"We all know Tasmania has the lowest wages in Australia, it has the lowest GDP per head, it's got the lowest life expectancy, it's got the lowest educational retainment in the country and it's got the highest unemployment, and funnily enough for the last eight years it has had a government in large measure dominated by the Greens," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-05/abbott-timber-industry-dinner-forestry-council-forest-locked-up/5299046

 

-------------------------

Er... I am flabbergasted by this idiotic crap... Come on! Since I arrived in this fair country, Tasmania has always been a bit of a "different case" whatever the colour of the government... Who can forget the BATTLE TO SAVE THE FRANKLIN RIVER? Who can forget the battle to save LAKE PEDDER? Often we hear the "inbred" joke about Taswegians... But...

Now, Tony the Idiot want us to believe that saving Tassie's economy involves a visit to a chocolate factory... while most of its economy is based on people wanting to come and see the trees, the forest and pristine nature in general... 

Tony is a hypocritical idiot but are we going to be hypocritically stupid to believe him? Since creating his regime, Tony Abbott has been a disastrous mug...

 

In advance of the half Senate by-election in WA, Senator Scott Ludlam delivers some searing truths about his home state to Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

TONIGHT I RISE to invite Prime Minister Tony Abbott to visit the beautiful state of Western Australia.

I do this in good faith, because we are only a matter of weeks away from a historic by-election that will not just determine the final makeup of this chamber after July but also will decide much more of consequence to the people of Western Australia, whether they are thinking of voting for the Greens or not. Prime Minister, you are welcome out west, but this is a respectful invitation to think carefully about what baggage you pack when you make your next flying campaign stopover.

When you arrive at Perth airport, you will alight on the traditional country of the Whadjuk Nyoongar people, who have sung this country for more than 40,000 years. This is 200 times the age of the city that now stands on the banks of the Derbal Yerigan, the Swan River. Understand that you are now closer to Denpasar than to Western Sydney, in a state where an entire generation has been priced out of affordable housing. Recognise that you are standing in a place where the drought never ended, where climate change from land clearing and fossil fuel combustion is a lived reality that is already costing jobs, property and lives.

Mr Prime Minister, at your next press conference we invite you to leave your excruciatingly boring three-word slogans at home. If your image of Western Australia is of some caricatured redneck backwater that is enjoying the murderous horror unfolding on Manus Island, you are reading us wrong. Every time you refer to us as the 'mining state' as though the western third of our ancient continent is just Gina Rinehart's inheritance to be chopped, benched and blasted, you are reading us wrong. 

Western Australians are a generous and welcoming lot, but if you arrive and start talking proudly about your attempts to bankrupt the renewable energy sector, cripple the independence of the ABC and privatise SBS, if you show up waving your homophobia in people's faces and start boasting about your ever-more insidious attacks on the trade union movement and all working people, you can expect a very different kind of welcome.

People are under enough pressure as it is without three years of this government going out of its way to make it worse. It looks awkward when you take policy advice on penalty rates and the minimum wage from mining billionaires and media oligarchs on the other side of the world-awkward, and kind of revolting. It is good to remember that these things are temporary. For anyone listening in from outside this almost empty Senate chamber, the truth is that Prime Minister Tony Abbott and this benighted attempt at a government are a temporary phenomenon. They will pass, and we need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture.

Just as the reign of the dinosaurs was cut short to their great surprise, it may be that the Abbott government will appear as nothing more than a thin, greasy layer in the core sample of future political scientists drilling back into the early years of the 21st century.

The year 2014 marks 30 years since the election of the first representative of what was to become the Greens-my dear friend and mentor Senator Jo Vallentine. She came into this place as a lone Western Australian representative speaking out against the nuclear weapons that formed the foundations of the geopolitical suicide pact we dimly remember as the Cold War. 

Since the first day of Senator Vallentine's first term, the Greens have been articulating a vision of Australia as it could be-an economy running on infinite flows of renewable energy; a society that never forgets it lives on country occupied by the planet's oldest continuing civilisation; and a country that values education, innovation and equality. These values are still at the heart of our work; nowhere stronger than on the Walkatjurra Walkabout, which will set off again later this month to challenge the poisonous imposition of the state's first uranium mine on the shoreline of Lake Way. As the damage done by the nuclear industry is global, so is our resistance.

