"The world is a better place this morning."

As the sun rose over Australia this Sunday morning, the Long Dark Night of the Soul was ended. "The world is a better place this morning," said the Climate Change Coalition candidate for the electorate of Parkes in western and far western New South Wales, Michael Kiely.

"I'm astounded!" he said on seeing the results on Saturday night. Mr Kiely attracted 660+ votes (with 72% of the vote counted). Nationally - with 72% of the vote counted - the Climate Change Coalition's 7 House of Representatives candidates attracted a total of 7,358 votes (or an average of 1,000 each). When asked about the worse than average performance of his campaign in Parkes, the Candidate pointed to the intense conservatism of the electorate and the high concentration of climate sceptics in the bush. "Just to introduce yourself as from a party with the word 'climate' in its name is to invite derision," he said.

"Don't underestimate our contribution: we made sure climate change was on the agenda for all parties - we made sure the ALP and the Greens stayed on message, for fear of giving us any oxygen. It was almost impossible to get media interest for the CCC. And this is, perversely, a measure of our success."

[Nicki Schmidt worked tirelessly all Election Day, swimming against the Ruddslide Tsunami.]

"I am proud to have contributed to a swing of 15% against the National Party because it has served the people of this electorate so poorly, despite their loyalty," said the Candidate. Thanking his booth workers in Mudgee, Dubbo, Coonabarabran, Moree, Parkes and Gunnedah, he said: "We were swept way by the Ruddslide. It was clear when only around 1 in 10 voters took a How To Vote flyer. They charged into those polling booths and they knew who they were after."

The Climate was the winner last night.

"Australia will now ratify the Protocol. It will no longer give President Bush moral coverage for his immoral actions on Climate Change," he said. "We can get up off our knees and face the world with pride now that the Axis of Evil between Australia and the United States is over."

The Candidate - who spent the first 5 weeks of the 6 week campaign organising the recent Carbon Farming Expo & Conference in Mudgee last week - shot an email off to Peter Garrett as the Government crashed. It said: "Congratulations! Now to work.... I believe we have a solution to gaining the cooperation of farmers to transform agriculture to regenerate the farmland ecology. It is enclosed: Carbon Farming. Change without conflict. When can we make a presentation to you?"

The Candidate with Spicers Creek grazier and carbon farmer Tom Green, who also did a full day on his feet for the cause.



"There are 660 good souls (and more) in the Parkes Electorate who care about climate change. If I could build an ark I would make room for all of them. God bless you."



We helped push the Nats to the brink: our preferences flowed to Labor and the Greens.



Vote for the "Good Looking" Ticket.



The Friday before the election we were in the local press in three separate publications. Blanket coverage! No wonder people were looking at me funny while I was in the supermarket."


This political action vehicle contains quotations from the Coalition, including "Where will the Polar Bears live?" It was parked in a prime spot outside the polling station at Mudgee High School.







Dr Karl is quoted on the "Environment Cab" which is a Mudgee feature.



IN MEMORIAM: JOHN HOWARD'S AUSTRALIA

John Howard set out to transform Australia, to remould our society from what he calls ‘the old order’ to what he describes as ‘the new order’. Unions are part of the old order. In John Howard’s Australia, workers are isolated from the support of their coworkers and left to fend for themselves in negotiations with management.

In John Howard’s Australia, every one can have a job, but they need two jobs because wages are too low to pay the mortgage or tollways

In John Howard’s Australia, every home can have a plasma screen television, but not hospital services worthy of a civilised society.

In John Howard’s Australia, we declare a national emergency and send the Army in to stop the Aboriginals abusing their children, but they don’t find much evidence of it.

In John Howard’s Australia the Prime Minister defends Pauline Hanson’s right to make racist remarks and dark-skinned people from the Middle East are locked away in concentration camps in the middle of the desert for up to 7 years – including children – but no white people. Then we express surprise at the Cronulla riots – “race riots” – the ultimate outcome of John Howard’s ‘dog whistling’. Moslem women are spat upon in the streets.

In John Howard’s Australia, the Minister For Immigration demonises one community (Sudanese), accusing them of being violent, lawless and incapable of living peacefully in a civilised society. He neglects to mention that these legitimate migrants from a war-torn African nation were dumped here without support and left to fend for themselves.

