Community grapples with planning for a climate changed future

When she retired, Sally Allen returned to the place she had spent summer holidays as a child.

She built a breezy off-grid house on the outer barrier, a narrow sand dune near Lakes Entrance, a fishing town on the East Gippsland coast. The barrier is quiet except for the lapping water and wind. There are only a handful of holiday homes and no other permanent residents.

The foreshore of Sally Allen's property on the outer barrier, Lakes Entrance.

You can’t get to Allen’s place by car. Town is a 15-minute journey away in her beloved outboard dinghy. One of her weekly tasks is laying out bracken and driftwood along on the shoreline to try and fortify her vanishing beach.

The unique area is subject to complex planning laws, along with state-wide guidelines adopted after the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. According to the municipal fire authority, all building on the outer barrier needs to be approved individually by the state planning department.

Sally says those restrictions have put the value of her house in doubt, without making her any safer.

Read the story from The Citizen by Claire Capel-Stanley - “Community grapples with planning for a climate changed future.”

Is Tony Abbott's time up?

When economist Nick Scott retired, he expected his days to take on a peaceful rhythm. He would read. Go fishing. Spend time with his grandchildren. He did not envisage staging political protests while wearing an inflatable dinosaur suit but, well, life is full of surprises. "It's been liberating," he says of joining a grassroots movement to remove former prime minister Tony Abbott from Federal Parliament. "I thought, 'It's time to actually do something rather than just shouting at the television.' “

Some traditionally right-leaning voters are joining locals
in Sydney’s Warringah in turning against their long-time
federal Liberal MP.

Scott, 64, has lived for 30 years in the northern Sydney electorate of Warringah, held by Abbott for the Liberal Party for a quarter of a century. Though now a backbencher, Abbott, 61, is still the driving force behind the Coalition government's hard-right faction. Whether he retains his seat at the looming federal election could depend on the effectiveness of a campaign against him by a collection of small community groups that, as Scott puts it, "have simply popped up like mushrooms in the night". Some of them have thrown their support behind Zali Steggall, the world-champion skier turned barrister who is running against Abbott as an independent. But the groups are bound less by allegiance to any one candidate than an aversion to the sitting member. In Warringah, they are known unofficially as the ABBA (Any Bastard But Abbott) alliance.

Read the story from The Age by Jane Cadzow - “Is Tony Abbott's time up?”

(Listen to Zali Steggall on “Climate Conversations”)

Renewables hub, or coal museum? Australia’s energy debate plays out in Latrobe Valley

If you were looking for a neat summation of the current state of the energy debate in Australia, the tug-of-war over the future of a retired brown coal power plant in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley would be a good place to start.

A renewables hub or a coal museum?

The old Morwell Power Station and briquette factory on the outskirts of the town of the same name was last week listed for protection by the Heritage Council of Victoria.

The former Energy Brix Power Station, which once supplied brown coal-fired electricity to the grid, was closed in 2014 – two years after receiving a $50 million federal government bailout package.

At the same time, the plant’s final operator went into liquidation.

Read Sophie Vorrath’s One Step Off the Grid story - “Renewables hub, or coal museum? Australia’s energy debate plays out in Latrobe Valley.”