by Will Glasgow
Broadcaster Alan Jones has warned the Baird government that there will be"consequences" for them if they allow coal seam gas development over the NSW watertable.
Speaking on the ABC's Q&A talk show Mr Jones threatened to campaign againstPremier Mike Baird at the March 28 election if coal seam gas mining was allowed overany part of the state's water table.
Mr Jones warned the Baird government against breaking a commitment by formerNSW premier Barry O'Farrell that there would be no coal seam gas mining, and coalmining, over the water table.
"If these poor people are suffering and get no redress, or if the Barry O'Farrellcommitment in NSW is not honoured, well, they've got to face the consequences," hesaid.
Mr Jones has been a long-time campaigner against CSG and coal mining inagricultural areas, championing a motley coalition of farmers, horse-racing owners andenvironmentalists.

http://www.afr.com/business/energy/gas/alan-jones-warns-mike-baird-on-cs...

I  produce cattle on the majestic Liverpool Plains and right now, we're in the battle of our lives.

The government is set to give the go-ahead for Shenhua to blast a massive coal mine in the heart of this beautiful country, in what's known as 'The Koala Capital of the World'.

With the federal election on the horizon, our local Member and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce needs to act - and fast!

The Liverpool Plains' koala population has already been decimated by heatwaves and drought, with an estimated 70% drop in numbers since 2009.* Shenhua's controversial mining plan could see 262 koalas lose their home and be forcibly removed in hessian bags. 

Can you email Barnaby Joyce to tell him 847 hectares of precious koala habitat cannot be mined for coal?

We've stood up for our koalas in court, we've lobbied our leaders, and we've spoken to media outlets with our friends at the Nature Conservation Council. Now we need your help.

It's the eleventh hour for these koalas and Deputy Prime Minister Joyce is in a position to save them. 

He needs to hear from people across Australia that these iconic animals and the landscape they inhabit matter to all of us. 

On our farm, I'm often reminded that over one hundred years ago, in her classic poem 'My Country', Dorothea MacKellar called this land of sweeping plains the "core of my heart".

Don't let Shenhua rip out the heart of the Liverpool Plains: email Barnaby Joyce today.

(A) Liverpool Plains farmer

Freedom of speech and freedom of association are cornerstones of democracy.

Any attack on them, such as the Baird government's proposed protest laws, is an attack on our democracy and civil society.

Peaceful protests have made the world a better place. Protest helped end slavery and child labour, delivered workers rights and equal rights, delivered better air and water quality and protection of the planet's most iconic landscapes.3

In Australia protests saved the Great Barrier Reef, the Daintree Rainforest, Kakadu, the Tasmanian Wilderness, Fraser Island and the many great national parks that have paved the way for our multi-billion dollar tourism industry. The Great Barrier Reef tourism industry alone is worth $6 billion and supports 60,000 jobs.

In Mike Baird's world the Great Barrier Reef would be dotted with oil rigs and tankers, the Franklin River would be dammed, the Daintree Rainforest would have been wiped out, and Fraser Island would have disappeared from sand mining.

The people who fought to save these places are now seen as national heroes but Mike Baird wants to stop their kind in their tracks. He wants to stop people such as Wallaby great David Pocock from protesting about mining and trying to protect farmland.

In Baird's world the iconic Australian bushland of the Pilliga, our largest inland forest, would be dotted with 850 coal seam gas wells. Beyond that the industry would expand across our best farming country.

The proposed protest laws would give police new powers to break up protests, to search and destroy private property. If police say just one person obstructs traffic, they can shut down an entire peaceful assembly.

This is a slippery slope that gives police discretion to silence dissent and could turn NSW into a police state. Far from being a moderate, Baird is taking NSW down the sad road of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's Queensland.

The laws will allow police to arrest anyone carrying or operating anything the police think will be used in a protest. Police would be able to arrest you and confiscate and destroy your car, for example, if they think it will be used to disrupt business in a protest. What has happened to the presumption of innocence?

