Ferguson claims "neutrality" as he shores up HRL brown coal

Updated 14/2/12

In a move to "shore up" brown coal rather than properly support genuine clean energy alternatives, resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson yesterday announced that HRL has yet a further six months to get its long-flailing Latrobe Valley brown coal power plant together and meet funding conditions before it loses a $100m Federal Government grant. Ferguson also announced $100m for CarbonNet, a carbon capture and storage project, also in the Latrobe Valley and part of the $1.68b CCS Flagships Program.

The HRL announcement follows concerted community action to stop the polluting brown coal power plant, the tabling in Federal Parliament of a petition of nearly 13,000 signatures opposing it, and a recent public rally at which Labor's Federal Member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson MP, spoke against the project, on which he also addressed the Parliament in tabling the petition.

The announcement has been met with dismay and a commitment to sustained action by community campaigners opposing the project because of its dangerously high carbon emissions, the availability of abundant and genuinely clean alternatives such as solar, and a promise by Prime Minister Julia Gillard not to build more dirty coal-fired power stations in Australia.

Here's the unedited version of my letter published in today's edition of The Age responding to Katharine Murphy and David Wroe's report of the HRL project extension.

In throwing a "lifeline" to HRL's brown coal power project and more money at carbon capture and storage in the Latrobe Valley, Martin Ferguson comes clean in at least one respect - he's aiming at "shoring up the value of Victoria's brown coal resource".

Ferguson can imagine no low-emissions solution that leaves coal in the ground. Unfortunately exploiting coal and lowering emissions are essentially contradictory aims.

Ferguson claims a "technology neutral" approach to clean energy solutions, but those he favours with so-called neutrality in fact serve private coal interests and escalate dangerous carbon emissions despite empty claims of technological advancement.

If Australia is to contribute to a safer global climate, the selection of clean energy solutions cannot be neutral in assessing projected emissions.

Ferguson knows there are jobs in genuine clean energy, but prefers coal at the bidding of coal interests who have no monopoly over energy from the sun and the wind.

He should also know that the public campaign to stop his climate destruction - a broad-based campaign driven not only by Greens - will only grow stronger.

 The published version can be read in today's letters (scroll to "Minister shores up coal").

See also the ABC's investigation of clean coal, Cloud hangs over Rudd's clean coal vision, for which Ferguson refused to be interviewed.


Comments welcome.

We're gonna stop HRL, fellas, so pull the $100m now

A great line-up of speakers and more than 400 nearly 500 people turned up at Victorian Parliament at lunchtime today (Wed. 1 Feb.) to call for an end to the HRL brown coal power station in the Latrobe Valley. (Why?)

Protesters obviously found it not only acceptable, but highly worthwhile to highlight that the project does not stack up economically and would be a disastrous misstep for action towards a safer climate.



The rally was organised by Greenpeace, Environment Victoria, and the wonderful Quit Coal campaign of Friends of the Earth.

Federal Labor Member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson MP, focused on the inconsistency of the project with Victoria's legislated 20% emissions reduction target by 2020 (not to mention federal targets).

He also noted the $100 million federal grant made by the Howard Government could be much better spent (I suggest redirection to renewables), as could the $50 million of State funding in Victoria - for example, by contributing to undergrounding powerlines in high-risk bushfire areas, a measure recommended by the Bushfires Royal Commission.

Kelvin also noted the lack of any private funding for the project, and a recent UN report calling for the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies by 2020 (see also this post on subsidies). For the full details of Kelvin's speech, visit his blog.

New Federal Green for Melbourne, Adam Bandt MP, also did a great job arguing for renewables over emissions-intensive (i.e. dirty) fossil fuels.

It was good to see some cross-party cooperation on this important issue, especially when it still seems to internally divide the Labor Party - it's a pity, for example, that Martin Ferguson can't seem to change tack from his current fossil-fuel-lobby cooperation.

There were three other speakers, and more about them will hopefully be written or posted as video on the web pages of the organisers.

(A wrap-up is now available from Quit Coal, including Ten News footage, and details of the tabling of a 13,000 signature petition against the HRL project in Canberra are available from Environment Victoria)

I was holding up the main banner with lots of other people, so I'm sorry I could only manage a hasty 40 seconds or so towards the end as Julien Vincent from Greenpeace vowed to continue the campaign even if efforts to end the $100 million federal grant were unsuccessful in the short term - which we are all hoping like hell they won't be.

