Paul Bongiorno: The signs are the Morrison government is decaying before our eyes.

Extract from The New Daily

5:57pm, Nov 29 2021

After nine years in office, the Coalition is focused only on hanging onto power, Paul Bongiorno writes. Photo: TND

opinion

Paul Bongiorno

Governments, like all living organisms, suffer from physical entropy. They have a limited life span and their end days are marked by a distinct decline in functionality.

It’s not surprising as the Coalition is about to enter its ninth year in office, three prime ministers later and after the resignation of some of its most competent ministers over that period, the Morrison government is tired, and it is running scared.

I do not make this claim lightly.

We are seeing fractures in the government over vaccine mandates, religious discrimination and a national anti-corruption commission, but these aren’t ordinary differences of opinion within the confines of the party room.

They are in open defiance of the government’s agenda on the floor of the Parliament.

This is a statement that they have lost faith in Scott Morrison’s leadership and judgment to save the government at the looming election.

Clearly some are spooked on the right by Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and One Nation over vaccine mandates.

Others are worried by the challenges of cashed-up progressive independents running on the issues of climate change action and integrity in government.

Allegra Spender, Kylea Tink and Zoe Daniel are all running as independents to 

contest Liberal-held seats. Photo: TND

It is generally accepted that the path to success is to walk a moderate or centrist path.

Always a juggle, it relies on the left and right of both the major parties being prepared to compromise on big policy issues.

Liberals of a more moderate bent are despairing that Mr Morrison’s capitulation to the hard-line coal warriors in the Nationals over emissions targets has left them electorally exposed.

They are not so ready to be railroaded over the consequences of the religious discrimination bill, which could see discrimination sanctioned against gay teachers and students.

Pressure is now on for the bill to be scrutinised by a joint select committee of both houses before a vote is taken.

But the starkest example of the Prime Minister’s loss of confidence in his own leadership authority is the withholding of the 349-page draft legislation for a national integrity commission.

Mr Morrison is not game enough to turn the proposal into a parliamentary bill because he can’t be sure it will not be drastically amended not only in the Senate but more uncomfortably in the House of Representatives.

It is crystal clear the PM does not have his heart in the promise he made more than 1000 days ago to establish a national integrity commission.

The exposure was laughed out of court when literally hundreds of high-powered submissions found it to be more a corruption protection commission for politicians than a fearless watchdog.

Attorney-General Michaelia Cash has had little to say about the integrity commission bill. Photo: AAP

His new Attorney-General Michaelia Cash has been missing in action on the issue.

She has only argued for the proposal on a couple of occasions, ignored the submissions and left the almost-friendless draft on the shelf.

At the weekend Senator Cash joined Mr Morrison in ludicrously blaming Labor for the failure to progress legislation, and again on Monday the government refused Labor’s call for the bill to be tabled.

The Liberals’ most marginal seat holder, Bridget Archer from the Tasmanian seat of Bass, crossed the floor last week to support a robust integrity commission bill sponsored by the independent member for Indi, Helen Haines.

With Labor’s support the numbers were there to pass the bill. But the government used a procedural technicality to block it.

Ms Archer’s rebellion came three days after Senator Jacqui Lambie threatened to run a candidate against her with the warning she would not “preference liars,” a charge Senator Lambie levelled at Mr Morrison over the issue.

With an eye to recruiting former New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian to run in Warringah against the independent Zali Steggall, the PM says he’s not interested in establishing “a kangaroo court” like the one in Sydney.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet says ICAC “gets rid of corruption in public life”.

A view rejected by the current NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, who says the Independent Commission Against Corruption “does a very important job and it gets rid of corruption in public life”.

Mr Perrottet, unlike the Prime Minister, says he does not want to prejudge the current inquiry into Ms Berejiklian’s potentially corrupt conflicts of interest in dealings with her secret boyfriend.

Bridget Archer may get it when she says a robust commission is needed so that people can have confidence in the politicians they send to Parliament, but she shares the same problem with other dissidents in Scott Morrison’s ranks.

