Category: Eco-philo-pol

Mark Latham may have been potty mouthed, his policies may have been misguided and he may have ended up being universally despised. But one thing he had going for him was conviction. To me, he came across as knowing how he wanted Australia to be, and he believed in his policies. In other words, he had a vision, even if most Australians clearly disagreed with that vision. Kim Beazley, on the other hand, seems at a total loss when it comes to articulating a clear platform for Labor, beyond the expected vociferous opposition to the Coalition’s workplace reforms. Worse still, Beazley seems intent on hijacking his own tilt at the prime ministership by announcing policies that appear to be completely devoid of anything resembling logic.

His most recent idea, which can only be described as stunningly ill-conceived, is to have all those coming to our shores – even tourists – sign a pledge to respect Australian values. Not only is this idea unworkable, it’s just plain stupid, because it won’t have any effect whatsoever on improving migrant integration. This laughable policy follows hot on the heels of Beazley’s confused uranium policy, which I’ve commented on previously. I note with interest that Bill Shorten, the secretary for the Australian Workers’ Union and new Labor candidate for Maribyrnong, has also called for Labor’s “half pregnant” uranium policy to be scrapped.

Kim Beazley is trying to match John Howard’s political savvy by attempting to appear clever and wise. Unfortunately, all he’s managing to do, in my eyes, is prove that he is incapable of leading this country. John Howard’s call to the state Liberal and National parties in the wake of their humiliating defeat in the Queensland election was basically “get a plan, get a vision and spend time working on them”. Federal Labor would do well to take that advice on board, too. Beazley has been completely reactive, continually playing catch-up, and therefore relying on half-baked policies which he feels compelled to introduce to look as though he’s providing a sensible option to the Australian people. It won’t do. Labor needs to provide us with an alternative to the Coalition at the next election; but on current form, I can’t see that many people will trust the management of our country to the Labor party, workplace reforms or not.

Kim Beazley, leader of the opposition, is asking his colleagues in the Labor Party to support an about-face with regards to their long-standing “no-new-mines” uranium mining policy. Essentially, Beazley is now arguing that new uranium mines should be opened so that Australia can benefit economically from responsible mining of the fissile material. Nevertheless, Beazley is at pains to differentiate his view on uranium mining from that of the Liberal Party. Like Kim Beazley, the Liberals are keen for Australia to become an “energy superpower” on the back of uranium mining, but they are also open to the idea of establishing nuclear power generators as a means to reduce carbon emissions and to diversify Australia’s energy sources. Furthermore, John Howard is now speaking of the possibility that Australia could enrich the uranium that it mines, rather than leaving the enrichment phase of the nuclear fuel cycle to the nations that already have well-established enrichment facilities such as the US, France and Japan. Mr Beazley, however, remains firmly against the development of nuclear power plants and enrichment facilities in Australia, saying that Australia’s energy future is with renewables. In effect, Kim Beazley is saying that it’s okay for Australia to dig up uranium and export it to other countries where it will be enriched and then used as fuel in nuclear power reactors, but it’s not okay for Australia to generate electricity from uranium.

This new policy stance smacks of hypocrisy, and is surely no less arbitrary than Labor’s existing “three mines” policy. I can see absolutely no sense in Kim Beazley’s position on the use of uranium within Australia. Either uranium should stay in the ground or Australia should be able to use it to generate electricity as other nations do. Furthermore, if Australia is to increase uranium mining, why ought we not add value to that uranium by enriching it ourselves, especially if we are to develop a nuclear power industry. As John Howard notes, it would be ludicrous to sell uranium to, say, the US, and then buy it back in its enriched form for use in a nuclear power generator. If Beazley’s reasons for not developing a nuclear power industry were grounded in economics – that it is probably not cost effective to build nuclear generators – or a genuine concern that leaving behind radioactive waste for future generations is morally reprehensible, then fair enough. But his objections to this point have been totally unqualified.

Obviously, it would be great if Australia could develop its renewable energy industry to the point where fossil fuels and nuclear power aren’t needed. But the reality is, at this point, and for several decades to come, coal, gas, hydro and nuclear power are and will be the only technologies capable of meeting Australia’s base load requirements. Most renewable energy sources have the severe limitation that they cannot produce electricity on demand: the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow, the waves aren’t always rolling in. For the same reasons, they cannot satisfy peak-load demand either. Things might change if some form of large-scale energy storage technology was devised, but this won’t happen soon. Even though the entire east coast of Australia (including Tasmania) is linked by an electricity grid, and it’s possible that the production peaks and troughs of renewable energy sources could be probabilistically compensated for (if the sun isn’t shining in Melbourne, the sun might be shining and the wind might be blowing along the coast of Queensland), demand would outstrip supply. This would be the case even if a huge increase in the efficiency of electronic equipment were factored into the equation.

