on future generations.
An area of coastal vulnerability noted in the case was land within 3 kilometres of the high tide mark and under the 6 metre contour.
When we look at the current transportation policy in relation to road and rail freight corridors between Sydney and Brisbane we find that both the rail line which transports mainly bulky goods and the road freight corridor (Pacific Highway) which transports mainly non bulky goods both run within 1 kilometre of the coast when they pass through Coffs Harbour and both are situated under the 6 metre contour.
Lands within 3 kilometres of the coast and under the 6 metre contour have been recognised by planners and the Insurance Council of Australia as being vulnerable to severe weather events and coastal inundation.
A CSIRO report to the Victorian Government suggested that 1:100 severe weather events could occur every 5 years by 2070.
Buffer zones at Hearnes Lake (calculated for the Sandy/Hearnes Lake Estuary Management Plan) where the proposed motorway will run within 600 metres of the High Water Mark take into account rising sea levels and it has been suggested by WBM Oceanics (authors of the EMP) that planning horizons should cover the next 100 years and that the creation of major infrastructure within the coastal zone should be avoided.
The Environmental Assessment for the Sapphire to Woolgoolga section of the Pacific Highway indicates the cost of the new 6 lane motorway upgrade will cost close to $850 million by completion.
Given that $450 million has been invested in the Sydney Brisbane rail line recently and about $850 million will be spent on the 25 kilometre Sapphire to Arrawarra section of the Pacific Highway alone one has to wonder why is so much money being spent on ecologically unsustainable motorways.
The Tourism Transport Forum Ltd claims responsibility on their web site for lobbying the Howard Government into committing AusLink funding for the Hexham to Tweed upgrade of the Pacific Highway to tolled motorway standard and having it declared a national road freight corridor.
SHAG wonders if its members like the NRMA, the RTA, Toll Transport, Macquarie Bank and the AbiGroup who profit from motorway building will ever display the same awareness of Justice Peter Biscoe and others who embrace Ecologically Sustainable Development Principles and face the challenges of Climate Change and Peak Oil and the responsibility to future generations with wisdom and courage.
It is alarming to think that since the WBM Oceanics paper was written, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets have been found to be melting at a rate of 150 billion cubic metres every year (Refer Appendix F).
Climate Change expert with NASA, Dr James Hansen (Appendix F), predicts that if the Earth’s temperature increases by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius this century that ocean levels could rise by up to 1 metre every 20 years. He claims the last time the Earth was 2 to 3 degrees warmer sea levels were 25 metres higher than they are today.
The Planning Minister Frank Sartor, should adopt the Precautionary Principle, refuse Pacific Highway upgrade works in the Northern Beaches of Coffs Harbour and get on with securing a "fit for purpose" rail freight network between Sydney and Brisbane as well as returning road freight to the New England Highway.

Wayne Evans
Sandy Hearnes Action Group (SHAG)

*Guest Speak is a new North Coast Voices feature airing serious or satirical comment by local individuals or groups.

It can't be all bad if Tim Blair dislikes it

Poor Tim Blair of do-you-know-the-truth-or-do-you-read-the-Telegraph fame.

Almost everything that even hints at being slightly green or mentions the possibility of climate change seems to turn this journalist markedly dyspeptic.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he was also a green legume anorexic as a child. :)

Popped on to his 'personal' blog early last night and around a third of the posts on his home page contained a dig at Earth Hour in one form or another.

With Earth Hour likely to occur again next year and climate change just as likely to be remain a topic of discussion, perhaps Tim will have to consider breaking out the Mylanta.

Here's laughing at you, kid.

 

Look who's going to Rudd's 2020 summit

Take a gander at this piece on Kevin Rudd's Australia 2020 summit coming to a comic strip near you this April.

I'm sorry, Kev, but you don't really expect me to take your bit of fluff seriously do you?

First it was Canberra and now wannabe talkfests are springing up everywhere.

So help me - there's even one scheduled for the Clarence Valley. A real piece of busy business allowing government and council staff (along with non-government agency employees and local business operators) to justify their existence. 

The whole national box and dice has all the hallmarks of a camel in the making.

Larvatus Prodeo pointed out some of the problems weeks ago.

Whales of the NSW North Coast in pictures

A slideshow of whale photographs can be found at the North Coast's Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre website here.

This image shows a whale breaching off Byron Bay.

Whale song from ABC's Whale Dreams.