Unless they have established a consistency in their approach to key issues, voters can’t be confident that if they are returned, they will simply revert to toeing the party line.

That is why the new breed of independents running in hitherto safe Liberal seats are using the voting records of Morrison government members in Parliament as a reason to reject them at the ballot box.

But we can be sure of this when towards the end of an incumbent’s long term in office it is every man and woman for themselves you know the show is running out of puff.

It has lost its mission statement other than merely being in power, and this is not enough to sustain its members’ discipline or zeal.

Paul Bongiorno AM is a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery, with 40 years’ experience covering Australian politics

Scott Morrison lights fuse on May election date with historic early budget.

Extract from The New Daily 

10:10pm, Nov 29

Scott Morrison has Anthony Albanese in his sights. Photo: AAP

Josh Butler Political Editor

Canberra’s favourite game of election timing speculation heated up on Monday, with Scott Morrison hinting towards a date in May.

That plan would see him go to the polls at the last possible minute but barely schedule any Parliament sittings.

It prompted outrage from Labor that the government was “allergic to public scrutiny”, with potentially just seven more days of regular Parliament between the end of this week and election day.

“The election is due in the third week of May,” the Prime Minister told Nine’s Today on Monday.

But while that is the final date for an election, Mr Morrison has the prerogative as PM to call an election any time he sees fit.

Another piece of the political puzzle fell into place on Monday, as the government released its draft schedule for parliamentary sitting weeks in 2022.

Federal Parliament will run for just a few weeks next year. Photo: AAP

The plan would see politicians return to Parliament House for seven sitting days in early February, before a five-week break ahead of a March 29 federal budget – a historically early date for the financial statement, which is usually delivered in early May.

Budget week would be just three days of sitting. It means just three weeks of sitting in February and March in 2022, compared to five weeks in the same period in 2021.

The draft calendar has another solitary sitting week scheduled for mid-April – but with the election due by May 21 at the very latest, and a five-week campaign etched into the law, that April sitting week could potentially be scrapped.

As Labor MP Tony Burke railed in the House of Representatives when the schedule was tabled on Monday afternoon, the timing of final declarations and poll results from a May election means Parliament would then be unlikely to sit again until potentially August, under the government’s plan.

“This is effectively a sitting calendar designed for a Parliament that doesn’t meet and meets as rarely as possible between now and the next election,” Mr Burke claimed.

“Ten days when the Parliament will sit over all of that time, from the end of this week, through to the 9th of August next year.”

With the three days of March’s sitting consumed almost entirely by the budget, it could mean just as few as seven regular sitting days in the next 250 days, after Parliament’s final sitting week for 2021 ends on Thursday.

“This is a calendar for a government that wants to hide from scrutiny,” Mr Burke claimed.

Mr Morrison and Mr Albanese may only get limited opportunities to face off in Canberra in 2022. Photo: AAP

It follows a torrid last week for the Morrison government, with seven backbenchers crossing the floor to vote against the government on various matters.

Most prominently, Liberal MP Bridget Archer sensationally defied the government’s position on an integrity commission, not only backing a bill from independent Helen Haines but even seconding the call for Parliament to debate it.

With other Coalition MPs openly splitting on provisions in the voter ID and religious discrimination bills, many pundits had questioned whether Mr Morrison would even want Parliament to return next year before the election, so as to avoid opportunities for more public division.

Speaking on Sky News on Monday, Labor deputy leader Richard Marles claimed the sitting calendar was a sign of “how concerned they are about their own divisions that they are not wanting to gather people in their own party room in Canberra”.

A March poll has been floated as an option for some time, even as Mr Morrison stressed an election was “due” in May, but speculation grew last week that recent chaos could encourage that timetable to be moved up.

Mr Morrison said in October that “there will be a budget next year, is our intention”.

Assuming the government sticks to that, it would rule out a March election, essentially leaving only May as an option for a poll.

April is not seen as a likely month for an election, due to overlapping school and public holidays through Easter.