Mr Abbott, your thoughtless cancellation of half a billion dollars of Commonwealth funding for the Perth light rail project has been noted. Your blank cheque for Colin Barnett's bloody and unnecessary shark cull has been noted. Your attacks on Medicare, on schools funding, on tertiary education-noted. The fact that your only proposal for environmental reforms thus far is to leave Minister Greg Hunt playing solitaire for the next three years while you outsource his responsibilities to the same Premier who presides over the shark cull has been noted too.

You may not believe this, Prime Minister, but your advocacy on behalf of foreign biotechnology corporations and Hollywood's copyright-industrial complex to chain Australia to the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been noted. People have been keeping a record of every time you have been given the opportunity to choose between predator capitalism and the public interest, and it is bitterly obvious whose side you are on.

So to be very blunt, the reason that I extend this invitation to you, Mr Prime Minister, to spend as much time as you can spare in Western Australia is that every time you open your mouth the Green vote goes up.

You and your financial backers in the gas fracking and uranium industries have inspired hundreds of people to spend their precious time doorknocking thousands of homes for the Greens in the last few weeks. 

Your decision to back Monsanto's shareholders instead of Western Australian farmers has inspired people across the length and breadth of this country to make thousands of calls and donate to our campaign.

As for the premeditated destruction of the NBN and Attorney-General George Brandis's degrading capitulation to the surveillance state when confronted with the unlawful actions of the US NSA-even the internet is turning green, 'for the win'. Geeks and coders, network engineers and gamers would never have voted Green in a million years without the blundering and technically illiterate assistance of your leadership team. 

For this I can only thank you.

And, perhaps most profoundly, your determined campaign to provoke fear in our community-fear of innocent families fleeing war and violence in our region-in the hope that it would bring out the worst in Australians is instead bringing out the best in us. Prime Minister, you are welcome to take your heartless racist exploitation of people's fears and ram it as far from Western Australia as your taxpayer funded travel entitlements can take you.

What is at stake here, in the most immediate sense, is whether or not Prime Minister Tony Abbott has total control of this parliament in coming years. But I have come to realise that it is about much more than that. We want our country back. Through chance, misadventure, and, somewhere, a couple of boxes of misplaced ballot papers, we have been given the opportunity to take back just one seat on 5 April, and a whole lot more in 2016.

Game on, Prime Minister. See you out west.

This speech was an adjournment speech delivered to the Australian Senate at 10.09pm on 4 March 2014 and has been republished from the Australian Greens' website. You can follow Senator Scott Ludlam on Twitter @SenatorLudlam.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/welcome-to-wa-tony-abbott,6246

Every time you refer to us as the 'mining state' as though the western third of our ancient continent is just Gina Rinehart's inheritance to be chopped, benched and blasted, you are reading us wrong.”

When Ludlam rose to speak just after 10pm on Monday only one other senator - Liberal Helen Kroger - was in the chamber. But the video of the speech has become an internet hit, with almost 280,000 YouTube views in three days, largely thanks to people "sharing" it on social media.

That's not at the level of Julia Gillard's misogyny speech - which has over two million views - but it's more than Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations or Prime Minister Abbott's Christmas address.

It's a welcome burst of attention for the Greens' communications and nuclear spokesman, who is battling to hold on to his WA Senate seat.

That task will be even harder if Labor preferences minor parties before the Greens, as Fairfax Media has reported.

"When you do a speech at 10 at night in an empty chamber and then it gets this reaction - I'm gobsmacked actually," Ludlam said. "It appears to have struck a nerve right across the political spectrum.

"Many people have said: 'I'm not a Green, I'm a Liberal or Labor voter but I have shared it."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/greens-senator-scott-ludlams-blunt-speech-to-an-almost-empty-room-goes-viral-20140306-348zx.html#ixzz2v9fk6Pk3
the speech can be seen at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtqrfiEV8Gs
To some extent, it is fortuitous that the Senator was making a speech to a near empty senate room... There were no heckles, no interruptions and no crap coming from the "other side" of the chamber as it often does... Good one Senator Ludlam...

