Palmer says he is just doing what he can to make Australia a better place. The question is, for whom? Making Australia a better place apparently necessitated spending all that money to suppress the Labor vote to save the country from ‘Shifty Shorten’. Continue reading Clive Palmer: a threat to democracy→
Clive Palmer wants balance of power in the senate. Why? He wants a future for coal mining, and the development of his Galilee Basin tenement. Simple as that.
So I’ll take a look at Palmer’s impact on the campaign and how the senate is likely to turn out.
The development of Adani’s Carmichael mine has always been sold as a job-creating venture. In fact it will be a highly automated mine, creating jobs mostly in the cities. A new report has found that the development of Carmichael and the subsequent development of the Galilee basin will cost about 12,500 jobs in existing coal mining regions and replace only two in three workers. Continue reading Adani will cost jobs→
This is a guest post by blog commenter Geoff Henderson. It is particularly strong on the structure and standing of Adani as a company, and on the truly pathetic contribution the project would make to both jobs and the coffers of the state government in royalties. I’ve added some links of other recent material at the end. Enjoy!
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A Four Corners program[1a] made serious claims about the Adani Conglomerate corporate profile in India. Credible allegations of bribery, corruption, money laundering, environmental destruction, tax/royalty avoidance and more were leveled at Adani.[1b] Continue reading The Adani Project: – is it good for Australia?→
An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.
The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.
Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.
The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:
The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.
Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.
The LHC is being fired up again after two years down time when it was refurbished and enhanced. In their first experiment they hope:
a completely new universe will be revealed – rewriting not only the physics books but the philosophy books too. It is even possible that gravity from our own universe may ‘leak’ into this parallel universe, scientists at the LHC say.
As mentioned at Mark’s Facebook, if they want a parallel universe a plane ticket to Australia might be cheaper.
2. Crazy polls
Either opinion is swinging wildly or the pollsters have lost it.
Two weeks ago there was a significant crossover of Newspoll and Morgan. Now they’ve crossed back again.
Morgan has a 2.5% swing to to ALP, putting them on 56/44 TPP.
Newspoll has a 4% swing the other way to leave Labor barely ahead on 51-49.
Essential has a 2% swing to Labor this week to leave it comfortably ahead on 54-46. Essential’s weekly poll has been reasonably steady over a four-week period.
They call it the tide of the century, but it actually happens every 18 years. Mont Saint-Michel is a tidal island off the coast of Lower Normandy. Acessible by a causeway at low tide, the tide comes in at the speed of a galloping horse. Mont Saint-Michel receives over three million visitors each year.
Adani’s Carmichael mine in the Galilee Basin is planned to mine 60,000 tonnes of coal per year, creating 10,000 direct and indirect jobs. Adrian Burragubba as spokesman for the Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council says that under native title they do not approve of mining in any shape or form and no amount of money will change their mind.
We’re concerned that it will devastate the land beyond repair.
It will destroy the waterways and our totemic animals and beings that are on that land and our ancestor dreaming stories and those things that are associated with our culture and heritage.
And it will also destroy it beyond repair to the point where we’ll be displaced forever from that land as the original custodians of that land.
It seems that the native title claim substantially overlaps with another native title claim lodged by the Bidjara people. If the claim cannot be settled between the groups then the Federal Court will test the matter at trial.
This map gives some idea of the geographic positioning of the vast Galilee Basin, one of the greatest untapped coal reserves in the world.
This map locates it in relation to some well-known towns.
Last year we were told that nine coal mines are proposed. The Alpha proposal and Kevin’s Corner (GVK and Hancock Coal) could each produce 30 million tonnes per annum for export, Palmer’s China First hopes for 40 million tonnes. The Carmichael deposit (Adani) at 10 billion tonnes is the world’s largest coal deposit. I think the plan there is for another 30 million tonne mine.
Greame Readfearn has calculated that the Alpha and Kevin’s corner projects alone will produce 3.7 billion tonnes of CO2-e when burned. He compares that to the UK which emitted 571.6 Mt of CO2-e last year. He also outlines some of the difficulties being encountered, including contestation in the land Court.
Greenpeace calculated that if the Alpha coal project was a country, its annual emissions would be higher than the likes of Austria, Columbia and Qatar.
