Are wind farms noisy? Tony Abbott thinks they are. And if Tony Abbott thinks they’re noisy then I imagine that every right-winger in the country will be using Abbott’s opinion as scientific evidence that your eardrums will be blown out if you dare to venture within two postcodes of the ‘awful’ things.
Mr Abbott forgets that timber mills are noisy, as are roads, which he came to office vowing to build more of.
But back to wind farms . . . was Mr Abbott telling the truth? Are they really noisy?
Instead of sitting here and spending all day summarising studies into the issue, I could best be more effective if I implore you watch this very short video which gives us the answer.
And for those who don’t wish to watch the video I will give you the findings: they are not noisy. Tony Abbott is. He’s making a noise about nothing.
Would it be too much to ask him to remain silent on any issue he knows nothing about? Can we hope that in future he refrains from telling untruths in order to promote government policy and his own personal prejudices?
While renewable energy is hugely popular amongst the Australian public with more than two-thirds of Aussies supporting building more wind-farms, PM Tony Abbott is once again way out of step with the country he is supposed to represent, admitting this morning that he has been actively working to reduce growth of wind energy in Australia.
The PM said they were ‘visually awful’ and claimed potential health impacts, despite a Senate Inquiry being told just yesterday that there is no evidence of this.
Only last year was Tony Abbott telling us that coal, a major contributor to the catastrophic impacts of climate change, was ‘good for humanity’.
In its cheap attacks on the president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, the Abbott government has shown it has a very prominent glass jaw. When Professor Triggs criticises the government, out comes a minister with a string of damnations, the most recent alleging that she has politicised her role. Say it often enough, and people will come to believe it. That is the way this government works. It seeds falsehoods and plays with words and meanings. It rethreads stories so that details get lost in translation.
What exactly has Professor Triggs done to deserve the thundering denunciations of this government? She has criticised its policies on human rights. She has denounced its treatment of asylum seekers. She has warned of executive overreach, of the dangers of investing ministers with more powers but without proper checks and balances and without the explicit authority of the people. And she has queried if the policy of unilaterally turning back boats carrying asylum seekers may be a reason why Indonesia and other neighbouring countries “will not engage with us on other issues that we care about, like the death penalty”.
To be clear, in those latter comments Professor Triggs did not specifically mention the execution of drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, as Immigration Minister Peter Dutton suggested. She did allude to the death penalty in pressing her point that if Australia wanted common ground on some matters with regional neighbours, it needed to consider how its own policies affected other countries.
The link was there, but these are hardly controversial comments and to make such a link is not a “complete disgrace” or an “outrageous slur”, as Mr Dutton contends. They are contributions to the debate about the efficacy of government policies and the management of diplomatic ties
Professor Triggs says the kinds of things governments don’t like to hear. That is the essence of her role. The commission is required to be alert to potential abuses of power, to criticise when it detects human rights intrusions, to call out the danger and act as monitor. Professor Triggs and her fellow commissioners are fundamentally not there to support the government of the day. They are there to act on our behalf and for the rights of all people within Australian territory.
Professor Triggs, though, has been the target of a despicable, orchestrated campaign by the Abbott government. It was led by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who accused her of acting in a “blatantly partisan” manner for investigating the conditions of children held in immigration detention. He declared the government had lost confidence in Professor Triggs. Then it was Attorney-General George Brandis, who tried to force her resignation by sending a bureaucrat to offer her another role.
The latest unwarranted and high-handed volley was from Mr Dutton. He needs to have a hard look at himself. Remember he brought to cabinet (with Mr Abbott) the unheralded and preposterously un-researched proposal to cancel, on the say-so of a minister, the citizenships of Australians suspected of terrorism activities.
As Immigration Minister, Mr Dutton has charge of one of the most important and sensitive government portfolios. His brief requires focus on matters of national security as well as national cohesion. To enhance national security requires more than extra defence and police powers or border protection services or, indeed, stripping citizenship rights from individuals. As Immigration Minister, he should be building tolerance and inclusion, not demonising and ostracising.
The efforts of all these senior ministers to blunt the independent advocate for human rights underscores how desperate the government is to deflect criticism of other matters, and how haughtily some ministers seem to view the power of the executive. On that last point, authoritarian is a word that springs to mind.
The claim: Prime Minister Tony Abbott says the Coalition announced plans to stop new mothers “double dipping” on paid parental leave before the 2013 election.