In John Howard’s Australia, neighbours are encouraged to spy on each other and report any suspicious activity to security forces. Our banking and telephone activity records are trawled by secret police for evidence that we are terrorists.

In John Howard’s Australia we ban books that the Attorney General believes are likely to encourage terrorism. He defines terrorism. Anyone critical of the Government’s foreign policy could qualify as a terrorist or one encouraging terrorism.

In John Howard’s Australia, the Prime Minister does publicity for a company set up to build nuclear power plants, despite the fact that the majority of citizens are against nuclear power.

In John Howard’s Australia, young people show no respect for authority, but what example have they had? The Prime Minister introduced to our children the concept of the ‘non-core promise’. He explained the lie of ‘keep interest rates at record lows’ by saying he only told the lie for 2 days. He told some very public lies – like ‘they threw their children overboard’ and “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction”.

In John Howard’s Australia, country people are left without decent mobile phone coverage and third world Internet access, even though the nation owned the biggest telecommunications company in the market. With the compliance of the National Party – the true blue defenders of country peoples’ rights – the Government sold Telstra, using another lie: that country people would not be left behind.

In John Howard’s Australia, government scientists are gagged when their findings about global warming contradict government policy. Reports were rewritten or not released.

In John Howard’s Australia, we can see the countryside disintegrating under the weight of a freak drought, but refuse to call it Climate Change. When we finally admit that it might be Climate Change, we refuse to do anything serious to curtail emissions because the coal miners and energy companies might suffer a reduction in profits.

In John Howard’s Australia, a $35billion tax cut to bribe voters is more important than reducing our greenhouse emissions by 30% by 2030 – which would cost the same amount.

In John Howard’s Australia, everyone is better off, but no one feels better off. Youth suicide is at a record high. Rural males are killing themselves in record numbers. Mothers are murdering their children.

How can there be such despair in our booming economy?

There was something wrong in John Howard’s Australia.

Climate candidate sends out SOS

PRESS RELEASE

MICHAEL KIELY
CANDIDATE PARKES
CLIMATE CHANGE COALITION

Michael Kiely, the Climate Change Coalition candidate for the seat of Parkes in next Saturday’s election, is sending up a flare for help. He has only this week to campaign and needs to recruit polling place helpers.

“I’ve been too busy fighting Climate Change to run a conventional campaign,” says Michael Kiely, organiser of the Carbon Farming Expo & Conference last Friday and Saturday in Mudgee. It attracted close to 400 delegates from every state of Australia and New Zealand. Scientists and ‘carbon farmers’ told the audience that soil can play a dramatic part in the battle to stop rising world temperatures.

“There are 5.5 billion hectares of soil controlled by farmers around the globe. If they were able to sequester an average of one tonne of carbon per hectare, they could soak up the entire annual emissions of the world,” says Mr Kiely.

The Kiely Family have been campaigning for more than 2 years to have farmers rewarded for growing soil carbon. Michael is standing for the Climate Change Coalition to put the issue at the top of the agenda.

“I couldn’t have run the world’s first carbon farming conference to bring the top scientists and farmers together while pushing a political barrow. It would have risked disrupting the conference,” says Mr Kiely.

“As it was, we invited my chief opponent Mark Coulton of the Nationals to address the conference to prove we weren’t a political front. And I did not announce my candidature until the end of the conference. This puts me and the Climate Change Coalition party at a disadvantage. But the conference was a great success.””

The Conference heard of three programs for trading soil carbon credits and two programs for selling “carboncredited” wool and other produce.

The delegates voted unanimously for the Government to provide $10 million for more research in soil carbon and for every farmer to have their soil carbon tests done for free to encourage them to join the ‘carbon farming’ movement and start absorbing more CO2.

The Climate Change Coalition was founded by Patrice Newell who is a candidate for the Senate in NSW.

For more information, call 02 6374 0329

Vote1climate.blogspot.com
www.climatechangecoalition.com.au

Healthcare

Voters of Parkes Electorate: You people amaze me. As our healthcare system heads towards Third World standards in country towns, I say to the voters “You deserve what you get.” In the past 11 years, healthcare services have declined dramatically in Australia. The Liberal Party and the National Party - who are promising to spend up big on healthcare - are the same people who took it away in the first place. Astonishing! What a hide! John Howard must think we have lost our memories. He breaks the Ninth Commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” But we cannot blame John Howard for being a liar. That’s his nature. But you must take responsibility for the situation. You voted for him and the Nationals who have supported him and collaborated in the attack on healthcare in the bush. And you’ll do it again. Madness!

