Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
‘When it comes to paying for tax cuts, you can bet the ones who will
feel the effects of reduced services will actually be part of middle
Australia.’
Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
The
government has sought to win the fight over its proposed tax cuts by
suggesting it is really a tax cut for middle income earners. But despite
assistance from some pretty dire reporting, Treasury’s own figures
highlight just how greatly the tax cut is weighted towards high-income
earners and those earning far more than the incomes of middle Australia. Before the budget
I wrote that the government would likely attempt to sell its budget by
misleadingly referring to average income earners as middle Australia.
But even I didn’t think we’d be at the point where someone on $200,000
would be considered middle income.
“Average” sounds like it is the middle – an “average Australian”
sounds like someone who is typical of Australians and “average income”
sounds like a typical income. It is why, for example, Malcolm Turnbull
in question time on Wednesday referred to his tax plan by saying it
would help “middle income earners” and that “middle Australia will
benefit from this”.
But average earnings – especially average full-time earnings – are not what is earned by “middle Australia”.
Always remember – average full-time earnings are higher than average
earnings, and average earnings are higher than median earnings.
Current average full-time annual earnings are $81,531, but median annual earnings for a full-time worker are just $65,577:
The median income for all workers – that is, the amount at which half earn more and half earn less – is just $52,988.
And yet last week in the Australian
we were told that “Turnbull’s tax plan will target the middle class”
and that “the bulk of the tax benefit received would come from
abolishing the 37% tax bracket and would go almost entirely to
middle-income earners on wages of $120,000 to $200,000”.
Please.
The Australian suggested this was the case because of “Treasury
analysis of wage data” that shows someone on an income of $120,000 in
2024-25 “would be considered the average wage equivalent to $84,600 in
today’s terms” and that “a salary of $158,730 in 2017-18 would be
$200,000 in 2024-25”. This would happen if wages grew by 3.5% each year
after 2020-21.
That is absurd enough, but there is no reality in which an Australian
worker on $120,000, let alone $200,000, can be classed as a
middle-income earner.
It is utterly misleading to suggest that someone on $84,600 is middle-income – let alone someone on $158,730.
We know from the most recent taxation statistics that someone with a taxable income of $84,000 puts them in the top 25% and someone earning $158,000 is in the top 5%:
The AFR also got in on this absurdity, suggesting “wage rises will make $200k a middle income”
and that “the chief beneficiaries of the third stage of the
government’s income tax cuts will be earning up to $200,000 but they
will be classified as middle-income earners by the time the cuts are
delivered”.
We’ve reached a pretty awful place where someone earning nearly twice
as much as the average full-time wage and three times the median wage
is being called “middle-income”.
To be fair, someone on the actual median income of $52,988 will one
day earn $200,000 – in 2056-57. And at that time, the AFR’s version of
the median-income earner will be on $615,875:
On Wednesday the pitch was changed to refer to workers such as police
officers and teachers (occupations conservative media governments
always love, except when they are conducting industrial action to get a
pay rise) and bizarrely a “forklift driver”. The Australian
suggested that a “forklift driver/excavator would pay almost $4,000
more a year in tax under Labor on a salary estimated at the most
qualified level to be $164,331 in 2024-25”.
Such a salary would be news to most forklift drivers.
In the latest tax statistics, the median income for forklift drivers
in 2015-16 was $48,622, and for an excavator operator the median income
in 2015-16 was just $63,300.
On the Australian’s list of presumably middle-income earners was
“school principal from the ACT”. In 2015-16 those principals had a
median income of $131,692 – putting them in the top 8% all of taxpayers.
The government needs to push this line, of course, because those on
the actual median income will not get to $120,000 until 2041-42
(assuming that wonderful 3.5% wage growth!).
On Tuesday the Treasury released new data
during a Senate estimates hearing that tried to suggest the benefits of
the tax plan would go to middle income earners. But it only serves to
reinforce how much the plan benefits higher income earners and how the
cost of those high income tax cuts dwarfs the rest.
By 2024-25, once the entire set of tax cuts go through, those on
$200,000 would receive a tax cut of 3.6%, compared with what they pay
now, whereas those on $70,000 (which will be the median income by then)
get a cut of just 0.8%:
The
tax cut is actually awful for “middle Australia”. Median income earners
get a smaller tax cut than low-income earners and a very much smaller
one than high-income earners.
And then we get to the cost – which is now up to $144bn out to the end 2028-29.
The biggest cost to the budget over that time is the $41bn to raise
the 19% threshold to $41,000. But that is planned to be done in 2022,
and thus its cost covers seven years. The $33bn spent to remove the
32.5% tax bracket occurs over just five years – meaning on average it
will cost the budget $6.6bn a year:
From 2024-25 all the tax cuts combined will reduce revenue by an
average of $21.8bn a year, but $13.5bn – or 62% – of that is for tax
cuts overwhelmingly for those earning over $120,000.
And how will the government pay for that $22bn cut to revenue?
