Category — Politics

Mercury photograph

Forestry Tasmania’s controversial annual autumn burn-off started yesterday prompting the Asthma Foundation to warn people with respiratory problems to stay inside away from the smoke.

Curiously, the burns started on the same day Premier Paul Lennon announced international consultancy Parsons Brinckerhoff would be engaged to audit the Government’s greenhouse emissions.

The first burn of the season was near Railton, in the state’s North-West.

A further six burns are planned for the Florentine Valley in the state’s south over the weekend.

Burnoff details can be found here.

Forestry Tasmania’s Fire Management branch manager Tony Blanks said the burns were expected to run throughout the autumn.

Welcome to clean, green Tasmania.

Angry Hobart aldermen have branded Targa Tasmania as ‘organised hooning’ and its competitors ‘environmental bandits’.

Eva Ruzicka and Bill Harvey came out firing in their decision not to approve a proposed Targa stage on the Domain in April.

‘It’s organised hooning, and we’ve a problem with hooning on our streets,’ Mr Harvey said. ‘Targa actively encourages that behaviour.’”

Hydro Tasmania says it cannot guarantee water supplies to the $2 billion Gunns Limited pulp mill.

The news comes as water flows in the South Esk basin plummet because of drought.

As well, Hydro Tasmania has reduced generation and thus water releases from Great Lake.

The level of the lake has dropped to 15.9 per cent of capacity ahead of a weekend of high evaporation because of hot weather.

The Tasmanian Government will introduce legislation to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by the year 2050.

Premier Paul Lennon says the target will be based in 1990 levels.

He says the government’s car fleet will be carbon neutral by mid 2010 and State Cabinet will consider making it mandatory for major government buildings to have solar power and hot water installed.

Mr Lennon has also announced an agreement with Greening Australia to offset the government’s air travel.

The body of a minke whale and its calf are dragged onto the whaling ship

The Australian Federal Government says photographs taken by the Customs ship the Oceanic Viking of Japanese whalers killing a whale and its calf will strengthen any legal case against the whalers.

The pictures, released by the Government today, show a slaughtered minke whale and its calf being hauled up the ramp of the Japanese ship, the Yushin Maru.

Customs has also released video of whales being harpooned from the ship.

The Government is extending the duration of its whaling surveillance program and says the Attorney-General is still considering what kind of legal action should be taken and who it should be brought against.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett says the pictures released today support Australia’s position.

‘I think it’s explicitly clear from these images that this is indiscriminate killing of whales, where you have a whale and its calf killed in this way,’ he said.

‘To claim that this is in anyway scientific is to continue the charade that surrounded this issue from day one.’

Gunns’ proposed pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley will cost the island’s economy up to $3 billion if something goes wrong, according to a new economic analysis.

The results of the analysis, commissioned by the The Wilderness Society, are in stark contrast to a similar study done for Gunns.

The National Institute of Economic and Industry Research (NIEIR) analysis found the most likely outcome of the mill would be a cost of $300 million to the Tasmanian economy until 2030.

Institute head Dr Peter Brain estimated the mill would boost the economy by $1.3 billion in a best-case scenario and in the worst case, $3 billion.

An Allens Consulting Group analysis — commissioned by Gunns — predicted the most likely impact of the mill would be a gain of $3.3 billion.

Dr Brain took into account factors including the cost of lost tourism and the risk of chemical spillage, Gunns changing ownership, a blow-out in capital costs, deaths and sicknesses from environmental damage and the closure of two other paper mills in northern Tasmania.

Allens Consulting had underestimated the opportunity cost of logs consumed in the pulp mill, which could be exported as high-value timber, and the cost of agricultural land clearing, Dr Brain said.

Two women who were seriously injured in a car accident outside Tasmania’s Mersey Hospital yesterday could not be treated at the Mersey, because the hospital still does not have an intensive care unit (ICU).

The injured women had to be taken to Burnie Hospital for treatment, even though others who were less seriously injured in the accident were treated at the Mersey.

The former Federal Government promised to reinstate the ICU as part of the take over.

Listen to the ABC Radio report here.

John Elder of The Age reports that:

The feral destruction of the Macquarie Island’s native vegetation is akin to Ayers Rock being taken over by 100,000 clowns with jackhammers or the Great Barrier Reef being used as torpedo practice …

… it’s like one of those movies where a team of rough and tough heroes are called upon to save the world. In this case, the survival of one of Australia’s ecological treasures depends on finding a dozen disciplined hunting dogs — and finding them fast.

Since rabbit numbers exploded on the World Heritage-listed Macquarie Island over the past couple of years, massive landslips - caused by overgrazing and tunnelling by the 100,000 bunnies - have sent entire hillsides falling into the Southern Ocean, killing king penguins and wiping out crucial albatross nests. At the same time, a living carpet of rats and mice have been feasting on the eggs in penguin and seabird colonies.

Macquarie is a sub-Antarctic island about 1500 kilometres south of Tasmania and a critical breeding ground for seabirds, including four endangered species of albatross, and delicate plant systems. It also serves as a unique geological snapshot of the world’s evolution, a record of life.

There’s more about Macquarie Island here …

Photographs by Matt Newton and Rob Blakers.

Anti-pulp mill activists will ratchet up their campaign to stop the $1.9billion Gunns project with a boycott of its corporate backers, according to The Mercury.

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