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Carbon Credits to states for ceasing native forestry – announcement and industry response
The Australian Government's "Improved Forest Management in Multiple-use Public Native Forests method" incentivises state governments to cease certain native forest harvesting purportedly to reduce Australia's carbon emissions. The Department's announcement and the response from the industry body, Forest & Wood Communities Australia may be the start of much debate over a contentious scheme.
The virtue is theirs. The bill will be yours
Farmers for Climate Action has produced a report ‘Energy Sovereignty for Regional Australia: Protecting Farmers, Powering the Future’ arguing that Australia's transition away from diesel should be accelerated through electrification, subsidies, infrastructure investment and changes to fuel tax arrangements ... When did advocacy become less about persuading people to voluntarily embrace change and more about finding another group to pay for it?
LECC find police failed in their duty in the death of Lindy Lucena – Police reject all recommendations: Higginson
A Law Enforcement Conduct Commission’s Operation Almas has criticised the police response to the violent death of Ballina woman Lindy Lucena at the hands of her partner in 2023. NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon has opposed all recommendations made by the LECC aimed at improving police responses to incidents of domestic violence in future.
Opinion piece – Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group to target serious online harms: Krissy Barrett
Krissy Barrett. When I became AFP Commissioner last year, I said I would have candid conversations with Australians to inform them about the threats they face ... But parents and caregivers now need to be aware of entrenched and emerging criminal threats because of rapidly-evolving technology.
The next fuel and fertiliser shock is coming
On writing this, urea had slipped back below $1,000 a tonne and oil had fallen under US$90 a barrel. The headlines had moved on, the politicians were congratulating themselves, and the market was once again telling us that everything was under control. Problem solved. Move along. Nothing to see here. Except that is exactly what people said after the last fertiliser shock, and the one before that, and the one before that.
NSW Government’s new brumby estimates don’t pass the pub test
Colleen Krestensen. New estimates of brumby numbers in Kosciuszko National Park imply a dramatic and biologically impossible increase of up to 315 per cent over a 12 month period ... The concern for the community is the government is accepting this alleged increase without question as a basis to resume aerial culling of brumbies, commencing in the coming days.
How much water and power will AI data centres use in Australia? Ironically, we don’t have the data to know
Michael Vardon. Australia’s data centre rush now rivals the mining boom. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman last week said Australia could become a “data centre capital of the world”. This would come at an environmental cost ... Before committing fully, we need granular detail on how much water and energy these centres use.
Comrades, the roadmap is nearly complete
Nearly two years after the live export ban became law, farmers have been making decisions while the transition industry is still planning the transition. That simple fact tells you almost everything you need to know about the live sheep transition.
Where to for regional migration? Peter van Vliet, Migration Institute of Australia
A week after the May Federal Budget, the Government published changes to the visa category allocations ... Most surprising in the subsequent announcement was the decision to more than halve a skilled migration program reserved exclusively for regional areas from 33,000 to 14,110.
When journalism picks a side
One of the more interesting developments in modern journalism is that reporters increasingly seem to know the answer before they begin asking the questions ... The problem with Ros Thomas's recent Weekend Australian feature on paraquat and Parkinson's disease is that by the time you reach the end, you are left with the feeling that the destination was already known before the journey began.
The few funding the fight
I’ve just returned from a two-day National Farmers’ Federation members meeting in Canberra and the mood is dark. It is increasingly clear this Government has little affection for the productive capitalist class and is hunting for revenue, regulation and control from wherever it can extract it.
Chalmers and Keating: A tradition of ambushing the entrepreneur
Amused by the now familiar angry interventions of the former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, on behalf of his acolyte and sycophantic follower Jim Chalmers, attempting to save him from the quicksand of the 2026 Federal Budget, Kookaburra has been taken back in time to December 1983.
The three principles behind Australia’s Fool’s Paradise
If you ever wondered why so few of our political class appear genuinely effective, the answer can largely be explained by three principles that govern human organisations everywhere: the Pareto Principle (1890s), Price’s Law (1960) and the Peter Principle (1969).
AI rewriting history – don’t get me started
Harry Gumboot. It was ANZAC Day when the algorithm suggested I watch an AI generated documentary on Australian troops in Vietnam. It concerned the way Diggers had a far better success rate in the jungle than the Yanks*, due to factors that included moving slowly, using hand signals rather than speech, and failing to use aftershave (sic). Pretty basic stuff if you want to avoid alerting the enemy. The thing that irked me was the diggers appeared to be wearing WWI vintage French helmets.
The party of the worker has become the party of the renters
This federal Budget reveals something far more significant than another round of tax fights over capital gains, family trusts and negative gearing. It reveals who modern Labor now governs for.
The Pirate Queen and the sinking department
Last week I wrote that Budget Number Ten would tell us everything we needed to know ... it’s worse than expected. For all the Government’s talk about farm resilience, diversification and food security, when it came time to fund the department that actually underpins those things, the treasure chest was empty.
A new rail reality for New England
The reported decision by the Australian Government to scale back Inland Rail to Parkes has quietly reshaped the transport future of inland eastern Australia. For communities across the New England region, it raises an important question: what now fills the missing rail link to Queensland?
A Voice by another name: Bev McArthur
"Governments are defined by their priorities, and at a time when Victorians are under real financial pressure, building an expensive new layer of governance and embedding identity-based processes into Parliament reflects, to my mind, a serious misjudgement."
When ideology meets the fuel tank
In the 1930s, Winston Churchill warned that Europe was sleepwalking into danger. Across the chamber, Neville Chamberlain insisted all would be well. “Peace in our time,” he said—a comforting line, right up until Hitler crossed into Poland. We are seeing a modern version of that same delusion play out today.
Groundswell against the mine: Mine Free Glenaladale
At the recent East Gippsland Field Days the many hundreds of people spoken to and attending the Mine Free Glenaladale stand expressed their frustration that the Government had given the former Kalbar Resources, now rebranded as Gippsland Critical Minerals, the opportunity to rescope the failed Kalbar project ... Mine Free Glenaladale also questions the authenticity of GCM claims relating to the test pit.
Fertiliser shortage at home, subsidies for exports abroad
At a time when Australian farmers are facing a major fertiliser squeeze, Canberra has decided the priority is not supply, not affordability, and not domestic resilience—but underwriting a green ammonia export dream ... while farmers are being told to accept decile 10 nitrogen prices, or even decile zero availability, taxpayers—including those same farmers in the years they make money—are being lined up to help fast track a plant that will help foreign farmers access fertiliser.
Radical Right v Radical Left and the threat of the Age of Unreason
Neither of these parties should have the capacity to determine government, let alone form it. Both represent an existential threat to the continuance of our hard fought for liberal democracy, itself a fragile experiment in the history of the world.