Mr Morrison has repeatedly described himself as a “full-termer”, hosing down speculation of an early poll, while Labor leader Anthony Albanese has previously claimed the government calling an early election would be an admission that they fear worsening economic or health outcomes in 2022 after the COVID pandemic.

Mr Morrison will soon be back in campaign mode. Photo: AAP

Adding up all those pieces, Monday’s sitting calendar hints most likely toward an election on May 14 or 21, the very last days legally available to the PM.

Such a scenario would be a carbon copy of 2019, when Mr Morrison called an early budget before a May poll.

Some in Labor see this play as an attempt to recreate the exact circumstances that delivered the Coalition what the PM called a “miracle” win.

But as Labor points out, the sitting schedule is merely a draft and can be changed at will by the government.

It means none of this speculation is set in stone, and could be shifted at any moment.

On Monday morning, Mr Morrison complained about “all sorts of political games and theatre that goes on” and unnamed opponents who “will play the political games down here in Canberra”.

With the release of the sitting calendar, the government has only added to the theatre and games.

‘Confronting’: Great Barrier Reef faces frequent extreme coral bleaching at 2C heating, research finds.

Extract from The Guardian

Great Barrier Reef

Even if warming is kept to 1.5C, bleaching would hit more than three times a decade, study predicts.

Research shows that even with the most optimistic global heating scenarios, Great Barrier Reef corals faces one bleaching event every three years.

Graham Readfearn

@readfearn

Tue 30 Nov 2021 03.30 AEDT

Last modified on Tue 30 Nov 2021 03.32 AEDT

Parts of the Great Barrier Reef would be hit with extreme levels of coral bleaching five times each decade by the middle of this century if global heating was kept just below 2C, according to ‘“confronting” new research.

Even under the most ambitious scenario where heating is kept to 1.5C, coral bleaching strong enough to kill corals would hit somewhere on the reef more than three times a decade, the study predicts.

Allowing global heating to go beyond 2C would bring unprecedented levels of heat stress.

Great Barrier Reef: how a spectacular coral spawning event is helping to breed heat-tolerant corals

Read more

“It’s hard to imagine what that would look like” said Prof Peter Mumby, one of the study’s authors.

Using the latest climate models, the scientists added extra information about the depth, tides and winds around reefs to give a more detailed projection of how much bleaching could occur over different areas.

Lead author of the study, Jen McWhorter, said the modelling suggested warming above 2C would be “very, very bad” for corals along the reef.

But she said keeping temperatures to 1.5C – the most ambitious target in the Paris climate change agreement – meant corals were exposed to far less heat stress.

“The stress we see above 2C under these higher [greenhouse gas] emissions scenarios is three to four times greater than present day conditions,” said McWhorter, who has a combined role at the University of Exeter and the University of Queensland.

The Great Barrier Reef is a victim of climate change – but it could be part of the solution

Read more

Coral reefs are considered one of the most sensitive ecosystems to global heating. If corals sit in warmer than average water for too long, they lose the algae that provides much of their colour and nutrients, leaving a visible white skeleton.

If water temperatures are not too severe, then corals can recover from bleaching. Higher temperatures or prolonged exposure can cause coral death.

The Great Barrier Reef, off the Queensland coast, experienced three mass outbreaks of coral bleaching in 2016, 2017 and 2020.

University of Queensland’s Prof Peter Mumby, a co-author of the study said the findings were “confronting”.

“It tells us that even with the most optimistic scenarios, we are still looking at one bleaching event somewhere every three years.”

Published in the journal Global Change Biology, the study found while all areas of the reef would see increased risk from bleaching as emissions went up, the central and southern areas would fare slightly worse.

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Mumby said scientists were busy on research to understand if, and how, different species of coral might naturally adapt to warmer temperature.

The study suggests if greenhouse gas emissions were held to levels that would keep global warming below 2C or at 1.5c, then the frequency of coral bleaching peaks just before the year 2060 and then falls slightly.

Mumby said he thought coral reefs “could still persist” with global heating of 1.5C, but the diversity of corals would not be at levels seen today.