This is the problem with misleading talk about who benefits, because
when it comes to paying for it, you can bet the ones who will feel the
effects of reduced services will be those who actually are part of
middle Australia. • Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist
Women’s Legal Services Australia is demanding to know whether the
decision to merge the family court and the federal circuit court was a
‘backroom deal’ with Pauline Hanson.
Photograph: April Fonti/AAP
The national spokeswoman for Women’s Legal Services Australia is
demanding answers about whether the Turnbull government has done a
backroom deal with Pauline Hanson on a plan to merge the family court
and the federal circuit court from 2019.
Angela Lynch, the chief executive of Women’s Legal Service Queensland
and national spokeswoman for Women’s Legal Services Australia, told
Guardian Australia the attorney general, Christian Porter, had “serious
questions to answer about whether there has been a backroom deal”.
“We don’t know, we haven’t been consulted. Has Hanson been
consulted?” Lynch said. “Pauline Hanson has been arguing for many many
years about getting rid of the family court, and quite frankly, she’s
claiming a great success, so it actually does raise an issue about what
is going on here really.
“It’s really a concern.”
Lynch warned the overhaul would have significant consequences for
vulnerable women attempting to navigate the legal system, and
characterised Wednesday’s announcement as “appalling”.
The Turnbull government announced
it would merge the two courts from 2019 in an effort to resolve up to
8,000 more family law matters every year. Under the plan the new court
would resolve all family law matters without the need to move matters
between the courts, as currently occurs in 1,200 cases a year.
Hanson immediately took credit for the overhaul, saying she was “proud” of the role her party had played in prompting the shift.
It looks like there are going to be huge changes to the Australian Family Law system. I took this to the last election & I am very proud of the role @OneNationAus has played in getting this result. There is still a lot to be done but it looks like we are on the right track! -PH
Lynch said the government had announced the overhaul without
consulting legal specialists in the field, including groups working with
the victims of domestic violence.
“There’s
a lot of communication from the attorney general that we are talking
about family disputes when what we are actually talking about here is
domestic violence,” she said.
“At least 50% of the matters going through the family court at the
moment … deal with issues of domestic violence. To change the whole
court structure without consulting the services that are dealing with
some of the most vulnerable women in Australia … beggars belief.”
She said the government’s proposal eliminated the specialisation of
the family court. “The federal circuit court is dealing with a range of
other issues – administrative law, bankruptcy, copyright, migration,
trade practices and the like.
“We’ve got no guarantee [that judges] are always going to
keep this specialisation. They could well appoint generalist judges to
be dealing with family court matters.
“Women who are victims of domestic violence could be appearing before
a generalist judge to determine their family court matter at a trial
stage.
“These issues are complex and counter-intuitive and people with
commercial legal experience don’t have the knowledge around dealing with
these issues.
“It will become a safety issue and it is a risk issue, and quite
frankly it is really appalling. Women and children need this court, and
they turn to this court for safety.”
In outlining the overhaul on Wednesday Porter said the single entry
point for family law matters “will help Australian families resolve
their disputes faster by improving the efficiency of the existing split
family law system, reducing the backlog of matters before the family law
courts, and driving faster, cheaper and more consistent dispute
resolution”.
He said the new court would maintain two separate divisions – one to
deal solely with family law and another that will consist of the current
federal circuit court judges that hear a mix of matters.
A review of the family law system from the Australian Law Reform
Commission (ALRC) is due to report in March next year. Porter said on
Wednesday the heads of the federal, federal circuit and family courts
had been consulted before the announcement.
“I have consulted, at exhaustive length, with the chief justice of
the federal court, the chief judge of the federal circuit court, the
chief justice of the family court,” Porter said on Wednesday.
“We’ve gone through this forward and backwards. I mean, obviously, at
the end of the day, it’s the government’s decision as to how to
structure the courts, and the courts respond to that.”
Asked whether the judges were on board, Porter said: “It’s not a matter of supporting or not supporting.
“The fact is that it’s just one of those things that the separation
between the judiciary and executive means that it wouldn’t be
appropriate for me as attorne general to talk about them supporting or
not supporting”.
Lynch’s critique was echoed by the Labor MP Emma Husar, who has shared her experiences of domestic violence.
Husar characterised the changes as “right up [Hanson’s] alley”.
“This is exactly what she wanted, which is a step to demolishing and
abolishing the family law court itself, which she has called for
numerous times,” the Labor MP said.
“The issue around merging the two courts together, simply changing
the letterhead, stationery and name of something, does not actually
reduce any backlogs that are currently being experienced.”
The Trump administration has the potential to test the world's oldest constitution more than it has in decades.
Special
Counsel Robert Mueller is heading up an investigation into whether
Russia interfered in the US election, and debate has raged over whether
Donald Trump will be compelled to testify.
While there have been
no direct clashes so far between the President and investigators, it
seems increasingly likely that at some point the question will be asked —
is the President of the United States above the law?
So far, in the history of the United States, the President has not been compelled to testify under oath in a criminal case.
