Environment
Minister blames staff for failures over Juukan Gorge tragedy
Fri 11 September 2020Labor is calling on the Minister to provide a full explanation to the Australian people about what she knew and when, and why she appears to have no process in place for exercising emergency intervention powers.
Read more...National leadership on waste crisis still missing
Fri 11 September 2020The current “leave it to the states” approach means that we aren’t protecting our environment or giving the waste industry the opportunity to expand and grow jobs to reach the scale needed for a modern recycling industry with matched manufacturing capacity.
Read more...Morrison is sweeping the extinction crisis under the COVID-19 carpet
Mon 7 September 2020Cuts, mismanagement and cluelessness by this government have left Australia ill-equipped to preserve and protect our beloved national icons.
Read more...Product Stewardship (Oil) Amendment Bill 2020
Mon 24 August 2020In another area of Australian life, if a person found a loophole in a legal definition so they could claim single-parent payments when they weren’t a single parent or a disability payment when they didn’t have a disability, we wouldn’t be sanguine about that. We wouldn’t say, ‘That’s clever; good on you for figuring that out and going down that path.’ I’m pretty sure I know how that would be treated in the mainstream media.
Read more...Indigenous heritage protection woefully inadequate
Mon 24 August 2020The bottom line is the protection of Indigenous cultural heritage in Australia is woefully inadequate. There is no effective national protection framework. I’m not sure we needed the Juukan Gorge tragedy to tell us that.
Read more...The Government must lift its game on recycling labels
Thu 20 August 2020If we’re serious about stopping the torrent of plastic that is pouring into our oceans every year, and the microplastics that are accumulating in animals including ourselves, then we absolutely have to tackle this problem from every direction and that must involve labelling that is accurate, helpful, and applied across the board.
Read more...10th Anniversary of World Heritage convict sites timely for jobs boost
Fri 31 July 2020Today marks the 10th anniversary since 11 Australian convict sites were listed by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, the first structures of this kind in Australia to receive this level of recognition and protection.
Read more...Ocean plastic research should be an alarm for the Morrison Government’s inaction
Fri 24 July 2020When it comes to ocean plastic, Australia should be taking the lead in our region and globally. If we can’t eliminate harmful single-use plastic and do better than recycling 10 per cent of our plastic waste, how can we expect countries in South Asia and the Pacific to do better?
Read more...EPBC Review highlights the need for stronger First Nations heritage protection
Mon 20 July 2020It is imperative that all governments to do more to ensure that the cultural heritage of First Nations Australians is respected and protected, through processes that ensure full and proper First Nations participation and self-determination.
Read more...Review of waste-product stewardship regulation – two years late
Thu 9 July 2020Labor welcomes the findings of the review into the Product Stewardship Act (PSA) which is two years late and shows there is much to be done and no time to waste.
Read more...