But as heating hit 2C, bleaching would hit parts of the reef “every two to three years” and he said “it’s hard to imagine what that would look like.”

Great Barrier Reef’s future dealt blow as study finds only 2% escaped coral bleaching

Read more

The Great Barrier Reef has seen five mass bleaching events – 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020 – all caused by rising ocean temperatures driven by global heating.

One study earlier this month found that since 1998, more than 98% of individual reefs along the Great Barrier Reef had been hit by bleaching at least once.

Prof Terry Hughes, of James Cook University and a leading expert on the effects of global heating of coral reefs, said: “The trajectory is already under way and we can see damage from only one degree of global warming. We are hading for 1.5C, which is unavoidable.

“Without a climate model, we know that warming has triggered three events and that has several damaged 80% of reefs. This study shows that will be ongoing, but the end point depends on how much warmer we are prepared to allow it to go.”

Radiation from the Sun may be a missing source of water on Earth, new study suggests.

Extract from ABC News

ABC Science

By Genelle Weule

Posted 1 hours ago

Solar wind may have contributed a portion of water to Earth's oceans, a new study suggests.(Supplied: NASA)

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Water is an essential ingredient for life on Earth. It is all around us in our oceans, rivers, clouds and our bodies. But where did it come from?

Key points:

• About 71 per cent of the Earth's surface is covered in water, but we don't know where all this water came from
• A new analysis shows it's possible that some of it could have come from the solar wind transforming dust particles 
• While the dust on the debate about the origins of Earth's water is far from settled, the discovery has important implications for the Moon

Some scientists argue that it was bound up in the rocks that glommed together as Earth was born out of a spinning disk of debris 4.5 billion years ago. 

Others believe Earth was dry for its first million years or so until it was bombarded by comets and asteroids bearing water.

But neither hypothesis can completely account for the amount or composition of water we see today on Earth.

Now an international team of scientists believe they may have come up with a missing source of Earth's water: the Sun.

Their analysis of tiny fragments of an asteroid and experiments at the atomic scale suggest that the solar wind produces water on the surface of dust grains, they report in Nature Astronomy.

Solar radiation on particles of dust in the early Solar System may have created water as planets and asteroids formed.(NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)

The idea is that water covering specks of dust floating around in the protoplanetary disk was incorporated into planets and asteroids as they formed.

"On the outermost parts of mineral grains attached to asteroids or as dust particles, we find a very thin layer of water that is associated with a very thin layer of hydrogen that has a solar contribution," said study co-author Steve Reddy of Curtin University.

"The solar wind component might only be a small component, but it's the important missing component that we know from the isotopic analysis of water."

Light vs heavy water

Most of the water on Earth, known as light water, is made up of two atoms of hydrogen bound to one atom of oxygen (H2O).

But a small amount of water on Earth is made out of heavier atoms of deuterium — an isotope of hydrogen with an added neutron — bound to an atom of oxygen instead (D2O).

Regular or "light" water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms.(Pixabay: FotograpfGabriel)

The ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in water tells us about where in the Solar System it came from.

Most comets and asteroids contain water with a slightly higher ratio of deuterium to hydrogen than on Earth.

"So there's always been a bit of an ongoing debate about how that light component of water gets to Earth," Professor Reddy said.

Only one type of asteroid, known as an enstatite chondrite, contains a similar ratio to water on Earth, but they are very rare, so they can't account for the total amount of light water.

Getting down to an atomic level

To find the missing source of water, the team led by Luke Daly turned to a technique known as atom probe tomography to study the chemical structure of grains of dust from an asteroid called Itokawa.

The samples were analysed using the Geoscience Atom Probe Facility at Curtin University.(Supplied: Steve Reddy/Curtin University)

Dust particles of a mineral called olivine from this stony asteroid between Mars and Jupiter were returned to Earth in 2010 by the Japanese mission Hayabusa.

"The set of samples we analysed are incredibly small — they are thousandths of the width of a human hair," Professor Reddy said.

