Category: Archive

The balance of power in Victoria’s recast 40-seat upper house could be split between the Nationals and Greens, suggested an article in The Australian Financial Review (25 August 2006, p.81). It quotes veteran psephologist Malcolm Mackerras as one expert who regards this as possible, based on 2002 election results and subsequent polling.

Complex weighting of "surplus" votes:

# Any candidate who gets more than 16.67 per cent of first preference votes is automatically elected. This is called the quota.

# That candidate’s surplus votes are then distributed according to preferences. However, rather than a simple distribution, they are weighted by the size of the candidate’s margin over the quota.

# That means the preferences of a candidate that clears the quota by a larger margin carry more clout for the beneficiary.

What the tipsters predict:

# Malcolm Mackerras: Labour 19, Liberal 15, Nationals 3, Greens 3;

# Antony Green: Labour 20, Liberal 14, Greens 5, Nationals 1.

The reforms: Under the reforms, Victoria’s 44-seat Legislative Council will be replaced by a 40-seat chamber and the preferential voting system by proportional representation. Eight regions, each with five members, will replace the 22 existing upper house provinces, each represented by two members.

The hopefuls: Players and pretenders hoping to wield some influence in the new-look Legislative Council include the Greens, Nationals, Family First and even Stephen Mayne’s People Power. But winning enough votes could be tougher than polling for a typical lower house electorate.

Traditional power bases under threat: The vast new upper house electorates – one is bigger than Scotland – will dilute the inner urban and rural power bases of the Greens and Nationals as they try to reach the crucial quota of 16.6 per cent of the vote.

Primary vote now vitally important: In the old upper house seats that now make up Melbourne’s northern metropolitan region, the Greens’ most winnable seat, the party polled 16.8 per cent of primary votes, giving it a wafer-thin margin for slippage. This is important under the new system because preferences of candidates who receive hefty primary votes carry more weight.

The Australian Financial Review, 25/8/2006, p.81

Source: Erisk Net  

To farmers in the Lower Bago Valley, Gerard is the neighbour they never see but for occasional sightings of his helicopter, who sold them out to the enemy – pine plantation operator Willmott Forests Ltd – said The Australian Financial Review (12/8/2006, p.23).

Change in land use devastates farmers: “It was a bolt out of the blue,” says the deputy mayor of Tumbarumba Shire Council and a Rosewood neighbour, Graham Smith, of the Gerard sale. Lower Bago angus cattle and merino sheep farmer Jeff Grady, who is affected by the change in land use, says he and his neighbours were devastated.

Gerard sale lets plantations in: Managed Investment Scheme (MIS) Operators such as Willmott and Gunns Ltd in the nearby Maragle Valley had started to get a toehold in the area and the Gerard sale gave the plantation company a huge foothold in a prime agricultural valley.

Country’s too good for them here: “They’ve wrecked this valley,” Grady said. “We were shocked for weeks because it changes your whole future. He has basically destroyed this valley and the community for his own personal gain. It’s only tax breaks that are driving it and it’s too high-value a country to be used for generating tax breaks for those blokes.”

Concerns over water flows: Grady said there are also serious concerns about the impact on environmental water flows. Tree plantations are thirsty. ‘It’s good country for pine trees but it’s also very good country for agriculture and by planting this high-rainfall land to pine, you are affecting your water yield further down the river.”

Issue raised as far back as 1989: A 1989 NSW Forestry Commission paper warned about the impact of extensive pine plantations in reducing environmental water flows. A number of other recent studies have raised similar issues.

Council’s not entirely happy: Deputy mayor Smith expresses concerns at the loss of farmers, who are the major ratepayers in the area, while the council faces an escalating bill for road infrastructure for the timber industry. “We walk a knife edge where your major ratepayers are your farmers on one hand and the timber on the other.”

Runoff disruption: Of the impact on water flows, he says: “They deep rip on the contour and plant the trees, and that stops the run-off into streams. They’ll tell you it doesn’t, but it does. You can see the difference … there are creeks here are bone dry … we’re worried because we are the catchment area for the Murray.”