Coal mining and climate change

Voters of Parkes Electorate: The Government and the ALP want to keep digging coal out of the ground and selling it to the Chinese who are building a new coal-fired power station every 5 days and pumping trillions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. The majority of genuine climate scientists in the world – not the handful of right wing crackpots who deny Climate Change is man-made – say CO2 is causing the droughts, floods, cyclones, and other natural disasters. The world is hitting itself on the head with a hammer and complaining about its headache. Get used to it. Australia is like a junkie drug pusher, addicted to the money from coal, knowing it is killing people and destroying lives, but to addled to stop. Who is responsible? You are. You voted for them. You deserve what you get. You must take responsibility for the situation.

Country Roads

Voters of Parkes Electorate: The Government has provided you with the roads you complain about. Narrow, dangerous roads that kill people. Roads that are pummelled everyday by massive trucks, B-Doubles and bigger, that cause millions of dollars damage. Roads that could be made safer and better if we made greater use of rail systems. What could the major parties do with the $34 billion they are using to bribe you to vote for them? You’ll have your pockets stuffed with money and your house stuffed with plasma screen tv sets, but risk death every time you drive on the roads. More kids will die. Who is responsible for this situation? You are. You voted for the Government that has been in control of your roads for 11 years. Stop complaining. You deserve what you get. You must take responsibility for the situation. Use your vote!

Water needs of Parkes electorate

The Cudgegong River flows through our property at Goolma. It is sad to watch it declining and realise that we had been warned about Climate Change in the early 1990s. But I can say there is hope. You can’t predict new ideas and innovations. For instance, “Carbon Farming” methods can capture more rainfall in rootmass of pastures and crops, protecting the soil against increased temperatures and allowing the plants to make better use of the reduced rainfall. Farmers, graziers and others interested can attend the world’s first Carbon Farming Expo & Conference on 16th-17th November, 2007 at AREC in Mudgee. Carbon Farming also captures and stores CO2. With 450 million hectares of agricultural land in Australia and 5 billion in the world, we only need farmers to capture and store half a tonne of CO2/hectare to completely wipe out the CO2 problem. But as farmers capture and hold more water in their soils, there will be less runoff. So we need recycling and reuse facilities in all ‘town water supply’ areas.

Infrastructure is the source of inequality

The provision of infrastructure is the greatest source of inequality in Australia today. Access to basic services should be a citizen’s right. If city people are as concerned about people in the country as they say, they shouldn’t mind funding the following projects:

1. Road transport: A tunnel or freeway through the Blue Mountains to give greater access give a major boost to tourism to the greater west.

2. Rail transport: High speed rail systems will reduce road maintenance costs and increase road safety.

3. Mobile phone coverage: this can be a life or death issue. Access to telephone services should be a fundamental right.

4. Internet access: broadband access should be a birthright. The world does business online, is educated online, meets and connects with important people online, accesses government services online.

5. Health services: We need high quality centres of excellence “hubs” fed by super-high speed air transport to bring the best standards of health care to regional people.

6. Energy: Local generation of energy from renewable sources like windfarms and solar energy installations. Encourage innovations such as algae farms for carbon sequestration and biofuel and fertiliser production.

7. Water: “Carbon Farming” methods will capture more rainfall in rootmass of pastures and crops, so there will be less runoff. So we need recycling and reuse facilities in all ‘town water supply’ areas.

Work Choices is Boss vs Workers all over again

Work Choices proves that the Howard Government are still stuck emotionally and mentally in 1950’s, when there was the old war between the bosses and the workers. When one side won, the other lost. But the world of business in the 21st century is a different planet. But even old Henry Ford could teach John Howard a thing or two about industrial relations. Henry paid his factory workers 10% more than his competitor car makers in Detroit. He saw that his mass-manufactured cars would need a mass market of ordinary workers. And wages were too low to let workers buy his cars . So he forced his competitors to pay more by creating a competitive market for workers.

I believe in the free market for everything: products, services, and labour. I am a small businessperson and employer (a woolgrower) and I know how unfair the system used to feel as a employer. My previous business employed more than 50 people. We always paid top rates, and have done for 20 years. We looked after our employees. But a business cannot afford to pay too much for labour because you become uncompetitive and go broke.

