If you want to read an astounding recap of Australia’s history on gas, how we signed away long term contracts to Japan meaning Australia now has to buy gas on the hugely higher global spot market you need to take a look at this succinct and alarming report from the ABC. What were those government agencies thinking?
Now a Nationals senator decided to do a big fact-check operation on the Australia Institute on its claims on how we tax gas resources. The institute was in its stride with the challenge. “Unlike the gas lobby, we love to be fact checked” it said this week, pointing out the same senator was “last week colluding with the Murdoch Press and a gas lobby in a smear campaign”, with accusations that there was “dark money behind calls for increased taxes.”
Some REAL facts, the institute said, included that the Japanese government collects more taxes from Australians than the Australian government. Or a 25 per cent gas export tax could fund free university or free childcare for Australia. In fact, the prime minister has now done a “U-turn”, and the government is now deliberating on a new gas tax over the coming weeks.
Will the NSW government approve this flood rise site for elderly housing?
The government is desperate for houses – so will it turn a blind eye to serious flood risk for a site slated for a 12 bed aged care facility, along with 71 independent living units proposed for a site in inner city Forest Lodge that’s considered as posing very serious flooding risk?
According to a story in The Guardian this week, this might be the case if it sticks to its promise to override environmental and other concerns in its efforts to build 377,000 homes by 2029.
The developer, Corio Developments, declared last year in its environmental impact statement that during heavy rainfall adjacent roads could see flood depths of more than three metres and velocities of more than two metres a second.
This would make the site “completely inaccessible by vehicle” during such an event.
Yes it declared these risks were “manageable through appropriate design responses.”
City of Sydney said the developer relied on climate modelling from 1987, “which has been superseded by 2019 flood risk guidelines”. The proposal has been rejected
The story tells us that the Conservation Programs, Heritage and Regulation group, a division within the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), has said it would not support the development. It was the “most highly flood constrained location in the area” and posed an “unacceptable risk to life for a seniors living development.” The NSW State Emergency Services and the City of Sydney agreed with this. Planning Minister Paul Scully told The Guardian that “all development proposals go through a full merit-based assessment”.
We’ll see.
Hanson, your support for Trump is getting you a $600,000 wake up call from GetUP
As Donald Trump’s popularity in Australia plunges to new lows, left wing advocacy group GetUp wants to spend at least $600,000 on anti-Pauline Hanson campaigns for the seat of Farrer’s byelection. This includes a profusion of ads already underway spanning television, billboards, radio and digital platforms that call out her support of Trump and link her and her party, One Nation, to the rising fuel and fertiliser costs hitting regional voters.
So far, the group has raised more than $400,000 towards its goal, and the campaign has activated a growing membership base across the nation, with more than 100,000 people joining the group last month alone. This puts the group in the strongest financial position it’s been in since its poor 2019 election campaign, and if it achieves its goals, it will eclipse its entire budget for the 2025 election.
The organisation’s chief executive, Paul Ferris, told the Herald that One Nation has been “cheering on Trump’s economic recklessness” and the “battler” it claims to care about are most impacted by the fuel and fertiliser crisis.
Southbank dreams shattered
The site for the $2.7 billion STH BNK by Beulah project will now be sold after the project failed to secure more funding and entered voluntary administration in early 2025. The AFR writes it would be one of the “highest profile casualties” of the surge in construction costs after the pandemic, after it sold 80 per cent of its apartments pre-pandemic at prices that no longer cover the cost of the build.
The project received enormous publicity after being featured in a 2018 grand design competition event, where six design groups competed to become the designers for the project. But now the receivers are selling the landholding and permits for the two sites across 7706 square metres for $130 million, which is almost how much the owners initially paid for them.
Jobs
The Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (WSROC) has appointed Francine Binns as its new chief executive. Binns had previously been the CEO at the Australian and International Pilots Association, general manager for Business NSW and CEO of the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia NSW & ACT.