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Senate approves NDIS legislation

AAPMarch 20, 2013, 6:41 pm

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The Senate has given the federal government the go-ahead to set up the National Disability Insurance Scheme, including launch sites that will begin in July.

Landmark legislation passed the upper house on Wednesday, subject to the lower house agreeing to government and Greens’ amendments.

Parliamentary secretary Jan McLucas said the scheme would end the “cruel postcode lottery” of disability care.

“(The NDIS) will transform the lives of people with disability and their families and carers,” she told the Senate on Wednesday.

“For the first time they will have their needs met in a way that truly supports them to live with choice and dignity.”

Liberal frontbencher Concetta Fierravanti-Wells earlier said the coalition had enthusiastically supported each milestone towards establishing the NDIS.

But she reaffirmed the opposition’s call to set up a bipartisan parliamentary committee to oversee its implementation.

This was rejected.

When fully operational the scheme is expected to cover 410,000 Australians with disabilities and cost upwards of $15 billion a year.

So far, the federal government has chipped in $1 billion over four years for the first phase of the scheme, which sets up launch sites in four states covering 26,000 people from July, and in the ACT from 2014.

The contribution falls short of the $3.9 billion the Productivity Commission said was necessary over the next four years.

Launch sites will be established in the Hunter region of NSW, covering 10,000 people, and in Victoria’s Barwon area covering 5000 people.

South Australia will have a state-wide trial covering 4800 children, while Tasmania’s trial will cover 1000 young people aged between 15 and 24.

The ACT’s launch site covers the whole territory and 6000 people aged under 65.

Earlier this week, the federal government quietly rebranded the NDIS as Disability Care Australia.

The Senate approved government amendments about disability advocacy, UN conventions on disability and the membership requirements of the NDIS advisory council.
The Greens secured support for an amendment for the NDIS agency to do advocacy work in areas broader than the scheme.

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Albanese say he didn’t make train comments

AAPMarch 20, 2013, 8:01 pm

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AAP © Enlarge photo

Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese says he did not say pollution from coal trains is not significantly higher than from passenger trains.

An AAP story published on Saturday said Mr Albanese and a spokesman said the level of particulate matter emitted by coal trains was not statistically significantly different to passenger trains.

Those comments came from an Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) 2012 report, Mr Albanese told parliament on Wednesday.

“I made no such statement nor did my spokesperson,” he said in parliament.

“The quotes that are attributed to me in the article are in fact from the ARTC report, not from myself.”

The ARTC is an independent corporate entity responsible for managing more than 8500km of rail track around the country.

Mr Albanese said he did not want to comment on a statement made by Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon on Saturday.

“I make it a policy to not respond to all of Lee Rhiannon’s obsessive comments about me because I have a real job to do,” he told parliament.

“But with regard to this, I did not make a statement, any such statement.

“My spokesperson made no statement whatsoever to AAP.”

An AAP reporter did speak to Mr Albanese’s spokesman on Saturday. But the coal dust comment was mistakenly attributed to Mr Albanese instead of the ARTC report.
A correction has since been issued.

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Plugged In

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More than wires – exploring the connections between energy, environment, and our lives
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Methane hydrates – bigger than shale gas, “game over” for the environment?

By Melissa C. Lott | March 19, 2013| 6

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Methane hydrate deposits could hold up to 15 times the amount of gas as the world’s shale deposits. At the same time, they represent more carbon than all of the world’s fossil fuels combined. So, it’s no wonder that the response to recent announcements by the Japanese has been a bit mixed.

Methane hydrates (a.k.a. methane clathrates or fire ice) are solid compounds where methane is literally trapped in water. The substance looks like ice and can be found deep on the ocean floor, locked under layers of sediments.

Last Tuesday, Japan announced that researchers have successfully produced natural gas from offshore methane hydrates in the the Eastern Nankai Trough. In the words of energy analyst Jesse Jenkins, this success could have explosive implications. In his article, posted Friday on The Energy Collective, Jenkins explains his views on the impact of unlocking this resource, stating that:

“Of course, just as with shale gas, not all of this potential energy resource will prove technically recoverable. Yet if (or should we say when?) technology to commercially extract gas from hydrates is developed, the implications for global energy markets are staggering nonetheless.”

Below if a portion of his piece, which was originally published on Friday on The Energy Collective. In it, Jenkins presents the big economic and environmental considerations that have come to the forefront of the methane hydrates discussion.

“Hydrates could remake energy markets
Methane hydrates are the world’s largest source of untapped fossil energy. And they are widely distributed across the world, as indicated in the graphic from the US Geological Survey (USGS) below…

…Japan is currently the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas and faces gas prices roughly four-times higher than those enjoyed in the United States. The development of hydrates could potentially erase that price differential.

“Depending on where the final cost of capturing methane hydrates ultimately rests, this can mean large reductions in natural gas prices throughout the world,” explains [Christopher] Knittel, [MIT energy Professor of energy economics].

In short, methane hydrates could once again reshape global gas markets, just as the development of shale gas has done in the last decade.