They also blasted samples of olivine collected on Earth with hydrogen and deuterium to simulate the effect of the solar wind.

"Over time we can build up a three-dimensional image of the chemistry and also the composition of the material," Professor Reddy said.

Samples from the Itokawa asteroid were returned to Earth in 2010 by the Hayabusa spacecraft.(Supplied: JAXA)

Analysis of dust from the asteroid and the lab samples showed an increase in hydrogen and deuterium in the outer layers of the particles.

"So what will happen is that the hydrogen will hit the mineral and will produce some sort of defect … and some of those defects will capture the hydrogen."

In other words, the hydrogen breaks the bonds of silicon and oxygen in the olivine, and combines with oxygen to make hydroxl (OH) and water (H2O).

The team said the discovery also meant there could be untapped reservoirs of water on the Moon, as well as asteroids.

'Really neat' for the Moon …

The ability to trace water in the crust of a speck of dust is "really neat", said geochronologist Trevor Ireland of the Australian National University, who was not involved in the study.

"It's an amazing result in terms of being able to resolve differences in the content in the last 50 microns to be able to establish that it's water," said Professor Ireland, who previously analysed samples from Itokawa.

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He said the potential of the solar wind to generate water had important implications for establishing a base on the Moon.

"If you can establish that there is actually water being generated in the lunar soil by proton bombardment by solar wind, then that gives a potential resource in the future for water supply."

"This is actually one of the first demonstrations that it may actually work."

But what about Earth?

Whether or not the solar wind was a major contributor of water to the dust that made up Earth is still up for debate.

"Going back 4.5 billion years and trying to assemble players and the timing becomes rather complicated," Professor Ireland said.

But, he said, the finding opened up the possibility that light water was delivered to the Earth on asteroids later on.

Different types of asteroids have different levels of water content, while some, like Itokawa, are only wet on their surface, others can contain up to 10 per cent water.

"There are lots of potential sources of water in the Solar System and they all have distinct signatures, both in hydrogen, as well as oxygen isotopes.

"So going forward, we'd like to see some of those predictions tested by looking at oxygen isotopes and potentially nailing down the proportion of these sources in the early Solar System," he said.

Professor Trevor Ireland has analysed samples collected from the Moon, as well as asteroids.(Australian National University)

There will be more opportunities to dive deeper into the mystery of Earth's water soon.

Along with Itokawa, Professor Ireland is also involved in missions retrieving samples from two other asteroids: Ryugu and Bennu.

The Ryugu mission returned to Earth last year in the South Australian desert, and the first results from the sample return are expected soon.

The Bennu mission is expected to land in 2023.

Australia needs social housing future fund to combat crisis affecting low-income families, Grattan Institute says.

 Extract from ABC News

By business reporter Gareth Hutchens

Posted 1 hours ago

If we built 108,000 new social houses by 2040, it would stabilise the share of social housing in Australia's total housing stock.(ABC News: Keane Bourke)

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Australia's housing crisis for low-income families has become acute, but it could be partly fixed with a unique solution, a think tank says.

Key points:

• Australia's stock of social housing has barely grown in 20 years
• A $20 billion future fund could support the construction of 3,000 to 6,000 dwellings a year
• With state government involvement, there could be over 100,000 extra social houses by 2040

The federal government should establish a "social housing future fund" to generate the income needed to construct thousands of social housing dwellings every year, the Grattan Institute said.

If the fund was created with an endowment of $20 billion, it could soon be funding the construction of 3,000 social housing units every year, or double that number if its payments were matched by state government funding.

Why is it necessary?

Australia has failed to build enough social housing in recent decades.

Brendan Coates, the Grattan Institute's director of economic policy, said the facts were alarming.

He said social housing — where rent was typically capped at 25 per cent of a tenant's income —could make a huge difference to the lives of vulnerable Australians.

But Australia's stock of social housing, which is currently about 430,000 dwellings, had barely grown in 20 years, even though the country's population had increased dramatically over the same period (by 33 per cent), he said.

In 1991, about 6 per cent of housing in Australia was social housing, but now it is less than 4 per cent.