But I am an Australian and I believe in a fair go for all. Employers deserve a fair go and employees deserve a fair go. I believe we need flexibility in employment conditions, but we don’t need to reduce the living standards of employees to sweatshop levels in order to compete. Henry Ford knew the wealth of everyone is important. After all, Australia is called a “Commonwealth”. All who put their shoulder to the wheel should share in the rewards.

This will be the first Climate Change federal election.

Climate Change is not simply an issue. It is THE issue. It endangers our way of life, our very existence as a community.

The people of Parkes electorate have been living with the first Climate Change natural disaster to strike a developed country for close to a decade. Climate Change is strangling our rivers and crushing agriculture.

The Howard Government has blocked action on climate change, to protect their mates in mining and energy. I say this to those who deny Climate Change: If I am wrong, the worst that can happen is a world economic recession. We’ve survived several of those before. But if you are wrong, the worst that can happen is the destruction of civil society and the breakdown of law and order, like New Orleans after Cyclone Katrina. So, are you willing to risk the lives of your children and grandchildren?

I believe all politics is personal first, local second, and national last. At a personal level, we must ask ourselves the Climate Change Question: “How should I live my life?” We must choose.

As a farm family, we are adapting to new practices to make the most of whatever rain falls and protect the soils that sustain us. Every business must choose.

As a community we must choose. Will we take half measures and hope it will blow over? Or will we get serious and make the changes necessary?

Agriculture and Climate Change

I believe farmers have got guts. They stare despair down every day. They get knocked down and they get up again. They take more risks than city-based businesses. They take on the climate, everyday.

Farmers are treated unjustly. The community expects them to work as unpaid environmental officers, but it refuses to pay a decent price for their produce.

They must have the right to make choices about managing their land to be economically sustainable. The real farmer does not want to destroy the natural resource base that they rely on to make a living. If Governments want woody weeds to cover pasture or croplands, the landholder must be compensated. A city-based business that had its profitability severely impacted by government policies would have every television channel championing their cause. Farmers who are working as environmental managers should be rewarded with stewardship payments.

I believe government scientists and advisers should live and work on a working property (or have done so) to understand the reality of farming. Research based on unrealistic methodologies creates bad science and leads to bad conclusions and bad decisions. The science of climate change is about to change the way every primary producer can manage their property. If that science is based on unrealistic methodologies, rural communities will be dealt another blow. The science of methane emissions is a good example.

I believe that land managers deserve the right to trade carbon credits based on the soil carbon they can grow with changed land management. The science of soil carbon has been misinterpreted and misused, to the farmers’ disadvantage. We want a fair go.

Climate Change and National Security

Anyone who understood the dangers ahead from Climate Change would despair that any of our political leaders can prepare the nation for the shocks we can expect. And what are they?

Recently Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty singled out climate change as the top security issue of the century. "We could see a catastrophic decline in the availability of fresh water. Crops could fail, disease could be rampant, and flooding might be so frequent that people en masse would be on the move. Even if only some and not all of this occurs, climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century. It's not difficult to see the policing implications that might arise in the not-too-distant future."

How does a nation of 18million withstand invasion by millions of people trying to survive? Climate Change is about National Security. We must prepare for it as we would prepare for war.

My urgent priorities as Member For Parkes would be:

1. Audit all services for disaster response capability in unprecedented extreme weather events. How do we respond to a disaster like the Newcastle floods if it was multiplied across the state or accompanied by several other disasters in other locations? Do we have the emergency services infrastructure we will need in the new era of Climate Change?

2. Prepare local communities for weather events that cause loss of access to essential services. Will people who think food comes out of a supermarket be able to provide for themselves if we have a breakdown of transportation and distribution systems after a natural disaster like Cyclone Katrina?

3. Encourage local production and distribution of energy and food products. Aim for self sufficiency in essential services.

Do you feel like a 2nd class citizen?

The people of the Parkes electorate are treated like second class citizens by both sides of politics. The two major parties assume we are poor relations. The quality of life out here is disintegrating as services shrink. … City people wouldn’t stand for it. But country people put up with it. And they can’t blame anyone but themselves.