The verdict: The policy the Coalition took to the election didn’t include ending double dipping and ensured most working women would have a far better deal with their paid parental leave. A pre-election costings document did flag scrapping double dipping for public servants, but it didn’t say it would apply to women in the private sector. Mr Abbott’s claim is misleading.
The claim: Prime Minister Tony Abbott says growth in spending is lower under the Coalition than it was under Labor.
The verdict: Experts say Labor’s one-off stimulus spending to combat the GFC distorts Mr Abbott’s comparison, and opposition in the Senate to proposed spending cuts could change the estimates for the Abbott Government. What’s more, measured as a proportion of gross domestic product, spending under the Abbott Government has been higher than in all but one of Labor’s years in government. Mr Abbott’s claim is spin.
There was a somewhat surprising announcement this week from a country with one of the world’s worst climate reputations: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s office declared that his government is committed to signing on to the next major international climate accord, set to be hammered out in Paris later this year.
In a statement, the PM’s office said that “a strong and effective global agreement, that addresses carbon leakage and delivers environmental benefit, is in Australia’s national interest.”
I have no idea what “carbon leakage” is. Presumably it’s something similar to carbon dioxide emissions, which are the leading cause of global warming. (Update: Carbon leakage is “the term often used to describe the situation that may occur if, for reasons of costs related to climate policies, businesses were to transfer production to other countries which have laxer constraints on greenhouse gas emissions,” according to the European Commission.) Regardless, the announcement is a welcome sign from an administration that was recently ranked as the “worst industrial country in the world” on climate action.
The Paris summit is meant to elicit strong commitments to reduce carbon pollution from all of the world’s leading economies, so it’s a good thing Australia is willing to play ball. The country gets 74 percent of its power from coal (that’s nearly twice coal’s share of US energy generation). Australia has the second-largest carbon footprint per capita of the G20 nations (following Saudi Arabia), according to US government statistics.
Whether or not Australians liked their carbon tax, new data show it absolutely worked to slash carbon emissions.
But let’s not get too excited. Although Abbott hasn’t yet specified exactly what kind of climate promises he’ll bring to the table in Paris, there’s good reason to be skeptical. Here’s why: In the run-up to the talks, developed countries are keeping a close eye on each others’ domestic climate policies as a guage of how serious they each are about confronting the problem. It’s a process of collectively raising the bar: If major polluters like the United States show they mean business in the fight against climate change, other countries will be more inclined to follow suit. Of course, the reverse is also true—for example, the revelation that Japan is using climate-designated dollars to finance coal-fired power plants weakens the whole negotiating process. That’s one reason why President Barack Obama has been so proactive about initiating major climate policies from within the White House rather than waiting for the GOP-controlled Congress to step up.
So, on that metric, how are Australia’s climate policies shaping up? It looks like they’re going straight down the gurgler.
Almost a year ago, Australia made a very different kind of climate announcement: It became the world’s first country to repeal a price on carbon. Back in 2012, after several years of heated political debate, Australia’s parliament had voted to impose a fixed tax on carbon pollution for the country’s several hundred worst polluters. The basic idea—as with all carbon-pricing systems, from California to the European Union—is that putting a price on carbon emissions encourages power plants, factories, and other major sources to clean up. Most environmental economists agree that a carbon price would be the fastest way to dramatically slash emissions, and that hypothesis is supported by a number of case studies from around the world—British Columbia is a classic success story. (President Obama backed a national carbon price for the US—in the form of a cap-and-trade system—in 2009, but it was quashed in the Senate.)
In Australia, the carbon tax quickly became unpopular with most voters, who blamed it for high energy prices and the country’s sluggish recovery from the 2008 global recession. Abbott rose to power in part based on his pledge to get rid of the law. In July 2014 he succeeded in repealing it.
Now, new data from the Australian Department of the Environment reveal that whether or not you liked the carbon tax, it absolutely worked to slash carbon emissions. And in the first quarter without the tax, emissions jumped for the first time since prior to the global financial crisis.
The new data quantified greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector (which accounts for about a third of total emissions, the largest single share) in the quarter from July to September 2014. As the chart below shows, emissions in that same quarter dropped by about 7.5 percent after the carbon tax was imposed, and jumped 4.7 percent after it was repealed:
Tim McDonnell
It’s especially important to note that the jump came in the context of an overall decline in electricity consumption, as Australian climate economist Frank Jotzo explained to the Sydney Morning Herald:
Frank Jotzo, an associate professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School, said electricity demand was falling in the economy, so any rise in emissions from the sector showed how supply was reverting to dirtier energy sources.
