Mission & Justice

23/9/08

A Greenpeace team has been documenting the conditions in three Papua New Guinea (PNG) logging concessions revealing the negative effects logging is having on life in the area. According to the Greenpeace Australia Pacific Blog, the Greenpeace team spent two weeks documenting life and conditions in three Papua New Guinea (PNG) logging concessions, where they ‘visited remote villages in Gulf and Western Provinces where logging companies Rimbunan Hijau (RH) and Turama Forest Industries (TFI, a Rimbunan Hijau group company) are felling ancient rainforests and abusing their workers’.

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23/9/08

Records of K100 million in public funds allocated to the National Forest Authority have gone missing according to the Auditor General’s office, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing found yesterday. There are no records kept of K100 million in the period 1999-2005, First Secretary to the Auditor General Andy Vui told the PAC hearing which began at Parliament yesterday. “No records, or sufficient accounts and documents were provided by the PNGFA to enable us to carry out an audit from 1999-2005,” Mr Vui said. PAC chairman Timothy Bonga grilled the NFA for not being able to manage its own budgets. “If the authority cannot manage its own internal budgets and cannot keep even basic accounting records, how can it be expected to manage our forests?” he asked. “There appears to be no oversight control, coercion or assistance to the authority by the Finance Department.” HE blasted Secretary for Finance Mr Gabriel Yer for his silence and inaction despite warnings from the Auditor General.

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Marian Wilkinson; 22/908

The constant dull roar of heavy machinery was regularly punctuated by the loud cracking of a tree. The loggers in the state’s south-eastern forests were going about their business uninterrupted. At Eden a new Japanese vessel headed into the harbour to load woodchips for Nippon Paper Industries and the Itochu Corporation, two of Japan’s biggest paper manufacturers. A handful of anti-logging activists, including the former fashion designer Prue Acton, surveyed some of the flattened coupes with dismay. “We have decided our campaign,” she said. “Natural native forests are part of the essential solution to climate change, water and biodiversity.” The forestry industry fears some activists are planning a blockade next month when logging moves to a new site near Bermagui.

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Siobhain Ryan; 22/9/08

Australia’s nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights plans to add a new store for radioactive waste on site from February next year, blaming the decision on delays in establishing a federal nuclear waste dump elsewhere. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, which runs the reactor in Sydney’s south, has applied to federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett, a former anti-nuclear campaigner, to expand its capacity to hold the spent or unwanted radioactive material.

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Heath Gilmore; 21/9/08

Farmers face being means-tested because of billions of dollars put aside in savings while accepting taxpayer-funded drought relief. New figures show people on the land have built up $2.8billion in Farm Management Deposits (FMDs) across Australia. Up to 10,848 NSW farmers hold $594million in the accounts, which are exempt from means testing for drought relief schemes, including interest subsidies. The Rudd Government is reviewing all assistance to farmers as part of a national review of drought policy amid concerns “less viable or riskier farming operations” are favoured. Professor Bruce Chapman, from the Australian National University, said FMDs needed to be means tested.

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Marian Wilkinson; 20/9/08

Thge melting of Arctic sea ice has reached a critical stage, with satellite images showing the disappearance of ice this year peaking at a level close to last year’s record. The figures put the size of the Arctic sea ice at the end of the northern summer about one-third lower than the average recorded over the past three decades. “This year further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past 30 years,” analysts at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre said in their latest report.

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Matthew Franklin and Sean Parnell; 20/9/08

Thousands of farmers are receiving taxpayer-funded drought relief despite having access to $2.8 billion in savings they squirrelled away during economic good times. And the federal Government’s National Rural Advisory Council has revealed the nation’s Exceptional Circumstances drought relief scheme is encouraging farmers to live on handouts instead of adapting to make their farms viable, creating a new rural welfare dependency. The claims from the NRAC, made in a submission to a Rudd Government review on relief arrangements, were underlined by southwestern Queensland farmer Rod Back who, while living in a drought-affected region, doesn’t get EC funding because he and his wife earn more than $20,000 a year from jobs outside the farm.

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Siobhain Ryan; 19/9/08

The influential Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists is expected to call for a radical overhaul of irrigation and cuts to water allocations in the Murray-Darling Basin at a Senate inquiry in Canberra today. Wentworth Group director Peter Cosier and fellow members Bruce Thoms, John Williams and Mike Young will argue that irrigation allocations should be wound back in light of the drought and climate change forecasts and provide enough water for the rivers, including South Australia’s thirsty Coorong and lower lakes, to be healthy and sustainable. The group wants the cutbacks based on the CSIRO’s Sustainable Yields Project, which calculated the current take of water from each of the 23 river valleys of the basin, and Murray-Darling Basin Commission’s sustainable rivers audit, which found only one river in the basin, the Paroo, was in good condition.

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Matthew Warren; 19/9/08

Car giant GM Holden will retrain marketing staff and plant 12,500 trees to make amends after being found guilty of running a misleading green marketing campaign last year. The Federal Court yesterday found GM Holden had breached the Trade Practices Act with its “Grrrreen” campaign, which made false and misleading claims about new Saab cars sold between July and September last year. Holden’s Saab ads claimed the company had planted enough trees to offset the greenhouse emissions for the entire life of the vehicle, but in reality it had only planted 17trees per car, enough for the first year. The offending ads claimed “every Saab is green, with carbon emissions neutral across the entire Saab range”. The Federal Court ordered GM Holden to pay the legal costs of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which brought the action.

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19/9/08

In the plains around the village of Bardala, the Israeli-Palestinian tug-of-war over land and water plays itself out in vivid colour - largely brown Palestinian farms border green fields owned by Jewish settlers.Israel and the occupied West Bank have both been hit hard by drought, but Palestinian farmers say Israeli restrictions on their water supplies have made conditions far worse for them than for farmers in nearby Jewish colonies. In many homes in the West Bank city of Jenin, water has been all but cut off since April. To cope, residents of Jenin and hundreds of villages get their water delivered by truck at sky-high prices.

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