 

The O’Farrell government has opened the way for the state’s forests to be used to generate electricity in a move blasted by the Greens as “devastating”.

Anthony Roberts, the Minister for Resources and Energy, said on Friday that modifications to environmental protection regulations would allow trees otherwise destined for pulp and paper production to be burnt in power stations. Invasive native species and offcuts of sawlogs could also be burnt for power.

Mr Roberts said the move would be monitored by the Environment Protection Authority “to ensure there is no increase in the intensity of clearing or logging”.

Upper house Greens MP John Kaye said the move would expose new native species to logging and perpetuate the ailing woodchip industry that currently consumes about 1 million tonnes of trees a year from the forests in the state’s south-east.  Subsidies for the native forest industry already cost $8 million a year, he said.

“The one chance we had of saving those forests has now been lost, into the furnaces of power stations,” Mr Kaye said, adding that carbon emissions are likely to be as high as six times that of burning coal.

The Greens will seek to block the move in the state’s upper house next week but Mr Kaye said it would be difficult to secure Labor and other parties’ support.

Jeff Angel, executive director of the Total Environment Centre, called the move – to be gazetted by the government later on Friday – “greenwash”, and said his organisation would call for consumers to boycott the power generated from biomaterials.

“This new law is an attack on the environment because it is underlain by the O’Farrell government’s progressive weakening of forest and woodland fauna protections, and is a strut for the clear-felling by the woodchippers who are losing pulp market share,” Mr Angel said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/devastating-changes-allow-forests-to-be-burned-for-power-20140307-34bd5.html#ixzz2vFQ54H5n

The Liberals (CONservAtives) are F&*@%$# vandalising IDIOTS!!!!

 

Greenhouse emissions from Australian companies paying the carbon tax have fallen by 7% over the past year “in large part” due to the carbon price impost, the Investor Group on Climate Change has said.

Calculations by the group of official data from the Clean Energy Regulator shows carbon emissions from Australia’s 350 largest corporate emitters – who are directly liable to pay the tax – fell from 342m tonnes in 2011-12 to 321m tonnes in 2012-13.

The group’s chief executive, Nathan Fabian, said he believed the carbon tax was “the major contributor” to the decrease in emissions, although other factors did play a role, including the shutdown of some large electricity generators because of weather events and the closure of some major manufacturing operations.

Appearing before a Senate committee investigating the Coalition’s Direct Action climate change plan, Fabian said the policy was not “investment grade” and investors were moving to Europe, the US and some South American countries to find “low-carbon opportunities”.

Fabian’s group represents institutional and other investors interested in the impact of climate change on investments.

He said his members were concerned that Direct Action was essentially “a short-term grants based scheme” and he believed the proposed emissions reduction fund would not provide sufficient incentives for investors and business to participate.

“We think banks will take a similar view,” he told a Senate committee inquiry into the Direct Action scheme.

“My members are looking at the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, France and some South American countries as having more stable investment environments for low-carbon opportunities,” he said.

He said the government’s policy to abolish the carbon price and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), and its intention to review the renewable energy target as well as uncertainty over funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency “appears to be a very clear signal that Australia is not the market for low-carbon investing”.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/07/carbon-taxed-companies-cut-emissions-by-7-in-past-year-investor-group-says

A former United States Republican presidential candidate says his party could learn lessons from Tony Abbott's election victory.

Former senator Rick Santorum says Mr Abbott was able to win government while sticking to his right-wing Catholic principles.

Mr Santorum is still toying with another run at the presidency for the Republican Party.

He said Pope Francis and Mr Abbott were two people who had been able to connect with average people while staying true to their principles.