The 40 seconds shows two things. First, the great crowd reaction, and, second, the difficulty of filming on a "smart" phone with big hands while holding a banner doing its best to demonstrate the abundance of wind energy in Victoria. Green Screen entry it is not.

Where to now?

Finally, there's going to be an action to maintain the pressure to end the HRL project next Thursday 9 February from 12.00-2.00pm in which we're all encouraged to ring, email, tweet and/or connect via all available or about-to-be-launched social media with prime minister Gillard, Finance Minister Penny Wong, and our respective local members (oh dear, that's Martin Ferguson in my case). I'll be in that (that is, it's in my diary as instructed, dear protest groups).

See also Rally says no to HRL coal power station in Victoria (from @takvera)

Comments welcome.

Ferguson spy skit has point of serious protest

If you haven't seen Quit Coal's very amusing short video about Tuesday's action against Martin Ferguson's spy-on-the protesters campaign, it's a must-see, with a very funny punchline about a certain fictional cat.

Unfortunately, the video is also a perfect illustration of the misuse of public resources not to fend off a threat, but to defend and perpetuate one - the Member for Batman himself, resources and energy minister, Martin Ferguson.

That's right - Ferguson is the threat we need to worry about as he works to expand exploitation of the fossil fuels that - burnt here, or exported then burnt - threaten to wipe out any carbon emissions savings from a carbon tax and clean energy development.

In the terms the Batman MP might use, there was no threat from the protesters, who dressed as spies to deliver a "secret" dossier about the coal barons. Ferguson knew there would be no violence or unlawful activity, just an inconvenient point to be made about his contribution to disastrous climate change. Unfortunately, he's the real face of the Gillard Labor Government on climate.

The assembled Australian Federal Police must also have known of the lack of any non-imaginary threat, and yet there they were, perhaps as genuine but unrelated threats elsewhere went unaddressed - witness the parallels between this action and Robert Doyle's nonsense with police attendance at various Occupy sites around the city while real crimes elsewhere just had to go unprosecuted.

The point Ferguson was really making is that he thinks he has the power to not hear directly from protesters, those among the 99% championed by Occupy Melbourne, and of course in this case from the ranks of the worthy activists of Quit Coal and Friends of the Earth.

In that sense, the video's use of the theme music from Get Smart was very appropriate. I can hear Ferguson grumpily pronouncing, "I didn't hear you", and - when the protesters ask "What part didn't you hear" - Ferguson replying, "The part after you said, 'Now listen carefully, Martin'".

If you'd like to contribute to the effort to improve Martin's hearing, please come to the second of this week's three actions, Occupy Melbourne's Say No to NOSIC* protest, at Ferguson's 159 High Street Preston electorate office (Google Map) on Thursday 12 January from 4.30pm, or meet at the City Square at 3.30pm to proceed there together by tram.

Further details are available on the Facebook page for the event.

After that, Friday is National Check In With Martin Ferguson Day, in which you let Martin know what you've been up to in the way of public interest activism to help the Government save money on spies by cutting out the middle-man (sorry, NOSIC*).


*NOSIC is the private intelligence-gathering firm spying on climate protesters for the Government.

Comments welcome.

"Carbon Party" undermines Gillard on carbon price

John Brumby made a good case for carbon pricing and low-emissions economic opportunities in his Saturday opinion piece in The Age. In it he makes an admission that State and Federal Labor need to act on, not just acknowledge. Standing in the way is the "Carbon Party". Here's my letter, published today (scroll to "Green initiatives are totally cancelled out").

It's good to hear former Victorian Premier John Brumby acknowledge that "Australia won't always be able to rely on what we dig out of the ground". That's true not because of the exhaustion of our large fossil fuel reserves, but because under the inevitable global pricing of carbon, the market for fossil fuels will disappear, and products we produce from emissions-intensive energy sources will become very expensive, and therefore uncompetitive.

Given the greed of large corporations and the short-sightedness of our less reflective investors and shareholders, it is understandable they will seek to capitalise on fossil fuels to the maximum possible extent before this happens. Understandable, but not acceptable.

As they rush to squeeze value out of their dinosaur powerplants and fossil fuel reserves, they push Australia and the world towards or even across the boundary of dangerous climate change. Their misleading campaigns foretelling economic ruin and energy insecurity place dollars above disaster.

While John Brumby argues well for the economic benefits of low-emissions investment and development, the timeframe in which too many Labor governments see the transition would allow the exploitation of fossil fuels and their climate impacts to substantially play out. We are, in fact, expanding our search for oil, coal and gas, and we operate in a deluded two-climate economy - one where we invest in green initiatives, and one where we cancel these out through the headlong pursuit of fossil fuels.