I’m undecided on whether the nuclear power option should be pursued. But I do know that if we increase our mining of uranium, which both major parties seem to think is a good idea and which will therefore probably happen unless the Greens are miraculously handed government at the next election, then we should also consider developing our nuclear power industry if it is economically viable. Beazley’s position makes no sense at all. We ought to invest in research on renewable energy because Australia can eventually become an energy superpower by exporting renewable technologies too, but it’s fair to say renewables won’t be able to satisfy our power needs on their own for a long time to come.

Update (26/07/2006):

According to this report (pdf) from the CRC for Coal in Sustainable Development, Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) power may, in fact, be able to satisfy a large portion (if not all) of Australia’s electricity needs. One thing in its favour is that it can store energy as heat, which is much simpler and more cost-effective than using batteries. Although the report cites some sources that claim CST will be cost-competitive with coal by 2013, the lowest prices achieved by CST technologies are around US$120/MWh, which are the lowest of any solar technology. By comparison, the average price of electricity in Queensland in the 2005-2006 financial year was A$28.12/MWh.

I abhor political correctness in all its forms. Some months ago, I watched a news or current affairs story on how some groups have urged the title and lyrics of Baa Baa Black Sheep to be changed because they could be viewed as racist. In addition, it seems there’s a problem with Humpty Dumpty being sexist. Finally, Fairy Penguins can’t be called that any more because these days the word fairy connotes homosexuality in addition to its regular usage as the name given to a class of tiny, imaginary humanlike creatures typified by Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. The other day I was also told how the title of a Nickelodeon cartoon had to be changed in the UK because the word bender is associated with homosexuality. In the USA, the word flamer is avoided by cartoons and computer games because it is also used to describe a homosexual. The question is, who exactly is suggesting bans on all these words, as in the case of flamer, bender and fairy, it’s surely not individual homosexuals who take offence at such terms. I’m left wondering whether one day there will be any words left in the English language which haven’t been blacklisted by some special interest group or another.

For the record, the suggested alternative to Baa Baa Black Sheep was Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep, but then that surely calls into question the sexual orientation of the sheep, and it probably won’t be long before the same people are calling for a ban on the word rainbow.

With both houses of parliament voting to hand control of the drug RU486 to the Therapeutic Drugs Administration, women who choose to abort their pregnancy now have a choice as to how that abortion will be carried out. At least, they will soon be able to use RU486 to terminate their unborn child if they have made the choice to abort before the 6-8 weeks period during which the drug is effective. Given that the debate was not supposed to be about whether abortions should be allowed but whether women ought to have a choice about how abortions are carried out, sanity seems to have prevailed.

Some people of considerable influence, however, did their best to make the debate about abortion itself. Tony Abbott, the Health Minister, was one of these people. He made no bones about bringing his religious beliefs to the debate. This raises a whole heap of questions about separation/integration of religion into politics, but this post won’t be asking any of those questions. Rather, the object of this post is to highlight what I think is very valid point made by the Health Minister:

We have a bizarre double standard in this country where someone who kills a pregnant woman’s baby is guilty of murder, but a woman who aborts an unborn baby is simply exercising choice.

Although some have described Mr Abbott’s statement as "unfortunate" (notably Amanda Vanstone), to me, as somebody who is generally pro-choice, this poses a real moral dilemma, which cannot be dismissed and simply swept under the carpet. Unfortunately, I don’t see how this dilemma can be adequately resolved.

Today Singapore executed a man because the drugs he was smuggling to Australia may have resulted in the deaths of many people. Nguyen was caught. The drugs seized. The drugs never even reached the streets of Sydney. I will never understand how any country can justify putting someone to death because something they might have done had they not been caught might have resulted in people dying.

Number of people killed by Nguyen’s drugs: 0.
Number of people killed by the Singaporean government: Nguyen plus countless others.

Joseph Koh, the Singaporean High Commissioner in Australia was quoted as saying:

We respect Australia’s sovereign choice not to have capital punishment. We hope Australia will likewise respect Singapore’s sovereign choice to impose the death penalty for the most serious crimes, including drug trafficking.

The sovereign choice to impose the death penalty is one thing; having a mandatory death sentence for a crime which may have resulted in the deaths of some people were it not foiled, is quite another, especially when the means of execution is a barbaric relic of the dark ages.

In this instance, Singapore asks for respect where there is none to be found.

A while ago I wrote that struggling farmers should be enticed off the land for environmental and economic reasons. Now a new CSIRO report suggests that drought aid simply prolongs farmers’ agony and delays the inevitable, and that the billions of dollars of aid given to farmers would be better used to help farmers leave the land. These aren’t new revelations, of course; it’s all been suggested before. But this time it’s in a formal report from the federal science organisation, and it comes at a time in this country’s history when water shortages are foremost in the minds of many people. Maybe somebody in a high place will listen this time.