Obama team lashes out: Clinton will "do and say anything" McCain wants "100 years of war"

With the racial attitudes issue muddying waters in the US presidential nomination race, Barack Obama now refocusses attention on his opposition to the war in Iraq.

Pity that this much publicised opposition didn't include voting in the US Senate to starve George W's war machine.

 

Here is the latest email from the Obama camp, with its usual bottom line request for more money.

 

Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are reading from the same political playbook as they attack Barack on foreign policy.

They have both criticized Barack's commitment to act against top al Qaeda terrorists if others can't or won't act.

And they have both dismissed his call for renewed diplomacy as naïve while mistakenly standing behind George Bush's policy of non-engagement that just isn't working.

But most of all -- after five years of overwhelming evidence that we are less safe, less able to shape events abroad, and more divided at home -- Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are failing to address the consequences of a war they both supported that should have never been authorized and never been waged.

We need a leader who had the judgment to oppose this war before it began and who has a clear plan to end it.

But Barack is facing a two-front battle against Senator Clinton and Senator McCain. Make a donation of $25 to support this campaign today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

We knew at the beginning of this campaign that we'd be up against the full force of the conventional thinking that grips Washington.

But no one could have imagined it would go on this long, or that we'd have to fight this battle on two fronts at the same time.

Senator Clinton's campaign, with her chances of winning dwindling and our delegate lead even larger than it was before her so-called comeback on March 4th, has adopted a "kitchen-sink" strategy to throw everything they can at us. Her campaign has made it clear they will do and say anything to win this nomination.

Senator McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, is already running his general election campaign. He's so eager to justify another 100 years of war in Iraq and drum up conflict with Iran that he and his campaign have been making sloppy and woefully false assertions about links between Iran and al Qaeda in Iraq.

We've got to take on both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain at the same time.

Your support now is more important than ever -- please make a donation of $25:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

Yesterday, Barack laid out a clear plan to make America more secure and end the war in Iraq.

Today, he laid out the economic costs of the war that Senator Clinton and Senator McCain supported.

In both speeches -- and in his speech on race in America earlier this week -- Barack Obama demonstrated that he is the candidate with the courage and judgment to tackle the challenges we face.

The choice Americans have in this election is clear -- and your support right now sends a message to those who support the status quo that it is time for a new kind of leadership.

Please do what you can to help fight this two-front battle for change:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Libs have more hide than Jessie the Elephant

Yesterday The Daily Telegraph let the world know that Brendan Nelson, Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and friends would like more money please.

The parliamentary salary scale for Opposition MPs was fine by them when they held the more financially lucrative government benches, but now they don't they want more money for shadow ministers who currently receive the base salary of about $127,060 per annum plus $30,000 in electoral allowances.

With Nelson as Opposition Leader getting a total package of around $262,00 a year and Bishop as Deputy Leader getting an extra $73,000.

These lord high poobahs just cannot get their heads around the fact that they are now the plebs of the Australian Parliament. Their greed and arrogance appear to know no bounds.

With many on the NSW North Coast scratching to find their next meal, keep a roof over their heads and afford medical treatment, whining Libs will find little sympathy hereabouts. 

Oi, Tony - if your wants were weeds you'd have a paddock full!

Read my lips, Mr. Rudd. I will never vote Labor if you continue down this path

For over a decade the former Howard Government ignored this country's own democratic heritage, international law and UN conventions; as it sought ways to quash many of the historic human and legal rights of Australian citizens, turn the safety net welfare system into a form of alms giving dependant on a whim of the government of the day, commence the transformation of public infrastructure/services delivery into 'user pays', and convert a significant part of government pensions, benefits and allowances into a non-cash component.

 

It was easy to turn away from the Liberal Party and the Nationals when faced with this concerted effort to destroy what was left of the ideal of an egalitarian society and the notion of a fair go.

 

Now barely four months after the federal election which saw it installed, the Rudd Government continues to support most of the legislation and regulations which the Howard Government created as its preferred vehicle for the destruction of our civil liberties and the idea of a fair go.

 

We still see racist law operating, habeas corpus remains missing in action for some criminal charges, draconian sedition laws chill dissent, judgemental and punitive attitudes to the poor still flourish within government policy, and there is a continuing push to transform certain pensions, benefits and allowances into a modern version of food stamps under the guise of income 'management'. 

 

The Northern Territory intervention clearly demonstrated that this current push to replace a percentage of welfare cash payments with vouchers or cards has nothing to do with the cited reason of protecting children in dysfunctional home situations. Because income management there was immediately applied across the board in designated indigenous communities and involved people without children, family commitments or any form of addictive/anti-social behaviour.

