“The fission reactor produces both energy and radioactive waste; we want to use the energy now and leave the radioactive waste for our children and grandchildren to take care of. This is against the ecological imperative: Thou shalt not leave a polluted and poisoned world to future generations.”
Hannes Alfven, 1970 Nobel Laureate in Physics
MAJOR ENVIRONMENT GROUPS REJECT INQUIRY REPORT INTO CHARITABLE STATUS
Media Statement, Places You Love Alliance
Key Australian environment groups today called on the Federal Environment Minister, Mr Greg Hunt, to reject recommendations of a report of an inquiry into the charitable status of environment groups.
The CEOs of WWF, The Australian Conservation Society, The Wilderness Society, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Friends of the Earth and the Nature Conservation Council of NSW issued the following statement on behalf of the Places You Love alliance:
Report here, including a dissenting report by Labor members.
The Report of the Inquiry into the Register of Environmental Organisations correctly recognises the enormous contribution environment groups have played in safeguarding Australia’s precious yet fragile environment, protecting icons from the Great Barrier Reef to the Franklin River.
However, the report contains a number of deeply flawed and dangerous recommendations, including an arbitrary requirement to spend a quarter of donor funds on ‘environmental remediation’ and a draconian attempt to clamp down on the type of work organisations conduct.
This flawed Inquiry, initiated by the Abbott Government and driven by a small handful of conservative MPs with the support of the mining industry, failed to uncover any evidence to justify removing the charitable status of any environment group.
We welcome the dissenting statements made by Liberal MP and committee member Jason Wood, raising significant concerns about the two most dangerous recommendations. (*See excerpts below).
We have identified two highly flawed and dangerous recommendations in the report.
Recommendation 5
The recommendation requiring environment groups spend at least 25 per cent of their supporters’ hard-earned money on ‘environmental remediation’ is ludicrous, imposing a huge bureaucratic burden on both the government and organisations, particularly small groups working with local communities. In Canada, the same policy experiment failed dismally, creating enormous red tape with no resulting public benefit.… Read more >>
Please sign Friends of the Earth’s petition to Fiona Nash Assistant Minister for Health against ‘new’ GMO techniques. Include your street address and ask for a written reply.
Big agrochemical chemical companies are trying to sneak crops derived from a range of new genetic modification (GM) techniques into our food chain without safety testing or labelling. And our regulators – Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) and the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) – seem only too happy to help them!
New GM techniques such as oligo-directed mutagenesis, zinc finger nucleases and CRISPR pose the same risks as older GM techniques and need to be assessed for safety before they are allowed in our food. They should also be labelled to protect choice for farmers, food producers and consumers.
Most Australians don’t want to eat GM food and it’s high time our regulators stopped letting industry write the rules for them.
The Friends of the Earth Adelaide International High Level Nuclear Waste Dump flyer is designed to be printed in Landscape format on both sides of an A4 page and folded in half. We can supply printed copies on request.
FoE International Waste Dump flyer
For printed copies contact adelaide.office@foe.org.au or Robyn on 0423 219 096
Renewable energy is abundant in Australia. The economic resource is estimated at over 5,000 exajoules – enough to power the world for ten years. This economic resource includes only solar and wind resources within close proximity to the transmission grid and able to generate power at a price competitive with other new power stations. This is 75 per cent more than the energy content of all Australia’s fossil energy resources.