GreensBlog

Removing the age of terror

ScottLudlam — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:39:15 +1000

Australia's Anti-Terrorism laws were rammed through Parliament in haste and need to be reviewed to determine which merit retention and modernisation. However, some of the laws don't even deserve the dignity of being subject to review by the long-awaited independent reviewer of terrorism laws. I have introduced the Anti-Terrorism Laws Reform Bill 2009 to identify those parts of the anti-terrorism laws that are irrational, unused or extreme and should be removed from Australia's statues.

Surely the lesson has been learned from the Haneef, Ul Haque and Habib affairs regarding holding people without charge; the laws went too far and after these debacles some reasonable safeguards and time limits are needed. We already know that punishing dissent and deterring freedom of expression and association through the crime of sedition runs counter to our democratic values.

The benefit of hindsight and the passage of time have revealed the laws about the"reckless possession of a thing" lack credibility and legitimacy. The UN has recently observed a real problem for Australians accessing the justice system; putting up barriers to fair and open trials by imposing silence on lawyers or requiring them to have to have security clearances has significantly limited the pool of lawyers permitted to act in cases.

Such laws simply need to be removed, to allow the solid criminal laws and procedures to continue doing the job they did before 2001 in prosecuting and penalising anything that can be sensibly described as terrorism.

Mistakes were made in the passage of the anti-terrorism laws; indeed, mistakes were inevitable when the government of the day would not allow the parliament to debate each bill individually, even though the anti-terrorism legislative package constituted some of the most dramatic changes ever made to Australia's security and legal environment.

Of course mistakes were made when 200 pages of legislation and explanatory memoranda were introduced into the House of Representatives at 8pm and were expected to be debated at 12 noon the next day, leaving entirely inadequate time for review and analysis. Amendments were made available to the Senate less than 24 hours before the commencement of debate in that Chamber, effectively stripping the parliament of the time necessary to ensure that the laws were adequate to prevent, deter and pursue terrorists while ensuring that any limits on free speech or association struck an acceptable balance. The parliament was set up to fail, and fail it did.

The violent crime of terrorism did not occur for the first time on 11 September 2001 and it will occur again. This is a grave reality that must be faced by governments who have the responsibility to protect citizens from intimidation and violence. Likewise, governments also have the responsibility to protect human rights and civil rights. The Greens do not underestimate the complexity of these responsibilities; however, we are not alone in recognising that in many countries, including our own, the balance between these two responsibilities was skewed by the responses to the events of 11 September 2001. Perceived and real threats to security were used as a lever to curtail human and civil rights and fair trials.

The newly elected US President has begun the courageous and complex work of reversing the symbolic and actual mistakes made in the name of the "War on Terror". The Obama Administration is putting effort into devising "clear, defensible and lawful standards..." to govern the treatment of detainees and arguing that the nation should "enlist the power of our most fundamental values" in the effort to keep itself safe. Australia entered the "War on Terror" very much on the terms set by the United States; we too should rethink and redefine a legitimate response to terrorism and practical ways to address its root causes and consequences.

The Australian Greens were formed on a platform of nonviolence, and condemn politically motivated violence unconditionally. While some leaders and commentators deeply fear the accusation of being "soft on terrorism" believing it to be corrosive of their public perception, standing and masculinity, the Greens believe that to maintain these laws in their current form is corrosive of democracy itself and the rule of law upon which it is based.

What you can do:

Write to the Attorney General today and ask him to support the measures in this bill.
Read the Second Reading Speech which outlines the rationale and main provisions of the bill.
Read the Explanatory Memorandum which sets out in detail the actual workings of the bill.

Climate Change Rally

TimNorton — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:21:16 +1000

On Saturday 13th June, a national rally is being held in most capital cities around Australia. All five Greens Senators will be speaking at or attending rallies across Australia tomorrow calling for the CPRS to be scrapped and replaced with swift action to reduce emissions, drive renewable energy and create green jobs.

Bob will address the Melbourne Rally, 1pm, State Library
Christine will address the Hobart Rally, 12 noon, Parliament Lawns
Rachel will address the Perth Rally, with Scott also attending, 12.30 pm, Forrest Place, Perth
Sarah will address the Adelaide Rally, 11am, Victoria Square

We're also expecting large numbers of Greens members to be in attendance. Full details of the rallies can be found at www.climaterally.org and resources and details about the Greens' involvement can be found at www. greens.org.au/resources

Bob has also done a short video piece:

Hope to see many of you there!

Latest info from Senate Estimates

TimNorton — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:37:15 +1000

We're right in the middle of Senate Estimates, and are slowly picking out the best bits to put up here on the website. For the uninitiated, twice each year, usually in May and November, the estimates of proposed annual expenditure of government departments and authorities are referred by the Senate to the relevant legislation committees for examination and report. At the estimates hearings, Senators may directly question Ministers and public officials not only about the details of proposed expenditure but also about the objectives, operations and efficiency of the programs for which they are responsible.

Picking out some of the more interesting reads:

Scott grilled ASIO representatives over phone tapping and surveillance.

He also continued digging into aspects of the Government's proposed internet filtering plan.

Rachel asked a serious of questions about the recent closure of Land & Water Australia, which you can read here, here and here. This was then followed up the next day with questions about other cuts to agricultural research.

And continuing on our campaign against GM canola trials, some questions here.

We'll put some more of these up as they come. In the meantime, for the politics geeks out there, you can watch live here, see the transcript production here, and get involved in the discussion in the comments below or on our forums.

7:30 Report on Fremantle by-election

TimNorton — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:41:46 +1000

Congratulations go to Adele Carles and the Greens (WA) for their recent victory in the Fremantle by-election.

The ABC's 7:30 Report last night produced a feature story about the by-election - you can watch it on the ABC's website here.

Transcript:

Broadcast: 18/05/2009

Reporter: Hamish Fitzsimmons

On the weekend political history was made in Fremantle, the safe Labor seat fell to the Greens in the lower house of Western Australia's parliament. Fremantle has been held by Labor for the past 85 years, but on Saturday the alp received a thorough drubbing in a by-election, with the greens candidate taking 44 per cent of the primary vote.

KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: On the same weekend Western Australians knocked back daylight saving in a record fourth referendum, political history was also being made with a safe Labor seat falling to the Greens in the Lower House of Western Australia's Parliament.

Fremantle has been held by Labor for the past 85 years, but on Saturday the ALP received a thorough drubbing in a by-election, with the Greens' candidate taking 44 per cent of the primary vote.

The result may also have implications for Labor federally with the Greens saying they'll now target inner city Melbourne and Sydney seats, where their vote has also been on the rise. Hamish Fitzsimmons reports from Perth.

ADELE CARLES, FREEMANTLE MP-ELECT: It was The Greens versus the Labor candidate in their heartland seat of Fremantle. It's known as the jewel for the Labor Party.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS, REPORTER: For 85 years it's been a bastion of the ALP. Now the West Australian seat of Fremantle will go down in history as only the second electorate to elect a Greens MP to the State Lower House - a first in WA.

Labor's vote haemorrhaged with the Greens grabbing 44 per cent of the primary, and it's a result with national implications, according to political analyst, Peter Van Onsolen.

DR PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICS, COWAN UNIVERSITY: The Green Party is either making the seats like Melbourne ports or Sydney or possibly Fremantle marginal Green seats or at least marginal seats outside the normal two-party process.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The by election was triggered by the early retirement of former Labor leader and minister, Jim McGinty, who held Fremantle for 19 years. In last year's State election Mr McGinty nearly lost to the Greens, so when a by-election was called in April, the Greens say they knew there was mood for change.

ADELE CARLES: Jim McGinty only got across that line with that very clear Greens' preference, but he ignored or Labor ignored the Green mandate in that vote.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Labor's candidate was long-time Fremantle mayor Peter Tagliaferre, who the party expected to maintain the ALP's unbroken grip on the seat. Mr Tagliaferre was unavailable today, but the result has prompted some Labor heavyweights such as former Premier Peter Dowding to question the Party's pre-selection process.

