AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE COMMISSION: The Chief Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, was today misrepresented in the Australian Newspaper in an article titled “Tim Flannery backs coal seam gas”.
Professor Flannery commented that he was “very disappointed that the headline of the article seriously misrepresents my view and bears no resemblance to the speech I delivered.”
Professor Flannery had been quoted from a speech he had made at the NSW Minerals Council environment and community conference, a meeting of environmental workers in the minerals industry. He released the following statement in response:
QUEENSLAND RESOURCES COUNCIL: Jubilant scenes in the House of Representatives yesterday following passage of the world’s biggest carbon tax would be repeated more boisterously in Canada, the USA and South America, Queensland Resources Council Chief Executive Michael Roche says.
"The hugs and backslapping in Canberra this morning are nothing compared with the level of excitement that this tax on Australia’s key export industries is generating among our global competitors," he says.
CHRIS DALEY: Much of Australia's agriculture and environment rely on the Murray-Darling river system. Yet the paltry 2,400 billion litres proposed to save it will only condemn it to a long, slow death.
The Murray Darling Basin Authority has effectively condemned the entire river system to death if it only seeks to buy back 2,800 billion litres of water, as reported this week.
This is a cowardly response from an organisation charged with saving Australia's lifeblood. It is an approach with no scientific merit and represents an appalling waste of taxpayers' money.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Our industry has declined from 55 ships in 1995 to just 22 today. This is in spite of the fact that Australia accounts for ten percent of the world’s entire sea trade. But while 99 percent of our international trade is carried by ships, only one half of one percent of that is carried by vessels that proudly display the Australian flag. Those 22 Australian ships that still service our ports average 20 years of age, around eight years older than the world average. Our seafarers are also getting on in years with half of them aged older than 45.
With so few ships, an ageing fleet and a declining workforce, our industry has reached the point where it is facing extinction. Such a collapse is not just an economic tragedy. There are also sound security and environmental reasons why an Australian shipping industry is essential. We all watched with dismay when the Chinese bulk-carrier the Shen Neng 1 ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef. Cleaner, better maintained Australian ships would provide greater environmental certainty for our precious marine ecosystems. More Australian ships would also improve our broader maritime security, particularly at our ports.
CHRIS GRIFFIN, Australian Dairy Farmers: Coles has continually tried to claim that dairy farmers are not being impacted by the pricing of milk at an unsustainable $1 per litre. This is simply not true. The evidence is in and the Coles’ led milk price war is directly impacting dairy farmers. There is now no doubt that Coles’ gain is farmers’ pain.
Dairy farmers in the key drinking milk markets of Queensland, northern NSW and Western Australia are being hit hard. In its submission to the Senate inquiry into milk prices ADF shows how.
In the last seven months dairy farmers have had to contend with the uncertainty created by Coles’ cut throat discounting of fresh milk. In Queensland alone over 20 farmers have left the industry, since the price war started, with many citing the impacts and poor outlook due to the supermarket milk price war as a key contributing factor in deciding to exit the industry.
The impact of the tragic events last week, in which the ABC documentary team filming over Lake Eyre were killed when their chopper crashed, has affected both those who knew and loved them, and those who have walked in their steps. Sydney man, Graham Wilson and three of his friends were travelling through the area on that same fateful day. He writes this, in dedication:
We were there that day too. We did not see them or meet them, but we met the same people they met and saw the same sights they saw.
Out on the Cooper, life is cheap and vastness is everywhere. In the early morning light we caught a boat up the river, playing tourists. It is a river almost beyond comprehension, this river from nowhere to nowhere, misnamed a creek. That morning it was a living river, a wealth of waterbirds of innumerable numbers feasting, on nature’s bounty, while the light shimmered and danced across the water, and a cold wind and cloudless blue winter sky heralded the end of the dawn.
BARNABY JOYCE: The Convoy of No Confidence that will arrive in Canberra today is the inevitable consequence of a population that is just sick to the back teeth of what is happening to their country.
Those participating are not nasty, they just want the government gone. They are regular truck drivers, regular people who are making a political point. They are driving to Canberra to ask the government to do the decent thing and go to an election. It is like when a relationship breaks down; Australians are saying they want out, or more to the point they want the government out.
CRAIG KNOWLES: During the past fortnight, I have met and spoken with senior ministers and officials in the Basin Governments as part of the necessary briefings and discussions as we move towards consulting on a draft basin plan.
Following these discussions, and submissions from some states, the Authority has formed a view that there are broader issues that need to be resolved before the draft plan is released.
I want to ensure that these broader issues have time to be worked through and governments have access to the information they need.
PROFESSOR IAN R. PLIMER: Climate always changes. Evidence of past climate changes are all around us. It has for 4,567 million years. Ice on Earth is rare. Planet Earth has been warmer and wetter than at present >80 per cent of time. Not one past climate change was driven by carbon dioxide even though atmospheric carbon dioxide was far higher than now for most of time. Climate cycles are of galactic (143 my), orbital (100,000, ~41,000 and ~21,000 yr), solar (1,500, 210, 87, 22 and 11 yr), oceanic decadal (~30 yr) and lunar tidal (~18.6 yr) origin. Sporadic climate changes are caused by supervolcanoes, supernoval eruptions and the pulling apart and stitching back together of continents. Since the earliest times in the Solar System, Earth has been degassing carbon dioxide from igneous activity and metamorphism, before, during and after volcanic eruptions from gas vents, hot springs and craters. The same occurs today on the Moon and the rocky planets.
MICHAEL ROCHE: There continues to be much media commentary devoted to the ‘contest’ between agriculture and mining in Queensland, yet on the ground, it’s a perception being increasingly challenged by farmers and resource developers.
In parts of Queensland, farmers, oil and gas producers and miners have been working side-by-side for up to 50 years, and while resource sector growth is challenging accepted norms in new regions, the message is getting through.
The smartest people in the room are not the ones advocating moratoriums but the ways and means of ensuring that the state’s two great export industries strengthen what is already a long and productive association.
