Australia: a country of dumbnubs lead by dimwits who can't think of anything to do, except dig holes everywhere...

Yes Gus.

While “outlaw” Attorney-General, George “Bandit” Brandis & the hypocritical rabble making-up the “feral” government play their self-serving “lawfare” game, we are expected to ignore their shameless promotion of the latest scam from corporate America in the form of the TPP.

Meanwhile, the odious bookshelf collector, intellectual midget & legal pygmy stands mute in the face of his government’s attempt to usurp our nation’s courts in order to strip Australians of their citizenship for alleged “crimes” based on secret allegations made by anonymous & entirely unaccountable bureaucrats.

No prizes for spotting the real ‘vigilantes’.

 

An attempt by Tony Abbott to blame "legal sabotage" used by green groups to kill off large resource projects in the courts, at the cost of tens of thousands of jobs, is derived from dubious and exaggerated evidence, according to an independent review of environmental law.

An analysis of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act by progressive think tank the Australia Institute has found only a fraction of the roughly 5500 projects referred since the act's inception in 2000 have been challenged using "third-party appeal rights".

Elements of the yet-to-be-released study, obtained by Fairfax Media, reveal that of those projects referred to the environment minister for assessment under the act, about 1500 have been judged to require formal assessment, with just 12 refused federal environmental approval - nine of those because they were deemed "clearly unacceptable" even before being referred for formal assessment.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/review-questions-coalition-push-to-end-legal-sabotage-of-resources-projects-20150818-gj1xp3.html#ixzz3jCWfunAF 
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Actually, the push by George Brandis is another political move to make people believe that Green groups are shit and against workers. NOTHING ELSE.  George Brandis rigmarole has no other purpose but to poke a dead cat to make people believe the cat is alive. His own mate tells him to put a sock in it:

The former Howard government minister Philip Ruddock has raised concerns about his own government’s plan to stop environmental groups using legal challenges to “sabotage” mining developments.

The fate of the controversial decision to amend the federal environment law – made in reaction to a legal case that delayed the $16bn Carmichael coalmine in Queensland for a few months – rests with the Senate after Labor said it “would not support weakening environmental protections or limiting a community’s right to challenge government decisions”.

The attorney general, George Brandis, took the plan to Tuesday’s meeting of the Liberal and National parties, saying it was needed to combat “green vigilantism” and “lawfare”, but Ruddock – the longest serving MP and a former attorney general – told the meeting he “had a problem” with it.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/aug/19/philip-ruddock-questions-move-stop-green-groups-challenging-mining-proposals

 

Not only the Turdy Team wants to vandalise the environment, it wants to vandalise the law.

 

Even for the Abbott government the inconsistencies in the latest “war on environmental vigilantes and saboteurs” are astonishing. And the slapstick nature of its attempt to use the issue as a political wedge is up there with Laurel and Hardy.

When an environment group successfully uses 16 year-old national environmental laws to delay a project, the Abbott government tries to change the law to prevent them from ever doing it again.

But if an anti-windfarm group can’t find a way to use existing laws and regulations to stop or delay a project, the Abbott government tries to change laws and processes to make it easier for them to succeed.

The first is called green “vigilantism” and “sabotage” and the second is, according to environment minister Greg Hunt, a reasonable response because “many people have a sense of deep anxiety, and they have a right to complain.”

The government calls regulations that stop fossil fuel or mining projects “green tape”, but a wind commissioner and yet another scientific committee to look at unsubstantiated health complaints regarding wind turbines is apparently no kind of “tape” at all.

Fossil fuel projects are judged by inflated assessments of the jobs they might provide. The prime minister and the treasurer keep repeating the claim that Adani’s $16bn Carmichael mine would create 10,000 jobs, even though evidence from an economist commissioned by Adani itself – Jerome Fahrer of ACIL Allen – given in the land court earlier this year said: “Over the life of the project it is projected that on average around 1,464 employee years of full-time equivalent direct and indirect jobs will be created.

But when it comes to wind energy projects no claim seems too fantastic.

The government can hardly contain its fury that environment groups might aim to delay or stop huge new coalmines because they are concerned about global effects of climate change, but assists and applauds anti-wind groups who use every available tactic to stop or delay renewable projects because they are worried about the health effects of “infrasound”.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/aug/18/abbott-government-war-on-green-saboteurs-is-laurel-and-hardy-slapstick

 

I am not astonished by these idiots in suits that would have made Hitler proud... Not many people were laughing.

 

The president of Kiribati has criticised Australia’s commitment to new coalmines on economic grounds as a “very selfish perspective” that illustrates the “fundamentally unjust” dynamics of climate change.

Anote Tong, whose small Pacific island nation is threatened by rising sea levels, has written to other national leaders calling for a worldwide moratorium on new mines ahead of UN climate talks in Paris in December.

Tong, who called for a pact to end new coal projects “simply to find some very concrete action on climate change”, told Guardian Australia he knew it would “touch on sensitivities”.

“I know the closure of coal-fired power plants will not happen,” he said.

“But at least the moratorium on coalmines, it gives people that sense that something can be done ... and it allows those involved in the industry time to adapt. I thought it would be more achievable.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/24/kiribati-president-says-australias-loyalty-to-coalmines-selfish-and-unjust