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  • Senate rejects Medicare changes

     

    Labor argues the two measures are crucial to make private health more sustainable.

    But the coalition says the government is waging an ideological war against private health funds and breaking an election promise in the process.

    The proposed changes to the Medicare levy surcharge would have penalised wealthier Australians who didn’t take out private cover.

    Singles earning more than $90,000 a year and couples on more than $180,000 would be levied 1.25 per cent of their taxable income, up from one per cent.

    Singles earning over $120,000 and couples on more than $240,000 would be slugged with a 1.5 per cent surcharge.

    Health Minister Nicola Roxon on Wednesday slammed the Senate for voting against “the first of the private health insurance rebate measures”.

    “The opposition have blown a $2 billion hole in the budget and have no health policies of any substance to put forward to the public,” she told parliament.

    Earlier, when asked if she’d like to fight a early poll on the issue, Ms Roxon told ABC Radio “it’s something that we are determined to pursue”.

    “I am absolutely happy to stand up anywhere anytime to defend the view that taxi drivers and secretaries and nurses should not be paying for the private health insurance of bankers and politicians and millionaires,” the health minister said.

    “I think that is a very clear and easy argument to make.”

    That argument might be easily prosecuted – but in fact it’s not just the ultra-rich that will be affected.

    Labor actually wants to means test and reduce the rebate for individuals earning more than $75,000 a year and couples earning more than $150,000 a year.

    Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the opposition’s determination to block the government’s measures “goes to the heart of our ability to provide finance for our hospital system for the future”.

    “The leader of the opposition is standing by the principle that the least-salaried Australians should subsidise the private health insurance costs of someone on $200,000 and $300,000 a year,” Mr Rudd told parliament.

    Labor already has a double-dissolution trigger on emissions trading.

  • UN warns India and China over growing problems of e-waste


    E-waste dumping

    The UNEP says e-waste cannot be left ‘to the vagaries of the informal sector’. It says large-scale collection and recycling facilities need to be established in China, India, Brazil and Africa where levels of e-waste are rising.

    The Ecologist reported recently on the dumping of Western electronic waste in Ghanaian slums and the damage to the local population and environment caused by some of the toxic components.

    The UNEP report says countries like Senegal and Uganda can expect e-waste flows from PCs alone to increase 4 to 8-fold by 2020.

    China and India

    At present the problem is most acute in India and China, which together produce more than 1.5 million tonnes of e-waste from TVs and 600,000 tonnes from refrigerators every year.

    In China, the report predicts that by 2020 levels of e-waste from old computers will have increased by 200 to 400 per cent from 2007 levels, and by 500 per cent in India.

    By that same year in China, e-waste from discarded mobile phones will be about seven times higher than 2007 levels and, in India, 18 times higher.

    But the UNEP says recycling can also recover valuable natural resources.

    ‘In addition to curbing health problems, boosting developing country e-waste recycling rates can have the potential to generate decent employment and recover a wide range of valuable metals including silver, gold, palladium, copper and indium,’ said UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP.

    ‘By acting now and planning forward, many countries can turn an e-challenge into an e-opportunity,’ he added.

    Useful links
    Full UNEP report on e-waste

  • Hydrogen taxi cabs to serve London by 2012 Olympics

     

    The widespread introduction of hydrogen cars has long been a goal of some green campaigners, because eventually they allow transport fuel to be generated from renewable energy. Wind and solar plants could be used to drive the process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen – and the hydrogen piped to filling stations. Iceland has already begun constructing a hydrogen grid using plentiful geothermal energy. But in the short term, hydrogen vehicles in the UK are likely to be powered by fuel derived from oil.

    Henri Winand, of Intelligent Energy, which makes the fuel cells used in the taxis, said they were an ideal way to begin building the infrastructure required for a hydrogen-based transport system – seen as one of the big stumbling blocks for the wider introduction of hydrogen vehicles. “With fleets you can deploy a little infrastructure, which you can build up with the more fleets you have, rather than going straight to consumers who might be wondering where the next filling station is.”

    London’s deputy mayor, Kit Malthouse, announced last year that by 2012 there would be six hydrogen filling stations in the capital. He said he wanted around 20-50 taxis in operation by then as part of the Black Cabs Go Green programme, as well as 150 hydrogen-powered buses.

    “The intent is to take the taxis and retrofit a powertrain that has zero tailpipe emissions,” said Winand. “But also it has to deliver some very important things: a reasonable range, very quick refuelling time and no modifying the passenger or driver space.”

    After modification, he said no one would be able to tell the difference between a hydrogen cab and a regular one apart from the lack of diesel fumes. The first few hydrogen taxis, which were funded in part by the government’s Technology Strategy Board, have already been built at the Lotus headquarters in Norfolk.

    Intelligent Energy, leading the consortium for the new hydrogen taxi, has designed and built the fuel cell, which uses hydrogen to make electricity. Lotus is responsible for integrating the fuel cell into the body of the taxi – in their design, pressurised hydrogen is stored in a tank where the internal combustion engine of a standard cab would be. The fuel cell produces electricity and feeds it to a battery pack under the floor of the taxi’s passenger area. The batteries then drive motors in the wheels.

    “To do that with a purely battery-electric vehicle, you would have to take up most of the space at the back with batteries, where the passengers are, or certainly you would constrict that space substantially,” said Winand. “And you’d probably have to stop halfway through the day to plug in somewhere.”

    Mainstream manufacturers are also getting interested in hydrogen. Daimler, Hyundai, Honda and Toyota have all announced plans in recent months to have fuel-cell vehicles available for the consumer market by 2015.