"Australia is clearly to the left of us on most of these moral cultural issues and yet Tony Abbott is a conservative Catholic who didn't change his positions one bit, but was able to go out there and connect with average voters," Mr Santorum told Fox News.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-10/us-republican-praises-tony-abbott/5309338

----------------------------------

Catholic?... Abbott? May be in belief, but zero in performance... Would not have a clue about scientific reasoning either. Tight-arsed in regard to accepting refugees and by sending the bill of his charitable pedalling to the government. The first lesson to learn from Abbott, Mr Santorum, is to lie with false conviction about promises that one has no intention to keep. The other lessons are to demonise with hate and vengeance, use three Goebbelsian-words sentences and use constant bombardment of ugly righteousness against anything that is not conservative — especially against anything that is socially efficient and bears fruit for most of the people...

It's tragic... a doorway to hell could be more catholic than a mad monk ....

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced a $320 million assistance package to support drought-hit farmers in New South Wales and Queensland.

Justifying the package, Mr Abbott said: "Drought of this severity is not the normal course of business. This is not just a once-in-a-decade drought. It's a once-in-a-quarter-century drought in many places. In some places, it's a once-in-a-century drought".

 

ABC Fact Check investigates whether the current drought really is a "once-in-a-quarter-century" drought or even a "once-in-a-century" drought.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-12/tony-abbott-drought-severity-claim-checks-out/5295232

---------------------------------

Mr Abbott is not the dude who formulated the severity of the drought... The BoM (Bureau of Meteorology) GAVE HIM THE INFORMATION to spruik... That Mr Abbott says it OR NOT is BESIDE the fuct chicken... The person doing the fact check at the ABC seems to always try to associate win-wins with the Liberals (CONservatives) and loose-loose with Labor... What actually the fict-chocker at the ABC should investigate is if Tony Abbott has yet realised that the AVERAGE TEMPERATURES IN AUSTRALIA ARE RISING and that this has led to increases in extremes — DROUGHT and FLOODS.

In fact Tony Abbott and his team of denialists are telling weasel porkies in regard to global warming.

Now, DOES GLOBAL WARMING FACT CHECKS? The pea brain in charge of fact checking at the ABC would not HAVE A CLUE or would not be prepared to wet his dacks on this issue — though 97 per cent of serious scientists know it's happening FASTER that we care to do anything about it.

The Fick-Chucker at the ABC should also investigate the stupid value of the Direct Action by Tony-da-Boom versus the carbon Pricing. I believe a lot of economists and bankers think that the carbon pricing is the way to go and the rest thinks that the duroct iction is a TOTAL crock/cruck/crick and does not fock-chuck-iut... 

That Tony decided to help the farmers is a political decision. That the drought is known to be severe is observed by the BoM and the farmers. The ABC FACT-CHEKER fact-checking the Bureau of meteorology???? Come on!!! That's a crock to give points to Tony... Fock thut!!!

 

Now if the feckt chickor at the ABC is looking for real things to do or check out:

 

These are but a few of the known, or declared, environmentally destructive acts, of the last six months.

