For most of the country the mining boom is a good news story of mining royalties and economic resilience that has carried us – so far - through the turbulence on world financial markets. However from close-up in the coastal Pilbara, the resources boom has distorted the local economy beyond recognition. Some are making and [...]
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Posted in Christine Milne, Climate change, Coal, Energy, Energy Efficiency, Environment, Garnaut Review, Poverty, Renewable energy, Senate, Tax, Transport on July 14, 2008 | 30 Comments »
So the day after tomorrow (ah that hoary old Hollywood chestnut…), Penny Wong will finally release the government’s Green Paper, to which Professor Garnaut is one of many ‘inputs’. Most of the others being big business.
While it won’t be anything like final design, and it won’t include any emissions targets or trajectories, the paper should [...]
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Posted in Agriculture, Christine Milne, Climate change, Coal, Energy, Energy Efficiency, Environment, Forestry, Garnaut Review, Kyoto Protocol, Logging, Nukes (energy related), Renewable energy, Senate, Tax, Transport, Welfare, fuel crisis on July 4, 2008 | 21 Comments »
This was published in Crikey this afternoon. My release from today is here.
Professor Garnaut’s much-awaited Draft Report [huge file here if the Garnaut website is still down] is, in general, strong on the architecture but terribly weak on the big, over-riding issue – preventing runaway climate change. His policy prescriptions are completely out of step [...]
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Posted in Agriculture, Budget, Christine Milne, Climate change, Coal, Drought, Education, Energy, Energy Efficiency, Environment, Family & Community, Forestry, Greens, Health, Housing Crisis, Indigenous Australian, Industrial Relations, Logging, Marine, NT Intervention, Peak oil, Poverty, Renewable energy, Senate, Solar PV, Solar Thermal, Sustainable Farming, Tax, Transport, Water, Web 2.0, Welfare, Wind Power, YouTube on May 29, 2008 | 3 Comments »
This has taken a while, but we finally have Christine’s Budget Reply Speech up on YouTube and postable to the blog. Those of you who have enjoyed reading or listening to it may be interested in watching it.
In five parts.
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Although the introduction of the Special Disability Trust (SDT) in September 2006 was welcomed by parents and carers of those living with disabilities, it has not been as widely taken up as expected, during questioning in Senate Estimates it was revealed that only 22 trusts have been established Australia wide to date. [...]
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Posted in Agriculture, Budget, Christine Milne, Climate change, Coal, Disability, Education, Energy, Energy Efficiency, Environment, Family & Community, Forestry, Greens, Health, Housing Crisis, Indigenous Australian, Logging, NT Intervention, Peak oil, Poverty, Renewable energy, Senate, Solar PV, Solar Thermal, Sustainable Farming, Tax, Transport, Water, Welfare, Wind Power on May 16, 2008 | 22 Comments »
Instead of replying to the details of the Rudd-Swan Budget, I decided this year to use their backward-looking, future-phobic presentation as the launching pad for a broader discussion of what we might do if we had a Government with the vision and guts necessary to take on the twin challenges of climate change and peak [...]
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Posted in Housing Crisis, Human Rights, Indigenous Australian, NT Intervention, Poverty, Rachel Siewert, tagged indigenous, intervention, NT, emergency, racism on May 2, 2008 | 6 Comments »
This is an excerpt of a full article I’ve written for newmatilda.com
I’ve just been on the road with the Senate Inquiry into the NT Emergency Response Consolidation Bill - the Government’s proposed changes to Howard’s original legislation.
It has been obvious for a while that there are some serious flaws with the NT [...]
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With all the discussion around the government’s intentions for carer bonuses and payments, Mr Rudd seems to have lost sight of the bigger picture: even with this bonus, carers are seriously under appreciated and under funded. Payment of the bonus or a reorganisation of existing allocation of funds does little to address an issue [...]
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This was orginally published in Crikey’s daily email today, March 5.
Let’s imagine for a moment that the policies put forward in recent days work and, in a few years, more people are able to pay the purchase price for new homes again. Let’s imagine – and this is easy to do – that these policies [...]
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Posted in Family & Community, Human Rights, Indigenous Australian, NT Intervention, Rachel Siewert, Welfare, tagged aboriginal, indigenous, centrelink, NT Intervention, Welfare on February 29, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Post-apology, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has asked us to “embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed,” asserting that the mistakes of Indigenous policy of the past won’t be repeated. His Government, however, is persisting in the ill thought-out and ideologically driven Northern Territory Intervention - despite a promise [...]
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