On Tuesday, the Abbott government delivered their much anticipated budget, putting an end to the age of ‘reckless spending’ and ‘entitlement’ and saving Australia from its path to economic destruction. There were some winners. The mining industry was generally happy with budget, finally rid of… Read more
Last week, Australia’s favourite mining magnate / politician / conspiracy theorist Clive Palmer made a bid for a stake in the controversial Abbot Point development. The $3 billion expansion of the T2 coal export Terminal was abandoned by BHP Billiton in November and now Clive,… Read more
Last Saturday, four members of a group of 13 medical professionals and students were arrested after joining an anti-mining protest at Maules Creek. Spending more than four hours chained together at the site, the so-called Medics Against Coal felt compelled to act. In March, 92… Read more
The Queensland Environment Minister Andrew Powell yesterday urged Australians to boycott the much loved American ice cream company, Ben & Jerry’s. What is this lunacy, you ask? What possibly could these old, smiling purveyors of frozen goodness have done to become the focus of such… Read more
With July 1st bringing a new senate, there has been a lot of talk about the Mining Tax. The Mining Tax, or Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT), has been a thorn in the side of the Liberal government since its introduction in 2012 and its… Read more
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on the Australian government. Once again, toxic waste from Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery near Townsville is threatening to spill into the Great Barrier Reef and local waterways. This comes only weeks after newly released documents revealed… Read more
According to Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt, coal will power Australia for “decades and decades” to come. Instead of increasing our Renewable Energy Target from a pitiful 5% by 2020 in a bid to reduce emissions, Hunt believes that scientific advances in carbon capture and… Read more
The Federal Government wants to amend a section of the Agricultural and Veterinarian Chemicals Act which would eliminate unsafe chemicals from our food and agricultural products. The mandatory scheme for the re-approval and re-registration of pesticides was introduced by the former Labour Government and was due… Read more
The upcoming budget will slash $100 million from the Department of the Environment over the next three years. An internal government review has indicated that 670 jobs will be shed, equating to a quarter of the Department’s workforce, with 250 voluntary redundancies expected by Christmas… Read more
The wilderness of the Cape York Peninsula is one of Australia’s most precious. One of the last wild places on earth it is a biodiversity hotspot, home to undisturbed tropical forests, wetlands and over 300 species of endemic flora and fauna. The Cape is also… Read more
Muckaty Station is a small township in the remote Northern Territory, 110km north of Tennant Creek and roughly 800km south of Darwin. Also known as Marlwanpa, the land is held under Native Title having formally been returned in 2001 to the traditional owners – the… Read more
Australians are becoming increasingly concerned with the impacts of large dredging projects on their delicate marine environments. After the social, economic and environmental disaster at Gladstone after large scale port dredging, local communities are concerned about the impacts on recreational & commercial fishing, tourism and… Read more
Today, the Mackay Conservation Group filed documents in Brisbane’s Federal Court challenging the government’s controversial decision to dredge and dump at Abbot Point. This is the second legal action against the government over the approval. As with North Queensland Conservation Council, they will be represented… Read more
Renewable energy is not something that springs to mind when I think of Clive Palmer. Loudmouth Imbecile? Yes. Bizarrely entertaining lunatic? Yes. Environmentally insensitive coal-mining magnate? Yes. But Palmer United Party’s controversial leader has spoken out in support of renewable energy and against government plans… Read more
The blows just keep on coming. Tony Abbott, speaking last week at a ForestWorks industry dinner in Canberra, hailed loggers as the “ultimate conservationists” and promised to end the lock-up of timber in national parks. Abbott told the audience that Australia has “quite enough” national… Read more
This week came a huge blow to Environment Minister Greg Hunt and the controversial Abbot Point coal port development he approved late last year. New documents obtained by Greenpeace emerged this week, revealing the extent of the Marine Park Authority’s opposition to both the dredging… Read more
In a recent article in the UK’s Independent, journalist Kathy Marks poses the question, “Is Tony Abbott’s Australian administration the most hostile to his nation’s environment in history?” Marks criticises Abbott’s absolute disregard for the science of climate change and even science itself, by not even… Read more
Tony Abbott has arrived in the drought affected regions of Western New South Wales and Queensland to discuss a potential government aid package with struggling regional farmers. By all accounts, these regions have faced a devastating drought over the last two years, with some areas… Read more
In another blow to the Australian environment, the government announced that it will remove 170,000 hectares of forest from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, opening it up to logging. In a week that also saw approval granted to dump 3 million cubic metres of… Read more