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The Seattle City Council passed a resolution opposing development of coal-export terminals in Washington over concerns about increased train traffic and potential harm to health and the environment.
With the coal industry under siege across the country, an announcement that the operator of the Big Sandy power plant near Louisa, Ky., planned to switch to natural gas prompted an uproar.
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The decision, announced by the Premier, Barry O’Farrell, this morning, represents a significant backdown by the Premier, who has repeatedly ruled out allowing shooting in national parks.
The government’s electricity privatisation bill has been stalled in the NSW upper house because of a lack of support from Shooters and Fisher’s Party MPs, who share the balance of power.
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It needs the support of at least one of the MPs to pass legislation opposed by Labor and the Greens.
The government announced today that the Game and Feral Animal Control Act will be amended to allow shooting of feral animals in “a limited number of areas under strict conditions” but not near metropolitan areas or wilderness or world heritage areas.
Mr O’Farrell said the power sale would deliver about $3 billion.
He said the government met the Shooters and Fishers MPs last night to hammer out the deal.
He said he and the Deputy Premier and leader of the NSW Nationals, Andrew Stoner, met the Shooters and Fishers MPs last night to hammer out the deal.
Under the changes, licensed shooters will be able to apply for access to 79 of the state’s national parks to hunt feral animals including pigs, dogs, cats and goats and deer.
Mr O’Farrell said culling of feral animals already occurred in some national parks by professional shooters, including the Royal National Park.
Hunters will require written permission and need to be licensed by the Game Council of NSW, which regulates recreational hunting.
Access conditions will be established by the Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, he said.
But the Opposition Leader, John Robertson said the decision was “completely outrageous” and one that would compromise safety.
“National parks are recognised as being iconic in the protection of flora and fauna,” he said.
“Barry O’Farrell was emphatic: he promised that in no circumstances would he allow hunting in our national parks.”
The Labor environment spokesman, Luke Foley, said it was of concern that Ms Parker would be in charge of the process, given her comments to a budget estimates hearing that logging protecting koalas.
“The Environment Minister who sent the loggers in after koalas [will] now send the shooters in to finish the job,” he said.
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Opposition Leader Tony Abbott conceded it would be difficult to undo the carbon tax. Picture: Gary Ramage Source: The Daily Telegraph
Tony Abbott conceded some parts will be “difficult to undo”
But pledged to remove it, regardless of the difficulty
“What the Parliament does the Parliament can undo”
TONY Abbott today conceded that elements of carbon pricing will be “difficult to undo” but pledged to scrap both it and the mining tax if made Prime Minister.
And he repeated a pledge to bring in tax cuts and pension increase delivered though fiscal discipline, not extra taxes.
The concession of difficulty means there could be further uncertainty for businesses which expect a new government at the next election, although Mr Abbott said all legislation could be undone.
The Opposition Leader told a Minerals Council lunch that Labor was trying to “Abbott proof” its initiatives to prevent them being dumped by a change in government.
“They are trying to prevent the next elected government from undoing the harm that they have done,” he said in his speech.
“And there is no doubt that there are measures associated with both the mining tax and the carbon tax that will be difficult to undo.
“We will be able to deliver tax cuts without a carbon tax. We will be able to deliver pension improvements without a carbon tax.
“Because we won’t shirk the fiscal discipline that is necessary to ensure that sustainable tax cuts and sustainable increases can be delivered.”
Mr Abbott did not itemise the difficult sections of the carbon pricing scheme and the Minerals Resources Rental Tax.
But he told the lunch: “Let me assure you that a tax that has been put in place by legislation can be removed by legislation. What the Parliament does the Parliament can undo.”
Mr Abbott said the Government was moving away from its own Enterprise Migration Agreements to allow the use of skilled temporary migrants in big mining projects which could not find local labour to start up.
“What has happened over the last few days is that the unions have spooked the Prime Minister and now the Caucus has rolled the cabinet on these matters,” he said, referring to an internal Government debate over approving an EMA for a $9.5 billion project by Gina Rinehart in Western Australia.
“You can be absolutely confident that as time goes by, these Enterprise Migration Agreements will be more difficult to negotiate, more onerous and yet less useful to you in your desire to try to develop appropriately our country,” said Mr Abbott.
Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey accused Labor of dropping its pledge for a company tax cut and claimed there was a rift between Treasurer Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Penny Wong.
The Labor Government has dropped plans for a one per cent reduction in company tax, funded by the MRRT, because the Coalition and the Greens would not pass the legislation.
Mr Swan has said the Government still wanted a reduction, but Mr Hockey claimed Senator Wong said the cuts were “off the agenda”.
Asked in a Senate committee whether it was no longer policy to pursue the cuts Senator Wong said, “That’s already announced”.
Mr Hockey said on May 15 Mr Swan said the company tax relief was still on the agenda.
A major union is at odds with the Federal Government about the number of overseas workers to be brought in for the Roy Hill iron ore project in the Pilbara.
The Government announced the first enterprise migration agreement (EMA) last Friday, giving the green light for 1,700 foreign workers to be brought in to help build the mine.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says they will be the only overseas workers employed on the project.
But Dave Noonan from the Construction, Forestry and Mining Union says he believes other foreigners could be brought in on 457 visas for skilled tradespeople.
“It’s been repeatedly stated that 1,700 is the maximum and that’s been repeated by many elements of the media,” he said.