“You had a step down in the emission intensity in power stations from the carbon price—and now you have a step back up,” Professor Jotzo said.
…[Jotzo] estimated fossil fuel power plants with 4.4 gigawatts of capacity were been taken offline during the carbon tax years. About one third of that total, or 1.5 gigawatts, had since been switched back on.
In other words, we have here a unique case study of what happens when a country bails on climate action. The next question will what all this will mean for the negotiations in Paris.
It could take a generation to dispel violent extremism from groups such as Islamic State, according to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
In a wide-ranging speech, Ms Bishop outlined her concerns about the extent of extremist ideology and the measures Australia is taking to combat it.
“We have no choice but to be part of this struggle against extremism in all its forms — both at home and abroad,” she said.
“This will take years, decades, potentially a generation to resolve.”
Ms Bishop said the growth of groups such as Islamic State, also known as Daesh, “poses a challenge to global security” and that it was “an issue that keeps me awake at night”.
The concern has led Australia to increase funding for security and intelligence agencies and step up its military role in the Middle East.
Ms Bishop also pointed to an expansion on intelligence sharing.
“Our intelligence agencies — and I’m not giving anything away here, I’m sure — are making contact with intelligence agencies from countries that we would not have in the past shared information with,” she said.
“The saying ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is emerging to be somewhat appropriate in this regard.”
She also thanked Muslim community leaders for helping the Federal Government combat terrorism.
“Our Muslim community — its leaders, its mosques — play an important role in combating extremism,” she said.
“I thank Muslim community leaders for their vital support.”
Her comments stand in contrast to the Prime Minister’s recent remarks about the same issue in a speech on national security.
Tony Abbott was criticised by the Islamic community for saying, “I’ve often heard Western leaders describe Islam as a ‘religion of peace’, I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often, and mean it”.
More than 200,000 calls have been made to the National Security Hotline in recent times.
Bishop flags difficulty prosecuting those responsible for MH17
Ms Bishop also spoke candidly about the difficulty of prosecuting anyone in relation to the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine last year.
A report is being prepared into the cause of the crash and Ms Bishop is certain it will show the Malaysia Airlines flight was downed by a surface-to-air missile.
The crash killed all of the nearly 300 people on board, including 27 Australians.
Ms Bishop has suggested it would be hard to pursue Russian-backed rebels if they were found to be the perpetrators.
“I feel sure that whoever ordered that firing, and whoever carried it out, long disappeared into a Russian winter,” she said.
“So it will be very challenging for us to take it any further.”
There is no place on the globe to escape the opprobrium and embarrassment generated by Australia’s uniquely hamfisted prime minister, writes IA’s French correspondent Alan Austin. Mon dieu!
SHAMELESS, insensitive, outrageous, incredibly racist, intransigent, shameful, disrespectful, lacking humanity and completely disconnected from reality. These are just some of the loathsome labels attached to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, as the world’s media again shakes its head in collective disbelief and mild abhorrence.
‘Australia’s increasingly controversial Prime Minister Tony Abbott has blundered into yet another self-inflicted disaster with a deeply insensitive and racist comment about Australia’s Aboriginals when he defended his government’s decision to remove subsidies from more than 150 remote communities.’
Journals covering this latest dismal display of discrimination Downunder include top mastheads. In France Le Monde and Le Figaro ran prominent stories, as did 7sur7, Le Petit Journal and others.
Abbott’s consistently bad press since his multiple embarrassments at Davos in January last year continued across Europe.
Portugal’s Expressolabelled Abbott’s statements as ‘ofensivas e inapropriadas’ — offensive and inappropriate.
It noted that Australia’s Constitution
‘… does not recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait islands people as the first to inhabit the country.’
The story in Germany’s Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitungclaimed Abbott’s ‘outrageous’ remarks about Aboriginal Australians ‘einen Sturm der Entrüstung ausgelöst’ — triggered a storm of indignation.
Spain’s Radio Intereconomiareminded its audience of some pertinent history:
‘More than two thirds of Aborigines, representing 1.6 percent of the population of over 23 million people, live in poverty and were victims of discriminatory policies for decades. Only in 1962 was their right to vote recognized. It took many years to achieve other claims, such as the 2008 apology by the State for past official policies which separated tens of thousands of Aboriginal children from their parents.’