Even
former president Richard Nixon, who was forced to hand over documents
and tapes, was not asked personally to testify in a criminal probe.
So what would happen if Mr Mueller decided to involve the US President directly in his investigation?
Mr
Mueller has subpoena power which means he can compel people to do
certain things, including produce documents or present themselves to be
interviewed.
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He can also seek indictments, conduct searches and pursue prosecutions.
But
according to US law expert Professor Sandeep Gopalan, from Deakin
University, whether Mr Mueller can subpoena Mr Trump is up for debate.
There is a precedent in the case of Clinton v Jones.
That
was a civil case in which Paula Jones, a former employee of Bill
Clinton, sued the president for sexual harassment which occurred before
he was elected.
"In that case, the Supreme Court answered that the
president would have to participate and deliver testimony in a civil
matter," Professor Gopalan said.
"The question is whether that applies in a criminal context when it's coming from a prosecutor rather than a private litigant."
Many
people would argue the President should not be forced to testify,
because the process of preparing for a criminal testimony would take
time away from him doing his job.
Essentially, they would argue the President is too busy to testify.
"Trump's
people would argue that it doesn't necessarily distract the President
from carrying out his functions to merely have to participate in a civil
case, whereas here you have a criminal prosecution where you have a
high risk to the President himself, and to prepare for such a testimony
entails a substantial division of attention away from his normal job.
"In addition, turning over documents or records is a lot less burdensome than personal testimony."
This is where we get into constitutional crisis territory.
If
the President is ordered by a court to testify and he simply refuses,
it's unclear who would be able to physically force him into a courtroom,
because all law enforcement officials are obliged to follow the orders
of the President.
"Ultimately the the power to execute orders
and and follow through on on any kind of court judgment remains with
the executive branch," Professor Gopalan said.
"So
there is nothing in theory stopping the President from saying, 'I'm not
going to listen to the court and I refuse to testify despite the court
saying that I have to'."
Can Mueller arrest the President?
If Mr Mueller finds proof Mr Trump committed a crime, he still does not have authority to arrest the President.
"Based on what we know, a sitting president cannot be indicted and cannot be arrested or prosecuted."
However, Professor Gopalan said that's only for crimes related to his official duties as president.
If he was to be charged with murder, for example, he may not be immune from prosecution.
Presidents
can only be prosecuted once they have left office, and apart from
elections and term limits, there are only four methods of leaving:
resignation, death, impeachment by a majority of the House and
two-thirds majority of the Senate, or the Cabinet declaring they are
unfit to fulfil the duties of the office.
The theory is that if Mr Trump wants to fire Mr
Mueller, he would have to go through the process president Nixon went
through to fire the Special Counsel investigating Watergate in 1973 —
namely to order the Special Counsel's boss to fire him, and if he
refuses, fire the boss and appoint someone who will obey your orders.
But it's possible Mr Trump would not need to go through that process.
"Given
that the President is actually the head of the executive branch and
possesses supreme executive power, there is nothing in theory stopping
the President from firing Mueller directly," Professor Gopalan said.
If he didn't fire Mr Mueller himself, Mr Trump would have to order Deputy-Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire him.
Mr Rosenstein said he won't fire Mr Mueller without a good reason to, so he seems likely to refuse.
If he does, Mr Trump would need to fire Mr Rosenstein, and go to his second in command.
If that doesn't work, Mr Trump would need to keep firing people until he can find someone who will fire Mr Mueller.
Would firing Mueller shut down the probe?
It's unclear if firing Mr Mueller would shut down the investigation or if someone else would just take over.
The
US Department of Justice could appoint a replacement, or alternatively
one of the 93 federal prosecutors offices around the country could take
up the investigation.
That's not to say it wouldn't be disruptive.
"Terminating Mueller will strike no doubt a very powerful blow against the investigation," Professor Gopalan said.
What we do know is the President is uniquely placed in the US legal system to avoid prosecution.
The system is built to stop nuisance legal actions from getting in the way of him doing his job.
The other thing we know is that many questions are yet to be answered.
No president has ever been forced from office or forced to testify against his will. We don't even know if he can be. Yet.
Russia,
If You're Listening is an ABC podcast about the investigation into
Russia's interference in the US election. Find it in the Listen App, in Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcasting app.
Every aspect of the indigenous Inuit culture grows from the land –
but the unpredictable seasons are forcing the community to adjust their
traditions
Greg Mercer in Rigolet
Children play at dusk in the Inuit community of Labrador.
Photograph: Darren Calabrese
Martin Shiwak is navigating his snowmobile along the frozen shoreline
when his eight-year-old son Dane, who is riding on the back, points at a
wall of stunted spruce trees.
Shiwak cuts the engine, hops off the machine and quietly pulls out a
.12 gauge shotgun. He hands the weapon to Dane, and the pair crouch
behind their snowmobile. Dane fires two quick shots. Two white
partridges, almost invisible in the tree line, drop dead.