“But we’ve always been very clear and have always stated that our understanding is that 1,700 provides a limit only in respect of the non-trades, and that at the trades and above level there is capacity to bring in more workers on 457s.”
“If that’s formally contradicted by the minister and its ruled out, well we’d be very pleased to hear it but that’d be a change in direction.”
WHEN you strip away all the noise, what really presses most on Australians’ sense of wellbeing is the relentless and punishing rise in the cost of living.
That is the inescapable truth beneath all the rolling political debates of our time — and utilities are the heart of this problem. It is no surprise to anyone in NSW that power prices are causing families to suffer — except, apparently, the power companies themselves.
The Sunday Telegraph has been campaigning hard on behalf of our readers to make the energy and water retailers act responsibly. Again and again, the response has displayed they are out of touch with reality.
When we asked energy companies in 2011 how they would bring prices down, Ausgrid’s then-chairman John Conde told us his company had introduced payment plans to help struggling householders pay their bills.
That was it — an admission that Ausgrid didn’t particularly care if people were struggling or not, just as long as they eventually paid up.
Today, The Sunday Telegraph reveals new figures from the NSW Energy and Water Ombudsman, Clare Petre, that show a 21 per cent spike in complaints from customers being denied payment extensions.
So the energy companies aren’t even living up to the one thing — payment programs — they promised.
Families disconnected from power are surviving without electricity for up to a month, Ms Petre says.
She is calling for an urgent national debate on how to help the vulnerable families — because, although most disconnected customers are plugged back in after a short period, they are continuing to rack up bills they cannot hope to afford.
Ms Petre says the real problem is the massive fixed-cost proportion of every bill. No matter how many lights customers switch off, they still have to pay the huge immovable charges that cover the companies’ network costs.
Both AGL and Origin say they encourage customers to get in touch if they’re facing financial strain and are always happy to put people on payment plans.
But Ms Petre is right.
There must be systemic national change to the way power companies are allowed to operate — or we will see more families shivering in the dark this winter.
The Liberal Party seems to think it can dismiss Bill Heffernan as an affable mad uncle, laughing off allegations he made an homophobic attack as just another example of lovable eccentricity.
That is not good enough. Heffernan’s rants about gay people have become so predictable they are even considered part of his charm by many within the party.
That’s why the party is attempting to smother — rather than investigate — revelations he is accused of seriously intimidating a homosexual man as part of the party’s shambolic Central Coast factional fight.
If the Liberals want to be considered a party for modern times, it is inexcusable to so flatly dismiss serious allegations without comment.
Heffernan is not just any old backbencher — he is Tony Abbott’s emissary to the NSW State Executive. This is the same body Mr Abbott blamed for butchering his chances of winning the 2010 election.
Now, with the almost inevitable 2013 victory looming, the same old brouhaha is back.
If Mr Abbott wants to be seriously considered as prime minister, he must stand up to his party’s very real internal troubles.
Responsibility for election comment is taken by the editor, Neil Breen, 2 Holt St, Surry Hills 2010
The US Defense Department consumes more energy than any other department or sector in the country, spending around $20 billion annually by some estimates; but ambitious plans to make it the nation’s green leader have been swept under the rug over budgetary concerns that smack of campaign politics. It is an inauspicious development for US energy independence, and indeed a contradictory one. The Defense Department is reeling under higher fuel costs already, which have left it short some $3 billion. A stronger focus on alternative fuels will…
The Egyptian presidential election is the most important political development flowing from the “Arab spring,” with enormous implications for the entire Middle East.According to partial results on 25 May American-educated Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Freedom and Justice Party candidate, won the most votes in a run-off election in Egypt’s first genuinely competitive presidential election. A Mubarak appointee, former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and Hamdeen Sabahi, regarded as a leftist and a supporter of the nationalist,…
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The world probably needs to get back to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if truly radical climate change is to be avoided. But we are going in the wrong direction fast. In April, the Mauna Loy observatory measured CO2 in the atmosphere at about 396 parts per million, the highest recorded since records began being kept. The level was up nearly 3 ppm in a single year, itself an unusual statistic. Before the Industrial Revolution, at the time of the American Revolution, the level was 280 ppm. The Founding Fathers would already…
Goldman Sachs (GS) have just announced that they plan to invest $40 billion in renewable energy projects over the next ten years. According to Reuters, renewable energy is “an area the investment bank called one of the biggest profit opportunities since its economists got excited about emerging markets in 2001.”They invested more than $4.8 billion in clean technology companies around the globe in 2011, so an average of $4 billion a year is actually a decrease, but GS see the potential for great profits as growing economies such as China,…
Many people in the UK solar industry have been worried that the sudden cuts made by the government to the solar Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) policy would make it nearly impossible to achieve their 2020 solar targets.The cuts were announced following a report by the consultancy firm Parson Brinkerhoff back in February which claimed that capital expenditure costs for new solar installations would fall by 10-30 percent by the end of the year, a further 5-25 percent by 2014, and continue to fall by small amounts in 2015 and beyond. However a more recent impact…
We face the danger that the euro, the world’s No. 2 reserve currency, could implode. Such an event wouldn’t be just another depreciation or collapse of a currency peg; instead, it would mean that one of the world’s major economic units doesn’t work as currently constituted.We are realizing just how much international economic order depends on the role of a dominant country — sometimes known as a hegemon — that sets clear rules and accepts some responsibility for the consequences. For historical reasons,…
