LNP puts mining profits before community health with uncovered coal

The Queensland Greens say the LNP puts mining profits before community health with its refusal to demand covered coal wagons and port stockpiles.

The Queensland Greens’ Senate candidate, Adam Stone said coal dust blowing into communities from the Port of Brisbane and from trains travelling through our suburbs were a serious health threat.

“This issue is months old,” Mr Stone said. “One of our candidates, Joanne Bragg, helped households living along the railway line lodge a formal complaint with the State Government back in March.

“Yet all that has been done so far is an extremely limited study of particulate emissions in a single suburb that was roundly criticised by experts, with no concrete action to limit the community’s exposure to this harmful dust.

“That suggests the Government is more interested in saving the mining companies the expense of covering their coal than safeguarding the community’s health.”

Geoff Ebbs, the Greens’ candidate in the federal seat of Griffith, says households in his area are particularly badly affected.

“People from Coorparoo, Buranda, Woolloongabba and Annerley complained about the impacts coal wagons were having on their lives early this year and nothing has improved.

“That might be defensible if we were dealing with some complex problem, but covering wagons to prevent dust from escaping hardly requires any scientific breakthroughs.

“It only requires the Government to listen to the community and take a precautionary approach to protecting their health.”

In a wide ranging interview with Michael Auslin, director of Japan Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, today  Eleanor Hall missed the obvious conclusion that Japan prefers economic stability to growth.

To be fair, this notion was just as unthinkable to Auslin  as it apparently is to Hall, even though it has been widely reported. See the NYT version of Eamonn Fingleton’s widely published writing on this topic.

Part of the reason is that growth underpins financial lending and so the financial institutions have a vested interest in slapping down any debate that leads to the obvious conclusion and part of the reason is that we have so much of our cultural identity invested in the notion of constant improvement.

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The Queensland Government established the Queensland Water Commission (QWC) in 2006 with the charter of achieving sustainable water supplies. This was at the peak of the drought and 2 billion dollars had been spent on cleaning recycled water and pumping it up the mountains above the Wivenhoe Dam (Brisbane’s water supply)

Following public (Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee, Western Alliance and others) outcry regarding Coal Seam Gas, in 2010 the QWC was given the role of extended to manage the impacts of water extraction by petroleum and gas tenure holders (including GST). By that stage of course, Coal Seam Gas in Qld was almost 15 years old and there were already thousands of wells being drilled.

DERM had developed some guidelines as to what data should be collected to establish baselines for water potentially affected by CSG drilling and QWC worked with the gas companies to collect and collate data based on those guidelines. It started to build a database on the data as it came in. There was no historical baseline data and no attempt was made to collect or collate historical data as a baseline.

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By Tony Moore in the Brisbane Times

Queensland has recorded the worst unemployment figure in three years, with a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent in September 2012.

The figures issued today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show Queensland’s unemployment rate increasing progressively since April, when unemployment was 5.2 per cent.

Queensland’s unemployment rose to 5.8 per cent in May and to 6.0 per cent in August before jumping to 6.3 per cent in September.

It is the state’s worst unemployment outcome since September 2009 and harks back to 2003, when the Queensland economy was shaking off double-digit unemployment figures. It is also the second highest rate in the country behind Tasmania on 7.3 per cent.

Read the original: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queenslands-worst-unemployment-rate-for-three-years-20121011-27exm.html#ixzz2EUgNhl7q

There have been increases in both Queensland men and women registered as unemployed, with men showing a bigger increase – from 5.9 per cent to 6.3 per cent – than women – up from 6.1 per cent to 6.3 per cent.

It appears Queensland has been hardest hit of the mining states, with Western Australia’s unemployment rate remaining steady at a national low of 4 per cent for the second month running.

In New South Wales, it rose to 5.2 per cent from 4.9 per cent in the same period. In Victoria, the jobless rate was steady at 5.6 per cent.

The unemployment results for individual cities and towns in August 2012, show unemployment worsening in Brisbane’s outer suburbs, on the Gold Coast, in Ipswich and north Queensland.

In Brisbane’s outer suburbs, there were 19,200 registered as unemployed in August (up from 17,400); in Ipswich 7650 people registered as unemployed (up from 5500), while the Gold Coast has seen a big increase to 18,000 unemployed (up from 12,500).

In Brisbane’s inner-ring of suburbs, there has been a slight improvement, with the number of people registering as unemployed dropping from 15,700 to 12,700.

Far North Queensland is at its worst position since May 2011, with 16,000 people registered as unemployed, up from 12,500 in July.

Unemployment in Mackay and the central Queensland coast has stabilised with 7500 people registered as unemployed, down from 8000 in July.

Labor’s shadow treasurer Curtis Pitt said the LNP government was directly responsible for the recent increase in unemployment in Queensland.

“We have been saying for months that the Newman government’s slash-and-burn budget strategy would result in an increase in unemployment and now it has been confirmed by labour force figures and their own bureaucrats,” he said in a statement.

“The premier and treasurer must now explain how they propose to meet their key election commitment of keeping unemployment at 4 per cent.”

However Queensland’s Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said the government had already made announcements that would generate jobs in the private sector in the longer -term.

Treasurer Tim Nicholls and Queensland Treasury has predicted unemployment would average at 6 per cent during 2012-13, in its 2012-13 Budget.

In a statement this afternoon, Mr Nicholls said today’s result was “disappointing” but it was still “well below Queensland’s long run average unemployment rate”.

“The fluctuating nature of unemployment data in recent times is indicative of the areas of growth within the Queensland economy,” he said.

“The high Australian dollar and global economic uncertainty are continuing to weigh on business sentiment and consumer confidence, and so any improvement in employment growth in Queensland will likely be modest over the near–term.”

Mr Nicholls said the government remained committed to reducing unemployment to four per cent in six years.

Queensland Council of Unions president John Battams said it was clear the state government was contributing to the increasing unemployment problem.

“The LNP is only part way through the 14,000 jobs it wants to cut from the Queensland

public sector,” Mr Battams said.

“Figures this week showed that 3400 public sector workers had lost their jobs – there are thousands more to go across the state.”