1. Discrediting of and intent to axe the price on carbon. The repeal has been passed in the lower house.
2. Approval of Clive Palmer’s China First mine in the Galilee Basin.
3. Approval for Gina Rinehart’s coal mine expansion in Galilee Basin.
4. Approval of expansion of coal port at Abbott Point.
5. Allowing dumping of dredged toxic material perilously close to Great Barrier Reef.
6. Enabling shark killing in Western Australia by exempting WA from protected species legislation.
7. Breaking an election promise to send a vessel to the Antarctic to monitor Japanese whalers.
8. Approving grazing trial of cattle in Victorian Alpine National Parks despite flawed science supporting it.
9. Appointment of out and proud climate skeptic/denier and former oil executive Dick Warburton to head a ‘review’ of renewable energy targets.
10. Fast tracking of environmental approvals; that is cutting “green tape” and thereby jeopardising environment approvals.
11. Attempts by the Coalition to dismantle the Climate Change Authority, which have recently ‒ thankfully ‒ been rejected in the Senate.
12. Plans to formally apply to wind back heritage listing of Tasmanian Forests.
13. Declaration by Tony Abbott that ‘we have too many locked up forests’ and National Parks.
14. Denial of a link between wild fires and extreme heat, leading to the non-implementation of protective or adaptive responses.
15. Failure to listen to the science of climate change regarding Queensland droughts so that no real adaptive action was taken.
16. Abbott’s responding IMF head Christine Lagarde calling for the G20 to include climate change on its priorities as not wanting the “agenda to get too cluttered”.
17. Ignoring report of CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology on state of Australia’s climate.
18. Pointless and costly review of wind farming and its health issues, despite 20 previous investigations having cleared wind farming of any health concerns.
19. Failure by Abbott to show concern about the health risks of coal despite the recent ongoing polluting coal fire at Morwell.
20. Federal cuts to all environmental legal aid.
21. Rephrasing and renaming ‘clean energy’ as dirty words, while cleansing dirty coal language.
22. Mounting concerted attacks on renewables.
23. Axing of COAG (Council of Australian Governments) Environment Ministers Forum after 41 years.
24. Scrapping the Biodiversity Fund and Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
25. Cutting $6.7 million funding to the: Caring for our Country Program.
26. Abolition of the Low Carbon Communities Program.
27. CSG approvals fast tracked despite concerns and evidence of the contamination of aquifers.
28. Promotion of the sham of “Direct Action” on climate, which features financial  compensation/incentives to big polluters.
29. Refusal to heed the Climate Authority about increasing emission reduction targets.
30. Not having a science minister.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/tony-abbott-and-his-headless-chooks-climate-change-vandals,6269

 

A key advisor to the World Heritage Committee has flagged concerns with the Federal Government's plan to delist 74,000 hectares of Tasmania's World Heritage Area.

In 2013, the committee approved an extension to the area, adding about 172,000 hectares to take the total protected area to about 1.6 million hectares.

The Federal Government vowed to reduce the area to help Tasmania's economy as part of an election commitment.

As part of the World Heritage Area boundary change, areas of the Southern Forests, the Styx and the Florentine were given protection.

The Government has said areas of genuine high conservation value are not part of the delisting plan, including tall forests in the Great Western Tiers.

A Senate inquiry is investigating the issue and in a submission, the Australian arm of the International Council on Monuments and Sites said it believed allowing the reduction in the area would likely reduce the credibility of the World Heritage listing.

The council is one of three advisory bodies for the World Heritage Committee and provides evaluations of cultural and mixed properties proposed for inscription on the World Heritage List.

"We are alarmed that this proposal ... fails to respect that due process was followed by the World Heritage Committee and that Outstanding Universal Value has been established as a prerequisite for the decision to support the 2013 Boundary Modification," the submission said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/heritage-area-reduction-plan-concerns-world-heritage-committee/5318182

 

The government has been accused of misleading the UN in its bid to strip world heritage protection from tracts of Tasmanian forest, after the release of pictures purportedly showing that ecologically pristine areas will be delisted.

Bob Brown, the former Greens leader, has released a tranche of photos from the Weld Valley, one of several areas where the government wants to remove a total of 74,000 hectares of the world heritage protection.

Brown said the images were evidence that 90% of the 74,000 hectares are “pristine, magnificent forests”. The government has argued a world heritage boundary extension last year include areas of logged, degraded forest that is being unnecessarily “locked up” from the timber industry.

The government has formally requested the world heritage committee reduce the protected Tasmanian forest area by 4.7%, claiming that the Tasmanian economy will benefit and that landholders were not properly consulted over the extension.

Brown told Guardian Australia: “The boundary has not been drawn by any environmental consistency, it’s for pure commercial expedience. I think their hidden agenda is to privatise the forests.

“I’ve spent many days and nights in the forests on the hit list. They are a tourism drawcard and far more valuable as carbon storage than woodchips.”

A Senate inquiry into the delisting has so far received more than 6,000 submissions, mostly against the plan.

Legal group the Australian Network of Environmental Defender’s Offices (ANEDO) said the government has incorrectly suggested that threatened species such as the Tasmanian devil will be protected if the world heritage listing is removed.