Switzerland’s German-language Neue Zürcher Zeitungquoted Amnesty International’s objections to the community closures on the grounds that this:
‘… was not only a breach of international law, but also counterproductive.’
NZZ also highlighted the hypocrisy of Abbott’s public relations trips to remote communities:
‘Apparently his intent to govern Australia for one week each year in the bush, has not led to Australia’s indigenous people feeling better represented.’
Le Nouvelliste, a French-language Swiss journal, also noted that top adviser on Indigenous affairs Warren Mundine was stunned – ‘abasourdi’ – at Abbott’s call:
‘”These people live on their original lands. This is their life, their essence, their culture,” Mundine said.’
Britain’s Telegraphdescribed Abbott’s comments as shameless and insensitive, and quoted indigenous leaders Mundine and Noel Pearson and various MPs.
It added that:
‘Mr Abbott, a London-born no-nonsense conservative, has become known for his propensity for embarrassing gaffes …’
Pearson and Mundine expressing ‘shock at the tone of Mr Abbott’s words’ appeared also in The Irish Times.
Elsewhere across the world, similar dismay was expressed loud and clear.
In Mexico, Contacto Hoyquoted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, saying that community closures would provoke an exodus to the peripheries of cities and only worsen “the situation [which] is already bad”.
Hoy Venezuelareported‘una ola de críticas’ – a wave of criticism – following Abbott’s comments.
It continued:
‘Australian Indigenous peoples are the poorest in the nation, with shorter life than other citizens, and who suffer disproportionate levels of incarceration and social problems such as unemployment.’
New Caledonia’s French-language Nouvelle Caledoniequoted film director Rolf de Heer saying Tony Abbott:
“… demonstrated such ignorance that he is no longer legitimate as prime minister.”
It also referred to ‘criticism in his own camp’ and Bill Shorten’s accusation that Abbott is “left in the 1950s”.
New Zealand’s media highlighted support for the remote Australian communities from Māori leaders.
‘… that if Aboriginal people are ripped from their communities they will lose their identity.’
It added:
‘He says he feels for the Aboriginal people in Australia and moving them out of their communities will be detrimental for them, just as it was for the identity of many Māori who are thrust into cities and lost among the masses and eventually forgotten.’
Following hard on widespread derision over the knighthood to Prince Philip, this confirms Tony Abbott has now replaced former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi as the object of global media ridicule.
Even Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal in the USA felt obliged to report the
‘… furor over [Abbott’s] comments suggesting people living in remote Outback communities are making a “lifestyle choice”.’
Naturally, this piece emphasised Abbott’s admirable intentions and his wonderful history of direct involvement with the communities.
The WSJ concluded:
‘Mr Abbott, who last month survived a challenge to his leadership brought on by slumping polls and policy gaffes, said people should look at his record on indigenous rights, including a week spent last year running the country from a remote aboriginal community in the Northern Territory made famous by the Crocodile Dundee films.’
It was already known that the Abbott government had effectively forced Australian universities into supporting its higher education reform package, at the heart of which is university fee deregulation. Australian governments are notorious for underfunding higher education, which nevertheless earns a return of $6 for every public dollar invested: as a proportion of GDP, Australia invests less in higher education than New Zealand, Canada, most of Europe and the USA. Realistic about their prospects for future funding increases, the universities had to support the government’s attempt to raise students’ fees.
What most didn’t know until last week was that the Abbott government is also trying to force Australia’s scientific research community to support fee deregulation. Christopher Pyne has sought to tie the $150 million of funding to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), announced during last year’s budget, to the passage of his higher education reform bill. The research community understood that the $150 million was all but guaranteed. There is now every prospect that it will fail to materialise if, as is expected, the Senate blocks the fee deregulation bill again.
And if that happens, there are 27 major research facilities across the country that will effectively have no funding after June this year. Hundreds if not thousands of postgraduate and early career researchers depend on the NCRIS – which facilitates research partnerships between industry, government and universities – for their positions, and there are fears many of them will have to seek work overseas. Scientists attended a Senate estimates hearing on Friday to make their case for funding certainty. This is not the first time the government has sought to effectively blackmail researchers into supporting its policy agenda in another area: the new $20 billion medical research fund was initially contingent upon the GP co-payment passing the Senate.
