Greenwash Political Action Party and Urban Grassroots Movement for the Green Party

Monday, February 27, 2006

Costello’s pub talk

When Premier Iemma backed Costello last week - he didn’t just dog whistle - he lined himself up with a flake.

Peter Costello’s controversial Sydney Institute speech about citizenship and Australian values was nothing new. He said exactly the same thing on Lateline last year - see ‘Respect Australian values or leave: Costello’.

Here’s a taste of what he said in August 2005, when interviewed by Tony Jones:

· “…They recognise Australian law and Sharia law. There's only one law in Australia, it's the Australian law. For those coming to Australia, I think we ought to be very clear about that.
· “...where a person has dual citizenship… it might be possible to ask them to exercise that other citizenship.
· “… so I would say to people who don't feel comfortable with those values there might be other countries where they'd feel more comfortable with their own values or beliefs.”

The real issue - then as it is now - is how would Costello actually put in place a plan to deny citizenship, or remove citizenship from people who don’t uphold ‘Australian values’.

But Costello has no idea. He hasn’t even the vaguest of plans for how to do it.

How would you actually strip people of their citizenship? How would people be denied citizenship? How would we test if they are upholding Australian values? Who would decide what those values are? Would there be a questionnaire? An exam?

Costello won’t give an answer to any of these questions. He won’t ,because he can’t. And he won’t because he hasn’t even thought about it.

If the Greens were to propose a policy idea that couldn’t be backed up with a realistic plan for implementation, we would be ridiculed. But this from the Treasurer with an army of advisers and an entire department at his disposal!

Tony Jones nailed it back in 2005 when he responded to Costello ideas with:

“ But isn't this the sort of thing you hear in pubs, the meaningless populism you hear on talkback radio?”

When pushed to give an answer in that Lateline interview about how these ideas would actually be implemented, Costello admitted that it would be voluntary! You would simply ask the person to leave Australia.

So the Treasurer is not only pandering to racism but is flakey . He deserves to be ridiculed as much as heckled.

Costello’s Australian values - ‘paved roads’

It is worth reading Costello’s Sydney Institute speech to the end, where he lists in some detail what he sees are the six key Australian values.

Number 5 relates to the environment:

“The Physical Environment: Australia has clean air and safe food and water. It has open space and natural beauty.”

Obviously Costello hasn’t been in Sydney much lately where air pollution levels have been front page news and fishing has been banned in Sydney harbour because of dioxin poising.

Anyway the environment is a ‘thing’ not a ‘value’. A value might be appreciation or reverence for the natural environment or commitment to ecological sustainability. But Australians can hardly say we are good custodians of our environment - inadequate environmental flows in our stressed and dying inland rivers and the worst greenhouse gas emitters per capita in the world.

And then there the is ‘value’ number six:

“Strong Physical and Social Infrastructure: Australia has roads that are paved, where traffic moves.”

I don’t know what is more stupid: that Costello thinks traffic moves in Sydney or that ‘roads that are paved’ is a core Australian value.

The man is a flake.

posted by Ben Oquist # 9:41 AM 0 comments

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Family First secret filming

Has the novice Family First Senator Fielding broken Senate rules on filming inside Parliament House?

There are strict rules about where and when TV film crews are allowed to film in the private areas of Parliament House. This is designed to accord MPs and their visitors some privacy - without fear of being nabbed on camera for every little thing they do.

But Steven Fielding in one of his lame video blogs ("Steve in Corridors at Parliament") appears to be filming inside one the Senate corridors having a go at those Senators who supported RU486.

Mr Fielding takes exception to a temporary paper sign sticky taped to the wall directing people to “RU486 drinks”. Presumably some Senators were having a quiet drink to celebrate rolling John Howard and Tony Abbot.

While Mr Fielding and the likes of Piers Ackerman (who had a rant on ABC’s Insiders last weekend) were critical of the drinks, the issue now is did Mr Fielding breach Senate rules by secretly filming inside Parliament House?

Did he ask permission to film? Was the Senate President or the Black Rod's office asked? If so on what grounds did they let him?

I’ve written to Senate President Paul Calvert asking for an explanation but as yet no response. [A timely, polite and action orientated response was later received]

---

Dear President

I have just been viewing a video on Senator Steven Fielding's website (www.stevefielding.com.au/html/videonews.html). In the video ("Feb 17, 2006 Steve in Corridors at Parliament") Mr Fielding is standing in a corridor of Parliament House (Senate side) talking to the camera while alluding to a sign in the Senate corridor.