PETER DOWDING, FORMER WA PREMIER: Peter Tagliaferre is a nice bloke, worked hard as the mayor of Fremantle, but has a lot of enemies and has - there are a lot of people in Fremantle who would have voted Labor, but wouldn't vote for Tagliaferre, and I think the Labor Party simply didn't understand the local electorate.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The Fremantle by-election has raised the obvious question about the leadership of Labor's Eric Ripper. Ironically he believes the absence of a Liberal candidate cost the ALP dearly.

ERIC RIPPER, WA LABOR LEADER: It was not possible for Labor to outweigh the combined effect of the Liberal votes and the Green votes. We had a circumstance where strong Liberal voters decided to punish Labor by going to the Greens in the absence of a Liberal candidate.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: As the nation's newest Greens MP gets used to her workplace, Adele Carles has a different take on the reasons for her victory.

ADELE CARLES: The Labor Party has moved so far to the right they've almost become, you know, part of that - they've metamorphed into that Liberal heartland area.

SENATOR BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: There's a message here for Canberra with elections coming up next year. Don't treat the populous as environmental mugs.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The growing Green vote in inner city Federal seats is going to be difficult for Labor to manage without taking big risks, according to Peter Van Onsolen.

DR PETER VAN ONSOLEN: If they respond to what's happened with Green voting in the inner city, then they risk losing mainstream voters and possibly government. If they don't respond, they put themselves in a situation where they could lose high profile candidates in inner city electorates; people like Lindsay Tanner in Melbourne or Tanya Plibersek in Sydney.

ADELE CARLES: When the Green primary vote gets up over 20 per cent, the Greens become serious contenders to win seats. So in the next federal election we're looking at Melbourne and Sydney, that inner heartland area with a very high Green vote. And if Labor don't watch it, those seats will go Green.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: In the light of the Greens' comprehensive win in Fremantle, some observers say the traditional political divide is a thing of the past in many of the inner city seats the ALP has never had to fight for, until now.

DR PETER VAN ONSOLEN: The Labor Party's never had to worry about the Liberal Party in these seats, but they do now have to worry about the Greens.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Hamish Fitzsimmons reporting from Perth.

Could the clean feed bypass parliament?

ScottLudlam — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:08:59 +1100

In order to impose its controversial internet filter, the Government has the choice of trying to pass new laws through a hostile Senate, or working with existing laws, which would mean negotiating its way around a legal minefield and a highly sceptical internet industry.

Right now, many people are curious to know whether the Government could bypass Parliament in this way to introduce mandatory net filtering by some other means.

If they choose to bypass Parliament, it could go something like this. Schedule 5 of the Broadcasting Services Act sets out default rules which govern the actions of internet services providers (ISPs) when no industry code is in operation. Under these default rules, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has the power to issue a standard prevention notice requiring ISPs to take reasonable steps to prevent end users from accessing prohibited content. The standard prevention notice could potentially be used to enforce the filter, but in order for the Government to use these default rules, a number of stars would need to be perfectly aligned.

Firstly, ACMA would need to deregister the existing industry code, and it is not at all clear that ACMA has the legal authority to do this.

Secondly, even if the existing industry code could be set aside and the default rules came into effect, it could be argued that as an ACMA prevention notice is being given to all ISPs, it's a legislative instrument and therefore it could be disallowed by Parliament.

Thirdly, under the default rules, the standard prevention notices must be "reasonable". Reasonableness is determined by considering a number of factors, including whether the notice is technically and commercially feasible, and whether it is in the public interest and accommodating towards technological change, as well as considering how it affects social needs and the provision of services. Even if the Government does go down the path of encouraging ACMA to enforce its filter using the default rules, it seems inevitable the decision would be subject to legal challenge on the basis of any one of the above factors.

Alternatively, the Government could indirectly implement its filter by seeking court orders to block content. This again seems like a highly unlikely scenario. In order for such an approach to be successful, the Government would need new legislation in place to both prohibit the offending conduct and impose a relevant injunction. It's unlikely that the current laws would be enough for the plan to work since it would be difficult to argue that the current legal framework mandates ISPs to filter content in the way the Government has proposed.

That just leaves Parliament as the Government's other option. With the Greens, the Coalition and Senator Xenophon yet to be convinced - and the Government still on the losing side of the community debate - that's not looking very hopeful either.

It is not at all clear where the Government is going with this thing - the trial is beset with problems, organisations from Choice magazine to Save the Children and Reporters Without Borders have condemned it, and the blogsphere still teems with scornful, well informed dissent.

The Minister has still offered nothing by way of justification except that net censorship was ALP policy in 2007. This kind of glib deflection does nothing to inspire confidence: with stakes this high we can only hope the Government has seen the writing on the wall and is quietly rethinking the whole idea.

First published on New Matilda

Building Resilient Cities

ScottLudlam — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:00:17 +1100

"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet" ~ William Gibson

Take a drive an hour south through the rapidly expanding growth corridor fusing Perth to Mandurah, and you'll fly past a road sign at once hopeful and heartbreaking.

'Sustainable Mandurah Home' it points cheerfully. Somewhere within the featureless expanse of brick and tile sprawl relentlessly consuming the Swan coastal plain, someone has taken the time to build a sustainable home.

I have no issue with the house itself; it's an intelligent blend of the state of the art and the bleeding obvious, it didn't cost a fortune to build and it gives visitors a sense that energy and water-efficient homes are comfortable, practical and inexpensive to live in.

The heartbreak of course, is that this single house vanishes into a sea of tens of thousands of large, nearly identical unsustainable homes built in breathtaking defiance of the basic ground truths of the twenty-first century. Cabled to fossil-fired power stations hundreds of kilometres away, entirely dependent on cheap middle-eastern oil for mobility, emergency services and food; this great city is profoundly, utterly vulnerable. We won't really understand the extent of our fossil dependence until its unspoken, gigantic flows of energy, water and resources are suddenly disrupted.

Much has been written about cities and sustainability in recent times; there's a wild and creative flowering of theory and practice across our universities and cooperative research centres; demonstration projects are flourishing and whole new disciplines are being established before our eyes.

We've known - for a long while - how to build zero carbon houses and office buildings, but the art of building human-scale sustainable cities seemed to be lost to us. After the War, centuries of accumulated planning wisdom were rapidly eclipsed by the overwhelming demands of the private car and its corporate stewards. Cheap anywhere-to-anywhere transport spawned an unstoppable proliferation of places that feel like nowhere; a featureless topography of sub-urban sprawl mart development. Tram and bus transit alternatives made suddenly quaint by saturation automobile advertising were purchased and shut down by oil companies, leaving faint but persistent afterimages in the collective memory of our Australian cities.

Now we get to turn it around. Public transport is making a comeback: on drawing boards, in the Senate committee hearings taking place around the country, and in our neighbourhoods. Planners are revisiting the idea of urban village archipelagos, networks of medium and high density human-scale settlements linked with safe, fast, frequent public transport. With light rail proposals advancing in Canberra, the Gold Coast, Sydney and Perth, and the proposition of Commonwealth Government public transport funding for the first time in a decade, we may be on the edge of an urban tipping point.

Planning world-class public transport for our communities can catalyse a whole series of changes that are not immediately obvious. Public transport works best in high population centres when a critical mass of people are an easy walk or cycle from transfer stations. Densification reduces the urban footprint and can be a major driver for local economies. Embedding a high proportion of affordable housing in these centres, rather than condemning low-income families to the urban fringe, guarantees access to employment and creates the opportunity for vibrant social diversity.

Halt the sprawl once and for all and we'll be able to protect and restore the ragged biodiversity and watersheds surrounding our cities. The reckless paving over of essential peri-urban agricultural land can also come to an end as we recall farmers and market gardeners to their central place in community life.

Electrifying public transport by installing light rail along the key corridors will lighten our vulnerability to rising oil prices and help prevent the horror of future oil wars. Demoting private cars from their pre-eminent position in the planning hierarchy will improve public health and reduce obesity, because every public transport trip starts with a walk or a cycle.