It is this duality within Labor at state and federal levels that is undermining the argument for carbon pricing. With federal Labor MPs like Martin Ferguson, it is almost as if there's an implicit Carbon Party at work in Australia, drawing its members in lesser or greater numbers from Labor and the Coalition respectively. If we're not to lose the race - the human race - that has to stop.

Comments welcome

Labor survival runs second to sustaining the planet

Today's edition of The Age carries my letter, "Bigger issues than an ailing ALP", responding to Michael Pearce's excellent opinion piece on the future of Australian Labor ("Should the ALP labour on, or is the party over?"), which questions the ultimate survival of the party.

There follows my edit of the longer version I submitted, which makes my point more clearly - that sustainability is a common theme among the issues Pearce considers in his search for a Whitlamesque "crusade" that might unify the ALP. It is also one with a strong basis in fairness and social justice - the traditional values of Labor.

I argue, however, that it is more important to consider sustainability as an imperative for the planet than for its potential contribution as a narrative for the renewal of the Labor Party. Sustainability is also a cause being progressed more urgently by social movements, independents and Greens than by a party that has lost its way.

Michael Pearce has written an eloquent and fascinating big-picture analysis of the Labor Party. We should, however, care less for the survival of the party than for the progress of the growing social movements concerning the vital issues it has so badly failed to capture.

Our federal minority government shows that in an era of converging major political parties, minor parties and independents can help steer the course of government back towards the public good. They may be maligned for doing so, but their measure is not the esteem of so-called "mainstream" politicians, but the degree to which their actions are informed by the values that no longer enliven Labor - and certainly not the Coalition - at state or federal level.

Nor is their measure, as Pearce observes, their position inside or outside the "economic paradigm". Increasingly, that paradigm is being recognised as uneconomic in a far deeper sense than questions of surplus or deficit.

One clue lies in what is common between the issues Pearce considers as potential sparks for renewed "crusades" - the national broadband network, the processing of asylum seekers and the carbon tax.

As Melbourne University's Voice supplement [in the same edition] announces a new research centre to "green" the internet, it is also projected that many more asylum seekers will need to be "processed" by Australia as they flee the impacts of dangerous climate change imposed on them by the spiralling emissions of developed and developing nations.

Yet the effective denial of Labor's weak climate action - with its looming capitulation to the big polluters over the carbon tax - is little better than the Coalition's denial outright. We can sustain civilization fairly and with humanity only if we work to sustain the planet on which we live. Shouldn't that be the business of politics across the trivial divisions of party power?

At present, Labor is masquerading as a climate progressive party to hold on to power by attempting to capture the green vote while placating conservative free-marketeers and the big polluters with weak climate action. Prime minister Gillard instead needs to recognise that a vital object of power is not its own preservation, but sustaining civilization itself.

Comments welcome.

IPA "remedy" for climate suits big polluters

Last week's edition of The Sunday Age carried another missive from the Institute of Public Affairs on how the world can be saved from the impacts of climate change by making countries rich enough to adapt.

Unfortunately, Chris Berg's free-market prescription amounts to little more than a get-rich-quick scheme for poor countries based on the same high-emissions growth that has led to our current climate emergency. This claimed panacea of profit-fuelled adaptation is deeply flawed.

Aside from the certainty with which the big polluters would flee the queue to pay for expensive adaptive measures, recent disasters give the lie to our ability to adapt to large-scale impacts. Among these, floods and bushfires are set to increase in frequency and severity if we do not act to sharply curtail our carbon emissions.

With Fukushima now adding to Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, there is also a nuclear cloud over Berg's failure to even mention renewables as a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

A full  accounting of the mortality, health and broader environmental impacts of climate change points to the urgent necessity of a strong carbon price. It also highlights the risks of the proposed compensation and current massive subsidies by the Australian Government for the polluters who work against a safe climate future.

The distraction we must resist is not a carbon price, as Berg would have it. Instead, it is the false reassurance of selective statistics and scant scientific support for doing nothing beyond business as usual.

Growing our emissions so we can get rich enough to supposedly adapt to the climate change those emissions cause just doesn't make sense.

It is to be hoped that Julia Gillard and her government recognise this as a basic physical constraint on how the world works - ignoring it could have extreme consequences for our shared global climate.

Gillard's sleight-of-hand on extremism

Friday's edition of The Age carried my letter responding to Julia Gillard's opinion piece the day before calling for the rejection of "extremists" following Wednesday's rally in Canberra against the proposed carbon tax.

