Releasing a list of the Abbott government’s top failures, the Australian Greens say the first 100 days have been a secretive, cruel and chaotic preview of what is to come.

“During the election campaign the Abbott government’s true agenda was hidden behind cheap rhetoric, but you can’t run a country with a slogan,” said Australian Greens Leader Christine Milne.

“The Abbott government has tried to claim a so-called mandate to take Australia back to the last century, but he doesn’t have one. The longer Prime Minister Abbott and his big business mates run the show, the less the public knows about what’s going on behind the scenes. The Abbott government is a secretive, cruel and chaotic government.

“The Australian people didn’t sign up to this, and the Greens will stand against it. (more…)

Voters face a serious choice on September 7 and the choice they make will determine the direction this country follows, not just for the next three years but for a long time after, says Greens candidate for Eden-Monaro Catherine Moore.

“On the one hand we have an Opposition that has set itself up to take control, but whose policies are largely unknown and whose actions are all about making the rich richer. It is an Opposition that denies the need to act decisively on climate change and perpetuates fear and loathing of some of the most vulnerable people, including asylum seekers,” says Catherine.

“On the other hand we have  government that seems to be trying to match the Opposition’s position in a number of areas, including refugees, and that also lacks the courage to ask the wealthiest to pay a fairer share.

“Both are determined to hold onto power at any cost, and have lost sight of the need to make decisions for the greater good of the whole community, into the future.

“But it doesn’t have to be simply an “either… or” situation. (more…)

The Senate has backed an Australian Greens motion recognising the start of legal action in the International Court of Justice against Japanese whaling and urging the Government to ensure any resources needed to enforce a positive ruling are provided.

“The start of this case is an important day for the decades-old fight against whaling,” Senator Rachel Siewert said today.

“The Senate recognised this, supporting the Greens motion and noting that this case will be keenly followed by all those Australians who oppose the continuation of whaling.

“It is also significant that the Senate backed our calls for the Government to consider what resources will be provided to enforce a positive result.

“This court case is an important marker in this long campaign, but it is important to remember that the Japanese Government have a track record of ignoring or bypassing international treaties, regulations and requests. The Government therefore needs a plan to enforce the findings. (more…)

Without the efforts of community groups and sustainable industry groups, there would be nothing to celebrate today, World Environment Day, according to  Greens candidate for Eden-Monaro, Catherine Moore.

“Politicians are failing the community when it comes to looking after the environment, but people working in their communities – in environment groups and industries committed to sustainability – are another story altogether,” says Catherine.

“Right now in this country, we have a number of state governments including in NSW looking at opening up National Parks to logging, mining, grazing and shooting.

“To his credit, Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke is at least recognising that the Federal Government may need to step in to protect National Parks from inappropriate activities like these. He needs all the encouragement we can give him.

“But the Federal Government still has on the table plans to hand over environmental powers to the states, and plans by Tony Abbott go even further. (more…)

Earth Day dates back to 1970 when the first one was held in the U.S.A., but this year’s in particular is a day for sober reflection, says Greens candidate for Eden-Monaro Catherine Moore.

“Every day there are email notifications calling for action on multiple environmental disasters. Unlike the finance reports however, which appear without fail in news bulletins and newspapers, many of these issues receive no coverage at all.

“You name it, it’s happening – the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest and the habitat of indigenous peoples for gold-mining; farmland and forest being turned into palm oil plantations;  attempts by corporations to patent a plant that has been used for thousands of years or to introduce genetically manipulated organisms into land or water when they have not been proven to be safe for human health or the environment. And of course the biggest potential environmental catastrophe of our time, climate change with its more frequent extreme weather and fire events, melting ice and glaciers, and rising sea levels. (more…)

It’s Earth Day! (more…)

As the O’Farrell government enters the second half of its term, the Greens NSW MPs have put together a report card on the government’s worst failures, and the Greens’ top achievements for a more sustainable and caring NSW.