Is it normal practice to allow filming in the Senate corridors? Did Mr Fielding ask permission for this filming?

Thank-you

Ben Oquist
(ex Parliament House staffer)'

Senate President acts, Family First hits back
Following this blog and my letter to the Senate President, Family First has issued the attached media release Family-First-media-release.pdf

The Sydney Morning Herald Stay in Touch column has now covered the story

posted by Ben Oquist # 11:54 AM 8 comments

New – yet unlikely - climate champions?

The South Australian Liberal Opposition has adopted the best greenhouse emission reduction target of any major party at state or federal level in Australia.

Strange but true. Liberal Opposition Shadow Minister for the Environment Iain Evans announced the plan to reduce emissions by 20% by 2020 and 60% by 2050.

But the announcement came just as Mike Rann formally put the election campaign into full swing so the Liberals plan got kind of swamped and hardly rated a mention in the Australian media.

While the South Australian Labor Government matched the 60% target for 2050 they have not committed to the intermediate target. Of course it is the intermediate target that is the important one.

Its easy to have a target for 2050 which is so far away it is the never never for must politicians - but the 2020 target would force real action to reduce emissions now.

Here in NSW, the Labor Government has also committed to a 60% reduction by 2050, but only has only agreed to reduce emissions to 2000 levels by 2025.

So while the SA Liberal are promising to cut emission by 20% over the next 15 years, the NSW Government has a 0% target for 5 years later!

Hardly a great legacy from the supposedly greenhouse-aware former Premier Bob Carr!

posted by Ben Oquist # 11:50 AM 2 comments

Friday, February 17, 2006

Death penalty and the Bali Nine

It made me feel sick this morning to read Dennis Shanahan in The Australian - “As tragic as it is for the parents and families of the convicted, this is a good result.”

Here is a man – supposedly of the Catholic right - saying that judicial murder is an unavoidable consequence of police operations. He was playing down the death penalties handed out to some of the Bali Nine saying they were “immaterial” to police objectives.

Yet Shanahan is the man who made the disgusting slur against Bob Brown claiming that the Senator was associated with ‘Nazi style eugenics’.

The hypocrisy of the right knows no bounds.

‘Right to life’ only sometimes

Hypocrisy seems to be the theme of the week. While some of Christian Right have been in overdrive against RU486, that same zeal doesn’t seem to have appeared for those of Bali nine sentenced to death. Where is Tony Abbott’s and Steve Fielding’s campaign for them?

It seems that for the Right, the ‘right to life’ is only sometimes an overriding principle.

posted by Ben Oquist # 11:05 AM 1 comments

‘Bob Brown On the Franklin’ – Radio National Sat 18 Feb 2pm

On a brighter note, don’t miss hearing ‘Bob Brown On the Franklin’ this Saturday 18 February 2pm, on Radio National (repeated Wednesday 1pm).

Last year I had the fortune to travel down the Franklin River for 10 days with Bob Brown and a few friends. Our river guide and budding investigative journalist, Heather Kirkpatrick recorded a series of interviews with Bob as we travelled down the river.

“It was the first time Brown had traveled down the Franklin since 1982, and it’s a remarkable portrait of a public man in very relaxed circumstances. Brown reminisces about the Franklin campaign, while providing a running commentary on the river and its environment” – Radio National.

posted by Ben Oquist # 11:00 AM 0 comments

Monday, February 13, 2006

Michael Duffy's Hypocrisy

The ABC must sack Michael Duffy. An employee attempting to bring its employer into disrepute would not be tolerated by any other boss – public or private.

While obviously taking thousands of dollars of taxpayers money through his salary from the ABC, Mr Duffy continues to run down our national broadcaster through public utterances like those in the SMH on Saturday.

Mr Duffy agitates against the ABC securing additional funding. Funding that would help the organisation keep pace with inflation and the costs of new digital technology. He further suggests that the ABC should not provide any services which might be provided by the commercial sector.

Except for his program presumably.

