AUSTRALIA'S UNENDING GREENIE PROBLEM

Three current articles below

Greenie paradise not so good when you try to live there

The Daintree is a beautiful unspoilt jungle area that the Greenies love -- but Greenies want to have their cake and eat it too. They hate modernity until they have to do without any of it



Daintree resident Neil Hewett's family uses gas to cook and heat water and there is no airconditioning to beat the far north Queensland tropical heat. Electricity is used only to run small appliances and a TV. But Mr Hewett still faces a weekly fuel bill of $170 to run generators that supplement the solar and hydro power electricity produced on his property. And the refill price of a gas bottle is $150. All up, it cost him $70,000 to become power self-sufficient as required by the State Government, which refuses to send electricity north of the Daintree River.



About 675 residents live there in 450 homes, and every home generator is spewing carbon dioxide into the surrounding World Heritage-listed environment where development has been restricted to maintain its pristine state. Locals have to run diesel and petrol motors because, with 5.5 meters of rain a year and 265 cloudy days a year, solar generation is unreliable.

Now, with diesel approaching $2 a litre, locals want the Government to relax its ban on reticulated power. According to Mr Hewett, conditions set by the state and federal governments for eventual access to the equalised tariff system that applies to other Queenslanders have been met.

Ten years ago, in a bid to stop development between the Daintree and Cape Tribulation, authorities decided on a $41 million buyback of some of the land that had been bought for homes. Established houses at Cape Tribulation, Cow Bay, Diwan, Cooper Creek and Thornton Beach were exempt. According to the deal, the buyback would trigger provision of electricity. With the buyback successful and the area further protected by new government iconic estate legislation, locals want the ban lifted.

In October, Energy Minister Geoff Wilson said he would take the matter to Cabinet but nothing has eventuated. Mr Hewett, who operates a forest walking business, said the ban was originally intended to stop developers who wanted to exploit a "great treasure". "But that legitimacy no longer exists," he said. "The development issue has been resolved. It is time the Government did something special for the Daintree."

But Mr Wilson was unsympathetic, saying: "We are not about to bulldoze through ancient rainforest to put in powerlines north of the Daintree River. "We are talking about world-famous, World Heritage-listed rainforest and everyone would want it to stay that way."

Source




Jobs 'at risk' from climate plan

OIL giant Mobil could be forced to close its Melbourne refinery when the Rudd Government introduces a carbon emissions trading scheme. The closure of the refinery, which supplies half of Victoria's fuel needs, would cut competition and could push up petrol prices.

Company executives believe the refinery, which employs 350 people, could become unviable because of competition from overseas facilities that do not have to pay to emit greenhouse gases. Under emissions trading, ExxonMobil will have to buy permits allowing it to emit carbon gases.

ExxonMobil Australia chairman Mark Nolan said yesterday the company would struggle to deal with the extra costs. "If you put a carbon price on Australian petroleum refining we'd find it very difficult, if not impossible, to recoup any of those costs because the price of petroleum products in Australia reflects the regional market," Mr Nolan said. "What we've said to Prof Garnaut and others is that it would be very difficult for domestic refineries, such as our Altona plant, to compete on a level playing field unless government recognises that refining is an emissions-intensive, trade-exposed sector." Mr Nolan said an ETS might also make it more difficult for the company to develop new liquid natural gas projects.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said yesterday the Government would consider industry concerns as it developed the trading scheme, due to start in 2010. "We understand there are various industries we have to be very mindful of, and obviously these issues will be canvassed in the Green Paper," Senator Wong said. "But what's important here is this: climate change is facing us, it is coming at us." [No sign of it for the last 10 byears but let's not quibble!]

Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes said companies subject to international competition, such as ExxonMobil, should get free carbon emission permits from the Government. "We're very keen to see a free allocation of permits for Australian producers to ensure that producers can make changes to their processes to lower their emissions, but also to produce goods Australia needs," Mr Howes said.

He said that there was no point in Australian refineries closing if they were replaced by facilities overseas that had lower environmental standards. [Logic for a change]

Source




Costly tokenism of climate scheme

When Garnaut said Australia had a diabolical problem he wasn't referring to rising sea levels or receding glaciers. Rather, it was the dilemma of needing to tax industry for carbon dioxide emissions when the emissions of this country alone can have no meaningful effect on the global problem of climate change.