According to Mr Coates, most tenants stay in social housing for more than five years.

That means there is little "flow" of available social housing stock for people whose lives take a turn for the worse, and more vulnerable Australians are being forced into the private rental market where they have to pay more of their weekly income on housing.

"With fewer low-income Australians owning their home or living in social housing, their housing costs are rising," Mr Coates said.

Low-income is defined as the poorest 40 per cent by equivalised household disposable income.

"The median low-income social renter pays 24 per cent of their income on rent, compared with 37 per cent for the typical low-income private renter," he said.

"The bottom 20 per cent of households by income now spend 29 per cent of their income on housing on average, up from 22 per cent in 1995."

How would the social housing future fund work?

Mr Coates said the federal government should establish a social housing future fund.

He explained the idea in a short piece called A place to call home: it's time for a Social Housing Future Fund.

He said the fund could make regular capital grants to state governments and community housing providers every year.

If the fund started with an endowment of $20 billion, and had an investment mandate to target real (after-inflation) returns of 4 to 5 per cent, it could deliver 3,000 social housing units a year.

That number assumes capital grants of $300,000 per dwelling to cover the up-front subsidy gap for social housing.

Mr Coates said such a fund would boost social housing with little or no hit to the federal government's budget bottom line.

"Since the initial endowment is an investment, it wouldn't appear on the underlying budget balance," he said.

"The federal government already manages $247.8 billion in assets across six future funds to address long-term problems ranging from covering federal public servants' superannuation entitlements to funding medical research."

He said capital grants from the fund could be allocated by the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation.

The grants could be awarded via competitive tender, with requirements for dwelling size and location.

How many social housing dwellings could be built?

If the $20 billion fund generated after-inflation returns of 4 to 5 per cent a year, it could generate an annual dividend averaging $900 million.

If the fund was up and running by 2022-23, it could build 24,000 social housing dwellings by 2030, and 54,000 dwellings by 2040.

If future governments chose to top up the fund endowment, it could fund even more social housing.

Mr Coates said the federal government had been "clear" it regarded social housing as state governments' responsibility.

However, he said the history of Australia's federation showed large social programs, from Medicare to the post-WWII expansion of social housing, only succeeded with federal support.

He said this reflected the reality that Australia's federal government had more powerful revenue-raising abilities: For every $5 in taxes levied in Australia every year, the federal government collected four and the states only one.

Nonetheless, he said, the federal government's frustration with state inaction on social housing was partly justified.

He said in the five years leading into the pandemic, the total stock of social housing increased by just 1,600 homes.

If state governments matched the funding it would double the housing

Therefore, Mr Coates said, the federal government should require state governments to match federal contributions to new social housing as a condition of any grants being allocated by the fund.

"If matched state funding was forthcoming, the future fund could provide 6,000 social homes a year — enough to stabilise the social housing share of the total housing stock," he said.

"It would double the total social housing build to 48,000 new homes by 2030, and 108,000 by 2040."

However, Mr Coates said a social housing future fund alone would not solve the housing crisis for low-income Australians.

He said even with an extra 108,000 social housing dwellings by 2040, more than two-thirds of low-income Australians would still be in the private rental market.

For that reason, he said the federal government ought to also boost Commonwealth rent assistance by "at least" 40 per cent and index the payment to changes in rents.

That would immediately reduce financial stress for some of Australia's most vulnerable families.

"This would be a fairer and more cost-effective way to reduce financial stress and poverty among poorer renters," he said.

"It's well targeted. About 80 per cent of Rent Assistance goes to the poorest fifth of households."

On Friday, a new report from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) found between 1.5 million and 2 million Australian renters aged 15 and over were potentially one life shock away from homelessness.

The paper, Estimating the population at-risk of homelessness in small areas, said a person was considered at risk of homelessness if they experienced at least two of the following:

• Living in a tight housing market
• Low income
• Vulnerability to discrimination
• Little social resources and supports
• Needing assistance to maintain a living situation (due to chronic ill health, disability, mental illness, or drug or alcohol problems)

The AHURI said the lack of affordable rental housing for low-income households in Australia — be it private rental or social housing — was amplifying various forms of disadvantage.

