Taiwan, a country of 23 million people and one of Australia’s largest trading partners, recently conducted a series of referenda on questions of vital importance to the future of the country, and of great interest to Australia, including same-sex marriage, nuclear power and the future of coal-fired power generation. The outcome of the referenda…
Climate guessing body The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) argues boldly that the world’s temperature has risen by one degree above pre-industrial levels. How would they know? There were few reliable weather stations in Africa and Asia 150 and more years ago. Latin America and Russia could not contribute much. Our world then was not yet technically developed enough to have weather stations in the oceans and seas over the earth surface. How about the Arctic and Antarctic, which had not yet been explored? No temperature gauges waiting for them there when Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott…
The current approach to managing the water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) seems to be a classic case of “straining out gnats while swallowing camels”. The Federal Government plans to return an additional 450 gigalitres of water “to the environment” as part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) via $1.4 billion of taxpayers’ money to buy farmers’ water allocations and increase water efficiency. Already, 2100 GL of water has been diverted away from agricultural production to “environmental flows” as part of the MDBP. A further 605 GL is being directed to the environment via water “savings measures”. Up to…
Pessimism is pervasive inside the Morrison Government following the Victorian election, with political commentators already “calling” the coming federal election and recalcitrant MPs adding to the black mood. Perhaps the indefatigable Scott Morrison is the only person left who believes he can turn the show around by selling the improving news on the economy and a likely return to a budget surplus for the first time in a decade. But the Victorian election result was a brutal reminder to all federal MPs of the consequences of cutting down an elected prime minister not once but twice. It…