The ANEDO said the government’s submission to the UN is “misleading” and that the removal of world heritage protection will also exempt forestry operations from the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the key Australian legislation used to protect threatened species.

‘The presence of ‘disturbed and previously logged forest’ and ‘pine and exotic eucalypt plantations’ within the world heritage area is not a sound basis upon which to seek to modify its boundary,” the legal group’s submission said.

“It is clear that a significant portion of the forest area proposed for removal has not been disturbed or previously logged.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/coalition-misled-un-heritage-listing-tasmanian-forest

 

 

Mr Hockey's claims about Australia's forecast levels of debt and deficits may be "pessimistic", but they are consistent with Treasury modelling.

His comments on growth in spending and debt compared to the 17 nations surveyed by the IMF check out.

He fails to mention the fact that Australia's overall debt as a proportion of GDP remains at comparatively low levels internationally.

Overall, Mr Hockey's claim is correct.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/joe-hockey-correct-on-australia-debt-and-spending/5310736

------------------------------------

This is an annoying political statement by the "Fact-Checker" at the ABC rather than a proper analysis of the situation.

Overall, the figures mentioned are arty-farty manipulation of "affordability" and of the social structure's ability to look after its citizens. The fact remains that Australia's overall debt as a proportion of GDP remains at comparatively low levels internationally. This tends to give more flexibility for keeping the national economy cooking for the benefit of most people, rather than hit most people on the head as Joe is planning to do, to achieve a set of pretty figures. So far, it appears the kiddies in charge of the Abbott Regime have only managed to destroy a lot of toys in vengeful acts. The list is long.

Ah... and by the way, the head of treasury has been sacked by Tony Abbott's regime, I have been told...

The Abbott government should ask Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson to stay on, despite being sacked last year, according to former Treasury head Ken Henry who said no previous government had thought it appropriate to remove the head of Treasury.

Dr Henry told the ABC’s 7.30 that he was disappointed to see Coalition attacks on his old department last year when public servants are unable to defend themselves publicly.

Asked if Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s decision last year to remove Dr Parkinson was normal, Dr Henry noted that “it’s never happened in the Treasury in 114 years, 113 years”.

“No government has ever thought it appropriate to remove the head of the Treasury and put in somebody who they think is of the right, let’s say, of a more comfortable political character,” he said.

“Now I’m not saying that is what has motivated the Prime Minister on this occasion [but] if that is what is intended then that would be a very disappointing move and quite an historic one.”

http://www.afr.com/p/national/politics/sacked_treasury_head_should_stay_m3dzdIRgCQBaC0s7hU4a6J

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton's comparison of Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler checks out?

 

 

 

amanolakis 1:54 PM on 25/03/2014
It is just WRONG that Hillary Clinton's comparison of Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler checks out. Not even close ABC.

An elected Government (Ukrainian) is overthrown by anti government protectors supported and financed by Hillary's democratically elected Government in the USA.

THE USA the very country which nuked Japan for no military reason (as the war was won and Japan wanted to surrender but the USA would not allow Japan to surrender), to show USSR it had a powerful new weapon and to use the Japanese people as guinea pigs to see the effects of the weapon on the people of japan has no rights to comment on the behaviour of others.

jasmine h 1:53 PM on 25/03/2014
What a ridiculous conclusion by a State that does what it wishes, anytime, anywhere. Can you imagine the USA putting up with a Nazi mob getting rid of its elected president no matter how bad he was? Okay Putin is a strong man in a fragile country so was Saddam Husain, and the leaders of Syria, Libya and Egypt. The yanks get them kicked out directly or indirectly and what do you have mayhem and carnage that lasts for years. We have yet to see what happens in Afghanistan once the "peace corps" quits. Give Putin some slack and stop the threats that will lead to another war no one wants.

 

 

 

And the executive director of The Climate Institute John Connor said it did not make sense for Australia to talk about halving emissions from brown coal - which would bring them into line with black coal - when the IPCC was talking about phasing out fossil fuel power unless it included full carbon capture and storage.

Hunt nominated preservation of “the great rainforests of the world” as the other “big thing’ countries could do to reduce emissions.