    “There is a global drive to reduce CO2 emission levels and this is something we are dedicated to, for both Lotus cars and our engineering clients,” said Simon Wood of Lotus Engineering. “The fuel cell hybrid taxi is a fantastic achievement for all the companies involved. The level of quality and professionalism that has been demonstrated is extremely high and the taxi is already running through a series of tests

  • Christine Milne: Greens will move in senate to ban triazines

     

    “The APVMA took 11 years to review the use of atrazines and came up with recommendations that are simply insufficient.

    “Communities suffering increasing health impacts cannot wait for wheels to turn so slowly in the APVMA.

    “Simazine was found in tap water in Orford last year, and yet the APVMA is only beginning its review into this toxic chemical in the coming months.

    “The Tasmanian government’s own research has confirmed that these chemicals remain in the environment twice as long in cooler climates, making them more persistent in Tasmania.

    “We already have a ban on the triazines in the Macquarie River catchment in Tasmania. The ban should now be extended to all water catchments in the state as a matter of urgency.

    “Many pesticides have been linked to animal and human reproductive and nervous system problems.

    “It is hard to believe that the Tasmanian government is still conducting its review of aerial spraying, a process in train since 2005.

    “As Leader of the Tasmanian Greens in the early 1990s, I called for a ban on the use of triazines in Tasmania, following the contamination of Olivers Creek at Lorinna.

    “The attempt to the ban the triazines for the past 20 years has been beset by endless reviews and mirror tactics – ‘just looking into it’ – as a go slow mechanism which successive Tasmanian governments have made into an art form.

    “It is time that the federal government took a much keener interest in the contamination of Tasmania’s river systems and the impacts on human and animal health, with responsibility for this ranging across the environment, water, health and agriculture portfolios.”

     

     

    Wendy McLeod

    Office of Senator Christine Milne

    Australian Greens Senator

    GPO Box 896

    HOBART   TAS   7001

    Ph :  03 6224 8899 (Hobart) 02 6277 3063 (Canberra)

    Fax: 03 6224 7599

    www.christinemilne.org.au

     

  • Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels.

     

    Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

    Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: “It’s one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science.” He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study’s conclusion.

    “Retraction is a regular part of the publication process,” he said. “Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances.”

    Nature Publishing Group, which publishes Nature Geoscience, said this was the first paper retracted from the journal since it was launched in 2007.

    The paper – entitled “Constraints on future sea-level rise from past sea-level change” – used fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements to reconstruct how sea level has fluctuated with temperature since the peak of the last ice age, and to project how it would rise with warming over the next few decades.

    In a statement the authors of the paper said: “Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.

    “One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes.”

    In the Nature Geoscience retraction, in which Siddall and his colleagues explain their errors, Vermeer and Rahmstorf are thanked for “bringing these issues to our attention”.

  • Transport projects will happen: Keneally

    Transport projects will happen: Keneally

    AAP February 22, 2010, 2:48 pm 

     

    Kristina Keneally says NSW is working to reimburse those who lost millions over the CBD Metro.

    AAP © Enlarge photo

     

    Premier Kristina Keneally says she’ll take personal responsibility for the implementation of NSW’s new transport plan, amid scepticism about whether some projects will see the light of day.

    Ms Keneally on Sunday announced her government’s $50.2 billion Metropolitan Transport Plan, which officially scrapped the controversial CBD Metro and reinstated the northwest rail link.

    The transport blueprint contains a mixture of new and previously announced projects, and focuses mostly on western Sydney.

    Spending of $3.1 billion is earmarked for new trains, $2.9 billion for more buses, $225 million for six ferries, and a $500 million expansion of the current light rail.

    However, the 2017 start date for the Epping to Rouse Hill line – a line proposed previously by the Labor government, only to be deferred or scrapped – has some questioning whether the government’s proposals will ever eventuate.

    Asked what guarantees she could give to commuters, Ms Keneally said the plan “is a fully-funded plan that we can deliver”.

    “This is a 10-year, fully funded package,” she told reporters at Parramatta railway station on Monday.

    “It will be written into the budget. It will be written into the state infrastructure strategy.

    “Many of these projects commence this year, particularly the new trains, new buses. We start immediately on the light rail, we start immediately on the geotechnical work and the planning work for the Western Express Line.

    “The cabinet has endorsed this plan, the government has endorsed this plan, and this is our plan for Sydney.”

    Asked if she would take personal responsibility for the success or otherwise of the plan’s implementation, Ms Keneally said: “I take personal responsibility for all plans, and all services delivered by my government”.

    Ms Keneally also lashed out at NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell’s reluctance to back the blueprint’s $4.5 billon Western Express CityRail service.

    On Fairfax Radio on Monday, Mr O’Farrell declined to commit to the project designed to speed up travel times to and from western Sydney.

    “”We’d want that reviewed by the experts,” he said.

    “It seems like a lot of money for a very small improvement.”

    Ms Keneally called for a bipartisan approach to the proposal.

    “We’d like him to support commuters in western Sydney,” she said.

    “This … is a big plan for western Sydney. It is so disappointing today to see the leader of the opposition refuse to back it.”

    Ms Keneally later told Fairfax Radio that the transport plan made no promises to improve the M4 East motorway, implement the M5 expansion or build a link road from the M3 to the M2.

    “What we are saying, we’re not going to promise things that we cannot fund, that we cannot afford,” Ms Keneally said.

    But the government would bring forward projects if additional funding came from either the federal government or private sector, she said.