ACF response to Deputy Prime Minister's speech at mining lobby event

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is deeply concerned that the Deputy Prime Minister’s extraordinary attack on public interest environment groups represents a disturbing disregard for civil society, democratic discourse and the public good at the top of the Turnbull Government.

On behest of the powerful mining lobby, the Turnbull Government is currently considering severely restricting the advocacy activities of public interest organisations that attract tax deductibility status on donations amid a wider set of anti-democratic proposals to limit the work of civil society groups.

ACF Chief Executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, said it was ironic that Mr Joyce’s speech had been made at an event held by the Minerals Council of Australia in Parliament House, an organisation that consistently sought to lobby and influence politicians into loosening safeguards against destructive and polluting development.

Read the Australian Conservation Foundation story - “ACF response to Deputy Prime Minister's speech at mining lobby event.”

Minister's sharp thinking sacrified to political needs

-      Robert McLean

High hopes: Greg Hunt speaking at the
 AFR Innovation Summit in August.

A friend, having personally watched Greg Hunt in action, argues he is probably one of the sharpest thinkers in the Turnbull Government.

Not for a second do, I doubt my friend’s judgement and so I can do nought but suspect that his aptitude for unvarnished and clear thinking has been sacrificed to political needs.

The CSIRO was recently eviscerated of climate scientists and now the Minister for Science he wants the body to be the best public research organisation in the world.

I’m confused and so is, I suspect, Mr Hunt the Turnbull Government – gone with the rump of climate scientists is the idea of public good to be replaced by the push for profit.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Greg Hunt aims for CSIRO to become world's best public research organisation.”

The Age reminds us about science and the public good

An important question Australians will need to consider when weighing the benefits of government-initiated cost cuts is how they affect institutions such as the nation's pre-eminent taxpayer-funded scientific organisation, the CSIRO.

Can it continue to pursue the kind of diligent science that is in the public interest and furthers the public good? Or will that be sacrificed as the organisation swings its research to focus on science that offers more lucrative outcomes?

These are vital issues because the swingeing cost cuts proposed at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation, which will lead to the loss of about 350 jobs at the CSIRO, including as many as 100 roles in the area of climate science, may prove irreversible

Read today’s Editorial in the Melbourne Age - “Science cannot afford cuts to the CSIRO.”

Walking your dog, mitigating climate change




Minnehaha Falls.

Rich Broderick writes about taking his dog “Chance” for a walk, and swim, off-leash park at Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis in the U.S. - he could have just as easily been writing about something similar, somewhere in Australia.

Broderick, of the Daily Planet, writing on LA Progressive, in a story headed: “Me the People: Public Good, Private Greed” said that if many present political practices had prevailed in the late-19^th and mid-20^th centuries then such things as Minnehaha Falls would not have existed.

Consider for a moment the grandeur of inner-Melbourne with its wide and
spacious streets and the calming and generously laid-out parks and gardens and the political foresight and courage it took to allow for and set aside those public spaces.

Mitigating the causes of climate change and building a society that can cope with those evolving changes, demands a similar foresight and courage from our present politicians, whatever political creed or philosophy they adhere to.