“What?”, my wife exclaimed, “Is this guy Satan1 himself?”. Within 6 months in office, the Abbott-oir has:
- attempted to remote World Heritage protection for a large expanse of Tasmanian forest;
- vowed to reinstate logging in Tasmania on a large scale;
- broken promise to fund Sumatran rhino recovery;
- decided to dump 3 million tonnes of dredging spoil on the Great Barrier Reef;
- scrapped management plans for most of the nation’s representative system of marine protected areas;
- rollbacked protection in national parks, including allowing logging, grazing, fishing and hunting;
- refused to send any Australian delegate to global climate change discussions;
- allowed Western Australia to proceed with a large-scale cull of great white, tiger and bull sharks;
- weakened Australia’s recently passed anti-illegal logging bill;
- nearly achieved legal immunity from any challenges to his decisions on mining projects;
- weakened the processes involved in development proposals by ‘cutting the green tape‘;
- vowed to halt the creation of any more national parks, saying that Australia already has too many;
- proposed to ban consumer boycotts of corporations that damage the environment;
- cut $100 million in funding, and axed 500 jobs, in the federal Environment department;
- continued to push for abolishing the carbon price.
Cry? Despair? Laugh? No – fight.
1There is not one jot of religiosity in our house.
