Pearls and Imitations

The overriding concern must be the lack of national water policy and failure to manage the complex interactions between water, land, biodiversity and the many human activities such as land development, mining and irrigation. Few scientists see any future for the Murray Darling system without replacement of rorting and state politics by an independent and statutory Sustainability Commission. Read more…

Croakey

This article outlined chronic and critical weaknesses in Australia’s environmental protections laws and processes, and expressed concerns that a federal review into Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act would recommend further inadequate protection. Read more…

Croakey

The world has watched in horror as President Trump’s response to COVID-19 had a devastating impact on the US population. In addition his sustained attack on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) included reversing, revoking or rolling back nearly 70 environmental rules and regulations, with long term significant implications for environmental and human health. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations

Fossil fuel lobbying is a cancer inflicting death, illness and misery on Australian society. How does it operate, what are its impacts and how can society allow this disabling condition to continue without treatment? Its false statements spread far and wide to devalue science, influence media judgment, community opinion and, most importantly, the views of elected representatives. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations

The Samuel Report and its rejection of an independent regulator by the Minister have ‘grave’ implications for the health of countless communities around Australia. The Report dismissed health, water and climate change issues suggesting that to include them “would result in muddled responsibilities, leading to poor accountability, duplication and inefficiency”. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations

Approval for the Narrabri gas project will say goodbye to hope of an effective climate policy to usher in an expanding national gas industry with a rise in emissions and untold direct damage to the sustainability of this drying continent. It will compound a philosophy of primacy of fossil fuel development, and delay consideration of any post-Covid Green New Deal. Read more…

Independent Australia

The right to good health is UN and WHO policy because over ninety per cent of the world’s population lives in regions (including some in Australia) where air pollution exceeds WHO standards. Australian governments seem indolent to the wide spectrum of suffering imposed on adults, children and the unborn by their lack of policy and action. Read more…

Pearls & Imitations

The Covid crisis will be controlled in a few years with new pharmaceuticals, vaccination or gradual human attenuation or immunity. Its lasting impact may well be from its distraction in addressing the crises eating away our life support systems. We cannot await democratic and political reform, so what urgent steps can be initiated now? Read more…

The authors urge the New South Wales IPC to reject the proposed expansion of CSG mining in the Narrabri region until all concerns for the safety of people and the environment are addressed and properly mitigated. Read more…

Independent Australia

For 10 years the local farming communities, using successive legal actions on medical and scientific evidence of harms to health, have sought to stop this mine expanding into prime agricultural land, exceed air pollutions standards and using excessive water. Yet the expansion remains supported by Governments and Oppositions, State and Federal. Read more….

Canberra Times

The evidence that gas mining can harm those living near to the wells, processing plants and compressor stations has been accumulating since 2012. Of particular concern are impacts on the unborn and infants probably caused by a wide variety of endocrine disrupting chemicals that interfere with the hormones in our bodies. Read more…

Pearls and Imitations

Mr Morrison has created a National Cabinet to drive a “singular agenda” to create jobs. If it functions successfully as it has done over Covid, it will be a masterstroke of governance allowing state leaders from both major parties to interact without the damaging rancour. However, crucially climate change, environmental sustainability and the disadvantage of Aboriginal peoples are missing. Read more…

Canberra Times

I am not unaware of the 432 Indigenous Australians who have died in custody since 1991 whilst governments sat on their hands. My commitment to human rights has involved me actively in several Aboriginal rights issues, but the mother's interview brought to me a new realisation of the urgency for reform. Read more…

Pearls and Imitations

Climate change is a massively complex ‘wicked’ problem hence solutions require human capacities of logic and imagination guiding action. Our leaders appear bereft of science-based logic, acknowledging neither magnitude nor urgency of climate change. This denial may be facilitated by refusal to imagine themselves inside these disasters. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations

Today in Australia one could be forgiven for thinking the word ‘University’ is synonymous only with the vast monetary income from educating foreign nationals and with the supply of qualified personnel to national industries and commerce. This view is enhanced by their investments in enterprises that enhance climate change and damage biodiversity. Read more…

Croakey

A National Sustainability Commission should be established and new environmental laws based on science and community values should replace the complex and unworkable Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999, according to medical and public health experts. Read more…

Renew Economy

Our studies provide compelling evidence that the Act has failed as exemplified most recently by  the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science at University of Queensland estimating that 93% of over 7.7 million hectares of potential habitat and ecological communities were cleared by the states between 2000 and 2017 with minimal EPBC scrutiny.

Pearls and Irritations

The forthcoming Review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act will provide an early indication whether the doomsday clock now at 100 seconds to midnight will continue ticking away Australia’s future. However, the government’s vision sends multiple bad omens of no change. Read more…

Canberra Times

At a time when we are consumed by the threats to our health and the nation's economy from an unpredictable pandemic, a national committee has been considering the likely devastation from another existential global catastrophe - environmental collapse. Read more…

Analysis and Policy Observatory

This submission urges the EPBC Committee to recognise the full gravity of its task and to have the courage to take responsibility for completely transforming our environmental laws and regulations to enable them to protect the Australian community's current and future health and lives. Read more…