There’s an old saying: “People get the politicians they deserve.” That’s because they vote for them. There’s another old saying: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” The majority of people in the bush vote for the same old Party. And so they get what they always got: declining living standards, shrinking services...

Every National Party politician I have met has been a decent, likeable person. I’d vote for them myself. But… “Remember Telstra”. The Nationals voted with the Howard Government to sell off the telephone company that you and I owned… that used to give country people subsidised services. Black Jack McEwen would never have stood for it. He had guts. Don’t vote for the politicians who took Telstra away. Shock them. You get no respect when you let them roll over you.

The Climate Change Coalition is not a city-based party. It was founded by people like you, who live in regional Australia. Our founder Patrice Newell and I are both primary producers.

Some new thinking on water

How about some new thinking on water? Fact One: We haven’t lost any water on Earth. It can’t escape. We’ve got the same amount in the world today as we did in the good old days. It’s just moved spomewhere else. So we’ve got the option of moving to where there is a lot of it, or paying billions to bring it to us. Fact Two: If water was money, we would have thousands of experts studying it and whole television shows devoted to it. Well, water is more precious than money. Government still thinks money is more important. Fact Three: We have enough water to do the things we want. We just don’t use it well. For instance, we flush our toilets and water our plants with fresh, sweet drinking water. Fact Four: We also have enough water for agriculture, if we change our ways. Peter Andrews discovered the secret: slow the water down in the landscape and give it time to do its work with plants. Carbon Farmers also slow the water down by giving the rain some rootmass to soak into out in the paddock instead of presenting it with bare earth, so that it runs off rapidly, carrying the soil with it. Fact Five: A farm that captures and uses water can create a ‘microclimate’ that is cooler and attract more rainfall. Fact Six: A prize of $500m should be offered for the inventor who solves our water problems. Read more: vote1climate@blogspot.com

Candidate says he won’t work hard for Parkes

Michael Kiely, the Climate Change Coalition candidate for the seat says he won’t “work hard” for the Electorate.

“John Anderson said he ‘worked hard’ for the Electorate. John Cobb says he is ‘working hard’. MPs say they work hard. But what does it get the voters?”

“Dudded on Telstra, on broadband Internet connection, on the single wheat desk, on rural health services. If that’s ‘working hard’, then I intend to be a bludger. I don’t think the electorate could survive another term of ‘hard work,’” he says.

Mr Kiely says our political system turns voters into passive consumers. “All we do is vote once very three years and we have the services of a person who will ‘work hard’ for us. We outsource our political responsibilities and that’s why they get away with things like the Telstra.”

Mr Kiely is involved in climate change planning for agriculture through the Carbon Coalition. He is not getting around the electorate yet is because he is on the team organising the world’s first Carbon Farming Expo & Conference on 16th-17th November in Mudgee.

“It is a grassroots movement, started by scientists and farmers in the central west. We are aiming for 500 attendees and have attracted sponsorship from big names like the NAB, Landmark, Country Energy and Holistic Management International. It’s about adjusting to climate change and slowing it down,” he says.

“I see my job as helping people help themselves.”

……..

More information, 6374 0329

Vote1climate.blogspot.com
www.carbonfarming.net.au

“Slash herd and flock numbers” says AGO

Dynamite Greenhouse Report Delayed For Election?

“Slash herd and flock numbers” says AGO

“What?” says The National Party.

The Australian Greenhouse Office is delaying the release of a report that recommends Australian graziers slash flock and herd numbers to reduce methane emissions.

“While we haven’t seen the document – which was due out a month ago and is apparently ‘delayed at the printer’ – we know the position of the scientists leading the methane team,” says Climate Change Coalition candidate for Parkes, Michael Kiely. “The document will say, first and foremost, we must run fewer animals.” (See Dr Richard Eckland reference below)

“Let’s hear what the National Party has got to say about that.”

“I’d like to know if the economics of these recommendations been analysed.” (See reference below)

The IPCC (the International Panel on Climate Change) has re-configured agriculture’s contribution to global warming to include its ‘transport footprint’. This is a departure from the Kyoto Protocol principles and will have the effect in Australia of enabling extremists to claim that agriculture emits more GHG than the stationery energy industry.

“This policy is insane. It could destroy the regenerative agriculture movement and lead to a decline of native grasslands. It would certainly increase soil degradation and desertification,” says Mr Kiely. “The only way to meet the Methane threat and retain stock numbers lies in SOIL CARBON volumes. This can offset the new high levels of CH4 and retain animal impact.”