All of these ideas are taking shape in real-world neighbourhoods around Australia, but the dominant governance mindset is still the provision of more roads to reduce the congestion spawned by the last round of road-building. The resistance from vested interests and path-dependent bureaucratic structures will be fierce and frustrating, but that doesn't make them right: the catastrophe taking shape everywhere between the Arctic circle and the Murray-Darling Basin is entirely non-negotiable.

When climate change or vicious price shocks at the foothills of peak oil take unleaded through $5 a litre, it will be too late to appreciate the heartbreaking irony written into the sign by the highway in Mandurah. The time for lonely demonstration projects by the side of the road is over. With persistence and goodwill it is possible to see our way through to the resilient city: the design and re-working of ecologically sane, human-centred communities that will be genuinely at home in the twenty-first century.

This blog was originally published on Open Forum on the 11 March 2009 http://www.openforum.com.au/content/building-resilient-cities.

Pine Gap, Democracy Gap

ScottLudlam — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:16:45 +1100

On 26 February during a Senate Estimates hearing I asked the Department of Defence about a review reported to be underway between the US and Australian governments on the Pine Gap Agreement. The senior Department of Defence personnel had never heard of a review, but assured me that he and his department would know if such a review was underway.

Signed in 1967, the agreement about Pine Gap between Australia and the USA was sealed when the token payment of a single peppercorn passed hands. In November 2008 the last 10-year extension of that treaty expired. US Consul General Michael Thurston said in the ABC piece online on Monday 23 February, "It's under review and that's what you do periodically with agreements, you take a look at them and both sides agree that this is what you want - you either upgrade or update the agreement, you make changes or you don't make changes and then you send it around for review and that's probably more the timely process is actually getting everybody who's got an interest taking a look and actually signing off on it," he said.

It most would certainly be good to take a look at this agreement, but citizens or parliamentarians are not allowed to see it. In 1999 the government refused to provide information about Pine Gap to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties - information that is made freely available to members of the US Congress. Nothing has changed since then. Although US Congress officials have visited Pine Gap and received classified briefings about its functions, elected representatives and Senators are entrusted with less information than can be found in a public library.

The history of disinformation and misinformation about Pine Gap is long. In 1966, Australians were told the facility was to be a weather station. Later the official cover was a "Space Research Centre". Australians have the right to know what is happening on Australian soil at one of largest and most sophisticated satellite ground stations in the world. Information is still not forthcoming about who is being spied upon, and who is being targeted through this facility? Was it used to coordinate air strikes against Iraqi citizens in a war accurately described by the UN Secretary General and other leaders as an illegal war? How is it used to support US nuclear war fighting capabilities, and how is that consistent with our government's efforts towards nuclear disarmament?

Last week the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee issued a report on a government bill to clamp down on peaceful protest at Pine Gap, which the Australian Greens opposed, issuing a dissenting report.

Under the Defence Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, the Government has strengthened provisions defining Pine Gap as a "prohibited area" required for the defence of Australia. Those who enter or photograph the site face imprisonment for up to seven years.

Why did this legislation come about?

The Howard Government's Attorney General Phillip Ruddock tried unsuccessfully to prosecute four Christian pacifists for entering Pine Gap, using the Defence Special Undertakings act for the first time in its long history. These people entered Pine Gap after informing the Defence Minister and the media of their intention to conduct a peaceful and nonviolent "citizens inspection" of the facility.

Despite engaging an army of QCs, at taxpayer's expense, to inflict the maximum punishment and to place maximum limitation on the court hearing the defence's justification and legal argument, the Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the convictions of the Christian pacifists. The court found that citizens had the right to challenge whether the 'prohibited area' was necessary for the purpose of the defence of Australia.

Adequate legislation already exists to protect Pine Gap from trespass or acts of aggression, in particular, the Crimes Act of 1914. It is very unfortunate that the Attorney General Robert McLelland is following his predecessor's lead, finishing what Ruddock started by amending the law to further crack down on peaceful protest.

If Pine Gap is indeed a 'core element' of Australia's national security, Australians have a right to know how and why. Rather than making the case for the proposed amendments, the government has described citizens exercising their democratic right to protest as "mischief makers" and have furnished the Committee with statements such as, "Pine Gap makes an important contribution to the security interests of both Australia and the United States of America...The methods used for collecting intelligence at the facility are sensitive..." with absolutely no supporting evidence of any kind. These are not convincing arguments and neither are those made in the Committee's report.

Rather than being convinced that Pine Gap does protect Australians, the Senate is being asked to enact legislation that would further shield Pine Gap from Australians. Such efforts to erode democratic rights are unsupportable and run directly counter to the kind of "security" we need.

Orizuru: Peace Ambassadors & Spinifex Hills

ScottLudlam — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:25:36 +1100

27th December 2008

The sky is white today. The sea has turned slate grey, and the deep swells rocking the Mona Lisa slowly from side to side are ripped with white foam. We have been out of sight of land for only two days since leaving behind the lonely outflung arms of Aotearoa, and our world has contracted to the swaying confines of this long white liner. Some time around sunrise tomorrow the coastline of New South Wales will come into view and my brief sojourn with the Peace Boat will be over.

The unique Peace Boat project has been running for more than 20 years. It began as an outreach mission by the Japanese peace movement to acknowledge and reconcile Japanese wartime atrocities through direct engagement with the communities of the Asia-Pacific region hit hard by Imperial Japan.

The success of the early voyages has seen the trips grow longer and more ambitious each year; this ship has is now a floating laboratory for cross-cultural exchange and peace education. I've joined them at the tail end of a four month odyssey that began in Yokohama in early September and has touched every continent save Antarctica. The 700 guests include one hundred Hibakusha - survivors of the atomic blasts that devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

In every port the ship has visited, the Hibakusha have given testimony: their first hand accounts of the day the sky erupted with the light of a thousand suns. This is the ‘Orizuru Project' - first-generation witnesses of the white flash; the sudden, incomprehensible devastation; tens of thousands of people instantly blasted out of existence or incinerated in the firestorm that followed; then the invisible curse of radiation sickness that still haunts the survivors.

It's one thing to read this in a history book or glance unknowingly at faded photographs of shattered, irradiated cityscapes. It is quite another to hear it first hand from someone who was underneath it when it happened. All they care about is that, no matter what, this never, ever happens again.

10th February 2009

On dry land, six weeks later, things are moving at a pace that has caught even the optimists flat footed. President Obama wasted no time putting the obscenity of nuclear weapons back onto the front page where they belong. Diplomatic moves are now underway to revive an ambitious plan to put this most lethal piece of unfinished cold war business to rest.

The new President wants the United States and Russia to move rapidly to 1000 nuclear weapons apiece; a tenfold reduction of US stockpiles and a fifteen-fold reduction of the Russian arsenal. This is not the endgame, just the opening move, a long overdue demonstration of good faith. It may well be sufficient to bring the next tier of nuclear weapons states to the table to talk about the ultimate goal: total abolition, on a verifiable timetable, of all nuclear weapons in existence.

Australia has taken a place at this table with the initiation of the Prime Minister's International Commission on Nuclear Non Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), intended to help defrost this cryogenically frozen debate despite Australia's utterly compromised position as the willing vendor of uranium to the world's nuclear weapon states.

On the edge of an isolated and beautiful dry lake bed in the north-east goldfields of Western Australia, the intractable calculus of nuclear geopolitics touches down along a series of drill transects criss-crossing the spinifex hills. They have yielded a marketable three dimensional picture of the silent geology beneath. Out there at Lake Maitland, Mega Uranium are scoping WA's first uranium mine, pitching to throw a thousand tonnes of uranium oxide a year into the world's nuclear fuel market.

On paper, the geologists and the engineers believe they can get the mine to pay for itself. A million tonnes of precious water freely used and discarded; two million tonnes of radioactive ore crushed, leached and discarded to produce enough uranium to power five substantial nuclear power stations for a year. Goldfielders are only just now waking up to the idea of hundreds of yellowcake transports through communities already jittery in the aftermath of the Esperance lead disaster.

I'd give a lot to have the good people of Kalgoorlie and Wiluna spend one quiet hour with the Hibakusha, just to stop in and listen to a modest personal description of the day hell opened up on earth. Then trace the path of that yellowcake stripped from Lake Maitland, shipped out under humid Darwin skies and fed into enrichment plants in Russia, Europe, North America and China.

