DancingShade posted:

I'm the right wing upper-middle class person fed by a silver spoon claiming to be a punk unironically while treasuring my material wealth and status.

DancingShade posted:

I'm the right wing upper-middle class person fed by a silver spoon claiming to be a punk unironically while treasuring my material wealth and status.

quote:

Labor has gained ground against the Coalition to post another clear lead in the latest Newspoll.

Full story to follow at 9.50pm AEST ...

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Hot take:

https://twitter.com/NewsProperDan/status/848502311634616320

Ora Tzo posted:

Shorten's gonna overtake as preferred leader at some point? Any takers on when?

Cleretic posted:

I don't think she knows what 'punk' means, but has decided that she is one.

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Was it Johnny Rotten? Cause I'm pretty sure he's a fuckhead these days.

Cleretic posted:

I don't think she knows what 'punk' means, but has decided that she is one.

Don Dongington posted:

Apparently the UWA Dean of Business was just spotted on ABC pretending to be a pensioner, and thanking Turnbull for the company tax cut and pensioner power bill assistance.

Oil; Guillotine; Etc.

SLASHER HAWKE posted:

remember PiL

neither do i

Urcher posted:

Highlights from last month's thread:

Brown Paper Bag posted:

https://twitter.com/samdastyari/status/848507723293401088

quote:

Coal-related pollutants continue to rise at many of the country's biggest mines, power plants and export facilities, prompting demands for stricter controls to limit health damage costing billions of dollars a year.

The latest National Pollutant Inventory, released at the end of March, revealed the extent of 93 key toxins from 4000 enterprises, including particulates that can spur premature death by worsening existing heart and lung conditions.

Protests, fires and more than 737 million tonnes of brown coal burnt in the 52 years of the Hazelwood power station.
Victoria's Hazelwood brown coal-fired power station, which shut on Friday, emitted 61,425 tonnes of toxins in the year to June 30, 2016, one of the largest totals. The tally included almost 700 tonnes of fine particulates with a width of 2.5 micrometres – about 1/30th the width of a human hair – that can enter the blood stream.

While Hazelwood's emissions fell over the year, those at Loy Yang B power plant in the Latrobe Valley jumped 13 per cent and Yallourn's 2 per cent.

In NSW, the Bayswater coal-fired power station reported a 770 per cent jump in toxic coarse particle pollution (known as PM10, of about 10 microns size) over the past five years, while Queensland's Tarong power plant recorded a 237 per cent increase in just one year.

"The latest NPI data reveal the total failure of Australian governments to control air pollution and highlight the need for much stronger pollution controls and regulation," James Whelan, a researcher for Environmental Justice Australia, said.

Dr Whelan said the annual health damage in Australia from air pollution was between $11 billion and $24.3 billion.

That total squares with a study conducted for the NSW government six years ago – and given little publicity – that estimated yearly costs in that state were about $6 billion.

Dr Whelan said particulate pollution from coal mining had tripled in the past decade. Pollution from mines such as Bulga in the Hunter Valley increased 32 per cent in the past year. At Drake Coal in Queensland, the increase was more than four-fold.

Coarse particulates (PM10) emitted by Newcastle's three coal terminals also rose 25 per cent last year, much faster than the increase of about 10 per cent in coal volumes, he said.

Taking in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle, coal-fired power plants contributed 87 per cent of the area's 187,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide and more than a third of the 724 kilograms of mercury registered over the year.

Responses

Fairfax Media sought comment from the federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg. Victoria's Environment Minister Lily D'Ambrosio declined to comment.

"It's a stark reminder that we need to be mindful of all the impacts of pollution, not only carbon," Tony Burke, federal Labor's environment spokesman, said.

The NSW Environment Protection Authority said the 2015-16 NPI revealed an overall reduction in the state of 13 per cent in PM10 and a 24 per cent fall for PM2.5 particulates.

"The NSW government led the review of the national standards for airborne particles and, as a result, NSW and Australia now have one of the toughest packages of standards for fine particles in the world," an EPA spokeswoman said.

The EPA, though, had been asked to review the anomalously steep drop in particulate emissions from two coal-fired power plants at Vales Point and Mt Piper.

According to the inventory, Vales Point reported a decline of about a third in PM2.5 emissions even though power generated rose about 10 per cent. For Mt Piper, the dive was in the order of more than 90 per cent even as electricity output rose more than 15 per cent.

"These two are clearly under-reporting," Dr Whelan said.