The Australian Financial Review, 12/8/2006, p. 23

Source: Erisk Net  

Vestas, one of the world’s leading wind power companies, was to hold a press conference on 25 August at its plant in Wynyard, in north-west Tasmania, to explain the reasons for its decision to close its Tasmanian manufacturing plant, reported The Australian Financial Review (25/8/2006, p.5).

Plant set up in response to fed scheme: The company set up its manufacturing plant three years ago to capitalise on the increased activity in the sector that followed the Federal Government’s 2002 decision to introduce the mandatory renewable energy scheme, which requires energy users to use renewable sources for a share of their power.

Feds refuse to increase targets: But when the government said in 2004 that it would not expand the scheme or increase the mandatory renewable energy target (MRET), renewable energy companies warned that the decision would lead to the winding down of the industry in Australia.

The Australian Financial Review, 25/8/2006, p.5

Souce: Erisk Net  

The Federal Government’s refusal to increase the mandatory renewable energy target (MRET) scheme has lead to the winding down of the industry in Australia, costing jobs. Full Story  

World Bank officials planned to discuss the document called the "Progress Report on the Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development" towards the end of August, before it was placed on the agenda of the joint annual meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in Singapore come September.

Separate G8 plan by Jan 2008: A similar programme focusing on longer term country-level activities and global research would be completed by the Group of Eight most industrialised countries at their summit in Japan in 2008.

Plan called for at Gleneagles: Rich nations had asked the World Bank, and other international financial institutions, at a summit last year in Gleneagles, Scotland, to draft the plan under discussion to combat global warming and help secure future energy supplies.

Rising energy price fears: The World Bank input comes amid heightened concerns about soaring global energy prices and the connection between high energy consumption and climate change. When the first draft of the document came out at the spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, many observers said they were shocked by the lack of references to poor people.

Focus on 1.6bn poor: But analysts who have seen a leaked version of the latest report say that it now devotes considerable space to the needs of the 1.6 billion poor people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, who presently lack access to modern energy.

Clean energy production: The strategy’s advocates inside the Bank say it goes a long way in dealing with environmental problems and climate change concerns. "This paper addresses the need to produce energy in a manner that reduces local and regional air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions," said Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank.

Two birds – climate change and poverty – with one stone: While acknowledging the improvements, the California-based watchdog group International Rivers Network (IRN) said that the plan misses "the double dividend of renewable energy" – namely, combating climate change and reducing poverty. In a brief analysis of the document, IRN argued that clean technologies like wind, solar, modern biomass, geothermal and small hydropower are available locally, create jobs and have very low environmental impacts, and could better achieve this dividend.

Bank has wrong priorities – IRN: The group, which presses for wider adoption of renewable energy and fewer environmentally damaging mega-projects, faulted the Bank for prioritising "large regional hydro and thermal generation plants" as the appropriate way to provide energy access. "This recommendation mirrors the misguided priorities of the World Bank’s energy sector lending, of which in 2005 only 10 percent was allocated to energy efficiency and new renewable energy projects," it said.

20 pc of investment in renewables: In its most recent figures released this week, the Bank said that investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency were now 20 percent of the Bank’s total energy sector commitments in fiscal year 2006, which totaled 4.4 billion dollars for 62 renewable energy projects in 35 countries.

Renewable energy delivers "double dividend": "Renewable energy and energy efficiency can contribute significantly to achieving the Millennium Development Goals," said Jamal Saghir, who directs the Energy and Water department at the Bank, referring to a United Nations-led plan to cut global poverty in half by 2015. "In fact, they offer a ‘double dividend’ – meeting the essential energy needs of countries for sustained growth and poverty reduction, while at the same time preserving or enhancing the environment," he said.

IRN discourages clean coal: Yet IRN argues that the Bank still favours "advanced fossil-fuel technologies" in the document, such as coal- and gas-fired plants, and non-fossil fuel technologies such as hydropower, wind and nuclear. The group called on the Bank not to waste money subsidising fossil fuel projects and to use soft loans and other funding to buy down the costs of renewable energy technologies.

No pressure on rich north: The World Bank document, critics note, also does not address the need for Northern polluters from rich nations to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Reference: World Business Council for Sustainable Development, website:
http://www.wbcsd.org

Erisk Net, 23/8/2006