The O’Farrell government:

• launched attacks on wages and conditions of teachers, nurses and other public sector workers, and drastic cuts to our workers compensation laws
• overturned the 26-year ban on uranium exploration in NSW, prompting widespread community concern and condemnation
• savaged schools and TAFE, stripping a staggering $1.6 billion of funding from public education
• opened up national parks to recreational hunters for the sake of a political deal with the extreme Shooters Party to enable electricity privatisation
• broke an election promise to oppose mining in drinking water catchments with approval of massive coal mine in the Sydney catchment
• gave tunnel vision priority to more tollways with $1.8 billion committed to the WestConnex without traffic modelling or cost-benefit analysis
• launched a “dob-in a rorter” program that demonised public housing tenants, while failing to clear the maintenance backlog and left tens of thousands on social housing waiting lists.
• watered down coal seam gas policy, failing to protect our farming lands and water with a weak strategic land use policy
• proposed child protection reforms that focus on punitive approaches to parents in at-risk families and prioritising adoption under short time-frames
• eroded civil liberties and failed to deal with police accountability - from the expansion of the sniffer dogs program, the removal of the right to silence and the failure to ensure that police do not investigate police
• squandered opportunity to transition to low carbon clean energy economy throwing $11 billion of wind industry investment into doubt with unrealistic and unreasonable wind farm guidelines.
• trashed marine science with the closure of The Cronulla Fisheries Research Centre of Excellence and continuing the deal with the Shooters Party for a moratorium on new marine parks
• replaced one pro-developer planning system with another, failing to put planning decisions back in the hands of local communities

(more…)

The Australian Greens have called on the Federal Government to immediately intervene and stop illegal refuelling of the Japanese whaling fleet in Australia’s Antarctic Territory as safety threats grow.

“I am writing to Minister Burke requesting that he urgently intervenes and orders the Japanese fleet to leave Australian waters, as well as dispatching a monitoring vessel immediately,” Senator Rachel Siewert, Australian Greens marine spokesperson said today.

“There are reports that the whaling fleet and Sea Shepherd are operating in close proximity as the factory ship Nisshin Maru attempts to illegally refuel from the Korean-flagged Sun Laurel. (more…)

Greens MP and environment spokesperson Cate Faehrmann says that the NSW Government should take the advice of the five trawler operators from Nelson Bay who have declared their practice environmentally damaging, and move to ban trawling in the state’s marine parks.

“Trawling is nothing less than land clearing with bulldozers and chains at the bottom of the ocean. It kills fish and destroys habitat indiscriminately. It has no place in a marine park,” said Ms Faehrmann.

“If trawling is allowed to continue in key sensitive areas we are going to see a rapid decline of marine life. Both the commercial and recreational industries will suffer. (more…)

While watching the item on Julia Gillard’s visit to China on last night’s Lateline, I couldn’t help but feel buoyed by the following matter-of-fact response to Ali Moore’s question:

ALI MOORE: Well, I know in (Julia Gillard’s) speech tonight that she did raise the issue of the proposed carbon tax. Is that carbon tax, the idea or the plan to put a price on carbon, an issue for the Chinese?

STEPHEN MCDONELL: Well the interesting thing with global warming in China is that there’s no debate here, no public debate as to whether or not global warming is happening or that it’s man-made, because the Government just accepts the scientific evidence that both of these things are true. So, you know, you’re not gonna get people here questioning Julia Gillard about this. And the big companies here, the state-owned companies have essentially been told to get on with doing something about this. And so you’ve got the big oil companies here, they’re throwing billions of dollars at renewable energy, huge wind farms, solar energy and this sort of thing, so it’s not seen as such a conflict here in that way.

And I really think that any sort of - people questioning whether or not coal prices might go up, for example, imports, as a result of this is just a little bit at the margins. Essentially, as I said, this is - it’s recognised by the Government that these measures must be taken, and so, I s’pose in that sense, Julia Gillard is amongst friends here.

Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party, are you listening? And Big Business in Australia, and all the other detractors of the carbon tax, not to mention the climate change denialists - are you? (more…)