The abject failure of the G8 this week to convince developing countries China and India to reduce their emissions is portent. Just as Australians can argue that their emissions have no material effect, developing countries contend, with great validity, that they didn't cause the problems in the first place - and in any event, their per capita emissions are far lower than the G8 averages!

Despite his swelling chorus of critics, Garnaut's work is substantial. There is nothing new in it, no blinding insights, but it is a solid assembly of all the critical issues and hypotheses on climate change. It spans the global effects and costs of droughts and floods to the economic impacts of a carbon trading scheme.

The Canberra professor already has his fierce critics. And the voices of dissent will rise further as industry and its vested interest groups gird their loins for the lobbying battle which lies ahead.

The most relevant criticism of the work is that it fudges on the notion that the consequences of climate change - from bleaching corals to melting icebergs _ somehow hinge on what Australia does to combat carbon emissions. What is it that Australia can do to reverse, or even slow emissions growth globally? Nothing of substance.

We are assuming here - notwithstanding what seem to be even more shrill cries of conspiracy from the climate change sceptics - that the overwhelming body of scientists and assorted experts have it right. That is, that human activity is warming the planet and something needs to be done about it. There is no swindle. Even assuming the flat-earthers have a prospect of being right, the risk of doing nothing would be too high.

Still, the argument that we urgently have to do something undermines the credibility of Garnaut, in a sense, as the effect of Australian activity has a negligible effect on global emissions. If we accept that the world has to do something urgently, that's fair enough, but even with no effort from Australia, the world could fight global warming quite nicely on its own.

Australia may dominate in cricket but not carbon emissions. Six countries and the European Union alone account for three-quarters of the world's emissions. Those are the US, China, Russia, Japan, India and Indonesia. Australia, contributing less than 2% to emissions, despite our high per capita carbon count, is not among them. We can only add another 100 million tonnes to the global 40 billion tonnes of carbon emissions assuming 2% growth over the next decade.

Does this mean it is useless for Australia to bother doing anything? This is where the debate gets philosophical. Is symbolic action worth the cost? Is there a case for Australia being a global champion of the climate cause? Would it not be a tad hypocritical, even under a new government, to hop up and move straight from the back of the classroom to the front row and start lecturing the teacher? Exaggerating our place in the global order at the expense of our own industry may be a mere vanity.

Let's not forget that one important aspect of the Rudd Government's victory at the polls last year was the Labor Party's pro-Kyoto stance. Rudd has a green mandate, a mandate to effect change, to make the hard decisions. Now the ramifications of this mandate are becoming disturbingly clear - and they are the high costs to industry of an ETS. This is where Kevin Rudd's other duties, to run the economy and look after workers, will come into sharp relief against his green mandate.

The overwhelming cost of the ETS will fall on coal, steel, power generation and mining sectors. Agriculture too, if not exempted. The rub is that these sectors not only deliver a disproportionate slice of the national income but also keep a lot of ''working families'' in work. What Garnaut recommends is a wholesale restructuring of our economy to respond to the climate change crisis. The impact of this, contend his detractors, would be destructive on local economies. In any case, India and China would still be pumping out the equivalent emissions while benefitting from the hole left by an Australian resources competitor. We will be hearing a lot of the ''if it's not us, it'll be somebody else'' logic.

Clearly, the line needs to be drawn between transforming Australia into a sustainable economy and not needlessly blowing up local economies and putting people out of work. This will be a nightmare for politicians who will blow up votes whatever policy or course of action they take....

More here





AUSTRALIA'S UNENDING PUBLIC MEDICINE PROBLEM

Two current articles below

NSW Ambulance bureaucracy indifferent to staff welfare

Not exactly a surprise

AMBULANCE management had been "grossly negligent and dismissive" in handling complaints by a female officer about bullying at Cowra before she eventually committed suicide, her former supervisor has told a parliamentary inquiry. The Herald has learnt that no women have been appointed to the Cowra ambulance station in the three years since the first and only female officer there, Christine Hodder, hanged herself in her backyard after allegedly enduring years of bullying and harassment by up to seven male colleagues.