“Game over” for the climate?
While hydrate resources look like an enormous boon to energy-starved nations like Japan, all that carbon and methane has climate scientists and advocates concerned.

Developing methane hydrates would be “game over for the climate,” writes green blogger Mat McDermott.

It’s easy to see why he’d be concerned: methane hydrates contain more carbon than all the world’s other fossil resources combined, according to USGS estimates.

If developed at a significant scale, hydrates would certainly be more than enough to cook the climate.<

Depending on how cost-effective production of gas hydrates proves, this vast new fossil energy resource could lower energy prices worldwide. “These lower prices almost certainly will lead to an increase in fossil-fuel consumption on an energy basis,” says Knittel. “That’s the bad news, from a climate perspective.”

But in principle, clean-burning natural gas from hydrates could also help displace coal consumption in places like China and India, just as cheap shale gas is now driving coal out of U.S. electricity markets. That scenario could potentially yield climate benefits and cleaner air — assuming the displaced coal stays in the ground and hydrates aren’t used to simply prolong reliance on fossil fuels.

To preserve any climate benefits of this hypothetical coal-to-gas shift, hydrate drillers would also have to be wary of letting methane leak out of hydrate deposits and into the atmosphere. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, and even modest leakage rates could nix any potential climate benefit of burning gas from hydrates instead of coal…”

Methane hydrates represent a huge potential energy resource, with correspondingly significant economic and environmental impact potential. How to best manage the balance between the two is an open question that it appears that society will be facing sooner rather than later.

Photo Credit: USGS and U.S. EIA

About the Author: An engineer and researcher who works at the intersection of energy, environment, technology, and policy. Follow on Twitter @mclott.
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ICAC hears Doyle’s Creek mining lease granted by Ian Macdonald netted John Maitland $15m

Amy Dale
The Daily Telegraph
March 20, 201311:13AM

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THE idea of a training mine at lucrative Doyle’s Creek was considered by senior government staff to be nothing more than “a thought bubble” in the head of former union boss John Maitland, ICAC has heard today.

Barry Buffier, the former director general of the Primary Industries department, is the corruption inquiry’s first witness in the investigation into the granting of a mining lease at Doyle’s Creek by disgraced former resources minister Ian Macdonald.

Mr Buffier said he considered the idea of having a training mine at Doyle’s Creek only to be “a thought bubble” of Mr Maitland, the former national president of the CFMEU and the man said to have made a profit of $15 million from the mining lease from an original output of $165,000.

Mr Buffier said proposals to have a training mine there in 2007 was a time when the state “was in the middle of a coal boom.”

“These were valuable assets for the state,” he said.

ICAC alleges Mr Macdonald granted the lease to Doyle’s Creek Mining without a competitive tender, a decision which went against department and industry advice.

The inquiry heard Mr Buffier believed “he had burst the thought bubble” about the training mine despite the one time union heavyweight’s “keenness to pursue it”, particularly as it hadn’t been endorsed by the Mine Safety Advisory Council.

Mr Buffier said having a training mine at the site wouldn’t “extract the real value of this lease” and the proposal “certainly wasn’t the right way to be going with this.”

The inquiry continues.

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Torbay referred to ICAC

Date March 20, 2013 – 1:52PM 188 reading now

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Sean Nicholls

Sydney Morning Herald State Political Editor

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Torbay: Premier ‘surprised as anyone else’

NSW Premier, Barry O’Farrell, responds to the resignation of state independent Richard Torbay.
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Information that led to Richard Torbay’s dumping as a federal Nationals candidate and his resignation from the NSW parliament over links to the Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid has been referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

There is speculation that the government will make an announcement about the referral to the corruption watchdog today.

This morning Mr Torbay resigned as the independent state member for Northern Tablelands, effective immediately.

Referred to ICAC … Richard Torbay. Photo: Jim Rice

The resignation came only hours after he was forced to quit as the Nationals candidate for the federal seat of New England, where he was to challenge the independent MP, Tony Windsor at the September 14 federal election.

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In a statement, Mr Torbay cited the amount of pressure placed on his family by politics, but also acknowledged he had brought forward the decision.

On Monday night the NSW Nationals were reportedly given information related to Mr Torbay’s acceptance of funding from the Labor party to run against Nationals candidates.

The party’s state chairman, Niall Blair, would not disclose the nature of the information, but said the party was seeking legal advice.

Mr Torbay’s resignation from the NSW parliament will spark a by-election in Northern Tablelands, which he has held as an independent MP since 1999.

The Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce has indicated his willingness to stand in the federal seat of New England if he is endorsed by the party.

It is understood the Nationals move to dump Mr Torbay was related to concerns about his links to the family of the Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid, who is the subject of the largest ever corruption investigation in NSW.

Mr Obeid, a former upper house MP, is accused of conspiring with the then minerals minister, Ian Macdonald, in 2008 to rig a tender for a lucrative coal exploration licences.

On Monday, Mr Windsor called on Mr Torbay to explain himself over claims by the Labor strategist Shane Easson that Mr Obeid had helped kick start Mr Torbay’s political career.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/torbay-referred-to-icac-20130320-2gez8.html#ixzz2O3ABJLsx