Western Sydney University chief Jennifer Westacott: ‘We will not tolerate hate speech on campus’

Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott has slammed anti-Israel campus protesters, two of whom were arrested and charged for allegedly assaulting security guards.

“Western Sydney University condemns anti-Semitism in any form, full stop,” Ms Westacott told The Australian.

“We condemn Islamophobia, hate speech, intimidation and violence in any form, full stop. I cannot be clearer than that.

“We will not tolerate these behaviours on our campuses. This is now a police matter and we are fully co-operating with the police investigation.

“The safety and wellbeing of students is our priority. Universities should be places of intellectual challenge and the contest of ideas, but they must never be places of fear or intimidation.”

Peak Jewish groups have expressed outrage at Western Sydney University protesters who claimed to name a campus building after the slain former leader of Hamas’s political wing. In a social media comment, the protesters confirmed their banner, which read “Haniyeh’s building”, was a reference to Ismail Haniyeh, the former leader of Hamas’s political wing who was assassinated this year.

The protesters have scheduled a “cops off campus” protest on Friday at the university campus, saying two of its members were “violently arrested” in a case of “racial profiling”.

“Ismail Haniyeh was the leader of Hamas, a terrorist organisation listed in Australia, just like ISIS and al-Qa’ida,” Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto said. “Imagine students glorifying bin Laden on campus a year after 9/11.

“Failures in university leadership across Australia have emboldened students to think they can get away with glorifying a genocidal terrorist leader with no consequences. Western Sydney University must come out strongly … to condemn this behaviour and send a clear message to all students that this will not be tolerated.”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry condemned the protesters for being “some of the most ignorant and brainwashed people imaginable”.

“It has taken a year for the anti-Israel movement to drop any pretence of supporting peace and Palestinian statehood,” ECAJ co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said. “It is now plain for all to see they’re only interested in war and Jewish destruction.

“In time they will undoubtedly turn up as Greens candidates or researchers for ‘human rights organisations’ but their proud support for a murderous anti-Semitic psychopath will follow them.”

Separately, University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell sent a note to students and staff on Thursday after The Australian revealed anti-Israel protesters had trespassed and protested in a Jewish physics professor’s office and left only when police were called.

Victoria Police on Thursday confirmed it had been called to remove “around 25 people” from a university staff member’s private office.

“This type of behaviour is completely and utterly unacceptable and stands in direct opposition to the values we hold as a university,” Professor Maskell wrote. “There are no circumstances whatsoever where a member of our university community should be targeted in this way.

“Everyone has a right to be safe at work and this is enshrined in law. Colleagues also have a right to be able to do their job without being or feeling threatened. Intentional acts of intimidation, violence, vilification or anti-Semitism against members of our community will not be tolerated.”

He said such acts cannot be allowed to be repeated: “I exhort everyone in our community to come together and stand against such attacks on our colleagues and our values.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/western-sydney-university-chief-jennifer-westacott-we-will-not-tolerate-hate-speech-on-campus/news-story/5a7ffbd4becdbd69c4174e312ecdab56

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‘It’s almost beyond belief’: Findings blast Australia’s biggest carbon offset scheme

Australia’s biggest carbon credit scheme is barely removing any greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, according to a new study, despite hundreds of millions of dollars being pumped into it by businesses and the government.

One of the study’s authors, Dr Megan Evans from UNSW Canberra, said the findings about the Human Induced Regeneration scheme, known as HIR, pointed to “such huge failures that it’s almost beyond belief”.

The HIR is intended to allow farmers and project proponents to reduce stock and feral animals from vast areas of rangeland Australia which, they argue, allows forest to regrow there in a way it would not otherwise.

Credits are then issued for each tonne of carbon dioxide abated by the assumed growth in trees based on a model of how the forest should regrow in those areas, plus on regular audits.

The new research from a group of ANU and UNSW scientists, led by Professor Andrew Macintosh, used historical and current satellite images to suggest there was no meaningful change between forest growth on areas that were claiming carbon credits compared with neighbouring areas.

The new paper suggests that whatever trees have grown on the 116 projects surveyed was overwhelmingly due to recent rainfall, not the human management of projects.

The study found most projects showed “minimal impact on woody vegetation cover in credited areas” even though they had already generated about $495 million in carbon credits.

Their findings were immediately rejected by another ANU scientist, natural resource management associate professor Cris Brack, who has done extensive work for the government regulator, the Clean Energy Regulator.

Brack rejected the statement that little or no abatement had taken place, saying he had “personally reviewed numerous projects across NSW, Queensland and WA”, and had access to independent assurance-audit reports that proved projects were on track.