An internal investigation by the NSW Ambulance Service after Mrs Hodder's death in 2005 recommended a male replace her and that no female be hired there for six months. There were 24 recommendations "to address better management of harassment and bullying" but no officer was disciplined after the investigation.

Mrs Hodder's former supervisor, Phil Roxburgh, said his complaints had fallen on deaf ears. He told the inquiry he was fed up with the "harassment, bullying, and intimidation which still continues unabated in the service, coupled with management's dysfunctional handling and empty posturing concerning these occurrences".

Yesterday Mr Roxburgh told the Herald he had received more than 100 emails of complaints after sending a group email in April expressing concern about bullying. "I couldn't do anything for Christine and myself - it's too late for that - but I'm hearing of people who have received some very bad outcomes from management," he said. "It's like water torture. You're left to hang and hang. I've got a couple of people who are on the verge of suiciding."

Mr Roxburgh had supported Mrs Hodder while she was at Cowra but he was also victimised and went on stress leave in October 2004, he told the inquiry. He said the professional standards and conduct unit "patently failed to respond in a timely and appropriate way" despite his warnings. He had also raised concerns with human resources, rehabilitation, and the state superintendent, and had even tried to speak to the CEO of the service, Greg Rochford, but "this fell on deaf ears". He accused the head of the conduct unit, Marion O'Connell, of being "very aggressive" when he criticised the internal investigation.

Mrs Hodder's mother-in-law, Carolynn Hodder, and Mr Roxburgh each told the inquiry that the then assistant operations manager leaked a complaint from Christine Hodder about a man whom she suspected had urinated "all over" her toilet. "Things at the station became explosive - [the accused person] became very verbally abusive towards her and he told Christine, 'See I told you. You have no chance seeking help from anyone above or the union as we will find out,' " Carolynn Hodder told the inquiry.

Mr Roxburgh told the inquiry the assistant operations manager had since been promoted. Christine Hodder had worked before as an ambulance officer at Canowindra and Grenfell and had got on well with her fellow officers. She had been an army medic for six years. Mr Roxburgh, who now works at Moruya ambulance station, said Mrs Hodder was victimised because she was a woman. "My colleague's problems were, first and foremost, that she was female and to exacerbate this she was intelligent, a good officer and her patients loved her," he wrote. "The constant harassment, bullying and intimidation by the staff, the callous indifference, inaction and abandonment by the service. all contributed to tipping the scales."

Source






Hospital urgent waiting list blows out

Gold Coast Liberal MP John-Paul Langbroek has blasted the State Government for not seeing the "sickest" patients first at the Gold Coast Hospital. Langbroek, member for Surfers Paradise, said Category One elective surgery patients, which are those requiring the most urgent attention on waiting lists, had almost doubled in the past 12 months. Figures released by Queensland Health indicate there were 25 people on the Category 1 waiting list last July and 58 in April this year.

"What this shows is our sickest patients are waiting far longer for treatment than they should be," Langbroek said. "The Gold Coast Hospital is struggling to cope with the demand." "As a result, our waiting lists are getting longer and patients are getting sicker as they are forced to wait for vital surgery."

However, a Government spokesman said the figures Langbroek was quoting were out of date and the latest figures, which will be released soon, show Gold Coast Hospital had only 23 patients on the Category 1 list. He did concede that numbers for Category 1 list at some hospital had risen. The figures show Category One patients almost doubled but there had been a decrease in categories 2 and 3. On July 1 2007, there were 205 Category 2 patients and 213 Category 3, while on April this year there were 176 and 168 respectively.

Langbroek said the Government was not making all categories a priority. "The bottom line is we shouldn't have to sacrifice one wait list for another, said Mr Langbroek. "The Government is spending record amounts on health. Patients should have no problem getting their surgery on time."

During the same period, Category 1 waiting lists numbers had increased at Bundaberg, Cairns Base, Caloundra General, Hervey Bay, Innisfail, Mackay Base, Maryborough Base, Nambour, Princess Alexandra, QEII, Rockhampton and Royal Children's hospitals.

Source