"There is a need for greater provision of rental housing that is specifically targeted to those on low incomes and/or those at risk of homelessness," the paper concluded.

‘Vandals’: Victoria, Queensland fume over federal climate intervention.

Extract from The Guardian 

Australia news

The commonwealth has used new powers to cancel states’ participation in global climate action.

The latest move on emissions is ‘a global embarrassment’ for the federal government, says Victoria’s energy, environment and climate change minister, Lily D’Ambrosio.

Peter Hannam

Mon 29 Nov 2021 03.30 AEDT

Last modified on Mon 29 Nov 2021 03.32 AEDT

The Morrison government has used sweeping new powers to override state and territory government support for an international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The federal government has deployed recently passed laws to overturn the participation of five states and territories in the global Under 2 Coalition.

In an email dated 23 November, an official with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told his counterpart in the Victorian government that its participation in the coalition was “no longer in operation”.

The email warned the Victorian government that under the new Foreign Relations (States and Territories) Act 2020, sign up to the agreement was now illegitimate.

Scott Morrison tells Cop26 Australia will exceed 2030 target in bid to fend off criticism

Read more

The email said Victoria had 14 days to tell the global organisation it had “failed to properly classify” the state’s involvement in a 2015 Memorandum of Understanding.

Two-hundred-and-sixty sub-national governments worldwide have signed up to the the Under 2 coalition, representing 1.75 billion people and 50% of the global economy. Members commit to keeping global temperature rises to well below 2C, with efforts to reach 1.5C. Thirty-five states and regions in the coalition have committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier.

“[T]he MOU has also been invalidated for a number of other states and territories,” the official said, naming the ACT, Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia. He did not cite NSW, which has lately signed up.

Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s energy, environment and climate change minister, said Dfat had used a technicality that was “illogical” to cancel her state’s participation.

“It’s just a really ridiculous technicality,” D’Ambrosio said. “It’s egregious. They are vandals.”

The move came less than a fortnight after the Glasgow climate summit ended. The Morrison government had weathered extensive criticism at the event for being among the few rich nations to avoid raising their 2030 emission reduction targets.

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“This is going to be a global embarrassment, not for the Victorian government but the federal government that has already covered itself in ridicule on the climate change stage,” D’Ambrosio said. “Rather than addressing the urgency of climate change, they are actually putting forward more barriers.”

A spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said the Under 2 Coalition MOU had not come to the minister for a decision.

“The MOU was not properly notified by the relevant states and territory under the Foreign Relations Act 2020 and was therefore automatically invalidated by operation of the Act,” the spokesperson said.

Dfat was also approached for comment, as was energy minister Angus Taylor.

The Dfat official suggested in the email if Victoria wanted to sign up to the Under 2 coalition’s 2021 MOU, his department would consider approving it. He also said Victoria should join with other jurisdictions to make a single submission.

“Under what conditions would they be prepared to consider an application?” D’Ambrosio said. “Are they saying that if there’s one or two states that maybe hadn’t wanted to pursue it or have delayed it, then everyone else will be held up?”

Meaghan Scanlon, Queensland’s minister for the environment and the Great Barrier Reef, said her state had also received the cancellation advice.

“Clearly, the Morrison government aren’t content with their own failures on climate change, they’re now trying to stop the states from taking action.” she said.

“Surely their time would be better spent funding renewable energy projects or delivering a credible policy on reducing emissions, than on playing silly bureaucratic games,” Scanlon said.

Queensland intends to re-apply “because it is an important and useful coalition of like-minded sub-national governments that want to act on climate action”.

Shane Rattenbury, the ACT’s climate change minister, said his government is yet to told of the cancellation, and continued to work with the global group, most recently this week on zero-emission vehicles.

“The Under 2 coalition is a helpful network of sub-national governments to work together on climate action,” he said.

