We have been discussing the horrific rollback of environmental protections in Australia under Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Now, Abbott’s government and industry allies are pushing for a change in competition laws to ban on campaigns against companies on the grounds that they are selling products that damage the environment.
Parliamentary secretary for agriculture, Richard Colbeck, said that there are votes to ban “secondary boycotts” that have been successful in targeting companies using old growth wood and causing other environmental abuses. Colbeck announced that “I do think there is an appetite in the government for changing these laws.”
The Australian Forest Products Association and other companies have demanded an end to such boycotts so that they cannot be punished for being bad actors in the environment in the view of public interest groups. Such secondary boycotts have targeted over-fishing and logging operations like the “NoHarveyNo” campaign by GetUp! and Markets for Change. Colbeck calls such groups as running “dishonest” that harm these companies. Environmentalists in Tasmania have been fighting to protect their threatened areas — some of the most spectacular and pristine areas in the world.
Colbeck and the Abbott government want to increase the power of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to police general claims made by environmental groups about particular types of products “to ensure that they are truthful”. It is an obviously attack not only on environmental protections but free speech protections. Colbeck wants to ban any “specific business-focused or market-focused campaign” based on assertions that are declared untrue.
The Abbott government has long portrayed corporations as the victims as people object to the lifting of protections from forests and species in Australia. He previously announced a campaign against what he called “the green ideology” and pledged to hand over key positions to industry officials. Grahame Turk, chairman of the National Seafood Industry Alliance, continued this victimization theme and called for “a level playing field to stop these environmental groups promulgating misinformation about seafood industry.”
The level playing field involves using the government to police and threaten free speech and association in protection of corporate interests. It is other worldly to see the series of anti-environmental and anti-free speech measures coming out of Australia — a nation with a long history of protections in both areas. It is a legacy that few people would want to create but it is clearly the legacy that Abbott wants to leave with a country stripped of many of its natural and constitutional grandeurs.
Source: Guardian
More evangelicals are seeing the light about climate change?
Nick Spinelli
Dredd, You are one of maybe 4 or 5 men here who know how to bust balls …
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Burst Nick burst.
You are the other three or four.
Big GuyBig Lie,Environmental extremism actually will eventually cause a backlash here also, as the economy and country are hemmed in with regs.
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Environmental extremism is destroying the environment that will in turn destroy civilization.
Jonestown type punks.
It is the terrorism of Oil-Qaeda and its wannabes.
Environmental extremism actually will eventually cause a backlash here also, as the economy and country are hemmed in with regs. And violent rather than measured protests. What is the name of fish we are so worried about, that we allow Calif. Ag. Lands to dry up? Kids need access to veggies and voters tire here of seemingly endless scenes to prevent use of resources. Maybe Australia does not want to commit flies re fuel of Europe and be dependent on the kindness of others (Blance Dubois foreign policy)!
I think my post got stuck in a filter. Can someone find it?
We can’t even get a solar powered car on the market because it gets squashed by big car corps who know it will drive them out of business. Free market my ass. What we have is a bunch of monopolies stifling competition. How can we NOT buy their products? I can’t ride my bike 9 miles to drop the kids and then take the freeway to work. I’d get run over in 5 minutes.
Mornin boss – hey let’s swap out ALL these computers for solar computers and let’s power the building with windmills. What? That’s not an option because big oil has a monopoly on the energy industry? Go figure! I thought we had laws to prevent monopolies. Oh, everybody is paid off so we’re all screwed. I see.
Poor Australia. They are in the same boat as the US. All the people crying out please please please don’t destroy our beautiful habitat.
Money talks. Corporations destroy and then walk away free to pollute again and again. Worker bees left to pay for the clean up and live in the toxic mess. Corporatists fly away in their jets to the islands and live on the beach far far away, pay no taxes, get off scot free.
If corporations are people they should also be held accountable like people. That will never happen tho since corporations make the laws and politicians are puppets.
Okay I’m ready for the backlash from the corporatists. Bring it on.
What next, mental squirrels flying outta our asses??
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that’s one way to save on toilet paper
Dredd, You are one of maybe 4 or 5 men here who know how to bust balls. You must have had a good old man.
Large chunks of plastic soiling the ocean waters are falling from the sky??? What next, mental squirrels flying outta our asses?? Is this a Chicken Little scientists convention?