Uranium is bomb fuel. It was on that bright day in 1945, and it still is today. Around the world, powerful undercurrents are turning against the very existence of the unspeakable weapons industry that Australia helps to feed. Australia is on the wrong side of this debate, and with persistence and goodwill we will shortly put these mining companies on the wrong side of history.

It's all hands on deck now to shove a spanner into the works at Lake Maitland; just know that in so doing, you're bringing the vision of those patient, determined Hibakusha one step closer. Hiroshima, Nagasaki; Never Again.

Public transport - why was it forgotten in the stimulus package?

ScottLudlam — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:50:16 +1100

What can be done to seize this opportunity to support Australians during this economic crisis?

Including public transport in the stimulus package would assist Australians in real need of an essential service during a time of petrol price volatility and peak oil looming. It would also increase the transit manufacturing sector and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Public transport benefits community health as pollution levels are reduced and individuals' activity is increased.

The fact is that people on lower incomes live further from city centres and therefore pay greater prices to travel. Those in living in inner eastern Sydney use a car for only 48.7% of all trips and travel on average 10.1 kilometres per day. In contrast those living in outer west suburbs of Sydney use private transport for 79.1% of all trips and while travelling on average 33.1 kilometres each day (DIPNR, 2003).

How much does it cost us to keep forgetting about public transport?

The Bureau of Transport and Regional economics estimates the cost of the health effects of motor vehicle pollution as $2.6b per year (Australia's Future Oil Supply and Alternative Transport Fuels, 2007). The cost of traffic congestion in Australian cities has been estimated by the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics as $12.8 billion per year (Australia's Future Oil Supply and Alternative Transport Fuels). The cost of road traffic injury and death is $1billion per year.

Investment in roads - which we haven't seen in the stimulus package - but is nevertheless a disproportionate focus of the current government's funding.

At present (2004-2009) the Federal Government is spending $15.8 billion of AusLink Funding of which only around 9% is allocated to rail infrastructure (Australian Greens Policy Initiative, Road to Rails, 2007). This is certainly not reflecting the ‘enormous changes' that the 2007 Senate Committee Report Australia's Future Oil Supply and Alternative Transport Fuels acknowledged as being required to establish a less oil dependant economy.

The higher demand for public transport investment over road investment was reflected in a recent Age/Neilson poll in Victoria. 62% of respondents wanted the government to give public transport priority over roads.

Support in Melbourne was stronger again with 68% of respondents wanting more funding directed to public transport than roads (The Age, Fix Public Transport Before Roads, 2008).
There is an increased demand for public transport, which is not being met
- The rapid increase in fuel prices since 2004 has resulted in a greater demand for public transport.
- In Brisbane in the three years since 2004 there was on an increase in patronage on average of 9.7% per year.
- Melbourne has also experienced a great increase in rail users since 2004 with around a 10% increase annually (Unsettling Surburbia- The New Landscape of Oil and Mortgage Vulnerability in Australian Cities, 2008).
- In March 2007 in Brisbane 1,749 buses were forced to turn away passengers because they were too full.

To encourage more people to use public transport we must provide them with an incentive to do so and this means providing a reliable and efficient service. Forcing people to wait for another bus or train will increase the appeal in simply using private transport.

Building housing without including fast, efficient and safe public transport is not doing anyone any favours. It is doing no favours to lower income people to build housing that strands them on the outer fringes of cities where they are acutely vulnerable to rising transport costs and falling land values.

Not only is an efficient mass transit system an essential component of any carbon reduction strategy, but improving mass transit means Australians will spend less on petrol, waste less time in traffic jams, reduce congestion and be able to access the services that they need. Other benefits of course include clean air, the increased safety of our communities, more open spaces and so on.

'Change': Australia must follow Obama's lead

ScottLudlam — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:18:26 +1100

In his historic inauguration speech, US President Barack Obama has signaled a new direction for Washington and the world.

For those of us appalled by the Bush administration's anti-democratic practices and disrespect for the principles of rule of law and natural justice, President Obama's words were music to our ears:

"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

The question is, will it lead to the repeal of excessive and dangerous legislation like the Patriot Act, which undermined the rights and privacy of US citizens in the name of fighting terrorism. It allowed for increased surveillance of citizens - tapping of phone calls, even police examination of library records.

Prime Minister Rudd faces the same question regarding the 40 pieces of anti-terrorism legislation hastily passed by the Howard government after the events of 11 September 2001 that encroach on the rights and freedoms of Australian citizens. Longstanding democratic and legal principles, including the right of judicial oversight, are undermined. Careless talk and bad ideas have become crimes in Australia, people can be found guilty of substantive offences because they are talked about, which is worrying in an open democracy. A number of subsequent studies have called attention to the urgent need for ongoing review of the terror laws.

When in opposition Labor promised a comprehensive review, but 14 months on it has not yet taken action. In 2008 the Greens supported a Bill initiated by Liberal backbenchers Judith Troeth and Gary Humphries - initially introduced by Petro Georgiou in 2007- to appoint an Independent Reviewer of the anti-terrorism laws.

The government is yet to say whether it will support the Bill in the House of Representatives but they opposed the bill in the Senate.

President Obama is correct when he describes the choice between safety and our ideals as false. It is possible to have a safe and secure country while respecting democratic rights and freedoms. It is time to abandon the false safety vs. rights dichotomy that so often dominates the debate about our response to terrorism.

If we sacrifice our democratic rights and freedoms in the name of security, then we sacrifice the very values we seek to protect. Restricting our civil liberties won't make the world a safer place. Let's instead focus on the factors that foster terrorism and extremism - racism, alienation and poverty. Only if we address these can we truly prevent terrorist acts in the future.

Rudd should follow Obama's lead and commit to a review of the anti-terrorism laws. The draconian laws of the Bush/Howard era have no place in our modern democracy. The world has changed and Australia must not be left behind.

Process not Postcode: the road to a defensible radioactive waste policy

ScottLudlam — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:52:53 +1100

In response to the Crikey article Radioactive Waste for Christmas:

The Senate Inquiry into my bill to repeal Howard's Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 received 103 submissions from organisations and individuals. Two public hearings held in Alice Springs and Canberra provided thoughtful and considered input to the Environment, Communication and the Arts Committee's deliberations and final report.

Overall, I would characterise the process as a very constructive one that pooled information and expertise, and encouraged constructive dialogue about a complicated and controversial issue which has rarely been given the space for open debate.

First, the inquiry revealed an overwhelming consensus regarding the deficiencies and consequences of Howard's 2005 legislation which enables the Federal government to impose a radioactive waste facility on unwilling Territory communities and against the wishes of the NT government. The legislation does this through overriding laws generated by the Territory government, preventing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 from having effect during investigation of potential dump sites, excluding the Native Title Act 1993 from operating at all, overriding the Land Rights Act and wiping out procedural fairness through suspension of the Judicial Review Act.

Second, the inquiry increased pressure on the government to fulfil an election promise to repeal the Act and to establish a scientific, transparent, accountable, and fair process ensuring full community consultation in radioactive waste decision-making processes. More than a year after being elected, its time the government took action, and the Committee not only provided guidance as to what future legislation should include, it also described exactly how it should differ from the existing Act.

Third, the inquiry report acknowledged the degree to which a centralised remote facility is questioned as necessarily an appropriate option. Witnesses argued that a dump in a remote area might not be the best way to manage this intractable waste at this time, and that other models should be explored by policy makers. Some groups argued strongly that a remote facility increased the transportation risks without any clear public health benefit.

And finally, the inquiry exposed just how contested the favoured site at Muckaty Station really is. Contrary to Mr. Gosfords assertion, Amy Lauder, a senior Ngapa traditional owner did not appear, nor did she make a submission to the Inquiry. Instead, we heard from other senior Ngapa traditional owners who gave compelling evidence about the flawed nature of the consultation process and questioned the accuracy of a secret anthropological report that designates a small handful of individuals as speaking exclusively for that country.