Many techniques for capturing and storing soil carbon will be on show at the world’s first Carbon Farming Expo & Conference will be held in Mudgee on 16th-17th November, 2007 – a week before the election.

Scientists have found that native perennial pastures, properly managed, can sequester as much carbon per hectare as plantation forests and native vegetation.

Australia’s sustainable farmers are getting the most rapid C increases using combinations of grazing management, pasture cropping and biological farming. “But the dominant paradigm - that Australian soils are too old and depleted to retain soil C (though no credible data supports this conclusion) -- remains the official position,” says Mr Kiely.

And the madness piles on madness: reducing herds will cause LESS carbon to be stored in the soil!

“The Climate Change Coalition seeks to rally the grazing management community to challenge the "stock is bad, de-stock is good” argument. We recommend Council of Crisis involving HM, RCS, the CMAs and prominent practitioners to educate the AGO in the immense potential of agricultural sequestration. Good grazing management should be central to its BEST PRACTICE regime.

“I am standing in the seat of Parkes for the Climate Change Coalition to alert the electorate to the threats to regenerative agriculture and the soil carbon opportunity to radically transform rural landscapes.”








REFERENCES
http://www.greenhouse.unimelb.edu.au/

http://www.greenhouse.unimelb.edu.au/BMPsSummary.pdf

GIA Summary May 2006 1
Reducing uncertainty and best management practices for minimising
greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture
A summary of the research currently being conducted by the Greenhouse in Agriculture
program, under the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting.
(Adapted from a paper by Dr Richard Eckard, Program Manager Greenhouse in Agriculture.
CRC for Greenhouse Accounting, The University of Melbourne and Victorian Dept Primary
Industries. Presented at ABARE National OUTLOOK Conference 2006.)

Animal numbers
An obvious management practice would be to run fewer animals, but to manage each animal to be more productive. By improving genetic and nutritional management, production can be maintained from a smaller herd. Associated with producing more per head on pasture -based systems is an increase in the emission/head, but this is more than compensated for by less animals. ….

• Animal stocking rate - The higher the stocking rate the higher the volume of
nitrogen deposited in dung and urine per unit area. Dung and especially urine are
very inefficiently recycled in the soil plant system, with up to 60% of the nitrogen in a
urine patch being lost to the environment. Higher stocking rate systems demand a
higher nitrogen input regime (either fertiliser or imported feed) and thus result in a
higher nitrogen content excreted in urine. A urine patch from dairy cow commonly
contains between 800 and 1400 kg N/ha effective application rate with the patch. A
higher stocking rate also leads to greater pugging (hoof compaction) of the soil;
pugged soils tend to be more anaerobic due to hoof compaction leading to higher
nitrous oxide losses.

…….


These options will all need to be economically assessed prior to being
communicated to the agricultural community to ensure a positive driver for adoption.
The adoption of greenhouse specific management practice is not likely to be a high priority for the farming community, and there are currently no policy drivers or market incentives for adoption of these practices. Researchers and policy makers would therefore be unwise to publish greenhouse -specific best management practice manuals, but should rather aim to seamlessly integrate greenhouse best practice into existing industry adoption pathways and mechanisms. This also ensures that these greenhouse best management practices are consistent with other industry best management practices, thus improving the adoption and the opportunity for a win-win outcome; this is the approach taken by the Greenhouse in Agriculture program team.

This is John Howard's Autralia

John Howard set out to transform Australia, to remould our society from what he calls ‘the old order’ to what he describes as ‘the new order’. Unions are part of the old order. In John Howard’s Australia, workers are isolated from the support of their coworkers and left to fend for themselves in negotiations with management.

In John Howard’s Australia, every one can have a job, but they need two jobs because wages are too low to pay the mortgage or tollways

In John Howard’s Australia, every home can have a plasma screen television, but not hospital services worthy of a civilised society.

In John Howard’s Australia, we declare a national emergency and send the Army in to stop the Aboriginals abusing their children, but they don’t find much evidence of it.

In John Howard’s Australia the Prime Minister defends Pauline Hanson’s right to make racist remarks and dark-skinned people from the Middle East are locked away in concentration camps in the middle of the desert for up to 7 years – including children – but no white people. Then we express surprise at the Cronulla riots – “race riots” – the ultimate outcome of John Howard’s ‘dog whistling’. Moslem women are spat upon in the streets.