The rally, attended by federal Coalition leader, Tony Abbott, featured offensive placards attacking the prime minister. Abbott has drawn much deserved criticism for his attendance, including Friday's Age editorial.  However, Julia Gillard used the opportunity to label as extreme not only those who attended the rally, but those opposing them who are urging stronger, science-based action than is currently being proposed by the Australian Government. Here's my letter:

Gillard lumps all in the extreme basket

IN CALLING for the rejection of extremists, Julia Gillard tries to create a single negative category including not only the ilk of Wednesday's ignorant and offensive rally against a carbon tax, but also those who urge stronger science-based action to achieve a safe climate (Comment, 24/3).

A valid critique of Australia's present weak emissions reduction targets does not render the holders of such a view extreme. They base their case on the same science referenced by Professor Garnaut in his climate review for the federal government. Perhaps Ms Gillard would like to explain her government's more than $12 billion in annual subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, or the recent approval of the largest open-cut coal mine in the southern hemisphere at Wandoan in Queensland?

It is just those kinds of actions that will work against household and industry assistance to choose low-emissions alternatives. This debate shouldn't be about some "fine Australian" calling the Prime Minister a "witch", or worse.

 Comments welcome!

Gillard's "sanctuary" no defence against climate inaction

Today's edition of The Age carries my letter responding to Ross Gittin's piece in yesterday's paper, "It's time to raise the bar" (The Age, Comment & Debate, 7 July 2010, p.8; online in a slightly different version).

Gittins questions the role of the deliberate creation of green jobs in emissions reduction. He thinks the jobs will flow as we move away from fossil fuels. He's right, of course, but direct action measures, including the specific creation of green jobs, are a useful complement for a strong price on carbon.

With Labor set to frame its pre-election climate policy, the risk is that so-called direct action will be used as an excuse for a failure to implement a strong price. If that happens, Julia Gillard's "sanctuary" Australia will be no defence against climate inaction.

Here's the letter, or scroll down to "Low-carbon jobs" on The Age letters page. As usual, the published version is followed by the version submitted.

Ross Gittins (Comment, 7/7) is right that jobs will arise from the shift to a low-carbon economy as we replace fossil fuels with renewables.

While he is understandably wary of the ''direct action'' approaches to climate change pushed by Tony Abbott, and now likely Julia Gillard, it would be better to acknowledge the need for a range of approaches to tackle climate change.

A strong price on carbon - one likely to achieve the emissions reductions indicated by science - can indeed be complemented by green jobs assessed as such by their total contribution to reducing our emissions. The problem comes when so-called direct action is substituted for urgent action by governments.

We may now be swinging from a position where a weak emissions trading scheme was seen as ''the'' climate solution to one where ''direct action'' may be used in an attempt to justify inaction at a higher level.

With the world heading for double the ''safe'' warming of two degrees above pre-industrial levels, any proposed solution needs to actually do the job. The challenge for all parties is therefore to show how their proposals will help Australia and the world return to an emissions path that will achieve a truly safe climate. Anything else is political game-playing. In particular, Gillard needs to acknowledge that Australia will be no ''sanctuary'' from climate change should we fail to act.

Now for the submitted version, which has had only a slight trim by the editor.

Ross Gittins (Comment & Debate, 7/7) is right that jobs will arise from the shift to a low-carbon economy as we replace fossil fuels with renewables as our source of energy. While he is understandably wary of the "direct action" approaches to climate change pushed by Abbott and now likely Gillard, it would be better to acknowledge the need for a range of approaches to tackle climate change. A strong price on carbon - one likely to achieve the emissions reductions indicated by science - can indeed be complemented by green jobs assessed as such by their total contribution to reducing our emissions.

The problem comes when so-called direct action is substituted for the urgent action that needs to be taken by governments. We may now be swinging from a position where a weak emissions trading scheme was seen as "the" climate solution, to one where "direct action" may be used in an attempt to justify inaction at a higher level. I commend to Ross the recent Deakin lecture by British green economist, Tim Jackson, who has also written about the economics of climate change and how these approaches might be combined.

With the world heading for double the "safe" warming of two degrees above pre-industrial levels (News, p.8), any proposed solution needs to actually do the job. The challenge for all parties is therefore to show how their proposals will help Australia and the world return to an emissions path that will achieve a truly safe climate. Anything else is political game-playing. In particular, Julia Gillard needs to acknowledge that Australia will be no "sanctuary" from climate change should we fail to act.