The Greens signed onto the government-led Committee report because it recommended that radiative waste policy should be adopted in consultation with communities, be based on environmental best practice, and be fair and transparent. Mr. Gosford's prediction that "the Greens would never support replacement legislation," is bizarre. It is essential that sooner or later Australia faces up to its radioactive waste legacy in a deliberative and measured process, and any future legislation to this effect will be carefully scrutinised by the Greens and supported if it enables the kind of the scientific, transparent, accountable, and fair process the government has promised.

So that was estimates

ScottLudlam — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:43:33 +1100

So that was estimates.

One of the few advantages of being new to this job is appreciating it's strangeness with fresh eyes. Three times a year, while the Senate is in recess, an intriguing and largely overlooked ritual takes place in the airy committee rooms of Parliament House in Canberra. Senior public servants, heads of departments and a highly qualified army of advisers and minders converge for five days of cross-examination in front of the Senate's eight standing committees.

Between them, the senior bureaucrats who will appear at the witness table over these five long days are expected to account for every dollar of the $292 billion that the Commonwealth Government will spend this year. They run the sprawling acronym factory of government departments responsible for translating the dreams of the executive into some approximation of reality day to day. Some of them are in charge of beginning the transition to a renewable economy, and some of them are in charge of making sure it never happens. Some of them hold in trust the lives of the uniformed men and women we've sent into harm's way in Oruzgan, Timor L'este and Baghdad. And this is your chance to ask them a question, face to face, across a table. Senator, do you have any questions?

The first thing you need to know about estimates hearings is that for the most part, they are boring. There's just no getting around it – one of our parliament's most important accountability mechanisms looks to an outsider like five days of spirit-pulverising tedium. Imagine a poorly organised party with no beer that goes for seventy hours, where every conversation has to start with a reference to a Commonwealth budget line item.

Estimates provides the bland spectacle of urbane public servants being tormented for hours at a time by opposition backbenchers probing obscure lines of argument for no reason at all. Middle aged men who never quite had the nerve to join the armed forces get to play out adolescent fantasies in detailed conversations with polite Generals about the coming generation of lethal military hardware. A handful of Senators who I shouldn't identify use estimates hearings as a backdrop for dismal, opportunistic theatrical performances at the expense of busy people with much better things to do.

Unless the news cycle's withering searchlight randomly crosses paths with a hearing – as happened to our Treasury Secretary this week - the press gallery cheerfully ignores most of what happens in senate estimates, and the curious process unfolds out of sight out of mind to the vast majority of taxpayers.

The thing about budget estimates is, we'd really miss them if they weren't there. Most of us experience 'The Government' under late capitalism as something massive, distant, faceless and unaccountable. Over these few precious days however, the internal apparatus of the whole machine is laid bare and open to careful scrutiny, whereupon you realise it's all held together by human beings doing their best to keep their piece of this vast thing from coming off the rails.

To give you a taste, we've assembled a couple of transcripts from the sessions I participated in over the four days from October 20 to 23. It's an eclectic set of conversations traversing a range of portfolio areas.

{note to the enthusiastic – some of these transcripts are yet to be loaded onto the parliamentary site by the overworked hansard team – please be patient!}

If you're interested in who will shortly be deciding what you're allowed to see on teh interwebs, start with this disturbing exchange I had with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy on mandatory internet filtering.

We got a fleeting glimpse of subliminal advertising on Network Ten's 2007 ARIA coverage, then had effective confirmation that protection of Australia's unique heritage places is in deep trouble; followed by this inconclusive conversation about the future of community television stations in the post-analogue world. The protection of the rights of users of the National Broadband network also seems to be something of a work in progress.

For a sense of the government's shifting priorities in tackling the housing affordability crisis, we got an update on progress toward the homelessness white paper and a hint that the government's National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) could be substantially greened up on its way through the Senate – as long as the Australian Tax Office doesn't inadvertently crash the scheme before it begins.
Late on Tuesday evening we joined the Australian Transport Safety Bureau for a glimpse into the white-knuckle half hour aboard QF72 as it passed within a hundred miles of the massive military transmitter at the Harold E. Holt communications base near Exmouth. Several people were seriously injured when a piece of navigation equipment on the Airbus a330-300 glitched and threw the aircraft into a steep dive. The professionalism of the pilots undoubtedly saved the lives of everybody on board; what is still unknown is whether electromagnetic signals from the base had anything to do with the near-catastrophe.

We're starting to get a better sense of how high the stakes are with the Government's new 'Building Australia Fund'. With more than $15 billion set aside for large-scale infrastructure projects, we're keen to know whether this precious resource will be used to prepare Australia for the renewable challenges of the 21st century or be used to entrench the waning dominance of fossil infrastructure and its' governance structures.

For a hint as to the Government's underlying priorities in this regard, there is this heartbreaking tract about the new international carbon capture and storage institute. Waiting for clean coal to save the climate? It's not happening this decade, or the next, according to the experts.
In the later part of the week we heard from the people responsible for Australian deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. You might have thought Australian military involvement in that misguided invasion had ceased; perhaps then you'd be interested to know an Australian warship and it's command staff are in charge of protecting Iraqi offshore oil terminals in the Persian Gulf. In Afghanistan we heard again – from people who ought to know – that the war is unwinnable, and that the only way out lies in diplomacy and political dialogue. Later in the day the good people at Ausaid gave a frank appraisal of just how hard their job is in Afghanistan, and then, in a brief exchange that was something of a highlight for the whole week, described the precious work they are doing in support of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in our region.
Bringing the consequences of war closer to home, I was given a lengthy opportunity to cross examine Defence on the contamination of the derelict Belconnen Naval Transmission Station on the outskirts of Canberra, and the Department's plans to move thousands of cubic metres of soil (much of it contaminated with asbestos, PCBs, lead and hydrocarbons) to an undisclosed location so that the former base can be subdivided for housing.

Anyone who knows me will understand that I have a bit of a thing about the nuclear industry, and so it was a rare and wonderful thing for the scraggly kid who pitched his tent on the outskirts of the Jabiluka blockade camp ten years ago to be able to get in front of some of the people who help this industry to do the things that it does.

There was this dialogue with the Office of the Supervising Scientist, responsible for 'overseeing' Rio Tinto's massive expansion of the Ranger Uranium Mine in Kakadu and documenting the creeping contamination from former mines in the Alligator Rivers Region.
There was this somewhat defensive exchange with the ANSTO folk who have been left with the job of getting the expensive, dysfunctional and entirely unnecessary OPAL research reactor back on its feet in Sydney after a year of shutdowns and refits. Then there was this utterly frustrating conversation with Mr John Carlson, Australia's chief apologist for uranium exports to nuclear weapons states.

Late on Thursday evening, in the last session of the week, I confronted the team who are preparing the ground for a National Radioactive Waste Dump in the Northern Territory. I won't spoil the surprise here; suffice to say, this was the only flash of real aggression and hostility sent my way all week, and you'll soon understand why. Anyone who thought the electoral demolition of the Howard Government meant the Territory was safe from this project needs to think again.

If you spot occasional flashes of rhetorical brilliance in any of these transcripts, it's entirely the fault of the wonderful and dedicated staff who put in gruelling hours behind the scenes to prepare the senators for these brief snatches of dialogue. Tip of the hat to Flick in particular without whom I'd have been a nervous wreck this week.

Poorly organised. Seventy hours. No beer. What a party.

Despair and Defiance

ScottLudlam — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:26:00 +1000

I was privileged to camp with Aboriginal elders and environment groups recently at the ‘Australian Nuclear Free Alliance' meeting, which took place at Mary River, about 100 km south east of Darwin.

This was a remarkable gathering of Traditional Owners and campaigners impacted by uranium mining, weapons testing and radioactive waste dumping, supported by environment groups from around the country. It got started in 1997 as the ‘Alliance Against Uranium' when the campaign to stop a uranium mine in Kakadu at Jabiluka that combining the strengths of Green and Black organising.

The stories I heard were of the cruellest form of dispossession: the day black rain fell at Maralinga; the expanding groundwater sacrifice zone around the Beverley uranium mine; the cultural and ecological tragedy of Olympic Dam.