In John Howard’s Australia, the Minister For Immigration demonises one community (Sudanese), accusing them of being violent, lawless and incapable of living peacefully in a civilised society. He neglects to mention that these legitimate migrants from a war-torn African nation were dumped here without support and left to fend for themselves.

In John Howard’s Australia, neighbours are encouraged to spy on each other and report any suspicious activity to security forces. Our banking and telephone activity records are trawled by secret police for evidence that we are terrorists.

In John Howard’s Australia we ban books that the Attorney General believes are likely to encourage terrorism. He defines terrorism. Anyone critical of the Government’s foreign policy could qualify as a terrorist or one encouraging terrorism.

In John Howard’s Australia, the Prime Minister does publicity for a company set up to build nuclear power plants, despite the fact that the majority of citizens are against nuclear power.

In John Howard’s Australia, young people show no respect for authority, but what example have they had? The Prime Minister introduced to our children the concept of the ‘non-core promise’. He explained the lie of ‘keep interest rates at record lows’ by saying he only told the lie for 2 days. He told some very public lies – like ‘they threw their children overboard’ and “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction”.

In John Howard’s Australia, country people are left without decent mobile phone coverage and third world Internet access, even though the nation owned the biggest telecommunications company in the market. With the compliance of the National Party – the true blue defenders of country peoples’ rights – the Government sold Telstra, using another lie: that country people would not be left behind.

In John Howard’s Australia, government scientists are gagged when their findings about global warming contradict government policy. Reports were rewritten or not released.

In John Howard’s Australia, we can see the countryside disintegrating under the weight of a freak drought, but refuse to call it Climate Change. When we finally admit that it might be Climate Change, we refuse to do anything serious to curtail emissions because the coal miners and energy companies might suffer a reduction in profits.

In John Howard’s Australia, a $35billion tax cut to bribe voters is more important than reducing our greenhouse emissions by 30% by 2030 – which would cost the same amount.

In John Howard’s Australia, everyone is better off, but no one feels better off. Youth suicide is at a record high. Rural males are killing themselves in record numbers. Mothers are murdering their children.

How can there be such despair in our booming economy?

There is something wrong in John Howard’s Australia.

What is it?

Vote 1 Climate

Climate Change Coalition
Candidate for Parkes
Michael Kiely
believes….

The people of the Parkes electorate are treated like second class citizens by both sides of politics.

The two major parties assume we are poor relations. The quality of life out here is disintegrating as services shrink. … City people wouldn’t stand for it. But country people put up with it. And they can’t blame anyone but themselves.

There’s an old saying: “People get the politicians they deserve.” That’s because they vote for them. There’s another old saying: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”

The majority of people in the bush vote for the same old Party. And so they get what they deserve… what they always got: declining living standards, shrinking services, low prices for the produce they grow.

Every National Party politician I have met has been a decent, likeable person. They are all good people. I’d vote for them myself. But… For anyone planning to vote for the same old Party, I have a two words: “Remember Telstra”. The Nationals voted with the Howard Government to sell off the telephone company that you and I owned… that used to give country people subsidised services. It’s now owned by wealthy people who live, in the main, comfortable lives in cities.

Black Jack McEwen would never have stood for it. But the heart of the old bastard does not beat in the chests of his descendants. McEwen would have threatened to break the Coalition on the spot over Telstra. He had guts.

I believe farmers have got guts. They stare despair down every day. They get knocked down and they get up again, and again. They take more risks than city-based businesses. They take on the climate, everyday. No backstops. No safety net. God. How this country needs their spirit. Man, woman, and child.

They must have the right to make choices about managing their land to be economically sustainable. The real farmer does not want to destroy the natural base that they rely on to make a living. If Governments want woody weeds to cover pasture or croplands, the landholder must be compensated. Farmers who are working as environmental managers should be rewarded with stewardship payments.

I believe government scientists and advisers should live and work on a working property (or have done so) because the reality of farm ecologies and economies must become second nature to them. Research based on unrealistic methodologies creates bad science and bad science leads to bad conclusions and bad decisions.

The science of climate change is about to change the way every primary producer can manage their property. If that science is based on unrealistic methodologies, rural communities will be dealt another blow. The science of methane emissions appears dangerously unrealistic.

