12 June 2016, ABC News, Election 2016: Malcolm Turnbull says placing Greens last in voting preferences in ‘national interest’. With three weeks to go until the federal election, the two major parties are locking in preference deals to boost their chances in crucial regional and inner-city seats. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced the Liberal Party will preference the Greens last, or behind Labor, in every Lower House seat and in return, Labor has confirmed it will direct its preferences to the Liberal Party over the Nationals in the seats of Murray, O’Connor and Durack. The deal will help the Liberal candidates fend off an attack from the Nationals in those three seats while also giving a boost to Labor’s chances in the seats of Batman, Grayndler and Sydney. “This is a decision I’ve made in the national interest,” Mr Turnbull said. “The big risk in this election is that we would end up with an unstable, chaotic, Labor-Greens minority Government as we’ve seen before.” The Liberal Party’s Victorian state president, Michael Kroger, had publicly canvassed the idea of a preference deal with the Greens to unseat Labor in seats like Batman and Wills, but Mr Turnbull has intervened to ensure that does not happen. “I am the party’s leader and this decision has been taken by me, with the federal director, Mr Nutt,” he said. Read More here
Tag Archives: Fed Govt
12 June 2016, The Conversation, Xenophon threatens massive retaliation against any Lib-Lab deal against him. Labor is heaving a sigh of relief after Malcolm Turnbull’s announcement that the Liberals will put the Greens below Labor everywhere. In particular, the embattled Labor MP for Batman, David Feeney, under serious threat from the Greens, has been given extra life support, although it remains to be seen on July 2 whether he will survive politically. The Liberals’ action gives the ALP an incentive to put extra resources into the area. Greens leader Richard Di Natale said he was still “very confident” about Batman, arguing voters would be “outraged” at the Liberal-Labor deal. Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger had been keeping the ALP on tenterhooks with the prospect the Greens might get Liberal preferences in inner-city seats in Melbourne. But directing preferences to the Greens would have sat badly with Turnbull’s oft-repeated message that a vote for the Greens or other minor players is a vote for instability. It would also have gone down very poorly with many in the conservative wing of the Liberal Party. Turnbull said he had made a call against preferencing the Greens in the national interest. “The big risk at this election is that we would end up with an unstable, chaotic, minority Labor-Greens-independent government as we had before.” Read More here
2 June 2016, YALE Climate Connections, U.N., UCS Point to Risks to World Heritage Sites. Australia concerns lead to holding-back case study on Great Barrier Reef, so Union of Concerned Scientists posts it independently. Climate impacts seen posing risks to sites . . . and to tourism. Sometimes, too often in fact, it’s not what’s included in the text of a report that captures the attention. It’s what’s omitted from that report, often not mistakenly. That’s a lesson learned and re-learned in the public policy field, but apparently not really absorbed in many cases. Those who internalized the lessons from the early-70s Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon’s resignation know well that it’s the cover-up, more so than the initial offense, that is the real crime. Only slightly more recently, the original “Jaws” in 1975 taught a similar lesson, as the fictional Amity Island town council sought to silence the truth in an effort to protect its tourism financial interests. 
News Analysis and Commentary Advance now to a new report, “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate,” released May 26 by two United Nations agencies and the Union of Concerned Scientists, UCS. In a somewhat dual-personality report that at times seems as concerned tourism as with impacts of climate change, the report paints a dire image of 31 natural and cultural World Heritage sites in 29 countries around the world. Around the world, that is, save for Australia and its, ahem, rather important Great Barrier Reef (GBR), by any practical measure a worthy entry among top-ranking heritage and tourism sites. And clearly one with observed and serious impacts from rising ocean temperatures, increased acidification, and continuing carbon dioxide emissions. It ends up that the Australian government prevailed on the U.N. and its United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and United Nations Environment Program to omit any reference to GBR. Those Sydney folks must never have seen “Jaws.” Read More here Also access missing chapter here
23 May 2016, The Conversation, Why has climate change disappeared from the Australian election radar? Two weeks into a protracted election campaign, it is looking ever-more likely that climate change is to be placed way down the order of business – at least for the major parties. The contest over climate change that characterised the previous three elections seems to have disappeared off the political radar despite the issue being more urgent than ever. Since the Paris climate summit, global average temperatures continue to break month-on-month records. Just a few weeks after the summit, the North Pole was briefly not even able to reach freezing point – in the middle of winter. And just this month, Cape Grim surpassed a 400 ppm baseline minimum. Then there is the truly frightening climate spiral developed by Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading. It shows what an El Niño amplified global temperature has climbed to. The spiral assumes a tight-knit but ever-expanding ball until April 2015, when the spiral line starts to separate dramatically from the ball. This year it careers dangerously close to the 1.5℃ threshold. Climate spiral. Ed Hawkins. The diminishing political and media spiral on climate. While global temperatures may be spiralling out of control, the opposite appears to be happening with the climate issue attention cycle in Australia.Apparently, climate is less important than jobs and growth – or, in Labor’s case, health and schools. A big part of this change in political climates is undoubtedly the Paris summit itself. The political triumphalism of the summit belies the scientific pessimism of so many climate scientists and activists. Kevin Anderson from Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research even declared the summit to be “worse that Copenhagen”, in that it is based on out-of-date science, does not include aviation and shipping, and includes negative emissions in its scenarios for achieving abatement. On the other hand, after the collapse of talks at Copenhagen, some activists see no choice but to climb aboard with the Paris agreement, insofar as it at least signifies a mainstream seachange in action – even if the actual measures are inadequate. The INDCs that came out of the conference still put the world on a path to 3.5℃. Read More here