Trauma is not too strong a word for what people here are feeling. The Australian community at large holds a distant but healthy suspicion about all things nuclear, but for the people gathered this weekend, the insidious poisoning of country and culture by nuclear blasts, nuclear waste and uranium mining are matters of direct personal experience.

I heard about the brain tumours and breast cancers growing inside people far too young, of the legal entrapments of the Native Title Act which has set families against each other, and now the NT Intervention which has simply compounded and aggravated the despair.

At the meeting there was a huge hand-painted map on the wall showing the rash of proposed uranium mines from Meekatharra to Mount Isa and everywhere in between. One participant observed: ‘there's just nowhere left to run.'

In the back of everyone's minds in the Territory is the spectre of 60 years of nuclear waste from the Lucas Heights reactor. The Howard Government passed the highly coercive ‘Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act' in 2005 which suspended all forms of due process and democratic oversight in order to dump Australia's radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. In opposition, the ALP promised to repeal this bill and start again.

Now the Federal Government is burning bridges up here. First it was Martin Ferguson's thuggish repudiation of Kevin Rudd's election promise on the waste dump. Last week it was the awful spectacle of former Oils frontman and anti-nuclear activist Peter Garrett meekly signing off on the expanded violation of groundwater at the Beverley Uranium Mine.

Where will it end?

According to the hardened campaigners, it ends with final silencing of culture and language, and contamination of country for all time.

In 2008, the year of the apology, we still have elders and law people willing to share their knowledge with us, and ‘open doors to the country' as Kevin Buzacott puts it. The language is still alive. The law is still being passed on to the kids, and people want to get on with the healing that ‘Sorry' goes some way to enabling. Why, with so much potential, are we still crushing Aboriginal people between chequebooks, bulldozers, police and Acts of Parliament?

The health treatment costs of police and military personnel present at Maralinga during British nuclear testing - those of them left - have been provided for through a Bill that passed through the Senate in June. Will there ever be a ‘sorry' and compensation for Aboriginal people? Too many forget that an area the size of England itself was fenced off by the British who then poisoned an area the size of metropolitan London forever with seven nuclear blasts and hundreds of "minor trials" with plutonium among other long-lasting radioactive substances. Aboriginal people did not give prior and informed consent to such activities and were not even warned that the black rain was toxic, that the flash of light would blind.

Ten years ago this year, the Jabiluka uranium mine was fought to a standstill by the Mirrar and thousands of their supporters. The Kungkas defeated the South Australian waste dump despite the full force of the Federal Government being brought to bear. The Territorians working against the waste dump and their supporters are going to win as well, but only with a determined mobilisation made up of thousands of individual actions - everything from writing out a surprisingly generous cheque to sending a spiky letter to Martin Ferguson or picking up the phone and finding out how you can help more directly.

The people gathered in this shed have things they'd much rather do than fight these undemocratic and toxic projects, but fight they will, and they deserve our support.

The nuclear industry has no place in a sustainable Australia - there is still time to bring some sanity back to this 60-year old conversation and institute a properly democratic and informed process for curing the country's radioactive migraine.

Beverley Uranium Mine

ScottLudlam — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:45:00 +1000

Thirty years after his first anti-uranium benefit gig at Sydney Town Hall, Environment Minister Peter Garret approved the expansion of the Beverley Uranium mine in South Australia.

The Beverley uranium mine is 520km north of Adelaide, deep in the heart of the South Australian desert. This is an area of low rainfall with sparse vegetation, reliant on underground water for development. Discovered in 1969, the ore body of approximately 21,000 tonnes of uranium oxide has an average grade of 0.18% and stretches four kilometres by 500 metres.

Minister Garrett's decision to expand the mine equates to a six-fold increase in the size of the Beverley borefields - from 16 square km to more than 100 square km - radically expanding the impact area into which hundreds of millions of litres of liquid radioactive waste is being discharged.

We are being told that the decision came after 'comprehensive, scientifically-robust and transparent process in the assessment of the potential environmental impacts.' Who would believe that an Environment Minister would describe 90 million litres of liquid radioactive and acidic mine waste being discharged into groundwater in one year as 'world's best practice?' Peter Garrett may have decided to swallow a bitter pill to gain his Ministry, but he shouldn't expect the public to swallow the idea that what is going on at Beverley is in any way acceptable.

The dangerous in-situ leaching mining technique being used at Beverley is at the heart of the wider controversy. Large quantities of sulphuric acid are pumped directly into the underground water aquifer to make the uranium soluble. The solution is returned to the surface, the uranium is removed for processing and the remains are pumped back into the water table. What is returned is often highly acidic and radioactive as radionuclides and other heavy metals, once dormant in sand granules, are mobilised.

As it is almost impossible to accurately monitor the migration of water in the aquifer, the extent and degree of contamination from this practice is unknown. It is unlikely that the aquifers are isolated and that water will not migrate out of the region or contaminate the Great Artesian Basin. Commercially the acid-leach technique is no longer used in the US, as previous operations in the US and Eastern Europe have led to significant ground contamination.

Acid in-situ leaching is a technique not used anywhere in the OECD due to its shocking record of groundwater contamination, and will ultimately result in turning the Beverley aquifer into a liquid radioactive waste dump. To extract a tonne of yellowcake here takes 18 tonnes of sulphuric acid and a tonne of hydrogen peroxide, not to mention the extreme cost of water. Beverley is in the driest state in the driest continent on earth. South Australia can't afford to give up the water that the Beverley mine will pollute.

In fact, pumping millions of litres of strongly acid or alkaline solution into the ground water to strip uranium from the host rock should be considered a crime. The Environment Minister's use of powers under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999 to expand this uranium mine provides yet more urgency to the Senate Inquiry into the effectiveness and operations of the Act currently underway.

Australia should not be involved in the uranium mining industry. It is an industry that remains extremely hazardous to human health and requires huge amounts of our already scarce water resources. It creates an eternal pollution legacy for future generations of Australians to deal with. It is a dirty industry that leaves behind waste products that are radioactive for thousands of years and ultimately feeds the dangerous international nuclear industry.

Zero Nuclear Weapons

ScottLudlam — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:59:21 +1000

August 6th is the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima. I've just spent four days in a city where the memories are not only fresh, but engraved in stone, protected in world heritage-listed monuments, and taught urgently to young and old, local and foreign alike.
The Japanese have a word for the survivors of the twin atomic attacks on August 6 and 9, 1945. They call them Hibakusha, those for whom nuclear weapons signify something other than peace marches.

An elderly gentleman stood at the front of the workshop room yesterday and took us back there, smiling, exquisitely polite. A warm morning in 1945. A brilliant white flash. Thunderous darkness, moments of blind unconsciousness. Waking in bewilderment in the remains of a building thrown sideways. He describes columns of silent ghost people, streaming out of the ruined city with skin and clothing hanging in shreds, a firestorm rising behind them.
One bomb, a whole city erased with 16 kilograms of highly enriched uranium stolen from Native American lands. 90,000 people murdered in an instant; incinerated or pulverised in the blast wave of a single weapon detonated 600 metres above the domed roof of the Industrial Promotion Hall. Three days later, with Imperial Japan still reeling in confusion, another nuclear weapon opens up the sky above the city of Nagasaki. All told, perhaps a quarter of a million people are felled in the blasts or succumb in the coming days and months to the unknown horrors of radiation sickness.

Much of the world has forgotten August 1945. Buried beneath our collective consciousness in the shallowest of graves, lies the uncomprehending knowledge that humanity now shares the planet with 26,000 nuclear weapons, most of them vastly more powerful than the devices of the 1940s. It is bad enough that they are in the hands of at least nine states, but unknown quantities of potential weapons-grade materials are also seeping through the porous borders of the world's black economy. The crucial bomb fuel, uranium, is being sold freely by Australia, Canada and others to nuclear weapons states under a fictional safeguards regime.

It is time we took a proper look at the reality that confronts us. Unless they are formally abolished, one day, nuclear weapons will be upon us again; either in the tip of a cruise missile or in the back of a truck parked in some familiar city. The correct number of nuclear weapons on a small planet facing big challenges, is exactly zero.

