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Australia’s billions in fossil fuel subsidies are under the spotlight in a new report as the US puts pressure on other countries to stop handing money to the sector.

Left-leaning think tank the Australia Institute has combed through recent federal and state budgets, finding there has been $10.3 billion in fossil fuel subsidies this financial year.

Most of it – $7.84 billion – is from a federal government fuel tax credit scheme, which provides a refund to industry for diesel.

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The one thing that the Covid-19 pandemic, now in its second year, has encouraged very few people to do, when most are despairing, has been to try to re-invent the wheel in the epoch of digitisation. 

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It turns out it’s surprisingly easy to tolerate the torture of your citizens if you’re a country with a long record of it. Dr Lissa Johnson weighs in on the Australian Government’s silence on Julian Assange.

BY Dr Lissa Johnson

As an Australian citizen, Julian Assange has set a number of firsts for Australia.

He was the first person to establish an encrypted dropbox media platform through which whistleblowers could anonymously share troves of information in the public interest, a practice which has now been adopted by news outlets worldwide.

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 On Wednesday, April 21, Australia terminated several agreements that had been concluded with China as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

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22 years since the launch of the NATO aggression on Serbia...

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Joe Biden has called upon the world to confront the climate crisis and “overcome the existential crisis of our time”, as he unveiled an ambitious new pledge to slash US planet-heating emissions in half by the end of the decade.

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The Ukrainian population is divided between a part of European culture and another of Russian culture. This singularity offers Washington a playground against Moscow. For several weeks now, the drums have been beating, sounding war. But none of the allies want to die for Kiev or sacrifice themselves to Russia.

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For more than 15 years, this little website has tackled some of the biggest issues faced by humanity and its fellow travellers, plants and animals, on this little planet.

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In the past 50 years, Australia has had 23 health ministers. But who is the worst?

Two of them, Lance Barnard and Arthur Sinodinos get passes, because Barnard and Whitlam were Ministers for everything in 1972 and Sinodinos merely filled in temporarily.

Neal Blewett, Brian Howe and Nicola Roxon would be among the best mainly because they focused on major policy reform; expanded preventative medical programs; and tried to integrate health policy into broader policy perspectives.

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IT’S ONLY WHEN the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked,” the billionaire investor Warren Buffett has famously said.

During the crash of 2008, the whole world learned just how dangerously nude Wall Street was. Now evidence is accumulating that suggests that many financial institutions are skinny-dipping once more — via similar types of lending that could lead to similar disasters as the water recedes again due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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White House distances itself from Maxine Waters’ ‘confrontational’ comments

The White House on Monday appeared to distance itself from House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters for telling racial justice protesters to “get more confrontational” if Derek Chauvin is acquitted in George Floyd’s murder trial.

President Biden believes “protests must be peaceful,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said when asked about the comments by Waters (D-Calif.).

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Scott Morrison has bowed to mounting political pressure by launching a royal commission into suicide among Australian defence force members and veterans.

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With the emissions reduction targets pledged in Kyoto, Japan, in the 1990s fading into distant memory, 2050—safely distant in time—has become the new favoured target date for the people making money from fossil fuels. As the Arctic permafrost melts and biodiversity collapses, “net zero by 2050” promises are an attempt to bullshit the public while allowing business as usual to continue undisturbed. 

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Mr Howard said his former colleague and rival was a "quite outstanding foreign minister" who forged important relationships with countries in the region and deepened the US alliance.

He is known for taking a stance against the Khmer Rouge genocide. In his earlier position as minister for territories, Mr Peacock played a key role in the path to Papua New Guinea's independence.

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