Late yesterday the Baird Government passed laws aimed directly at you: to discourage people who want to see NSW coal seam gas free.

Some called the anti-protest bill the “Santos law” because right now Santos are building the only new coal seam gas project in NSW, in the heart of the Pilliga Forest.

Santos must see the new anti-protest laws as a victory, a sign that their project will go ahead.

Let’s prove them wrong. Send the new Santos CEO, Kevin Gallagher an urgent message today. 

The Pilliga forest, in our state’s north-west, is the largest intact temperate eucalypt woodland in eastern Australia.

The Santos project puts half a million hectares of this traditional Gamilaraay country at risk to build 850 coal seam gas wells. It’s also habitat for threatened animals like the Pilliga mouse, koala and pygmy possum.

Soon the new company CEO Kevin Gallagher will front up for his first AGM.

Let's make sure he understands we want to protect NSW from their damaging coal seam gas project.

We won't be silenced: send your message the new Santos CEO.

We’ll send your message along to the upcoming Santos AGM with Gamilaraay people and local farmers who are standing together to protect the thousands of cultural sites, native plants and animals within the forest. 

It's not a done deal. Santos is on the skids. Shares in the company have fallen dramatically in the past year, leaving its Pilliga project looking more dodgy than ever.

This is the final battle ground on coal seam gas in NSW. Let’s make sure the new Santos CEO knows what a risky business this is. 

Send your message here: www.nature.org.au/get-involved/take-action/lets-make-nsw-csg-free/

Thanks for your support..

And we all know why. The NSW Government receives hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue from The Star, and will reap a further bonanza when Jamie Packer's Barangaroo casino opens.

It may be business as usual, in the eternally soiled playground of politics. The NSW Government weighed up its competing imperatives - revenue and votes (and, we like to think, to some extent at least the public good) - and reached the kind of pragmatic compromise which state governments do all the time and which we mostly tolerate with a worldly sigh.

Baird promised to be a different kind of politician from the shop-worn norm, and his popularity with the electorate has reflected that reputation. The conflicting interests that the business of governing throw up were inevitably going to challenge his ability to remain a cleanskin, and he now finds himself in a bind.

Arguably, Baird is falling into the business-as-usual trap. As his stumbling response to Sam and Rove demonstrates, he is dissembling - and he's not very good at it. Politicians specialise in answering the question they weren't asked; Baird, who is an investment banker by vocation, habitually tries to be direct and honest in his responses. He is being caught short now, because he isn't being upfront.

It doesn't have to be this way. He could level with us. We do understand what's going on here; we do get why the Government wants to protect its casino revenues. There are big political risks in being truthful on this score, certainly, but the alternative is that the voters will tune out, having concluded that Baird is just another politician. And then what is he but (to adopt Tony Abbott's daughter's epic description) just a churchy loser?

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Sydney law firm Marque Lawyers, and he writes a weekly column for The Drum. He tweets at @marquelawyers.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-17/bradley-baird-and-the-lock-out-laws/7251396

Last week, in a historic verdict, a Pennsylvania jury awarded $4.24 million to two families in Dimock, PA who sued a shale gas driller, Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., over negligent drilling that contaminated their drinking water supplies.

Dimock has for years been one the nation's highest-profile cases where shale gas drilling and fracking was suspected to have contaminated water, a claim the oil and gas industry strenuously denied. Controversy over the water quality swirled as state and federal regulators repeatedly flip-flopped over who was responsible for the water contamination — and whether the water might even be safe to drink.

For years, Cabot Oil and Gas has maintained that the problems with the water were simply cosmetic or aesthetic, and that even if the water was not good, their operations in the area had nothing to do with it.

http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/03/16/dimock-water-contamination-verdict-leads-renewed-calls-federal-action-fracking

The plan to turn Sydney's green space into stadiums and car parks

Green space is under pressure in cities around Australia. One of the most hotly contested areas is in inner Sydney, right on Anzac Parade. Massive trees are coming down and light rail is going in, but there may be something even bigger on the way. Mark Davis investigates.