Dane runs to retrieve the birds, warming his hands against their
bodies to ward off the chill from the cold wind whipping in from the
North Atlantic Ocean.
Shiwak is an Inuit trapper and hunter who grew up relying on the wild
bounty of Labrador. He takes his son out for trips like this every
week, trying to pass on generations of knowledge around living off the
land: how to collect firewood, hunt and fish, and travel safely in a
place where the rhythm of life is still built upon ice and snow.
But he’s running out of time.
The sea surrounding coastal Labrador is warming at an unprecedented rate, according to data from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Robert Way, a climatologist based in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, said the
region is a volatile place climatically, with extreme swings in the
weather that can amplify – and sometimes mask – the changes that are
happening. Compared to historical terms, winter is about six weeks
shorter, while the region’s sea ice coverage is about third smaller than
it was a decade ago.
Dane Shiwak, eight, warms his hands on white partridge he
shot with his father, Martin Shiwak, outside Rigolet. Photograph:
Darren Calabrese
“If you look at the rate of warming from the late 1980s to 2015, this
is one of the fastest warming places in the world. It’s quite
concerning,” said Way.
For the people of Rigolet, a former trading post that is the southernmost Inuit community in Canada, the vanishing ice and increasingly unpredictable seasons means they’re being forced to adapt in ways they never have before.
Like generations of Inuit before him, Derrick Pottle is a trapper and
hunter. His diet of wild game, salmon, berries, trout and seal would
have been familiar to his ancestors who were living in Hamilton Inlet
around 8,000 years ago.
But Pottle worries all the skills he’s learned from older generations
may soon become irrelevant. More and more, Inuit are relying on
expensive, store-bought processed foods because it’s safer and easier
than catching or shooting supper.
Pottle’s ancestors never experienced a time when their frozen world
in northern Labrador was being altered so dramatically because of
climate change. Shrinking ice packs and more severe weather has made
travel increasingly difficult and dangerous, often cutting people off
from other communities and traditional hunting lands.
There are no roads connecting Rigolet to other communities, so people
here long ago came to rely on trails over the ice as their lifelines.
But those frozen lifelines are increasingly unreliable, prone to sudden
thaws, weak ice and dangerous openings.“I’m seeing changes that impact the way that we live,” Pottle said.
“The sea, the ice, the snow, it’s all changing. You can’t travel safely
any more. Up and down the coast, it’s the same thing. And it’s changing
right before our eyes.”
Some changes are more subtle. Summers have always
been short here, and marked by tormenting swarms of black flies. But
Paula McLean-Sheppard, a Nunatsiavut government employee, said she has
been startled to see the insects arriving earlier and earlier in the
spring.
“I was driving my truck last year and there was this big black cloud
that suddenly appeared on the windshield. I had to use my wipers to
clear it, I didn’t know what it was,” she said. “It was the flies. It used to be the end of June before you saw your first fly. Now they’re coming in May.” Rigolet’s fishermen say new species are arriving in the bay, from
cormorants to sharks to sea turtles, chasing warming waters and the food
that comes with it. Seals, a key source of food and skin for waterproof clothes,
are moving further and further up the bay as the sea ice vanishes.
Others blame the decline on the region’s caribou herd on the changing
climate, too.
Some of the changes are harder to see. McLean-Sheppard worries that
as coastal Labrador’s sea ice becomes increasingly unreliable, it’s
causing more anxiety among Inuit who feel stuck and unable to travel to
catch their food. This past winter, the ice in the bay didn’t freeze up
until February, months later than normal.
“It’s
especially hard on the hunters and providers because they can’t get out
on the land. They feel stuck,” she said. “We’re like an island, really.
We need the ice to connect us.”
Living off the land is still a big part of life in Labrador’s coastal
communities. Hunters provide meat to community freezers for sharing
with seniors and others who can’t catch their own food. The freezers are
filled with Labrador’s wild buffet, from partridge berries and Arctic
char to moose, duck and goose meat. Each year the Rigolet community is
allowed to kill two polar bears, and the meat is divided up for families
up and down the rugged coastline.
Scientists say the impact of climate change on the Inuit psyche is
significant, and only just beginning to be understood. Social workers
worry it is leading to increased rates of drugs and alcohol abuse, in a
place where the suicide rate far outstrips the national.
“The land is not just the land for them. It’s family, it’s kin, it’s
part of you. Every aspect of Inuit culture grows from the land,” said
Ashlee Cunsolo, director of the Labrador Institute in Happy Valley-Goose
Bay.
“When you’re the first generation that can’t do that any more, that
can’t follow your ancestors on to the land, think about how devastating
that can be from a cultural standpoint. It’s a disruption to cultural
traditions that have endured for hundreds of years.”
Cunsolo is one of leading researchers into the links between climate
change and mental health. She says the rapid changes happening in
coastal Labrador are causing the Inuit to feel increased feelings of
anxiety, depression and grief. They sense something is being lost, she
said.