NSW is understood to be discussing with Dfat the application of the new act on its involvement in the coalition.

Chris Bowen, federal Labor’s climate spokesperson said the intervention would probably viewed internationally as another blow to Australia’s reputation.

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“The states are doing their best to fill the federal climate vacuum but this demonstrates the need for national leadership,” Bowen said.

“It’s a blight on Scott Morrison that he hasn’t updated the medium-term targets the coalition government agreed to revisit,” he added.

Polly Hemming, an adviser in the Australia Institute’s Climate and Energy Program, said local governments had played an important role in advancing climate action.

Examples include California lifting its ambitions to cut emissions during the Trump years in the US, and in Australia where states have long led the way.

“While the commonwealth government is the only level of government that can commit Australia to a foreign treaty, it’s the state governments that will face the full costs of climate change induced disasters,” she said.

“The ACT legislative assembly and Sydney city council have endorsed a global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty,” Hemming added.

“We can only wonder if they will be getting emails from federal bureaucrats in the near future as well?”

Australian Government Confidential Report - Fossil Fuels and the Green House Effect 1981

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21117818/ona-climate-1981.pdf 

The Australian Government knew about Climate Change 40 years ago and did nothing!!

The Worker 

Electric cars averaged more travel than petrol vehicles in Australia in past year.

Extract from The Guardian

Electric vehicles

Expert says claims that EVs will ‘end the weekend can be put to bed’ by new figures.

A Hyundai Kona Electric charges at a EV charge station in Sydney. New statistics shows Australian electric vehicle drivers are travelling further as infrastructure improves.

Royce Kurmelovs

@RoyceRk2

Sat 27 Nov 2021 06.00 AEDT

Last modified on Sat 27 Nov 2021 06.02 AEDT

Australian electric vehicle drivers are on average driving further than people with petrol vehicles as infrastructure improves, new statistics show.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics for the first time looked at how electric vehicle drivers use their cars and found that in the 12 months to 30 June 2020 they had travelled 69 million km.

Electric vehicles travelled 11.1 thousand km on average, which was 600km more than drivers of petrol vehicles for the year.

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In New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT, EV owners travelled further than petrol vehicle owners, with Queensland not far behind. But electric vehicles lagged behind in South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

On the whole electric vehicles were still mostly confined to the cities and urban areas, with nearly three-quarters of all travel – 72.5% – taking place within capital cities. While EVs only recorded 5 million km of travel outside urban areas, or 7.2% of the total, they still recorded 2 million km of travel interstate.

Dr Jake Whitehead, the Electric Vehicle Council’s head of policy, said these early results were promising as they showed people were beginning to leave urban environments as infrastructure improves.

“The claim that EVs will end the weekend can be put to bed,” Whitehead said. “We are seeing them used for those longer-distance trips interstate.

“Overall this is very encouraging and demonstrates that Australians are adopting electric vehicles, and that having freedom to travel across the country is being helped by the increase infrastructure.”

Whitehead also said that the data comes with some caveats as it relied on a small sample size and different states and territories do not always clearly sort whether a car is an electric vehicle, a plug-in hybrid or another kind.

“We should be very clear about what an electric vehicle is: it’s been established internationally that an EV is one you plug in and power using electricity,” Whitehead said.

“Hybrids and these mythical hydrogen cars – which there are very few of – unless they can be plugged in and powered they are not EVs. And we should treat them separately, especially as they have different infrastructure requirements.”

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The results come as the Australian government faces criticism for not doing enough to support the transition to electric with its new electric vehicle strategy.

While the strategy was presented as a “reboot” for the Coalition, it offered little to help encourage the uptake of electric vehicles and instead focused on the rollout of charging infrastructure.

This lack of clarity has continued with Nationals whip Damian Drum calling for the introduction of an EV road user charge, saying that as uptake increases revenue from the fuel excise will decrease, forcing governments to “find those monies from somewhere”.

“You look at a future in Australia where if we move to more EVs, which undoubtedly we will, people that are driving EVs will have to be paying some sort of road tax,” Drum said.