For the past three years, the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust and some government ministries appear to have been working to a plan to completely take over the open spaces of Moore Park, a few kilometres south of the Sydney CBD.

A promotional video made by the Sydney Cricket Ground as part of a pitch to government in 2013 and obtained by Background Briefing reveals plans for a breathtaking land grab of all of the open parkland around the ground.

Moore Park, Kippax Lake and the parklands on the other side of Anzac Parade—Moore Park West—are all set be part of this 'world class sports precinct'.

'Moore Park West will be completely redesigned to include new landscaping with community sporting fields, 2,500 underground car parks and dedicated pedestrian bridges over South Dowling Street and Anzac Parade,' the video's voiceover says.

The first hint that the public have seen is the new bridge that spans Anzac Parade, named the Tibby Cotter Walkway.

For the crowds of sports fans who avoid it—crossing instead at the traffic lights to get to the Sydney Football Stadium—it goes by other names: the Bridge to Nowhere or Barry's Bridge, in honour of former premier Barry O'Farrell, who was in office when it was built.

The bridge is often mocked as a white elephant, but Background Briefing can reveal that it may be much more than just a waste of money.

For Sally Ann Hunting, one of the trustees of the parkland and the chairperson of the Centennial Parklands Community Consultative Committee, the bridge is just stage one of a bigger plan.

'I think this is Barry’s bridge,' she says. 'Barry wanted to leave a legacy and I think it also part of the SCG's master plan: a way to activate pedestrians from cars from Moore Park West in towards the SCG.

'We thought it was a white elephant but it is actually a Trojan horse ... to a 5,000-seat stadium.'

Mark Speakman, the minister for the environment and assistant minister for planning, says what's built is built.

'My focus is on the future—the future of securing green space at Moore Park,' he says. 'There's no suggestion of any car park on Moore Park land.'

The area around the mooted parkland stadium is already under extreme stress. Dozens of massive Moreton Bay fig trees are coming down to make way for a light rail extension.

Forces are gathering to save Anzac Parade and the surrounding parkland, with high-profile names like Greig Pickhaver—better known as sporting commentator HG Nelson—joining the fray.

Pickhaver says the area is ground zero for many of the pressures affecting this part of inner Sydney.

'It’s become very contested land, because even where we are sitting now could be buried under yet another football stadium,' he says.

'It may not be, if the state government had any sense.'

Hear Mark Davis's full investigation into the plans for Moore Park on Background Briefing at 8:05am on Sunday.

Subscribe to Background Briefing on iTunes, ABC Radio or your favourite podcasting app

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/plan-to-turn-sydneys-green-space-into-stadiums-and-car-parks/7255928

The New South Wales Government has said it will allow a private operator to bid to run a medium-security jail on Sydney's north-western outskirts, while announcing that prisons that fail to cut reoffending rates will be put to competitive tender.

Faced with a dramatic increase in prisoner numbers, the Government says it will put a tender out for the running of John Morony medium-security jail near Windsor.

"Prisons in NSW are thirsting for reform; you only have to pick up the newspapers, you only have to listen to talkback radio," Minister for Corrections David Elliott told reporters on Sunday.

Mr Elliot said another 1,100 beds would progressively be made available in the public system but there needed to be an improved performance across the system.

Prisons that did not slash reoffending rates would also be put to tender, he said.

"This about making sure the taxpayers of NSW get the best opportunity available when it comes to managing a prison."

Mr Elliot said it was not a vote of no confidence in the public sector, but rather "market testing".

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-20/nsw-jails-private-prison-operators-ohn-morony-windsor/7261300

Britain’s public assets are now the subject of a giant boot sale. The great rolling privatisation juggernaut not only includes the £4bn Green Investment Bank, and the bailed-out Lloyds Bank but is now eyeing up assets like Channel 4 and the Met Office. The government hopes that together they will deliver £32bn in revenue this year alone from the sell-off.