 

This push originally started as a possible method to control and restrict the lives of welfare recipients in an effort to disguise the fact that the former government was intending to dismantle the welfare system overtime and the Rudd Government allows the push to continue for very similar reasons.

 

Like the Howard Government before it, this Federal Labor Government is first targeting groups which society has always felt comfortable about negatively labelling before it inevitably widens its 18th century net and goes after the unemployed and those with a disability. 

 

Sadly, modern Labor governments right across Australia are turning out to be nothing more than a collection of self-righteous suits eager to assume the position in front of neo-con think tanks, big business and professional god-botherers. Always happy to demonise the weak and vulnerable if doing so pleases these politically powerful sectors. Seeing nothing wrong with the diminished autonomy, discrimination, humiliation and financial loss that ensues.

 

So read my lips Mr. Rudd. If you continue down this path towards establishing debit cards for any or all 'welfare' recipients, I will not be voting for a Labor candidate at any future election.

What's more, I will treat Labor as I treat the Coalition and make sure that my ballot is likely to be exhausted long before my preferences could flow on to its candidate.

 

Therefore, although the Labor MP for Page may be a genuine and hard-working local member she will never see my vote.

No Labor candidate for the NSW Clarence electorate will ever get my vote in the future. Nor will any Clarence Valley local government candidate identified as a member of the Labor Party.

The ball is now in your court, Prime Minister.

Breaking news: Pensioners in financial stress

Australian pensioners will wake to the news today that their politicians have arrived at the ground breaking conclusion that pensioners don't live on easy street.

An Australian Senate committee report has highlighted that those who rely on the pension as their sole income are among those most in financial stress.

The committee's findings come as no surprise to those who struggle to subsist on the meagre pension, particularly single pensioners.

For some perverse reason, politicians, bureaucrats and other assorted bean counters have long figured that single pensioners have overheads that are significantly less than those of their married counterparts.

Even the most cursory examination of pensioners' expenditure records readily reveals that, for want of a better term, 'economies of scale' are had when couples live under the one roof and contribute towards their shared overheads such as rent and utilities.

Single pensioners face the same costs as couples. One doesn't have to be an Albert Einstein to understand that a more equitable approach to pensioner payments is long overdue.

That the committee has reported its findings and recommended an overhaul of pensions is commendable, but for something to be done about it, well that's another thing completely different.

Pensioners can expect to have to wait in their queue for some time. They would be well advised to not hold their breath while waiting for an appropriate course of action that would improve their lot to be implemented.

Heaven forbid, but some fiscal nerds are likely to respond that married pensioners are too well paid and call for their pensions to be cut, bringing them in line with their single counterparts. Too silly for words? Don't be too sure of that!

In part, The Sydney Morning Herald (March 21) reports:

Older single women tend to have missed out on compulsory superannuation and must rely on a pension that is low by English-speaking countries' standards.

They receive a pension of $546.80 a fortnight, compared with the $913.60 for couples, even though many fixed costs such as rates, rents and bills vary little between singles and couples.

The meagre payment meant pensioners were often reduced to relying on donations of food from friends and even, according to one inquiry witness, to "raiding dumpsters to retrieve bread, fruit, vegetables … and sometimes meat" discarded by grocery chains. Others told the inquiry of going to bed early to cut heating bills, and forgoing social visits to or from friends because of transport and meal costs.

The committee agreed to a bipartisan verdict acknowledging pensions had increased in real terms in the past decade. But after hundreds of submissions the committee said the comparatively widespread prosperity "obscures the fact that the distribution of wealth among many older Australians is unbalanced".

Many Australians, particularly those on low, fixed incomes with little discretionary spending capacity, were vulnerable to living cost rises. They were disproportionately affected by increases in essential goods and services: food, rent, petrol, utilities and health care. Growing medical and pharmaceutical costs and the lack of affordable dental services were disturbing.

"These older Australians do not enjoy a decent quality of life," the committee said.

The committee's call for a rethink on the level of the pension and the way it is calculated triggered a chorus of calls from seniors groups for the single pension to be lifted from the current 60 per cent to at least two-thirds of the couple rate.

The chief executive of National Seniors Australia, Michael O'Neill, said the findings "confirm what every pensioner knows: living on a pension has become almost impossible unless you have additional income".

The Government late yesterday signalled that it would consider lifting the single pension.

Read the report in The Sydney Morning Herald here.