The Inuit community of Rigolet on the northern coast of
Labrador as seen in front of Hamilton Inlet. Photograph: Darren
Calabrese
“These
changes are disrupting hundreds of years of knowledge and wisdom and
connection to the land. That’s a scary thing for humanity,” Cunsolo
said.
Many of the Inuit in Rigolet are just a generation removed from the
government relocation programs of the 1960s, when families were forced
to abandon their nomadic ways and settle in larger communities. They say
it’s in their blood to travel out into the wilderness. Inez Shiwak, who
is working to preserve local Inuit culture in Rigolet, smiles when she
says getting away from the village and into the wild is “like taking
your first breath when you were a baby”.
Her father Jack Shiwak, the village’s mayor, said elders have noticed
that the wind whipping in from the ocean is getting more severe. It can
cause blinding snowstorms, and some people have been lost on snowmobile
trails because of it. The unpredictable weather is causing some Inuit
to reduce trips to their remote cabins, a tradition that dates backs to
the days when fur trapping was a major industry in the region, he said.
“Until five years ago, we’d hardly miss a week of going to the cabin.
We haven’t been there is two years. It’s just the weather,” Shiwak
said. “It’s a strange feeling. We know things are changing, but you
realize you can’t stop it. The question is how we adapt.”
Back out on the frozen shoreline a few miles outside of the village,
Martin Shiwak stops his snowmobile again and looks out over the bay. The
sun is shining now and the hunter unzips his coat, remarking this is
one of the mildest Marches he’s ever seen.
He knows this wild land intimately. But lately he’s starting to
recognize it less and less. This is the first winter Shiwak couldn’t
cross nearby Lake Melville to go trapping because he couldn’t trust the
ice. It’s also the first winter he’s had to cancel an educational
program that used to bring youth out on the ice and show them the old
practices of their people.
Shiwak worries what life will be like for Dane, as the traditions of
the father grow harder and harder for the son to maintain. Labrador’s
youngest Inuit will have to learn new ways to live with a land that is
changing all the time, he said.
“It affects everything,” he said. “I just know it’ll be a lot different than it is now.”
The companies examined by the report include Australian cattle giants and a Norwegian seafood company.
Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Meat and fish companies may be “putting the implementation of the
Paris agreement in jeopardy” by failing to properly report their climate
emissions, according to a groundbreaking index launched today.
Three out of four (72%) of the world’s biggest meat and fish
companies provided little or no evidence to show that they were
measuring or reporting their emissions, despite the fact that, as the
report points out, livestock production represents 14.5% of all
greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is clear that the meat and dairy industries have remained out of
public scrutiny in terms of their significant climate impact. For this
to change, these companies must be held accountable for the emissions
and they must have credible, independently verifiable emissions
reductions strategy,” said Shefali Sharma, director of the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy European office.
The new Coller FAIRR Protein Producers Index has examined the
environmental and social commitments of 60 of the world’s largest meat
and fish producers and found that more than half are failing to properly
document their impact, despite their central role in our lives and
societies.
Many of the names in the index will be unfamiliar, but their
consolidated revenues of $300bn cover around one-fifth of the global
livestock and aquaculture market – roughly one in every five burgers,
steaks or fish.
The companies looked at by the index include giants like the
Australian Agricultural Company, which has the biggest cattle herd in
the world; the Chinese WH Group, the largest global pork company; or the
US’s Sandersons, which processes more than 10 million chickens a week.
More than half the companies looked at by the Coller Index were flagged as ‘high-risk’.
Many of them run vertically integrated systems, sourcing meat from
contracted farmers around the world, processing it themselves through
their own slaughter and packing houses and then selling on to frontline,
more familiar companies such as McDonalds, Walmart, Nestle and Danone.
But
a close examination by the Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return
(FAIRR) group has shown that, despite their critical part in our food
system, these companies appear to be neglecting some of their social
responsibilities.
The food system, according to FAIRR, is “very sensitive to changing
public sentiment”, and really large sums of investor money in the sector
are often at risk due to little-understood risks. The organisation, founded by financier Jeremy Coller in 2015, aims to shed greater light on these risks.
Animal welfare, water scarcity, deforestation and working conditions
were some of the areas in which the 60 largest protein-producing
companies around the world were assessed. The index looked at
self-declared information from each company, and set a wide range of key
performance indicators such as targets for deforestation reduction, a
policy on antibiotic reduction, or water exposer of supply chains.
Overall 60% were found to be “either not managing critical risks or are
failing to disclose basic information”.
“The findings from this first index create cause for
concern,” said the report’s introduction. “There is still a worrying
lack of ESG [environmental, social and governance] data availability and
disclosure … despite the sector’s myriad sustainability impacts.” Climate change
emerged as a particular concern. Despite the fact that, according to
the report, livestock production represents 14.5% of all greenhouse gas
emissions, almost 72% of companies provided little or no evidence to
show that they were measuring or reporting their emissions. Some 19
companies received the lowest possible mark in this section, including
Australia Agricultural Company, Cal-Maine (a US company which reportedly
produced 1bn eggs in 2017), Russian Cherkizovo and Indian Venky’s.
