Australia's greenhouse gas cut targets quietly tripled on Saturday night, from a 5 per cent cut by 2020 to a cut of more than 18 per cent.

The failure of the federal government to repeal the carbon price has triggered a far more ambitious emissions reduction target.

As of midnight May 31, the Clean Energy Act 2011 passed by the Gillard government sets a default target that is more than triple the previous 5 per cent goal.

Under the existing legislation, the government of the day was supposed to have decided on an emissions cap to enable the start of a carbon emissions market in 2015. Since no cap has been set, a default target is automatically generated.

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This goal is based on a tally that is 38 million tonnes below the 2012-13 emissions level, shrinking each year by 12 million tonnes. In practise, since 2012-13 emissions were much less than expected, the resulting trajectory is also for a lower target by the end of the decade.

The default target is 475.8 million tonnes by 2019-20, equivalent to 18.8 per cent below 2000 levels, according to the Greens, who had their estimates confirmed by the Parliamentary Library.

Greens leader Christine Milne said the measure was inserted in the act to insure against ''a government like this refusing to set a cap''.

''It won't have realised because it never put its mind to the detail,'' Senator Milne said. ''By doing nothing more than we are already doing, we are getting to 18.8 [per cent] and if we put a bit of effort in, we can go even higher.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australias-emissions-cut-target-triples-overnight-thanks-to-failure-to-repeal-carbon-tax-20140602-39esv.html#ixzz33XKcGwgQ

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Australia has experienced its hottest two years on record and high temperatures are set to continue through winter in a clear sign of climate change, a report warns.

May 2012 to April 2014 was the hottest 24-month period ever recorded in Australia, but that is likely to be eclipsed by the two years between June 2012 and May 2014, according to the Climate Commission's latest report, Abnormal Autumn.

"We have just had an abnormally warm autumn, off the back of another very hot 'angry summer'," Professor Will Steffen of the Climate Council said.

"The past two-year period has delivered the hottest average temperature we have ever recorded in Australia.

"Climate change is here, it's happening, and Australians are already feeling its impact."

The average temperature across Australia in April was 1.11C above the long-term average, the report says, citing Bureau of Meteorology figures.

The average minimum temperature was 1.31C above normal.

Unseasonable temperatures in the autumn "warm wave" set records, with Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne setting benchmarks for the consecutive number of May days when the mercury reached 20C or higher.

In its report, the Climate Council says the abnormally warm weather in April and May "are part of a longer-term trend towards hotter conditions in the summer months and more warm spells in autumn and winter".

It says each of the 12-month periods ending in January, February, March and April 2014 have been record warm periods for Australia, with May figures on track to also be a new high.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/02/australia-experiences-its-hottest-two-years-on-record

This from a few years ago.... The words used are those of Malcolm near verbatim.

Australia's record on the "fair go" is far from perfect and shouldn't be exaggerated, but what this budget does is assault the very things that this nation has gotten right, writes Tim Dunlop.

The budget has been delivered, the pollsters have read our entrails, and the verdict is in: we don't want to be America. Or England. Or most of Europe. We certainly don't want to be Tony Abbott's Petri dish.

There is even a feeling around that our sense of patriotism, our national self-understanding, is for once being discussed in relation to something other than sport. There is an inkling that our national identity might actually be built on an enduring commitment to what we have in the past nonchalantly referred to as "the fair go".

The budget has rubbed our nose in the fact that there are certain elites who don't believe in society, to borrow Margaret Thatcher's famous phrase. They think the market should allocate resources - including in education and health care - even if that means rewarding the few at the expense of the many.

To put it simply, it is now obvious that the Abbott Government - along with the business interests, media outlets and think tanks that carry water for them - do not believe that equality is a desirable social goal.

They dress this predilection for brute market forces up in the garb of "freedomspeak", but it is really just about entrenching privilege. Why else enact policies that favour the rich over the poor?

So the first thing we need to get through our heads is that in voting for an Abbott Government - no matter what they promise you - you are voting for a less fair, less egalitarian Australia.

We also need to understand that Mr Abbott's brand of inequality doesn't stop at economics. This is a guy, after all, who wants to reintroduce the titles of Knights and Dames.

What's worse, he is running the Parliament and the Government as if democracy was a winner-takes-all operation.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-05/dunlop-fair-go-australia/5499240

The nasty loonies are in charge OF YOUR LIFE!