Comments welcome!

Local Labor keen to draw Gillard link

The Northcote Leader has run with a story suggesting a close relationship between new prime minister, Julia Gillard, and local State and Federal MPs, Fiona Richardson and Martin Ferguson. I left the following comment on the story, and it will be interesting to see if it gets up:

With Martin Ferguson behind the "meteoric rise" of new prime minister, Julia Gillard, what hope do we really have either for urgent climate action or for a robust resources tax that won't be just a backdown in the face of a powerful mining lobby? After all, Martin has been on a listening tour to the mining magnates.

As for Fiona Richardson, she may well try to wring out a few votes by association with Australia's first female prime minister, but why not ask the two other women known at this stage to be running for State and Federal Parliament what it means for them to have a woman as prime minister? Could it be because they are running for the Greens?

We should also remember that the Richardson association cuts both ways - it ties Gillard to the factional apparatus of the Victorian Right. Surprise, surprise.

Comments welcome.

Gillard stumbles as call for climate action sounds

Despite the rise of our plain-spoken and highly capable first female prime minister, Julia Gillard has taken little time to make her first false moves on climate.

Writing in The Age, Adam Morton relates the role of climate backsliding in the demise of Kevin Rudd as a conviction politician, but we now see Julia Gillard party to a brown coal deal with Vietnam as she “opens the door” to the mining industry and flags the need to build community “consensus” before Australia acts decisively on climate.

The consensus line comes as a new poll already shows strong concern for action on climate and a perception that the major parties are "clones" on climate policy.

An admitted party to the Rudd Government’s disastrous decision to shelve work on emissions trading, Gillard now appears to be operating on the consensus of the mining industry that it proceed full-steam ahead with the extraction of our natural resources despite the community, environmental and climate impacts, and quite possibly with a watered-down tax payment on its super profits.

The prime minister surely recalls Kevin Rudd’s 2007 election mandate to act on climate, and Australia's historic ratification of Kyoto. Julia Gillard must now acknowledge that should she ignore the scientific and growing community consensus, the climate will render self-evident its own consensus through the clear and worsening impacts of global warming. That is already happening, and further delay on climate action is no better than denial.

Comments welcome!

Julia Gillard and a consensus on climate

I was at a climate event last night when one of the presenters, David Spratt, announced to the gathering that he'd received a text to say a challenge was on for the Labor leadership. It was a bombshell, and, as we saw this morning, Julia Gillard - always potential prime minister material - fulfilled that ambition in rather sad circumstances.

This morning's press conference, with only the odd false note, was coherent, focused and eloquent. Yet there's an immediate question mark over our new prime minister's stance on the resources tax and on climate action.

On the first, I thought it was a masterful stroke to cease the resources tax campaign with the accompanying proviso that the mining industry follow suit as a sign of good faith. Though I think the ads - however poor in execution - were justified, it's good to be able to avoid the charges of political advertising, provided the mining industry isn't thereby offered free hits with the continuation of its own propaganda.

However, the test will lie in what Julia's "open door" policy for the mining industry really means. If it turns out to mean a spineless watering-down of the resources tax (as happened with the ETS), then the leadership change will rightfully be seen as a massive win for the tactics of the mining industry. If it means a sensible approach to creating a clear and workable tax that recognises the strong case for the mining industry to pay (a lot) more, then that may be a good thing.

On climate there was also cause for concern. Julia spoke of the need for a strong community consensus before a price was put on carbon. In the context of her admission that she was a party to the decision to shelve the emissions trading scheme, this statement was worrying. She clearly wasn't talking about the obvious consensus that exists on the science, but on the public will to tackle the problem.

In that sense, the pressing question is what she is going to do about achieving that consensus within a timeframe that addresses the urgency of the science. She surely can't mean only the $30 million for better climate change communication drawn from the existing funding of a climate change department expected to find savings of $200 million?

I've argued before that the justification for the resources tax campaign would also justify a campaign on climate change, but that a truthful campaign on climate would force the government to acknowledge that its currently proposed measures are totally inadequate.

As David Spratt pointed out at the climate event I attended on the fateful night, the promises on the table at Copenhagen point to four degrees of warming - easily enough to push us past catastrophic climate tipping points.

It's now up to Julia. To a powerful case for election built on workplace relations, health and education, our first female prime minister can add climate action. Kevin Rudd ratified Kyoto; Julia can finish the job - as long as she recognises science as the benchmark of her success, or failure.

Comments welcome