This, the report argues, may be “putting the implementation of the Paris
agreement in jeopardy”. The Guardian approached these companies for
comment but received no response.
Studies over the last decade have repeatedly shown that the
production of red meat is energy and water-intensive compared to the
production of most grains and vegetables. But many government officialsappear to be reluctant to suggest that consumers should reduce their meat consumption.
Antibiotic
use also stood out. Antibiotic resistance has soared in recent decades
and is now considered one of the biggest public health threats facing
the world. The role of farming and food production in spreading
resistant bacteria has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as
growing evidence points to a direct threat to human health from
veterinary overuse of antibiotics on farms.
Despite this, there has been a “widespread failure to respond” to the
crisis, the report says. The report says that 77% of the sector - 46
companies worth an estimated $239bn - rank “high risk” on antibiotic
stewardship, with “little or no measures in place to reduce excessive
use of antibiotics”.
Abigail Herron, global head of responsible investment, Aviva
Investors, said: “Our research shows that three in four of these
companies are ignoring the calls from regulators, health professionals
and the financial community to manage and reduce their use of
antibiotics. That failure puts both global public health and their
business models at risk.”
Indian poultry giant Venky’s is among the companies ranked as “high
risk” on antibiotics. Sanderson Farms, one of the US’s largest poultry
producers, is also given bottom-tier ranking.
Venky’s was recently found by an investigation by the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism to be advertising colistin, a
so-called “last resort” antibiotic, for sale as a growth promoter in
India, one of five pharma companies found to be doing the same.
Deforestation is another area in which many companies are falling short. A recent analysis by Forest 500
found that despite cattle production being the biggest driver of
tropical production globally, only 17% of assessed cattle companies had a
policy addressing forest production. And the Coller Index finds that of
the 24 companies processing beef and dairy (where deforestation is a
particular risk), only one is assessed as “low risk”.
“From an investment point of view, it is not only this $300bn group
of companies at risk but the wider multi-trillion dollar global food
supply chain ... Investors sit at the top of the chain as ultimate
owners of these listed businesses. They need to use their influence as
responsible stewards of these assets to start a dialogue on best
practice and encourage a race to the top to build a more sustainable
food system,” said Aarti Ramachandran, head of research and corporate
engagement at FAIRR.
“A major, systemic change is needed in the way we source protein if
we are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, habitat loss
and water stress. This can only be achieved if businesses and
policymakers, working with the latest food technologies and scientific
advice, collaborate to create a sustainable and nutritious food
revolution that meets tomorrow’s demand,” said Emily Farnworth, Head of
Climate Change Initiatives, World Economic Forum.
“It’s always worth remembering that there is no such thing as cheap
meat—these industries have been subsidised for years by the public
because we pay for their environmental pollution, public health costs
that they do not account for in their business model. This is where
governments need to step in,” said Sharma. Additional research by Naomi Larsson
‘Trudeau is banking on the fact that his liberal charm will soothe things over.’
Photograph: Chris Wattie/Reuters
In case anyone wondered, this is how the world ends: with the cutest,
progressivest, boybandiest leader in the world going fully in the tank
for the oil industry.
Justin Trudeau’s government announced on Tuesday
that it would nationalize the Kinder Morgan pipeline running from the
tar sands of Alberta to the tidewater of British Columbia. It will fork
over at least $4.5bn in Canadian taxpayers’ money for the right to own a
60-year-old pipe that springs leaks regularly, and for the right to
push through a second pipeline on the same route – a proposal that has
provoked strong opposition.
That opposition has come from three main sources. First are many of
Canada’s First Nations groups, who don’t want their land used for this
purpose without their permission, and who fear the effects of oil spills
on the oceans and forests they depend on. Second are the residents of
Canada’s west coast, who don’t want hundreds of additional tankers
plying the narrow inlets around Vancouver on the theory that eventually
there’s going to be an oil spill. And third are climate scientists, who
point out that even if Trudeau’s pipeline doesn’t spill oil into the
ocean, it will spill carbon into the atmosphere.
Lots
of carbon: Trudeau told oil executives last year that “no country would
find 173bn barrels of oil in the ground and just leave it there”.
That’s apparently how much he plans to dig up and burn – and if he’s
successful, the one half of 1% of the planet that is Canadian will have
awarded to itself almost one-third of the remaining carbon budget
between us and the 1.5 degree rise in temperature the planet drew as a
red line in Paris. There’s no way of spinning the math that makes that
okay – Canadians already emit more carbon per capita than Americans. Hell, than Saudi Arabians.
Is this a clever financial decision that will somehow make Canada
rich? Certainly not in the long run. Cleaning up the tar sands complex
in Alberta – the biggest, ugliest scar on the surface of the earth – is
already estimated to cost more than the total revenues generated by all
the oil that’s come out of the ground. Meanwhile, when something goes
wrong, Canada is now on the hook: when BP tarred the Gulf of Mexico, the
US was at least able to exact billions of dollars in fines to help with
the cleanup. Canada will get to sue itself.Sign up
No, this is simply a scared prime minister playing politics.