If Mr Duffy believes his own rhetoric, he should subject himself to it. Why doesn't Mr Duffy try and get a job promoting his right wing views in commercial radio? Is any national commercial network going to give Mr Duffy a prime time weekly 1 hour gig? I don't think so.

Mr Duffy owes his job at Radio National to politics. Unlike everyone else at the ABC who had to win positions on merit, Mr Duffy had a whole program invented by an ABC management desperate to pander to the Howard Government.

The irony of this hypocrisy is completely lost on Mr Duffy - but not on us readers who are a least a little relieved to see that Alan Ramsay has got his side column back on Saturdays - thereby forcing Mr Duffy to the bottom of the page.

Of course the ABC won't sack Mr Duffy, but if he had any integrity he would resign.

[This post was first published by Crikey]

posted by Ben Oquist # 1:45 PM 4 comments

Friday, February 10, 2006

Saving Recherche Bay

You may have heard the great new that Recherche Bay will be protected from
logging. After a long struggle, countless talks and books sales, it is a
great win for the environment and for our history.

What a treat to have a win like that!

Yet it is fascinating to see how the story has been written up.

The last minute scramble from the Lennon Government to join the campaign and announce it as a positive win, when all along they had said the area could be logged without harming it. Indeed, they had continually ridiculed the Greens - and Bob Brown in particular - in his efforts to save it.

The Lennon PR machine was in overdrive to spin the story as a loss for the Greens and an embarrassment for Bob Brown because he wasn’t there at Lennon’s press conference. I guess that's not surprising, but what was interesting was how gullible some journalists were - including the supposedly politically savvy Crikey - swallowing the Lennon PR flunky's lines. Gulp. Gulp. They were like fish desperate to be on the Government take.

How anyone can believe that forcing the Government to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to saving an area the Greens have campaigned for is a political loss is beyond me.

Politics today seems to be more about who does the opening, who cuts the ribbon than achieving change. Is that all that counts? But it does make me think about the whole other issue of how much an individual can achieve if they are prepared not to take credit for it. But that is a topic for another day.

Turning an area of less than 200 hectares of remote Tasmania from obscurity into a national icon is no mean feat - and it was Bob Brown and a hell of a lot of others who helped achieve this despite the efforts of the Tasmanian Government and the logging company Gunns Ltd desperate attempts to resist

And while we are apportioning credit I’d like to give a fair share of it to Byron Bay. I am currently in Northern NSW and recollecting on a visit earlier this year when Bob and I traveled up the North Coast promoting the Recherche Bay issue and selling Bob's little book about Recherche Bay.

The biggest audience was at Byron Bay where a packed group of 300 plus flocked to hear Bob tell his great story about this magical piece of Tasmania, where the French visited for their peaceful encounters with the Aboriginal people 200 years ago.

And it was someone in the enthused audience who suggested to Bob that we should just raise the money and buy it. And while Bob had thought of that before, it was that that got him going on that track with new zeal. Ringing friends and colleagues across the country until finally he - somewhat reluctantly - rang Dick Smith.

The rest is history. Scalp one of the Tasmanian election to the Greens.

posted by Ben Oquist # 12:09 PM 1 comments

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Public wants permanent water restrictions

Reports today that the NSW Government will scrap mandatory water restrictions as early as this August suggest the Government has learnt little from the desalination debacle.

Sydney has enough water. We just use too much and waste too much.

And what’s more, Sydney-siders know this. A huge majority think they can and should do more. 74% think water restrictions should stay in place (see previous post Feb 7th). Of course, this makes sense. Best to save water while you can.

We need to get used to using less water - for tougher times are ahead with reduced rainfall and higher temperatures expected from climate change.

Using less water – so called ‘demand management’ – is the best option. The best environmental solution and cheaper than recycling.

This is why we need to keep the pressure on the Government so it doesn’t continue down the slippery supply side solution slope of profligate and unsustainable ground water use - or heaven forbid - dusting off the desalination plant after the election.

Someone asked me what the cost of recycled water would be.

It is true that recycling to drinkable standards can be expensive. However recycling to a standard suitable for industry use and agriculture is much cheaper… freeing up the remaining supply of drinkable water.

And there are creative solutions.

A proposal by AGL - uncovered by the Greens - would have used their disused gas pipe network to pump recycled water. This would significantly reduce one of the biggest costs associated with recycling water – the need for a second pipe network. The AGL scheme was estimated to cost $250 million and would have produced almost as much water as the small scale Kurnell desalination plant which had a price tag 5 times as much at $1.3 billion.

posted by Ben Oquist # 10:03 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The first scalp of the 2007 state election goes to the Greens

Well, well, well. They said it couldn’t happen. The Government was adamant that the desalination plant would go ahead come what may. Premier Iemma’s was adamant that the Kurnell plant would go ahead ‘drought or no drought’

Perhaps former minister Craig Knowles quote is even better. He declared that the desalination plant was ‘beyond public debate’ and ‘we can do nothing else in this city’. Well, no actually Minister.

What a great lesson in people politics. Never say never.

Even when the politicians are screaming that things can’t possibly change, don’t believe them. Today’s announcement proves that.

Listening to Energy Minister Carl Scully’s interview on ABC 702 this morning, I couldn’t help but think how clearly he contradicted Premier Iemma’s ‘drought or no drought’ comments. Mr Scully said the reason the desalination plant was not going ahead was not just the discovery of the new ground water, but because of recent rain dam levels were now 45% - instead of the anticipated 33%.

Yep, drought or no drought, eh Mr Scully.

Still, the NSW Government seems addicted to supply side solutions and failing to put the much needed dollars into demand management and recycling.

But today let’s celebrate the death of the Greenhouse guzzling, polluting desalination plant.

Scalp number 1 for the Greens in the 2007 election campaign.

posted by Ben Oquist # 9:40 AM 4 comments

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Why Sydney is ahead of its politicians on desalinisation

Thirty three boxes of Government files on the desalination plant were recently made public.

The files were reluctantly released in response to an Upper House motion from Greens MLC Ian Cohen requiring the NSW Government to provide a series of documents on the project.

They clearly show that the desalination plant is a greenhouse disaster.

With Australia already the world’s worst per capita greenhouse emitter, it has been estimated that the Kurnell plant will add as much pollution to our atmosphere as 250 000 more cars on the road. As Premier Bob Carr put it so neatly - desalinated water is really just bottled electricity.

What the documents don’t reveal is why the former Carr - and now Iemma - Government are pursuing the increasingly unpopular desalination option. In fact unpublished community surveys buried in the 38 boxes show that the people of Sydney want to do more to conserve water. In fact a clear majority want tougher water restrictions.

In the face of growing media pressure, Energy and Utilities Minister Carl Scully asserted that people ‘are not fussed’ where there water and electricity come from so long as it came out of the taps and sockets.

But such cynicism about the public’s attitudes is contradicted by several surveys results contained in the documents released this week

Key findings in previously secret documents show:
• 93% of people support very strong water restrictions during drought
• 92% support water restrictions every summer
• 74% support water restrictions all the time
• 90% support only water efficient appliances being able to be sold.

Water restrictions that have been in place for the last few years have already saved twice the amount of water than the desalination plant will produce.

Further research uncovered in the documents shows people are also willing to do more in the home, with between 80-95% of people willing to:
• limit time in the shower
• use water efficient showerheads
• have dual flush toilets
• always use washing machines and dishwashers with a full load
• fix leaking taps.

Sydneysiders are way ahead of the government.

But instead of embracing these community attitudes and work with the people of Sydney, NSW Labor seems determined to work against them.

Further action requires community engagement – and that requires trust between the government and people. But instead of facilitating community action, the Government seems determined to impose the unpopular, polluting option that is increasingly alienating the electorate.

In April 2003 Bob Carr established the Expert Water Panel to provide advice on achieving a sustainable water balance for Sydney’s future. In the documents obtained this week the Expert Water Panel’s draft report was uncovered.

Recommendation 18 could not be clearer.

“The Panel recommends that the Government not consider the following new infrastructure at present:
• constructing new dams
• constructing new desalination plants
• installing cloud seeding equipment

The options identified in this Report have the capacity to defer the need for such new infrastructure indefinitely if properly implemented. Optimising the use of existing infrastructure is more cost effective and environmentally sustainable.”

On top of this the scandal of how much money the Government is spending on advertising the desal plant has yet to receive attention. I have already heard radio ads and then there was the ridiculous spectacle of mock wine tasting scheme with desalinated water trucked in from Perth.

Ben Oquist

posted by Ben Oquist # 7:57 AM 1 comments