*PoliticOz is changing. From tomorrow you’ll see a new email in your inbox from the Monthly. Called “The Monthly Today”, it will include the daily political editorial as well as stories from the magazine and its website, themonthly.com.au.
New South Wales is following Canberra’s lead in adopting what the Abbott government is referring to as “asset recycling”, which in practice translates to privatisation, securing 2 billion dollars under the deal.
The Baird leadership intends to funnel the money garnered from leasing 49% of the state’s electricity network into road and rail projects, though it is unclear as to whether this will actually take place and if it does, whether the decision is in the public interest.
Proponents of privatisation describe it as conferring a multiplicity of benefits to the public by boosting the efficiency and quality of remaining government activities, reducing taxes and shrinking government. The argument rests on the presumption that the profit seeking behaviour of private sector managers and owners will produce ever more efficient, cheap and customer focused services.
We mustn’t forget that the raison d’être of a business is to provide profit. People do not start up or buy a business for the sole purpose of serving the public, that sort of behaviour is more likely to be found in a monastery than in McDonalds. This basic profiteering function of business is primary in capitalist society, and we often see that rather than being customer or human centric, the businesses that make it to the big time cut corners when it comes to ethics and the treatment of their employees and customers.
It is not unreasonable to assume that the same profit hungry managers and owners the evangelists of privatisation refer to may have no second thoughts about implementing practices that make service unaffordable to large segments of the citizenry. Profit seeking organisations may decide that spending on the disabled or the poor is money wasted, and those affected may find it far more difficult to seek accountability than they would were the services government owned.
It is worth noting that efficiency is not the only goal of services like electricity, healthcare and water. One must also take into account quality, ease of access and sustainability when building a picture of what a successful service should look like.
Privatization was billed under Jeff Kennett’s Victorian government as leading to a more efficient and productive industry, passing on the savings to consumers. Despite Kennett’s comments to the contrary, electricity prices in the state have remained consistent with non-privatised states, only falling below the mean between 2004 and 2008.
There is evidence that companies running Victoria’s electricity services increased prices by up to 175% for “off-peak” periods, a decision which affects a sizeable portion of the populace who conduct their business during those times, perhaps the most notable example being agriculturists and farmers.
The notion that productivity would increase under privatisation has fallen apart, with the industry becoming an anchor on national productivity since the turn of the century. The private sector’s tactic of employing a higher percentage of managers and salespeople has contributed to further bureaucracy rather than having the intended effect of streamlining the industry.
Selling off government assets is typically coupled with the promise of the revenue being funnelled into new and needed infrastructure such as roads and rail networks, however the promise does not always carry through to reality. Economist John Quiggin noted that investment in infrastructure did not occur in Queensland under Bligh’s leadership despite almost ten billion dollars being made from the sale of government assets.
1. Neither public nor private managers will always act in the best interests of their shareholders. Privatisation will be effective only if private managers have incentives to act in the public interest, which includes, but is not limited to, efficiency.
2. Profits and the public interest overlap best when the privatized service or asset is in a competitive market. It takes competition from other companies to discipline managerial behavior.
3. When these conditions are not met, continued governmental involvement will likely be necessary. The simple transfer of ownership from public to private hands will not necessarily reduce the cost or enhance the quality of services.
There are hidden costs of privatisation rarely spoken of by the politicians and their friendly counterparts in business. When a public service is privatised, much of the time employees are paid less on average and lose their existing benefits. On the surface this seems like a saving, but the costs of poverty and ill health must fall somewhere, and it seems it’s generally into the waiting arms of another state agency. The profits increase for those at the top of the pyramid, and those underneath carry an ever-increasing burden to support them.
It is also unclear as to whether privatisation actually does save governments money, with a study by the Project on Government Oversight finding that in 33 of 35 occupations, using contractors cost the United States Federal Government billions of dollars more than using government employees.
This seems yet another example of cosy relationships between politicians and businessmen taking priority over the wellbeing of the public. A more thorough, nonpartisan investigation into the history of privatisation in Australia, a cost benefit analysis and a public debate over the issue would go some ways to clarifying the relationship of privatisation to the people it affects.
![Australian PM Tony Abbott has recently proposed budget cuts [AP]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/images/2014/5/21//2014521132517378734_20.jpg "Australia's George Bush")
Tony Abbott’s disappointing three day week in Arnhem Land 
Offend, distract, repeat: Tony Abbott’s lifestyle choice 
olddogthoughts 
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