Friends of the Earth Adelaide

Housing Crisis Requires Nordic Policy Solutions

roman May 6, 2022

From the Australia Institute, Nordic Policy Centre

The key driver of Australia’s acute housing affordability crisis is its over-reliance on just two housing options – private home ownership and private renting.New research from the Australia Institute’s Nordic Policy Centre shows that Nordic countries have a wider repertoire of policies, and Australia can learn from policies that are already in practice in Nordic countries.
Key Findings:

In Australia, the proportion of social housing is estimated to have fallen from over 7% of all housing in Australia in the early 1990s down to just 4% in 2019. That proportion needs now to be ramped up to double digits.

In Sweden, public housing is more than triple the proportion it is in Australia. Sweden’s housing co-operatives amount to 22% of the total housing stock, while in Norway this figure is 15% nation-wide, but 40% in the capital, Oslo.

Sweden, Norway and Denmark also have extensive co-ownership whereby individuals own, use, and control their own dwellings but shared spaces and property are owned jointly and managed collectively with neighbouring members of a housing co-operative, which improves affordability.

Finland’s ‘Finnish Housing First Principle’ views housing as a prerequisite that will enable solving a homeless person’s social and health problems, not the other way round.

Coupled with the nation’s belief in the notion that people have a right to decent housing and useful social services, this has seen an impressive reduction in homelessness and the current government has a policy to eliminate homelessness by 2027.

Finland currently has less than one homeless person per 1,000 people, compared to Australia’s nearly five homeless people per 1,000 people.

“If we are to have any hope of tackling Australia’s housing affordability crisis, policymakers must stop favouring investors over tenants and shift the priority in housing policy to supporting low- and middle-income earners who simply want a secure place to live,” said Professor Andrew Scott, convenor of the Australia Institute’s Nordic Policy Centre.

FoE

Pine Gap’s role in China–US arms race makes Australia a target

roman April 23, 2022

Some idea of the growing importance of Pine Gap to the US is given by its extraordinary growth. Initially, it was a ground station for a single satellite to gather what’s called signals intelligence while orbiting 36,000 kilometres above Earth. There are now at least four much more powerful satellites connected to the base. Their antennas automatically intercept everything transmitted within their frequency range. This includes a huge array of electronic signals for intelligence analysis, including text messages, emails, phone calls and much more. In addition, ground-based antennas at Pine Gap and other Australian sites intercept a vast volume of information transmitted via commercial satellites.

Pine Gap’s own satellites also intercept signals from radars and weapon systems, such as surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery, fighter planes, drones and space vehicles, along with other military and civilian communications. From Pine Gap, a vast volume of military data is fed into the US war fighting machine in real time.

Pine Gap operates in conjunction with similar intercept satellites linked to a base at Menwith Hill in England. Their use in directing botched drone strikes that have killed a large number of civilians has been highly contentious in England. The combined coverage of the two bases includes the former Soviet Union, China, South-East Asia, east Asia, the Middle East, eastern Europe and the Atlantic landmass.

[…] Together, this access to signals and infrared intelligence, and its location in relation to China, gives Pine Gap a crucial role in US plans for fighting wars in space. This capability will be improved by a new space-based detection and tracking system called Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR).

On April 6 the AUKUS pact leaders – Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison and Joe Biden – announced they would develop hypersonic missiles and subsurface robots after earlier promising to provide Australia with nuclear attack submarines starting from about 2040.

“Climate greatest threat to Australia’s security,” ex-defence chief says

roman April 23, 2022

National security experts have called on Australian voters to use the federal election to support candidates that back strong action on climate change, saying Australia has “squandered” the last two decades.
Speaking at the Smart Energy Council’s Emergency Fuel Summit in Sydney, retired admiral Chris Barrie described climate change as the single biggest threat to Australia’s national security.
Barrie currently serves on the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group and said the group saw national climate policy failures as putting Australia at risk.
“We consider that climate change now represents the greatest threat to the future and security of Australia,” Barrie said.
More details: Michael Mazengarb, renew Economy

Clean Futures, Climate, Old_Notes

Australia will miss its weak 2030 emissions reduction targets

roman April 23, 2022

Australia is not on track to meet its weak Paris Agreement commitments, with a lack of meaningful national climate policies resulting in emissions cuts that are too slow to achieve the Morrison government’s 2030 target, new analysis shows.

New analysis from consultancy Ndevr Environmental says that if Australia’s emissions trajectory remains on current trends, Australia will fall short of achieving the already meagre emissions reduction target set by the Morrison government.

“If Australia continues its current emissions trajectory, then by 2030, Australia would have cumulatively emitted over 125.4 MT CO2-e more than the Paris [Emissions Reduction Target] trajectory,” the Ndevr analysis says.

“This is equal to 25 per cent of Australia’s annual entire national emissions.”

[…]

While the period was impacted by some Covid-19 lockdowns, the temporary relaxation of some restrictions in the last three months of 2021 contributed to a jump in transport emissions, with a resurgence in the number of Australians taking more trips leading to a 12 per cent increase, compared to the previous quarter.

Emissions from stationary use were also higher – representing emissions produced in the consumption of coal and gas in industrial operations like steelmaking – as activity returned to normal pre-Covid patterns, growing 2 per cent on the same quarter a year prior.

Emissions in the agricultural sector are also on the rise as drought conditions across Australia ease and farmers are able to grow herd numbers. Nvedr estimates that agricultural emissions were 5.2 per cent higher in the last three months of 2021 compared to a year prior.

Agricultural emissions in the 2021 year were a massive 15 per cent higher than in 2019 when drought devastated cattle numbers across large parts of Australia.
Australia has no economy-wide emissions reduction policy that would help drive cuts in sectors beyond the electricity sector.

Australia will miss its weak 2030 emissions reduction targets, new data shows, Michael Mazengarb, RenewEconomy

Clean Futures, Climate, Old_Notes

Budget ignores environment…

roman April 5, 2022

The Sydney Morning Herald’s analysis (30 March 2022) of the budget from an environmental perspective paints a grim picture:

“5-Minute Budget” – eight policy areas covered but no mention of the environment.

Headline: “Fuel excise cut brings relief for six months”. Let’s help people burn fossil fuels but nothing to promote EVs.

“Where it goes” pie chart of the $628 billion total Commonwealth expenditure: the environment doesn’t feature in the pie.

“Top Spends”: $3.8b to halve the fuel excise and $1.9b over 5 years for a floods package – responses to flooding, that is, not prevention of.

Headline: “Extra $1.3b for net zero emissions by 2050” – financial support for the private sector to expand Australia’s gas resources and continue to flog the dead horse that is carbon capture and storage.

“Losers”: “Climate Change Mitigation – No major promises on how to get to net zero emissions by 2050” is one of four losers along with an increase in net debt, less foreign aid and nothing for people with a disability.

In a rather more detailed analysis, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) concludes the budget allocations show a strong focus on gas, carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), and blue hydrogen, “all of which add to Australia’s and global emissions, not reduces them”. The CCUS scheme in the Pilbara will pump CO2 into oil and gas wells to produce more oil and gas, while blue hydrogen is produced from natural gas and produces more greenhouse gas emissions than simply burning the gas. Spending to tackle climate warming will decrease from $2 billion in 2021/22 to $1.3 billion in 2025/26.
see more from Peter Sainsbury at Pearls and Irritations

FoE, Old_Notes