Tag Australia

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Australian Prime Minister on climate change sceptics

Nov 8, ’09 12:51 PM

Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter on cli­mate change scep­tics:

… these do-nothing cli­mate change scep­tics are pre­pared to des­troy our children’s future … cli­mate change skep­tics in all their guises and dis­guises are not con­ser­vat­ives. They are rad­ic­als. They are reck­less gam­blers who are bet­ting all our futures on their arrog­ant assump­tion that their intu­itions should tri­umph over the evidence.

My mes­sage to the cli­mate change skep­tics … is this: You are bet­ting our children’s future and the future of our grand­chil­dren. You are bet­ting our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our eco­nomy and our future on an intu­ition – on a gut feel­ing; on a polit­ical pre­ju­dice you have about science.

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Australian town bans bottled water sales

Jul 9, ’09 6:50 PM

Someone’s cot­toned onto the fact that they’re being conned:

[The town of] Bundanoon’s battle against the bottle has been brew­ing for years, ever since a Sydney-based bever­age com­pany announced plans to build a water extrac­tion plant in the town. Res­id­ents were furi­ous over the pro­spect of an out­sider tak­ing their water, truck­ing it up to Sydney for pro­cessing and then selling it back to them. The town is still fight­ing the company’s pro­posal in court.

Then in March, Huw King­ston, who owns the town’s com­bin­a­tion cafe and bike shop, had a thought: If the town was so against host­ing a water bot­tling com­pany, why not ban the end product?

On Wed­nes­day, 356 people turned up for a vote — the biggest turnout ever at a town meeting.

Only two people voted no. One said he was wor­ried ban­ning bottled water would encour­age people to drink sug­ary drinks. The other was Geoff Parker, dir­ector of the Aus­tralasian Bottled Water Insti­tute — which rep­res­ents the bottled water industry.

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Shattering the myth of egalitarianism in Australia (and NZ)

Apr 26, ’09 12:56 PM

Boris Frankel in Melbourne’s The Age:

Here is some good news. Just as the Great Depres­sion inspired sig­ni­fic­ant social reforms, so the cur­rent “great world reces­sion” is pro­du­cing a spate of over­due reform pro­pos­als. Some of these pro­pos­als have emerged in Bri­tain, one of the most unequal soci­et­ies in the developed world. While Aus­tralia ranks as the fourth most unequal developed soci­ety after the US, Por­tugal and Bri­tain, there is wide­spread delu­sion among Aus­trali­ans that we are an egal­it­arian soci­ety. By con­trast, 80 per cent of people in Brit­ish sur­veys believe that class divi­sion — or birth not worth — determ­ines a child’s life chances.

I think there’s prob­ably wide­spread delu­sion among New Zeal­anders too when it comes to see­ing their soci­ety as egal­it­arian. It used to be for sure, but since the Labour and National party usered in free-market fun­da­ment­al­ism in the 80s New Zea­l­and, too, has become one of the most unequal developed soci­et­ies in the world. One more reason not to vote for Labour or National.

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Should the Americans invade Oz next?

Oct 7, ’05 10:28 AM

In terms of the war on ter­ror, who should be the next coun­try to invade? Read on to see some of the bet­ter res­ults of “engin­eer­ing consent.”

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