The HIR method is the largest single contributor of carbon credits to the Australian government and private industry, with 465 projects covering 42 million hectares – an area significantly larger than Japan. Having issued 44 million carbon credits, the Australian scheme is, according to the new study, the fifth-largest nature-based scheme in the world, making these findings of global significance.

ANU professor of climate change law and policy Andrew Macintosh.
ANU professor of climate change law and policy Andrew Macintosh.Credit:Vikky Wilkes

The problem, the researchers say, is that HIR schemes are being credited on rangeland that was unsuitable because it was never cleared of forest in the first place, and is already close to its natural coverage of forest (trees above two metres tall over at least 20 per cent of the landscape).

Since 2021, Macintosh and a growing team of scientists have described the method as a fraud that would cost Australia up to $5 billion by 2030.

Their concerns have prompted a number of reviews, most notably by former chief scientist Ian Chubb. In 2023, he found the method was sound and said, “we have no reason to believe that there are substantial numbers of [Australian Carbon Credit Units] ACCUs not credible at the moment”.

But the new, peer-reviewed report, published by Macintosh and his team on Friday in The Rangeland Journal, closely analysed 116 sites in NSW, Queensland and South Australia using high-resolution satellite images.

Based on the number of carbon credits generated on the project areas, the tree canopy should have covered 30 per cent of the sites. Instead, they found the average cover was just 13 per cent. They also found the project’s management had made little difference to tree coverage.

“The areas are likely to be at or near their carrying capacity for woody vegetation, meaning any changes in tree cover are most likely to be attributable to seasonal variability in rainfall,” the report said. “Projects are being credited for regenerating forests in areas that contained forest cover when the projects started.

“Given that 2023 was the third year of a rare triple-dip wet La Niña, if the projects were performing as expected, observed levels of canopy cover across the projects would be significantly higher.”

The scientists said the real problem with this was that emitters would not alter their behaviour because they could buy offsets, then if those offsets did not produce real cuts in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Australia would not genuinely reduce its emissions.

Another of the project’s authors, Professor Don Butler from the ANU, said the government body that administers the scheme, the Clean Energy Regulator, had “let us all down terribly”.

“They’ve used hundreds of millions of dollars of public money to build a house of cards that is enabling climate inaction ... The failure of this scheme will only become more obvious as time goes on.”

But Brack, who has audited the scheme for the Clean Energy Regulator, and found it was meeting its targets, said the other scientists had got their measurements wrong.

The satellite images they used were not picking up all the extra growth, he said, much of which could only be seen from photographs or “in situation measurements” on the ground.

Brack added that projects could still meet targets if there were small trees that had not yet reached full size.

In a statement, the Clean Energy Regulator said the HIR method had been reviewed and found to be sound, by Chubb, the Australian National Audit Office and most recently by Brack who had given “strong assurance that the projects are being managed properly”.

If a project was not compliant, carbon credits already paid out were clawed back, the statement said. “We only issue carbon credits where a project can demonstrate regenerating native forest,” it said.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australia-s-biggest-source-of-carbon-offsets-built-on-house-of-cards-credits-worth-495m-20241009-p5kh3m.html

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Some Australian states are discovering what happens when they have too much rooftop solar

What a muddle!

When Victoria basks in mostly sunny spring weather this weekend, energy authorities will be monitoring how far electricity demand ebbs. If needed, they’ll turn off rooftop solar systems to ensure stability for the grid.

Such minimum system load events, as they are called, have emerged as a new challenge as households across Australia take advantage of plunging prices for solar panels to shield themselves from rising power bills and cut carbon emissions.

The Australian Energy Market Operator issued two such alerts for Victoria during the AFL grand final weekend a fortnight ago, and warned of two for this Saturday and Sunday.

Prior to this cluster, the state’s only previous warning was last 31 December.

The public has become inured to annual alerts to possible power shortfalls during summer heatwaves or extended cold snaps during winter.

It won’t be long before the obverse – a grid strained by too little demand – is common during mild, sunny spring and autumn days, when the need for cooling or heating abates, experts say.

“It’s all going to be uncomfortably interesting for energy system people,” said Tennant Reed, director of climate change and energy at the Ai Group, noting there are “emerging rules to keep the show on the road”.

Having a grid that is supplied entirely by renewable energy is something Aemo and state and federal governments have anticipated as they step up support for so-called consumer energy resources. Australian households have already embraced rooftop solar at a pace unmatched anywhere, with more than a third generating power at home.

Many options are available to source extra demand, such as encouraging people to use more of their generation at peak sunny periods, renewable advocates say.

Hot water heaters, now often operating at night, could be switched on during the day, while certain industrial users could be given incentives to increase production, much like they are now rewarded to power down during summer heatwaves.

Still, the looming challenges aren’t small, particularly as coal-fired power plants shut.

