@CelloMomOnCars Yes, they are so to say neighbours. And 11k is not a big number, I'd say. But if this seems already to be considered as a great deed - what will happen when enormous numbers of climate refugees will need to resettle? I am thinking about Bangladesh, parts of India etc.
And same time, countries like Australia have politicians who don't care about #ClimateCrisis and still promote fossil fuels instead of doing their utmost to prevent it getting completely out of hand.
Most climate migration (for now) is internal, where people move to higher ground in their own countries, only for nations that have no higher ground, like Tuvalu, that's not an option.
And of course, some politicians use the threat of a stream of immigrant Others to get, or stay in, power.
Lethal heat will make Australia's north 'unliveable'
— Australia's leading news site
Australia's north will be “unliveable” in the coming decades because the heat and humidity will be so intense that it will be deadly for humans
Another day, another unflattering portrait of a public figure, and this time, the Streisand effect is in play too. TIME magazine reports on Australia's wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart, and her attempts to get a painting of her removed from the National Gallery of Australia. The portrait by Vincent Namatjira, an Aboriginal Australian artist, is part of a series in which he uses humor and exaggerated features to portray the rich. “People don’t have to like my paintings, but I hope they take the time to look and think, ‘why has this Aboriginal bloke painted these powerful people? What is he trying to say?’” he said in a statement shared with TIME. The gallery, to which Rinehart is a donor, is not backing down, saying it “welcomes the public having a dialogue on our collection and displays.”
I'm giving my slightly weary legs a rest today from 5km runs -- I'm 70% of the way to the distance and 87.9% of the way to my funding goal -- but I'm still chasing YOUR donations for the #May50K! Every dollar counts, so please consider donating today!
Rinehart demands National Gallery of #Australia remove her portrait
“The mining billionaire Gina Rinehart has demanded the National Gallery of Australia remove her portrait from an exhibition by the award-winning artist Vincent Namatjira.
The image, arguably an unflattering picture of Australia’s richest woman, is one of many unveiled at the Canberra gallery.”
It is established fact that Australian soldiers in Afghanistan committed war crimes. Today, the man whose courageous act of whistleblowing brought these crimes to light has been sentenced to almost 6 years in gaol.
This is a dark day in Australian history. Democracy needs people to stand up when they see wrongdoing being committed by powerful people. We should be thanking and celebrating David McBride, not imprisoning him.
@timhollo The story behind this is wild. It's fucked on so many levels: from the adversarial conditions of his work in the military, to the PR stunt of choosing a single soldier as a scapegoat while the most vile war criminals got medals of honor, to the fact that the journalist he leaked the documents to turned on McBride.
#McBride Was sentenced today. Six years, or two years if he gets out on parole.
McBride was not allowed a lot of his evidence in court, preventing any possibility of him winning the case.
David McBride photocopied over 200 proofs of the #Australian [#Australia ] military committing, and hiding, war crimes in Afghanistan.
After McBride released his proof to the #ABCaustralia the AFP raided the journalists. Jailing journalists is a dangerous precedent that the government has toyed with for decades, but never committed to (see #WitnessK ). Jailing McBride is possibly the most damaging thing to Australian #democracy the government has enacted in decades. It was possible to pardon him, like they did with Witness K.
Fuck the judge that sentenced him, fuck the prosecution, and fuck the government ministers for not speaking out on this, even the ones that couldn't do anything about it.
"It is a stain on Australia’s reputation that some of its soldiers have been accused of war crimes in Afghanistan, and yet the first person convicted in relation to these crimes is a whistleblower not the abusers,”
Daniela Gavshon, Human Rights Watch Australia Director
i am genuinly worried about the changes bill shorten wants to introduce to ndis they are being dressed up as “helping disabled people” and “making the ndis more flexible” but its actually reducing how much money plans have and reducing what we can do with funding, treating ndis as a business. not to mention dehumanizing disabled people by requiring regular checkins to prove you are still disabled enough i mean “assess if you still need supports”
The #Australia government is not a household or a business, they are the monopoly issuer of our #currency.
Any #surplus they achieve is necessarily money they could have spent on things we need, but chose not to. That's bad.
Do we want a government that taxes more money than they spend?
I don't. I want a government that identifies what needs doing, and spends whatever money required to achieve that.
And taxes based on which parties or activities should not have as much money as they extracted from the economy. Not a fiction of taxation "to spend on" something else.
The federal government should not have a "balanced #budget", they don't have any need to "find the money" anywhere, they issue as much #AustralianDollar as they choose to at any time.
That's what a federal spending bill does: The money now exists. It didn't "come from" anywhere. Stop waiting for taxation!
Posting this 👇 again for Australians, as it goes to council in Sydney this week on Weds. Let's get a many signatures as poss 👍🏻
"Sydney councillor Steve Christou has moved to ban childrens' books in Cumberland council libraries talking about same-sex parenting, despite contravening Australian anti-discrimination laws. Christou claims he has widespread support of parents.
Fair point - if you're not using digital payments, you should make the effort to get used to them. Cash is (mostly) going away. (This article also contains a guide to getting started with digital.)
Cash is dead. Why are we still pretending it isn’t?