He’s worried about the reaction in Alberta if the pipe is not built, and
so he has mortgaged his credibility. His predecessor, Stephen Harper,
probably would not have dared try – the outcry from environmentalists
and First Nations would have been too overwhelming. But Trudeau is
banking on the fact that his liberal charm will soothe things over.
Since he’s got Trump to point to – a true climate denier – maybe he’ll
get away with it.
But it seems like a bad bet to me. Faced with the same situation – a
revolt over the Keystone XL pipeline – Barack Obama delayed for several
years to avoid antagonizing either side. He ultimately decided he
couldn’t defend the climate cost of building it, and so became the first
world leader to explicitly reject a big piece of infrastructure on
global warming grounds. Trudeau has made the exact opposite call, and
now we’ll see if pipeline opponents cave.
I was in Vancouver two weeks ago to help activists raise money for
lawyers, and I would guess that the civil disobedience will continue –
so far, two members of parliament have been arrested, an escalation
we’ve never seen even in the States. Coast Salish elders have built a
“watch house” along the pipeline route and, as at Standing Rock, other
native activists have been pouring in – I’m guessing that making this
petro-colonialism officially state sponsored will only harden people’s
resolution. The showdown will be powerfully symbolic: kayaktivists, for
instance, have paddled peacefully around the pipeline’s terminal, at
least until Kinder Morgan put up an ugly razor wire barrier in the
middle of the harbor.
Now it’s Trudeau who owns the razor wire, Trudeau who has to battle
his own people. All in the name of pouring more carbon into the air, so
he can make the oil companies back at the Alberta end of his pipe a
little more money. We know now how history will remember Justin Trudeau:
not as a dreamy progressive, but as one more pathetic employee of the
richest, most reckless industry in the planet’s history.
There is nothing logical about the Kinder Morgan pipeline – especially not the decision to gut environmental laws for it
Elizabeth May
Steel pipe to be used in the pipeline construction of Kinder Morgan Canada’s trans mountain expansion project.
Photograph: Dennis Owen/Reuters
The twists and turns in the saga of the Kinder Morgan pipeline just
took a turn for the seriously weird today, but the path has never been
clear.
The Alberta oil sands lie under thousands of square kilometers of
boreal forest, wetland and muskeg. Bitumen is a viscous substance found
in small concentrations amid the rock and soil. It is either mined out
from huge open pits, or pumped out through in situ production,
injecting hot water deep into the ground to loosen it. Either way, the
resulting product is highly polluting, very expensive to produce and of
low value. Bitumen is a solid. To be refined, bitumen must undergo
costly upgrading. Bitumen, being both low value and expensive to
produce, would never have been developed without government subsidies,
with the lowest royalty rates in the world at 1% and massive federal
subsidies of several billion/year.
Before the 2008 global financial crisis, there were upgraders and
refineries being planned. But when the recession hit, those investments,
along with any new oil sands mines, retreated. When the economy
recovered, oil sands expansion came back. But not the upgraders and
refineries. Instead, for the first time, industry began to promote
pipelines. Keystone was the first pipeline proposed to run north-south
to take Canadian bitumen to other countries for processing.
Since bitumen is a solid, there is nothing logical about
proposing to move it through a pipeline. Stirring in fossil fuel
condensate (essentially naptha) creates a mixture sufficiently liquid to
flow through a pipeline, without the expense of upgrading it to
synthetic crude. The resulting mix of condensate (called diluent) and
bitumen is called dilbit. And it is very challenging to clean up. The
2010 dilbit spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan was the first time regulators
realized dilbit behaved very differently than conventional crude. The
diluent is highly toxic and volatile. Diluent separated from bitumen and
bitumen sank to the river bottom.
By the 2011 election, pipelines had become a political issue. Former
prime minister, Conservative Stephen Harper, an Albertan who stood
four-square for fossil fuel development, opposed any pipelines heading
to the British Columbia coastline. Harper’s position was that Canada
should not export bitumen to countries with lower environmental
standards for refineries than Canada.
"Justin Trudeau announced support for the
Kinder Morgan pipeline. In doing so, he violated election promises to
respect indigenous rights"
Within months of that election, difficulties in gaining US permits
for Keystone led to an entirely new position. With Harper’s support,
Enbridge proposed a pipeline to Kitimat on the BC coast. In 2013,
Texas-based Kinder Morgan asked to build a second pipeline more or less
along the lines of the Transmountain pipeline purchased from a Canadian
company from Alberta to Burnaby, not far from Vancouver BC. Kinder
Morgan’s pipeline expansion would be 100% dilbit for export. It would
increase tanker traffic, loaded with dilbit, seven-fold.