The May 2005 review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was perhaps the lowest point in the history of the campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons before they rid the world of us. The Bush Administration crashed a thirty year dialogue to the dismay of the tight knit community of officials, diplomats and activists who have made it their lives' work to wrench some progress from these tortured negotiations.

The Bush presidency is now little more than a cruel joke, and the global abolition community is re-emerging with a new determination. There is a change in the air.

Senator Barack Obama has put the abolition of nuclear weapons on the agenda of a US Presidential race for the first time. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has put Australia into the frame with a proposed new Commission on nuclear weapons. Japanese campaigners are particularly interested in how the collaboration between their government and ours will work. Announced after Rudd’s visit to Hiroshima, the Commission will be chaired by former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, and co-chaired by former Foreign Minister of Japan, Yoriko Kawaguchi. The Australian peace movement has a crucial role to play as watchdog and adviser as this commission unfolds.

The 7000 participants in the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs here in Hiroshima are focussed on the next opportunity for decisive action: the April 2010 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York. We have a twenty month deadline to disarmament, which will be characterised by a new wave of peace efforts, petitions, demonstrations, fundraisers and planning all around the world. In Australia our job is to ensure that our delegation to New York is given a crystal-clear mandate to bring the age of nuclear weapons to a close.

Today we witnessed the memorial ceremony in the Hiroshima peace park. We watched as the names of 5,100 additional people who died in the last 12 months were added to the cenotaph. The total number of dead: 258, 310 officially recognised Hibakusha.

It is hard to describe the sense of unswerving determination that the dignified elderly Hibakusha have instilled in the representatives of the global peace movement this week. There are now three generations of Hibakusha speaking up: those who witnessed the blast first-hand, their children and now their grand children. The subtle permanence of the damage wrought by radiation on the human genome mean that the impact of atomic warfare is cross-generational. And so it is with the campaign to abolish these weapons.

Spurred on by dedicated local campaigners, the international community has had the foresight to ban chemical and biological weapons. The abolition of landmines and cluster munitions are advanced works in progress. Nuclear weapons are next.

A Nuclear Weapons Convention – already drafted by expert non-government organisations – shows us how. Until the job is done, the Hibakusha will be here to remind us why.

Collateral Damage: housing and heritage on the line in the Pilbara

ScottLudlam — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:56:54 +1000

For most of the country the mining boom is a good news story of mining royalties and economic resilience that has carried us – so far - through the turbulence on world financial markets. However from close-up in the coastal Pilbara, the resources boom has distorted the local economy beyond recognition. Some are making and taking a great deal of money out of the region; others are struggling to survive.

On my recent visit to Karratha, I heard incredible stories from angry and frustrated people. A modest four bedroom house now sells for more than a million dollars and rents are out of control, stretching from $1500 - $2800 per week. People are sleeping in cars, tents and clapped out caravans, with temperatures soaring regularly into the 40s through much of the year. Petrol is nudging $2 per litre and fuelwatch is a joke when the nearest alternative servo is hundreds of kilometres up the road. Women in labour rush to the Karratha hospital only to be told to drive three hours to Port Hedland because there are not enough nurses and doctors.

All conversations here lead back to housing: unless you own your own place or are employed by the mining industry you simply can’t afford to live here any more. Small businesses, government departments and non-government organisations are well past desperate and running out of ways to hold on to staff.

In the absence of robust social or community infrastructure that provides adequate health care, policing, education or cultural activities, there are fewer and fewer incentives for families, particularly those with adolescent children, to stay. In the face of these difficulties, flying workers in and out from Perth or Brisbane makes more sense, which is absurd in an increasingly carbon conscious world.

In April a Senate select committee investigating housing affordability visited the town. They have called for a ‘high level emergency task force’ to make up for years of premeditated inaction on behalf of state and federal governments, but folk up here have had enough of taskforces, reports and recommendations.
Karratha needs 2000 affordable beds, yesterday, to prevent the complete hollowing out of the community. The situation in Hedland and other Pilbara communities is similarly acute, but the cluster of townships around Karratha seems to be worst hit. These are communities literally collapsing under the weight of the boom.

Why? To find some of the answers, we look to the low range of rust-coloured hills across the bay from Karratha: to Murujuga, the Burrup Peninsula.
Murujuga, virtually unknown to the world until a few years ago, is the world’s oldest and largest work of ceremonial art – an entire landscape given over to unbroken cultural narratives stretching back nearly 30,000 years into the late Pleistocene. Along the main peninsula and across the islands of the Dampier Archipelago, up to a million petroglyphs – rock carvings – are distributed across tens of thousands of sites, amidst an enigmatic network of standing stones, boulder terraces, prehistoric campsites and shell middens.

Words can’t quite do justice to this otherworldly landscape of deep red granophyre, steeply incised valleys and shaded rock pools. Along some valleys, nearly every surface is engraved with a riot of archaic faces, birdlife, animal figures, footprints, outstretched hands and wildly abstract geometries.
It is humbling to spend time in this landscape with people who know it well. You quickly realise that we’re almost completely illiterate to the thousands of stories that these rocks have been telling since before the last ice age.

Nowhere else on planet earth do we have a continuous record of human cultural endeavour stretching back this long. Twenty five thousand years before our ancestors assembled the megaliths at Stonehenge, the first complex archaic faces were being carefully worked into the diamond-hard boulder piles of the Burrup.

In the 1960s, the iron ore port of Dampier was established, erasing unknown thousands of petroglyphs and blowing a town-sized hole through the fabric of the rock art province. In the 1980s, the construction of the Woodside onshore gas plant flattened a square kilometre of the central peninsula, dumping displaced rock art into a lonely fenced compound described by one Elder as a ‘cemetery’ and establishing the Burrup as one of Australia’s most important industrial areas.

Since then the gathering momentum of fossil capitalism has treated the Peninsula as an industrial sacrifice zone, scarring the silent terrain with roads, infrastructure corridors, pipeways, power lines and quarries. One of the world’s largest ammonia plants squats in the floodway between Hearsons Cove and the ruined landscape of King Bay, one cyclone away from a public health catastrophe.

Until recently, the highest point on the landscape has been the flare tower on the Woodside plant, but all that is about to change.

Despite a hard fought campaign by local activists, Traditional Owners, rock art conservators and a cross-party alliance of MPs, in 2007 the Western Australian Government signed off on a massive new gas plant – Woodside’s Pluto Project. The Federal Government stood back and watched, declaring the whole Archipelago a National Heritage property while agreeing that specified leases should still be blasted flat for more heavy industry. As elsewhere in Australia, Indigenous voices were silenced by a combination of poverty, overwhelm and recondite legal agreements removing their right to public dissent, which makes their continued resistance all the more extraordinary.

Pluto is being bulldozed into existence on the northern flank of the Peninsula, on an artificial plateau that will be visible for miles in every direction. Forever hereafter, the ancient Burrup will be dominated by this architecture, when at the stroke of a pen the WA Government could have demanded that Woodside locate their plant on the flat coastal plain that stretches for hundreds of kilometres in either direction.

The Burrup’s growing supporters are now gathering their strength to fight for the relocation of an avalanche of new development proposals: a quarry expansion; a huge explosives plant; another gas plant to handle Woodside’s Browse field; an energy hungry desalination plant.

It is no coincidence that Karratha’s economy has been pushed past breaking point – it is simply impossible for a town to expand fast enough to accommodate this breakneck pace of construction.

These ‘developments’ are the logical conclusion of an economic mindset that seems determined to liquidate Australia’s non-renewable resources as fast as possible. Unless sanity prevails and we transition toward a conserver economy, within a generation we will have drained the north-west gas fields, stripped the Pilbara of its ancient ironstone resources and permanently ruined the Burrup. Karratha’s survival at this point would be an open question; a visit to the spooky Goldfields ghost towns should be mandatory for anyone contemplating the future of the Pilbara under our present development model.
Even posing these questions is likely to see us accused of being blindly anti-development, but in fact we are only against blind development. At this pace, there will be nothing for the children of the Pilbara to inherit.

So let’s get emergency housing resources into Karratha to help people out of the caravan park. While we’re at it we also need to take a good hard look at where this rollercoaster ride is taking us, and whether it might not be a good idea to apply the brakes while we still can.

