Telephone pole set to vote Labor in Northcote

Media release

Independent candidate for Northcote, Darren Lewin-Hill, has been shocked by the discovery that even local telephone poles are succumbing to ALP propaganda, with one Clarke Street pole stridently declaring, "I'm voting Labor".

"I've heard of telephone polls, but this is ridiculous," Mr Lewin-Hill said.

"There's no human face on the placard, so we can only assume it's the voting intentions of the pole being referred to in the message. As an independent committed to accountability, I'll get to the bottom of this - I very much doubt that that pole is on the electoral role for Northcote," he said.

The distracting signage, on a speed-limited section of the notorious traffic rat-run, covers an earlier sign featuring Northcote MP Fiona Richardson, wife of former Victorian ALP State Secretary, Stephen Newnham.

"I did stop letter-boxing for a while to try to talk the pole out of such a foolish move, explaining that in its exposed position it would be among the first to experience the impacts of severe climate change driven by the Victorian Government's disastrous climate policies, not to mention Australia's status as the world's largest exporter of coal.

"I also pointed out that the Government's mania for roads would likely see even more traffic using rat-runs through local residential streets, and it was likely the pole would be a sitting-duck. My plea fell on deaf ears, so-to-speak," Mr Lewin-Hill said.

He said the sheer prevalence of Labor propaganda had given him the brilliant idea for a "Replace a Placard" scheme, in which Labor placards would be replaced with an equivalent surface area of solar panels.

"By the end of this election, I'd say we'd have enough renewable energy to power Victoria ten times over," Mr Lewin-Hill said. "We could close the Hazelwood brown-coal-fired power station immediately."

"At the moment, emissions savings from the renewable initiatives slated by the Brumby Government would be quickly overtaken by our continued burning and likely large-scale export of brown coal. Lip-service to renewables can't compensate for the emissions from brown coal," he concluded.

He said that until his Replace a Placard scheme kicked in, it still wouldn't be a bad idea to shine a light on Labor's propaganda machine.

Climate encounter at Northcote Plaza

Just a short post about a climate encounter while out leafleting at Northcote Plaza yesterday. A fellow took my flyer, went in to do his shopping, then spoke to me when he came out. Turns out he works on the coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley!

We talked about closing Hazelwood, Australia's dirtiest brown-coal-fired power station, and he agreed it had to close but there needed to be a plan to replace the generating capacity. Enter the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan! The plan uses 40 per cent wind power to complement 60 per cent concentrated solar thermal (CST) power generation.

He hadn't heard of the plan, didn't like wind power because of its intermittency, but also hadn't heard of CST power generation, which allows baseload power to be produced by using solar energy to generate heat that is stored in molten salts. That heat can then be released when needed to drive a turbine when the sun isn't shining - voila, baseload power supply.

This fellow thought it was a promising idea. He said he thought Morwell was actually dirtier than Hazelwood, though I know Morwell is quite a bit smaller (165MW and 5 turbines, versus 1600MW and 8). Maybe in emissions per MW generated it is, I'm not sure. The big thing for me was who you can bump into outside a suburban supermarket, and how they can add to your understanding. Amazing!

Bracks enlisted for Richardson's Northcote ALP launch

Former Victorian Premier, Steve Bracks, was tonight enlisted to launch a bid to "Keep Northcote Labor" and re-elect Right faction Labor Unity MP, Fiona Richardson, who has held the State seat since her election in 2006.

Northcote is one of four inner-Melbourne seats now under threat from the Greens, and the recent federal election poses the question of whether Martin Ferguson's poor result in Batman will translate to a State political poll among a constituency shared between the State and federal seats.

Labor concern over Northcote is one reason why the popular Mr Bracks may have been called into play, but it should be remembered that his famous victory in 1999 marked the rise of the Independents in Victoria, and the federal hung Parliament may yet be echoed in the State result, to the benefit of Greens and Independents - not to mention more representative and participatory democracy.

The launch event held, at Northcote's Regal Ballroom, attracted a lively crowd, among them climate campaigners protesting the Victorian Government's addiction to brown-coal-fired electricity generation, including its current consideration of a proposal by HRL for a brown-coal-gasification plant in the Latrobe Valley.

The Brumby Government has made much noise of late about its proposed partial closure of International Power's Hazelwood plant, Australia's dirtiest coal-fired power station, but the HRL proposal, if approved, would negate any emissions savings from that inadequate measure.

The Government has also focused talk of compensation for the partial Hazelwood closure on International Power, rather than workers who may be displaced by the transition to a low-emissions economy. The mooted billions of compensation to the corporate giant would also redirect vital public funds away from investment in renewable energy projects that could generate sustainable jobs in the same region.

With a string of negative issues besieging the Victorian Government - from Dirt Units to dirty coal - Labor will be sorely challenged to sanitise its image by parading Mr Bracks before Victorian voters cast their ballots on 27 November.

Brumby better than Feds, but lags behind climate science

Today The Age published my letter responding to yesterday's page one article, "Brumby plan exposes Gillard", and the paper's editorial, "State reclaims leadership role on climate". It seems the Premier has turned greener in the lead-up to the Victorian State election in November, but at the moment he's mainly looking good compared to dismal federal climate proposals by Labor and the Coalition, not in terms of the true benchmark of the climate science. The risk of his new policy is that International Power will be paid far too much to close Hazelwood, if that eventuates.