To
grease the gears for pipeline approval, Harper gutted environmental
laws. The resulting environmental review of the Kinder Morgan expansion
was the worst in Canadian history. No longer reviewed by our
environmental assessment agency, the pipeline was before the National Energy
Board. Intervenor rights, such as cross examination of industry
witnesses, were eliminated. Many intervenors withdrew alleging the
process was “rigged”.
In the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau
pledged that no project could be approved based on such an inadequate
process. Trudeau promised evidence-based decisions, respect for
indigenous rights, the end to fossil fuel subsidies and an aggressive
climate plan.
In 2016, the Liberals turned down the Enbridge pipeline due to the
court ruling the previous government violated indigenous rights.
Simultaneously, Trudeau announced support for the Kinder Morgan
pipeline. In doing so, he violated election promises to respect
indigenous rights, to base decisions on evidence, and to pursue real
climate action. Having approved Kinder Morgan, he and his ministers
became increasingly pro-pipeline.
Meanwhile fifteen different court cases were working through the
federal court of appeal. The new BC government raised its concerns about
the threat of a dilbit spill and to survival of the endangered southern
resident killer whales. In March, I was one of the several hundred
people arrested protesting the Kinder Morgan pipeline. As opposition
built in British Columbia, Trudeau insisted the pipeline was in the
national interest and must be built. On 8 April, Kinder Morgan upped the
ante and demanded the federal government remove the uncertainty created
by all the court challenges to the project by 31 May.
Astonishingly, the government announced on 29 May that the government
of Canada will buy the existing Transmountain pipeline. Canada will pay
$4.5bn for those existing assets, valued by Kinder Morgan in 2007 at
$550m . As well, the Trudeau administration says it will get the
controversial expansion pipeline built. Kinder Morgan had pegged those
costs at $7.4bn, and that is just the beginning of federal liabilities.
With this, Trudeau’s election promise to end fossil fuel subsidies is
violated in spectacular fashion.
We await the court decisions. This battle is a long way from over.
Before the budget I wrote that the government would likely attempt to sell its budget by misleadingly referring to average income earners as middle Australia. But even I didn’t think we’d be at the point where someone on $200,000 would be considered middle income.
“Average” sounds like it is the middle – an “average Australian” sounds like someone who is typical of Australians and “average income” sounds like a typical income. It is why, for example, Malcolm Turnbull in question time on Wednesday referred to his tax plan by saying it would help “middle income earners” and that “middle Australia will benefit from this”.
But average earnings – especially average full-time earnings – are not what is earned by “middle Australia”.
Always remember – average full-time earnings are higher than average earnings, and average earnings are higher than median earnings.
Current average full-time annual earnings are $81,531, but median annual earnings for a full-time worker are just $65,577:
Please.
The Australian suggested this was the case because of “Treasury analysis of wage data” that shows someone on an income of $120,000 in 2024-25 “would be considered the average wage equivalent to $84,600 in today’s terms” and that “a salary of $158,730 in 2017-18 would be $200,000 in 2024-25”. This would happen if wages grew by 3.5% each year after 2020-21.
It is utterly misleading to suggest that someone on $84,600 is middle-income – let alone someone on $158,730.
We know from the most recent taxation statistics that someone with a taxable income of $84,000 puts them in the top 25% and someone earning $158,000 is in the top 5%:
To be fair, someone on the actual median income of $52,988 will one day earn $200,000 – in 2056-57. And at that time, the AFR’s version of the median-income earner will be on $615,875:
The Australian suggested that a “forklift driver/excavator would pay almost $4,000 more a year in tax under Labor on a salary estimated at the most qualified level to be $164,331 in 2024-25”.
Such a salary would be news to most forklift drivers.
In the latest tax statistics, the median income for forklift drivers in 2015-16 was $48,622, and for an excavator operator the median income in 2015-16 was just $63,300.
On the Australian’s list of presumably middle-income earners was “school principal from the ACT”. In 2015-16 those principals had a median income of $131,692 – putting them in the top 8% all of taxpayers.
The government needs to push this line, of course, because those on the actual median income will not get to $120,000 until 2041-42 (assuming that wonderful 3.5% wage growth!).
On Tuesday the Treasury released new data during a Senate estimates hearing that tried to suggest the benefits of the tax plan would go to middle income earners. But it only serves to reinforce how much the plan benefits higher income earners and how the cost of those high income tax cuts dwarfs the rest.
By 2024-25, once the entire set of tax cuts go through, those on $200,000 would receive a tax cut of 3.6%, compared with what they pay now, whereas those on $70,000 (which will be the median income by then) get a cut of just 0.8%:
The biggest cost to the budget over that time is the $41bn to raise the 19% threshold to $41,000. But that is planned to be done in 2022, and thus its cost covers seven years. The $33bn spent to remove the 32.5% tax bracket occurs over just five years – meaning on average it will cost the budget $6.6bn a year:
And how will the government pay for that $22bn cut to revenue?
This is the problem with misleading talk about who benefits, because when it comes to paying for it, you can bet the ones who will feel the effects of reduced services will be those who actually are part of middle Australia.
• Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist