This consultation was on how to best ensure Queensland’s environmental protections can achieve a balance between ecological sustainability and future economic prosperity for the Queensland Lake Eyre Basin region. My submission makes the points that more consideration is needed on the impacts of climate change, confirmation of the Wild Rivers Act and the exclusion of further fracking. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
The Government’s draft Strategy on Health and Climate Change is vital to cope with the expected increase in deaths and illness from accelerating climate change. It fails in many respects and should be rewritten to reflect the views of medical experts. It was written by KPMG which has many links to the coal industry and the words fossil fuels are not mentioned in the entire text. The Strategy fails to deal with the climate emergency which is now upon us. Read more…

The proposed amendments to the Sea Dumping Act would enable the Minister to grant permits for the export of carbon dioxide streams from carbon dioxide capture processes for the purpose of sequestration into a sub-seabed geological formation (CCUS). There are many independent scientific and engineering reports on major CCUS projects which indicate their inadequacy in reducing emissions. The Act, proposed to support emission reduction from Beetaloo gas should not be supported. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
Governments around the world are promoting and subsidising carbon capture and underground storage to facilitate an increase in fossil gas mining despite storage being problematic. This will dash any hope of controlling world emissions at a time when there are deep concerns for climate change becoming uncontrollable. The Dumping Bill facilitates under the sea storage of carbon dioxide generated from the NT Beetaloo fossil gas development. This will generate a huge income from export of fossil gas to the detriment of world emissions. Read more…

Journal of Economic Reform Australia
This article is a follow up with modifications on the article “Deteriorating health, housing and education upshot of inequality”. Our nation is threatened by inflation. More nurses, teachers and aged care workers cannot afford housing on their poor remuneration and now – beset by inflation - they are quitting their vocation. But an even greater problem is arising, the collapse of basic health services which are becoming unavailable to many and particularly the poor. Read more…

The Guardian
I have realised that I have a grief disorder which has arisen slowly over the past few decades and will remain prolonged. My brain suddenly came to the diagnosis when I tried to watch Tim Winton’s series on Ningaloo Nyinggulu, one of the Earth’s last truly wild and intact places. “Tried” because it hurt to watch, and I had to turn it off. After many years of working on environmental issues and being steeped in the wonder and beauty of the natural world I had realised it would inevitably die soon. Read more…

Croakey Health Media
In the past 20 years there has been little progress on climate change, world emissions continue to rise; the only significant falls have been caused by the US recession of 2007-2009 and the 2020 COVID-19 crisis which reduced profligate consumption in western nations. This article examines the ideological mechanisms which have embraced much of Western civilisation and now represent the most crucial barrier to our future, the conquest of rational thinking by the free market system under neo-liberalism and its strategy of corporatisation. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
The housing problem is huge; the plight of the homeless is growing and must be addressed urgently. Currently 122,000 are homeless and the government’s $10 billion “Housing Australia Future Fund”, will spend the earnings to provide housing. It will take many years. Housing is a human right and provides a sense of safety, emotional stability, improved physical and mental health and a better chance of employment. This article offers an urgent solution and suggests how it can be financed. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
Approval of the Isaac coal mine is a betrayal of Australians and indeed people worldwide and as a medical doctor I am justifiably angry. Most health workers will recognise that we are opting to allow our emissions to increase by exporting more gas to balance our budgets, which is stated quite openly by some jurisdictions, for example the NT. Our fixation on the economy in the recent budget left climate change and environmental degradation inadequately funded as we soon approach breeching the 1.5 temperature rise. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
The Universities Accord terms of reference indicated it was “to deliver a higher education system that meets the current and future needs of the nation, and targets to achieve this”. Yet the terms of reference and discussion paper made no mention of a University role in leadership and management of the huge climate and environmental threats to civilisation. My submission describes how the university should be “A centre of learning to ensure the sustainability of the planet and the human race”. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
Current oil, gas, carbon capture and storage (CCS) developments in the US and Australia ignore accepted science that no new oil and gas fields can be developed without compromising the limit of 1.5 degree temperature rise. In Australia, approval for large gas projects requires an expectation of concomitant CCS. Yet currently CCS is inefficient, and will cause domestic emissions to increase. Nevertheless the government’s Climate Change Authority has issued a report which can be seen as supporting an uncritical report on CCS from CSIRO. Read more…

Independent Australia
The health of Australians is deteriorating. Good health is not only what our doctors and nurses can offer us but according to WHO, our health also depends on non-medical factors such as the conditions in which we are born, grow, work, live and age. Health is also affected by economic policies and political systems. A promise of $254 billion for tax relief for the rich should be broken and used for health, social, aged and disability services, and for educational revival. Read more…

Universities should have as their main theme the human and environmental sustainability of humanity and the planet. Two vital pillars should be (1) human health in its widest sense and reforms of medical training to be more relevant (2) the range of specialties which support ecological systems including agricultural, biological and water science and the many other disciplines which support rural existence. Read submission…

Pearls and Irritations
“Swimming between the flags” was Albanese’s climate policy of safety from attack by the Coalition government and their media supporters at the last election. The policy did just enough to appear progressive but not enough to arm an Opposition. The 2030 emission reduction target increased from 40 to 43%. The revised Safeguard Mechanism can also be seen as “swimming between the flags” and is inadequate to reduce emissions. The mind sets behind these decisions are discussed. Read more…

Mirage News
with Melissa Haswell
Queensland has significant responsibilities for maintaining the integrity of Great Artesian Basin (GAB) water for sustainable use by humans and agriculture. The evidence suggests it is failing. Pressure in the GAB is falling and the Mound Springs which maintain the biodiversity of the Lake Eyre Basin are drying up. Oil and industry developments have a prodigious water usage and pollute water and land with toxic long acting polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and endocrine disrupting chemicals. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
In the eastern states of Australia debate on the environment or ‘nature’ has been mainly about protecting koala habitat. This view is too simplistic. Protection should embrace all biodiversity and ecological services. These are our human life support systems, and those which determine food production. Governments must come to understand their role, explain them to the public and make them the centre of environmental policy. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
The integrity of the ecology of the Lake Eyre Basin and its water supply from the Great Artesian Basin are threatened by oil and gas development and by ineffective state and federal administration. The Lake Eyre Basin, occupying nearly a sixth of the land mass of Australia, is already subject to 800 oil and gas developments and recent evidence strongly suggests much more is soon to come in what is seen as a wide underpopulated area open to the concept of ‘Western’ development (plunder). Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
The Aukus deal for nuclear submarines by 2050 indicates that government has little grasp of the likely chaotic state of the world after current trajectories for climate and environmental change disasters have played out for the next 27 years. Their costs will increase and the national budget will shrink. We must prioritise basic requirements of living, health, social services and housing by reforming the economy and by seeking collaborative means to reduce defence spending. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
To be effective, democracy must cope with critical and urgent decisions imposed by a fast changing world of environmental crises with climate change as a significant cause. Our democratic system must also involve those who matter most, the young, by having 16 and 17 year olds vote at the next national election. Let us copy the “Make it 16” campaign in NZ. Many young people are leaders in climate change action and their knowledge often exceeds that of the current elected representatives. Read more…

The Hill
World leadership on climate change from President Biden has not eventuated. Despite introducing the Inflation Reduction Act to develop renewable energy, the US like Australia continues to develop fossil fuels. The basic problem in addressing the issue is the sanctity of capitalism. The article explains how this will continue to damage the environment and asks Americans to read the work of the late Herman Daly, an economic ecologist. Read more…