The IPCC report said said renewables needed to make up 80% of the world’s energy by 2050.

Hunt described Australia’s target of cutting emissions by 5% by 2020 as “one of the world’s leading reductions”. The independent Climate Change Authority found it should be trebled if Australia was to shoulder a fair share of global emissions reductions

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/03/coal-emission-reduction-technology-still-five-years-off-says-csiro

------------------------

Yes we've got enough of hunt hypocrisy in regard to emission reduction and "protection of forests". He either lives in his own stupid hypocritical little mind or he talks shit. See toon at top.

 

Former prime minister Tony Abbott scrapped Labor's carbon tax in 2014.

Mr Turnbull said he had never supported a carbon tax.

"There are many distinguished members of the Coalition parties who have supported a carbon tax over the past — I've never done," he said.

Mr Joyce told the ABC's 7.30 program the Government did not support a carbon tax, saying they had "said that quite clearly".

"They can investigate possibilities, we're honouring our commitments, we're going to meet our commitments to the Paris protocol — in fact we're going to outdo it," he said.

"I can only tell you what the position of the Coalition is now, and I can tell you what the position of the National Party is now, we don't support a carbon tax."

'One of the dumbest things I've heard'

Conservative senator Cory Bernardi went even further in his rhetoric and said debating the issue was only going to "cause division".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-06/turnbull-dismisses-colleagues'-criticisms-of-climate-change/8095096

Tony Abbott has slammed the Turnbull government for reportedly killing off his pet project, the Green Army, saying he is “dismayed” by such a move.

In a direct attack on Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister also declared that abolishing the environmental program would “hardly be a smart move for a centre right government”.

As recently as last month Mr Abbott praised the Prime Minister for adopting a “much more orthodox centre right” leadership approach.

“I’m dismayed by reports the Green Army may be scrapped,” Mr Abbott wrote on Facebook.

“Not only has it been good for grassroots conservation but it got unemployed people working too. It’s a bad principle to axe your own policy for the Greens policy because it means that their priorities are more important than ours.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/tony-abbotts-green-army-to-be-killed-off/news-story/f92cab4fc888809d28cfb32dde3d894e

 

What this does not tell you is that Abbott was in favour of cutting old growth forest down... And that he once supported a carbon tax. See toon at top.

 

From Greg Jericho

As I watched Coles cower to complaints and decide first to provide free plastic bags indefinitely and then announce a deadline of 29 August, I was struck by how climate change has utterly destroyed the minds of conservatives.

Here was a pretty straightforward proposition to get behind – not least for those who believe in small government. In New South Wales and Victoria, unlike in other states where a legal ban on plastic bags has been in place for some time, Coles and Woolworths instituted a ban of their own volition. 

 

The plastic bag ban is not really about climate change, it’s about conservation – the tool conservatives such as Tony Abbott used to counter criticism they did not care about the environment.

It was the thinking behind Abbott’s Green Army, with that old-fashioned personal-responsibility aspect about it. Get out and plant some trees, pick up some rubbish and huzzah, look at me, I care about the environment, and unlike those greenies who just want to destroy jobs, I’m doing something that matters.

 

But sigh, no. Conservatives have been rendered so bereft by climate change that anything carrying even the slightest taint of an environmental impact is viewed with distrust. And so the plastic bag ban quickly became a new focus of the culture wars.

It’s all rather odd, but fits perfectly within a strain of thought that has decided the way forward is to ignore evidence and instead pursue an ideology of wilful ignorance. 

It has led to the point where there are barely any conservative commentators worth reading or listening to. It’s not that there are no intelligent conservative thinkers, but the lunacy of climate change denial and distrust of expertise has so infected the conservative media that prominence is now almost exclusively given to those for whom a worldwide conspiracy is more believable than reports by multiple universities and public agencies.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2018/aug/05/a-virus-of-...

 

See also:

chuga chuga chuga chuga...

 

and all the relevant articles on global warming on this site, including:

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/19279

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8985

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/26452

 

Read from top.

 

See also:

save the koala...

 

saving the royal planet...