The grid’s system strength is “projected to decline sharply over the next decade”, Aemo said in its latest 2024 Electricity Statement of Opportunities report.

From October to December is likely to be when demand sinks to its lowest for most parts of the national electricity market. (The national electricity market or Nem serves all regions except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.)

Windy, sunny spring days – much like the coming weekend in Victoria – also mean an elevated supply of renewable energy in a season of minimal heating or cooling need.

A year ago, on 29 October, Nem grid demand hit a record minimum of about 11 gigawatts for 30 minutes. Small-scale solar, most of it on residential roofs, met 52% of underlying demand.

As more homes install solar, the Nem’s minimum demand may continue to shrink at the present rate of 1.2GW each year, Aemo said.

The Nem needs at least 4.3GW of electricity moving across its transmission network. If there are “unplanned network or unit outages”, the threshold rises to about 7GW – a level that may be breached as soon as next spring, Aemo said.

“While these periods of very high distributed PV levels relative to underlying demand are currently not frequent, they will increase over time and could occur during unusual events and outage conditions,” it said.

“A credible disturbance could lead to reliance on emergency frequency control schemes which are known to be compromised in such low operational demand periods, escalating risks of system collapse and blackouts.”

However, the market has a sizeable toolkit to address those risks. South Australia, where about half the homes have solar panels, already has coped with two minimum system load events of level 3 – the most serious – on 11 October 2020 and 14 March 2021.

For the latter, SA Power Networks, a company part-owned by the Hong Kong-based conglomerate Cheung Kong Infrastructure, was ordered to turn off 71 megawatts of photovoltaic systems. It was the first such intervention by Aemo.

So-called solar curtailment is now a feature of SA’s operating system even if such an intervention is meant to be a “last resort”, the network group said.

Before such action, large-scale solar and wind farms will be turned off, as will big solar systems on shopping centres and factories. Exports of surplus solar power from homes will also be halted before the systems themselves are turned off.

According to WattClarity, a leading energy data website, SA had at least eight such rooftop solar curtailments in 2022 and 2o23.

Victoria, which introduced similar “backstop” rules on 1 October this year, says consumers can do their bit. Solar curtailment should be authorities’ last move.

“We encourage households with solar panels to make the most of their clean energy and save on bills by using their solar power during the day – whether it’s charging electric vehicles, doing laundry or running dishwashers,” a Victorian government spokesperson said.

For Victoria, the backstop mechanism won’t affect a household’s ability to consume their own solar generation. Large batteries are part of the toolkit from this spring, with storage on standby to create additional demand by charging up.

New South Wales and Queensland are expected to face similar challenges in coming years. NSW, though, is yet to start public consultation on restrictions of solar exports, with minimum load issues not forecast until late 2025 or beyond.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/12/australian-states-too-much-rooftop-solar

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Landlords giving up: Victoria sees record fall in rental stock as investors leave the state

Victoria is experiencing the sharpest fall in rental stock since record keeping began in 1999, suggesting an investor sell-off is gaining pace.

The number of active rental bonds (a proxy for the number of rental properties in a market) fell from a little over 676,400 in June last year to 654,700 this year – suggesting there were 21,700 fewer rentals in the market.

The state has only ever recorded two quarters of rental bond falls, and both occurred in 2024.

The speed of rental stock loss also appeared to be increasing, with the total number of rental bonds dropping 1.3 per cent in the three months to May, and 3.2 per cent in the three months to June.

The new data, released by the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, supports a trend identified in the recently-released Property Investment Professionals of Australia (PIPA) 2024 Annual Investor Sentiment Survey.

The survey described a "sell-off of investment properties around the nation" that was "continuing unabated" and "fuelling fears of an even tighter rental market".

The outlook may be grim for investors, but home owners appeared to be benefiting, snapping up 65 per cent of the properties investors sold, according to PIPA.

First homebuyers in Melbourne have also enjoyed months of falling prices, while most of the rest of the country has experienced continued increases.

However, the survey's 1288 respondents declared Victoria to be the "least accommodating state or territory for property investors", and Victoria and Melbourne were found to have some of the highest proportions of investors selling up.

In Melbourne, roughly 22 per cent of investors surveyed had sold at least one rental in the past year, the second highest after Brisbane.

When it came to investors selling in regional areas, Victoria also had the second highest rate, with just over 9 per cent of investors selling, just below NSW, where the figure sat at just over 10 per cent.

PIPA Victoria board director Cate Bakos said legislative changes around minimum rental standards and increased land taxes were driving investors from the state.

She said real estate agents were also reporting a higher percentage of sellers being investors.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-12/victoria-sharp-fall-in-rental-stock/104464504

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