No place for uranium in a renewable Australia

ScottLudlam — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:45:03 +1000

In the wake of the release Professor Garnaut's draft report this morning, Stateline WA ran a well timed piece this evening on the nuclear industry's unsightly scramble for a place at the climate change table.

The piece used clips from a film I produced last year titled 'Climate of Hope' which reviews the nuclear fuel chain and exposes the nuclear industry's reliance on fossil fuels. The alleged 'nuclear renaissance' just isn't happening. The renewable energy stats I quoted in the film are already out of date - the wind industry installed ten times more capacity worldwide last year than nuclear power. It's time Australia kicked the fossil/nuclear habit once and for all.

No place for uranium in a renewable Australia

ScottLudlam — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +1000

In the wake of the release Professor Garnaut's draft report, Stateline WA ran a well timed piece in which I was interviewed on the nuclear industry's unsightly scramble for a place at the climate change table. The piece used clips from ‘Climate of Hope', a film I produced last year that reviews the nuclear fuel chain and exposes the nuclear industry's reliance on fossil fuels. The renewable energy stats I quoted in the film are already out of date - the wind industry installed ten times more capacity worldwide than nuclear power in 2007.

In the United States, the supposed source of inspiration for the resurgence in nuclear reactors, no new nuclear construction was initiated in 2007, though one reactor was restarted after a 22-year shutdown, and construction resumed on a reactor that had been stalled since 1988. According to US nuclear policy analyst Jim Riccio, Wall Street has yet to be sold on new nuclear investments in the United States. Moody's, a credit rating agency, has stated that it "believes that many of the current expectations regarding new nuclear generation are overly ambitious," raising questions about the industry's cost estimates and its schedule for bringing the next U.S. nuclear reactor online. Moody's concerns seem well placed. By the end of 2007, new nuclear plant cost estimates for identical Westinghouse-designed nuclear plants had soared, more than doubling to $12-18 billion

In a world facing dangerous climate change, we simply can't afford the fossil/nuclear habit, especially when we have the know-how and technology to provide long term clean energy and transport in our cities and regions.

Same dump, different Minister

ScottLudlam — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:09:41 +1000

The Rudd Government needs to take a careful look at Martin Ferguson’s handling of the latest tragic chapter of Australia’s 50-year nuclear waste story.

A cursory review of the history of Government attempts to force nuclear waste dumps on unwilling communities shows an unbroken record of Government failure. It’s time for new thinking.

Former Science Minister Brendan Nelson summed up prevailing attitudes at a press conference in 2005: "why on earth can't people in the middle of nowhere have low level and intermediate level waste?" The ghost of Terra Nullius still haunts the question of what to do with the nation’s radioactive mess.

Mitch is an Arrernte and Luritja woman who speaks for one of the proposed dump sites in the ‘middle of nowhere’ at Harts Range. She said it best: “We didn’t offer up our land…We’re still fighting for food, about education, health and poverty issues, how can we be fighting against uranium mining and waste dumps of top of all that?”

Like the Kungkas (senior women) who led an earlier campaign to stop a waste dump in South Australia, and Western Australians who defeated the Pangea proposal, Territorians banded together and stuck up for themselves. In 2007 they extracted a promise from the Rudd opposition that Howard’s punitive Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 would be repealed, closing the door on the disgraceful land grab.
Now that’s all up in the air.

Martin Ferguson says “Let the Greens and the fringe groups play their little games, it's the responsibility of this parliament once and for all to resolve it.” Peter Garrett and other Labor MPs are falling over themselves to muddy the waters and re-frame commitments made before the election. It looks like history is about to repeat itself all over again (along has a harshly ironic edge, given Mr Rudd's current diplomatic engagement in Hiroshima).

Before proceeding any further with this spectacular betrayal of the Territorians who believed they had beaten the waste dump, the Prime Minister needs to step in, sideline Mr Ferguson and grab the once-in-a-generation opportunity that has arrived.
For fifty years we’ve had the Lucas Heights research reactor operating in Sydney with no real plan for the treatment of the high level radioactive waste, much of it parked in Western Europe awaiting reprocessing and reclassification as 'Long-Lived Intermediate Level Waste'. The core of the old reactor building is also highly radioactive and will need to be dealt with somehow. The dozens of de-facto low-level waste stores at hospitals and research centres around the country are a side issue compared to the unanswered questions of this high and intermediate level waste.

What is urgently needed is a properly deliberative process about what to do with this material, because in reality the fuel rods may well be much safer where they are at Lucas Heights, than transported halfway across the country and dumped in a hole. There is a strong argument for monitored, dry, above ground or near-surface storage, minimising transport risks and keeping the wastes close to centres of nuclear expertise.

This option needs to be discussed openly, with input from all stakeholders – particularly people living in the vicinity of Lucas Heights - rather than rushing down the same well-worn, failed path of attempting to dump the waste on politically vulnerable communities in central Australia.
Perhaps in the light of reasoned debate we will find that the best option is long-distance shipping to a remote site. But Australia needs to have that conversation.

Because, with a whole world of high level nuclear waste with nowhere to go, there is every reason to believe an national waste dump in the NT could rapidly mutate into something vastly larger.

Election 2007

ScottLudlam — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +1100

On Saturday 24 November 2007, the thirteen and a half million enrolled Australians wrote the Howard Government into history. Not just a mild rebuke, but one of the most delightfully unambiguous electoral demolition jobs our country has ever seen. An army of AEC staff and volunteers are still reading the fine print, but it looks like the Howard Government has been decapitated, with the Prime Minister rolled out of Parliament, the architect of the NT intervention bluntly deposed, and a crushing number of seats turning over everywhere but the boom state of Western Australia.

What a beautiful day. A whole generation has grown up with no concept of Australia without Howard, and the banal but ruthlessly efficient strain of neo-conservatism which he channelled.

Here's how it's done in Australia in 2007: with eskies full of soft drink, miles of evil plastic bunting, and carefully deployed armies of colour coded volunteers offering pamphlets to queues of mildly resentful citizens. At the end of a ten hour day, executive power changes hands.

While the focus has obviously been on the earthquake in the House of Representatives, something equally significant appears to have happened in the Senate: the balance of power will probably now be shared by the Liberals, Nationals, Labor, the Australian Greens, Family First and South Australian Independent Nick Xenophon.

That's worth restating: no single political entity has absolute control of both houses of Parliament. To win any given initiative, the parties will need to negotiate with each other, which is more or less how the people who drafted the Constitution intended the Senate to operate.

Our campaign team in WA had a dream run on the 24th. More than a thousand booth workers fanned out across the state, setting up cheerful positions at hundreds of polling places to remind people that the Greens exist as a viable alternative to the shrinking differences between the major parties. If you were one of those people, huge thanks.

Our vote went up in nearly every seat in the state, and with the count under way it looks like our Senate vote will be in excess of 9.2%. While the swing to the ALP was far less pronounced in WA than the rest of the country, it was great to see the Greens not just holding our ground but winning the votes of - we believe - more than a hundred thousand Western Australians. The total national Green vote will be in excess of a million people for the first time.

While we are not yet ready to definitively claim the WA Senate position as a win, we are very hopeful. Counting will continue until mid-December; until then please keep your fingers crossed! The ACT (with an astonishing 22% of the vote), Victoria and Queensland are still an outside chance of a Greens win - unlikely, but not impossible. It appears we have almost certainly lost Senator Kerry Nettle's seat despite a huge increase in the NSW Green vote, and anyone who knows anything about Kerry's work will appreciate what a huge loss this is. In Tasmania, we polled over a quota for the first time - emphatically re-electing Senator Bob Brown.

But locally, we're simply delighted with how we've done in WA. An election campaign is a massive, complex endeavour which never goes without a hitch. From those in the office doing 18 hour days to the dedicated volunteers supporting our 15 lower house candidates, the 2007 election campaign team have done something remarkable. We have built the Greens profile, substantially increased our vote, and probably elected a Senator, under conditions approaching a media blackout. Thanks to you, and to everyone who made this happen.