As usual, here's the letter as published, followed by the submitted version.

JOHN Brumby's 2020 emissions target (The Age, 27/7) looks good relative to the appalling federal proposals but not compared with what the science demands to achieve a safe climate. In the meantime, the danger lies in caving in to International Power on compensation for a staged closure of Hazelwood, Australia's dirtiest coal-fired power station. We should not pay a massive corporation hundreds of millions of dollars not to pollute when there is the capacity identified in Brumby's policy to regulate emissions from Hazelwood to render it unprofitable if a reasonable deal to close is not achieved.

Money spent paying off International Power would not be available to invest in renewable energy, cushion the economically disadvantaged in the transition to a green economy or shield workers affected by the phasing out of fossil fuels. International Power stranded itself through an unwise investment when the threat of climate change was already well known.

Now, as submitted.

John Brumby's 2020 emissions target looks good mainly relative to appalling federal proposals, not when compared to what the science demands to achieve a safe climate. His new climate policy, while an overdue step in the right direction, will ultimately need to match the science to be truly effective and credible - an outcome that cannot be judged by a citizens' assembly convened by his federal Labor colleagues.

In the meantime, the danger lies in caving in to International Power regarding the level of compensation for any staged closure of Hazelwood, Australia's dirtiest coal-fired power station. We should not be paying a massive corporation hundreds of millions of dollars not to pollute when there is the capacity identified in the Brumby policy to strictly regulate emissions from the power station to render it unprofitable if a reasonable deal to close it cannot be achieved.

Money spent paying off International Power would be money not available to invest in renewable energy, cushion the economically disadvantaged in the transition to a green economy, or shield workers affected by the necessary phasing out of fossil fuels. International Power deserves no such treatment. It stranded itself through an unwise investment in doomed emissions-intensive power generation when the threat of climate change was already well known.

Comments welcome!

Fiona Richardson: climate change 'delivered'?

Labor's Member for Northcote, Fiona Richardson MP, has already switched into election campaign mode with a string of local visits to shops, including today's sales-pitch at Northcote Plaza.

Richardson is pushing local achievements she claims to have 'delivered', but Darebin Climate Action Network is making sure the community also makes the link with the climate track record of the Brumby Labor Government that Richardson represents.

With the Federal Government shelving emissions trading until at least 2013, the pressure is on the Victorian Government to fill the climate action vacuum. Yet the State Government is committed to expanding coal mining and addicted to coal-fired energy generation through plants such as the massively polluting Hazelwood.

DarebinCAN distributed fact sheets about our dirtiest power station, and to drive the message home, I presented Richardson with a letter asking that she tell Northcote voters where she stands on climate (click on the arrow at top right to expand).




Part of Richardson's promotion was a flyer indicating she could help constituents by 'Raising an issue in Parliament'. I call on my local State Member to raise in Parliament the issues communicated in my letter, so they can be heard by every Member of the Legislative Assembly, including Peter Batchelor and Premier John Brumby. I'll also be awaiting a written response from Richardson, as will other community members who presented their own letters to the MP.

Like Martin Ferguson, the Federal Member for Batman, Richardson is gearing her campaign to the local achievements she has 'delivered'. While these certainly need to be debated, we should also ask what else is being 'delivered' for Northcote. Emissions from Australia's fossil fuel exports and domestic power-generation are delivered to the global atmosphere, but the impacts of climate change will be localised - everywhere. Questioning politicians about climate change is therefore vital.

Fiona Richardson, where do you stand? Are the only issues you'll raise in Parliament those that are consistent with Labor Party policy? That's too easy for you, too hard on our climate.

Comments welcome

Government spins letter threat against all greenies

Following coverage of the letter threat to the CEO of the Hazelwood power station, The Age published my letter today arguing that the Victorian Government is trying to spin this unfortunate incident against environmental activism as such (See 'Don't fall for this spin on greenies' on The Age Letters page).

Here's the letter, with a small grammatical correction that didn't make it into the published version:

Threatening the boss of the heavily polluting Hazelwood power station does nothing to advance the campaign for action on climate, and such measures are rightly condemned (The Age, 15/6). However, media reports of Energy Minister Peter Batchelor's call for environmental groups to denounce such measures indicate a ham-fisted attempt to tie all environmental activism with this extreme.

The tactic is underlined by Treasurer John Lenders' reference to 'green extremists' in radio reports about the incident.

Contrary to the perception these politicians wish to create, the vast majority of environmental groups legitimately campaign against the huge contribution coal-fired power stations make to global warming and its consequent impacts on the planet. Following the Black Saturday bushfires, the Queensland floods and other impacts arriving much sooner than expected, global warming is a much bigger threat that the Government would do well to take seriously.

Since I wrote the letter, the article I was responding to has been expanded from the original AAP story that appeared yesterday, with text now including Peter Batchelor's reported view that

...the credibility of the whole of the environmental movement would be jeopardised unless the people involved were identified.

This further underlines the Government's tactic, and seems to borrow from the ignorant practice of blaming all Muslims for instances of Islamist terrorism should they fail to identify terrorists whose identities are completely unknown to them. We reject outright the latter, and must therefore reject Batchelor's cheap PR ploy against environmental activism.