Privatisation was originally sold as the route to Mrs Thatcher’s much vaunted ‘popular capitalism’. Yet shares bought by the public through privatisation have mostly been sold immediately. Far from spreading wealth, decades of sell-offs have merely skewed the economy even more heavily in favour of a few private owners helping to fuel Britain’s widening wealth and income gap.

No longer able to claim it will spread popular capitalism – always a myth – the government has a new defence: sales will help pay down the deficit. Yet it makes little sense to use long term capital assets to finance a temporary revenue gap.

Sales offer a one-off windfall – the family silver can only be sold once. They mean the permanent loss of collectively owned public assets, many highly profitable, built up over many decades, and the end of the stream of income delivered over time. Although such sales can reduce the cash debt at a given moment, they aggravate the problem of public indebtedness as the asset base which once helped to balance the debt shrinks away. On this course, Britain will soon be all debt and no assets. The state is the custodian of these assets on behalf of citizens yet seems intent on mindless short-termism that will be paid for over and over again by subsequent generations.

read more: https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/03/create-social-wealth-funds-its-time-to-halt-the-great-public-asset-boot-sale/

The president of the peak industry body, Local Government New South Wales, Keith Rhoades, said the letter was premature and undemocratic.

"The Minister has not even fully read all of the reports from the delegates as yet," he said.

"From a democracy point of view, this is one of the most undemocratic decisions this government has made during this so called consultation on these merger proposals of local councils."

State Opposition Leader Luke Foley said the push to consider job roles in merged councils at this stage pre-empted the process.

"They tell us there's a legitimate, independent process. Of course, it's anything but," he said.

An expression of interest process is underway for council general managers as well as mayors and councillors.

Councillors are asked on their form to sign their name, agreeing to make a commitment to the success of any new council.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-28/mayors-councillors-requested-to-apply-for-merged-council-roles/7279066

The Baird Government's idea here is that all the councillors from a fascist political colour, the right wing Liberals (CONservatives) councillors will of course sign the pledge while the others who refuse will be considered not worthy to be on the new councils... The intent here is to march "dissent" (read Labor and Greens) out of councils and get approval for developments with lightning speed, rather tan considered approach... The Baird's purpose is to destroy your lovely suburbs... in the most undemocratic way.

It’s been a year since Mike Baird won the election, so I crunched the numbers, and it’s shocking.

In just 12 months, his government has approved 398 million tonnes of coal to be mined in NSW. That’s 52 tonnes for every person in our state.

They've done this when the price of coal has fallen dramatically and doesn’t look like recovering. Premier Baird digging us deeper into an economic hole, and taking our best farmland, forests and communities with him.

Let’s turn this around: show your support here.

The world is changing fast. Investment in renewable energy is now double that of coal and gas projects, hitting $276 billion last year.

But NSW is lagging behind. Our state is Australia’s biggest climate polluter and only 10% of our electricity is renewable, compared to South Australia which shines at 36%.

We can go from laggard to leader on renewable energy: take action here.

Unless we join together to change things, Premier Baird will just keep digging. There is 700 million tonnes of new coal currently being assessed by the NSW government. 

Endangered animals like koalas and quolls will soon have their habitat destroyed if major coal mines go ahead. Villages like Wollar are set to be destroyed for a mine expansion to provide coal for dirty electricity. But what if we built renewable energy instead?

Make Mike Baird build renewable energy: join the campaign with the Nature Conservation Council.

We must be a louder, more powerful voice than the coal industry. By joining together to call for a clean, renewable NSW we’ll tell our Premier to put the long term interests of our environment, farmland and water first.

Less than a year ago the NSW Government supported Australia’s largest solar farm being built in Nyngan in the state’s west. We know Premier Baird sees renewables as popular but so far his actions aren’t enough.

We can do this. We have the technology. All we need is for Premier Baird to honour his pledge to lead Australia in renewable energy. Let’s hold him to his word: http://natureorg.nationbuilder.com/renewables

Daisy