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…)

The Australian Greens have launched a new plan to give refugees a safer pathway to protection. The plan includes increasing the government’s humanitarian intake to 30,000 a year, providing an extra $70 million per annum in emergency funding to help fast track the processing of refugee claims in Indonesia and shutting down all detention camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

It comes on top of a Galaxy poll, commissioned by the Australian Greens, which shows that 48 per cent of Australians don’t trust Labor or the Coalition to care for refugees ahead of political interests, while 20 per cent remain undecided.

“The majority of Australians recognise that Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott cannot be trusted to care for refugees,” Greens Leader Senator Christine Milne said.

“They are locked in a race to the bottom to see who can adopt the cruellest approach to refugees, including dumping them on our poorest neighbours. (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…)

Greens spokesperson on women Senator Lee Rhiannon has questioned whether women can trust opposition leader Tony Abbott’s promise today that he will heed the advice of technical experts on abortion drugs and has called on him to definitively declare his position on women’s right to access the full range of reproductive health procedures.

“Abbott’s assurance that he will accept the advice of technical experts cannot be trusted if you look at his history during the Howard years,” Senator Rhiannon said.

“As Health Minister in 2005 Mr Abbott relied on limited advice from the Chief Health Officer on whether to lift the ban on RU486.

“Mr Abbott was criticised by the AMA’s rural taskforce and the Rural Doctor’s Association of Australia for failing to consult with them. He instead took the Chief Health Officer’s advice that rural and regional health services and GPs were not equipped to provide medical abortion.

“Women living in regional and rural areas have been disadvantaged ever since.

“The attitude of the Opposition leader to women’s rights is shaping up as issue of public interest in the coming election campaign. (more…)

Australian Greens health spokesperson, Dr Richard Di Natale, said today that he would be pushing for a vote on his Restoring Territories Rights (Voluntary Euthanasia Legislation) Bill, before the election.

“Dying with dignity is an issue that deserves to be on the national agenda this election year,” said Senator Di Natale.

“The front page of today’s Age tells the story of environmental campaigner Beverly Broadbent who took her own life at the age of 83 because she wanted to be in control of the way in which she died. Beverly was quoted as saying that if dying with dignity laws had been available to her in Australia then she may have waited longer. (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…)

(letter to the editor, sent to Eden-Monaro media)

Ah how we take our opportunities to freely express our views in the newspaper for granted. Thanks to Amnesty and the newly re-formed Braidwood branch of Rural Australians for Refugees, I was lucky enough on Wednesday night to hear Robin de Crespigny read from and talk about her book “The People Smuggler”, which I am now reading.

Robin referred to the post-traumatic stress being experienced by refugees in detention in Australia and elsewhere and it occurred to me that it is no wonder this is so common. People who come here are fleeing persecution, but Australians are fortunate enough to have no concept of what persecution really means. In many cases, those who eventually make it here have been tortured for doing something as simple as speaking out against an oppressive regime, but they spoke out and continued to speak out because they knew it was the right thing. Eventually they had no choice but to escape and make the often dangerous journey (though nowhere near as dangerous as their lives at home) to a place where people live freely with endless opportunities, But instead of a rapid and efficient process to establish their refugee status when they arrive, they are put in concentration camp-like detention centres with no idea of when they will be released, and many are kept there for years on end. (more…)

For more than a decade the NSW Game Council has been licensing hundreds of children as young as 12 to illegally hunt with firearms in millions of hectares of State Forests. The children they have sent out hunting are now exposed to possible criminal prosecutions for breaches of the Firearms Act which carry a maximum five years jail sentence.

Under the Firearms Act it is unlawful for a child to use a firearm for the purpose of hunting. A minor’s permit under the Firearms Act only entitles a child to use a firearm for the purpose of instruction in its safe use or for authorised target shooting.

As reported in the Australian:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/game-council-under-fire-for-licensing-children-to-hunt/story-e6frgczx-1226590292664

Greens MP and Firearms Spokesperson David Shoebridge said “in 2012 the Game Council licensed 410 children to hunt on public land and most of them are illegally hunting with firearms. (more…)

The following media release was issued today by Friends of Durras Inc.

The NSW Government’s plan to introduce shooting in NSW National Parks is in disarray, say members of the environmental lobby group Friends of Durras.
Friends of Durras spokesman John Perkins said that by announcing its intention to inject a whopping $19 million dollars toward implementing the plan, the NSW Government had committed yet another blunder and had clearly exposed the plan to be a dangerous and dodgy promise to the Shooters and Fishers Party in exchange for votes. (more…)

The Australian Greens have launched a ‘Books of Hope’ drive today, calling for people all around the country to donate children’s books for refugee families in Manus Island and other detention centres.

“These children are living in terrible conditions and we need to do anything we can to improve their situation,” The Greens’ immigration spokesperson, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

“When I was on Manus Island last month, one of the many sad and disappointing things I realised was that the children there have no books to read and share with their families.

“The experts and Greens agree that no child should be locked up but the Labor Party continues to compete with Tony Abbott’s Liberals in a race to the bottom.

“The simple gift of a book will mean so much to the children who are being detained in island prisons. (more…)