"NSW was tasked with developing standards for particulate matter under the National Clean Air Agreement but failed to advocate effectively for standards that would protect human health," Mehreen Faruqi, NSW Greens environment spokeswoman, said. "NSW's proposal was so bad, Victoria actually went it alone and adopted more stringent standards."

Penny Sharpe, NSW Labor environment spokeswoman, said the commitment to stringent air quality standards was "not an academic exercise. It is an issue of life or death".

"NSW has signed up to lower air quality standards than recommended by the World Health Organisation," Ms Sharpe said, noting that proposals such a giant waste incinerator fo Eastern Creek in Sydney's far west "has the potential to make things worse".

SLASHER HAWKE posted:

remember PiL

neither do i

BBJoey posted:

conservatism is dead, though

all the power on the right is concentrated on a spectrum from rabid nationalists to straight up neo-nazis.

free market, social conservatives are being rolled by protectionist, xenophobic nationalists and they have no idea what to do about it.

coincidentally the same thing is happening to the centre-left by socialists and they are possibly even more clueless about how to stop it.

BBJoey posted:

conservatism is dead, though

all the power on the right is concentrated on a spectrum from rabid nationalists to straight up neo-nazis.

free market, social conservatives are being rolled by protectionist, xenophobic nationalists and they have no idea what to do about it.

coincidentally the same thing is happening to the centre-left by socialists and they are possibly even more clueless about how to stop it.

BBJoey posted:

conservatism is dead, though

all the power on the right is concentrated on a spectrum from rabid nationalists to straight up neo-nazis.

free market, social conservatives are being rolled by protectionist, xenophobic nationalists and they have no idea what to do about it.

coincidentally the same thing is happening to the centre-left by socialists and they are possibly even more clueless about how to stop it.

Anidav posted:

Actually conservatism is quite attractive.

'Almost too attractive': artist says former prime minister Tony Abbott has a good face for sculpture

Tony Abbott's face might be one of the most recognisable in Australia, but sculptor Linda Klarfeld found herself caught off guard after sitting with the former prime minister for more than an hour.

Mr Abbott's distinctive ears and Roman nose - prime fodder for the nation's cartoonists and photographers for decades - were almost too attractive to sculpt.

Commissioned by the Victorian goldfields city of Ballarat to create a bronze bust for its Prime Ministers' Avenue, the Czech-born sculptor wanted to avoid a predictable caricature.

"It wasn't an easy one. I personally think he's quite attractive, and I always say attractive people are hard to sculpt because it's hard to make them look real," she said.

"He has a Roman nose, his ears are not big and I don't know why the cartoonists always pull them out the way they do, but for sculpture they're very good.

"All his features are very strong. He has a chiselled face, which is very good for sculpture."

Australia's prime ministers are immortalised in the collection of busts established by Federation politician Richard Armstrong Crouch and, after months of work, Ms Klarfeld will become the first woman to contribute.

Her $25,000 commission has been sent to a Melbourne foundry and is expected to be unveiled in the city's botanic gardens later this year.

The final design is a closely guarded secret.

Ms Klarfeld said the former leader was patient while she made a plasticine maquette model, praising Mr Abbott's appreciation of civic art and a bust of Winston Churchill that looks over his Parliament House office.

"It's almost like a preparatory sketch a painter makes on the spot, but three-dimensional in my case," she said.

"I wanted the bust to be very real. Of course it's realistic, but I've worked hard to capture a sense of him as a human being and not just a prime minister."

Busts of the first six prime ministers were unveiled by Victoria's governor Sir Winston Duggan in 1940, with the Crouch bequest providing funds for their successors.

Ballarat mayor Samantha McIntosh said an unveiling date for Mr Abbott's bust was being negotiated, coming after former Labor leader Julia Gillard took part in a ceremony in 2014.

"It is a significant avenue and one that many people admire and love. There have been large crowds at all the unveilings that I've witnessed and it's undoubtedly a source of local pride that former prime ministers come and visit," she said.

Mr Abbott described working with Ms Klarfeld as "a pleasure".

"I feel thrilled and humbled to be on the avenue of the prime ministers and am looking forward to seeing it in the future," he said.

open24hours posted:

The Greens seem kind of maxed out, they've been treading water for the past few federal elections and their polling is pretty stable. I don't know what they can do if they want to become a mainstream party, but they'd better get on it.

Bogan King posted:

Anidav posted:

The Greens will only become mainstream once climate change starts flooding Sydney.