I believe landholders deserve the right to have the research explained to them, so they can understand how the findings were made. Science is not religion. Every good scientist I know wants people to understand what they do.

I believe that land managers deserve the right to trade carbon credits based on the soil carbon they can grow with changed land management. The science of soil carbon has been misinterpreted and misused, to the farmers’ disadvantage. We want a fair go.

I believe we must bring the city and the country closer together. People should know where their food is coming from and where the fibre for their clothing is grown. Bring city people to the country and let them see for themselves the realities of life. They want to help; they feel bad about the way we are treated.

We need new ways to selling our produce that give the farmer a fair return. We need new structures and new leadership with new ideas. The leadership of my industry, the wool industry, is like the Howard Government. Dead, but it won’t lie down.

We’ve only got ourselves to blame for this. Only we can change the game and earn some respect. We have got to remember Black Jack McEwen. Don’t stand for it.

Don’t vote for the politicians who took Telstra away. Shock them. You get no respect when you let them roll over you, time and again.

Finally, I have a message for the other parties and candidates standing in this historic election – the first Climate Change federal election. The message is this:

“It’s the Climate, stupid.”

From all sides we have hand-wringing, half-baked ideas, grasping at straws, hoping it will go away. Well it is here to stay. It’s not simply an issue. It is THE issue.

It flooded Newcastle and smashed Lismore and belted Orange. Who’s next?

Climate Change is strangling our rivers and crushing agriculture. The people of Parkes electorate have been living with the first Climate Change natural disaster to strike a developed country for close to a decade.

The rest of the world is watching us. How have we acted so far? Like a bunch of chooks without heads. Squabbling about minor details and even absurdly denying it exists. We lost precious time. Kyoto was not perfect, but it was the best chance we had to protect the future for our children and grandchildren.

The Howard Government has blocked attempts to head off the worst of climate change, simply to please their mates in mining and energy. Read former Liberal staffer Guy Pearse’s book High & Dry. Go to the ABCTV website and read the transcript of the 4 Corners program “Dirty Politics”. Read the testimony of CSIRO and NASA scientists who were gagged. Read how President Bush’s oil industry connections rewrote scientific reports to play down the threat. Watch the Canadian documentary “The Denial Machine”. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

I say this to those who deny Climate Change: If I am wrong, the worst that can happen is a world economic recession. We’ve survived several of those before. But if you are wrong, the worst that can happen is the destruction of civil society and the breakdown of law and order, like New Orleans after Cyclone Katrina. So, are you willing to risk the lives of my children and grandchildren?

What must we do about Climate Change? I believe all politics is personal first, local second, and national last. At a personal level, we must ask ourselves the Climate Change Question: “How should I live my life?” We must choose. Freely.

As a farm family, we are adapting to new practices to make the most of whatever rain falls and protect the soils that sustain us. Every business must choose. Freely.

As a community we must choose. Will we take half measures and hope it will blow over? Or will we get serious and make the changes necessary?

Think of this: A leaked Pentagon Report back in 2000 posed the question: would the US armed forces fire on swarming refugees arriving on Australia’s shores to the north on a flotilla of Tampas and fishing boats, after their low-lying countries had been engulfed by rising sea levels. (Australia would appeal for assistance under the ANZUS treaty.) More recently, the Commission for Federal Police Mick Kelty said Climate Change is the biggest threat to national security – for exactly the same reason. Guns won’t stop this tsunami of humanity.

I believe Climate Change is like War. Ask our WWII diggers and their spouses. Wartime brings sharp changes. No one likes change. But when Charles Darwin said only the fittest survive, he meant only those who could adapt to changing situations can make it through.

Australians are the most adaptable people in the world. We are inventors and innovators. “Stringy bark and rawhide” technology “will be the saviour of Australia”. We can lead the world… or we can hide behind a rock. I stand with those who believe that it’s never too late. We can change the future with our bare hands.

I am offering the voters of Parkes the opportunity to send a message to whoever forms Government after November 24th:

“It’s the Climate, Stupid.”

Vote 1 Climate Change Coalition in both Houses.

Do it for the children.

Visit vote1climate.blogspot.com

Save Our Soils, Save the Family Farm, Save the Planet

Australia’s soil crisis undermines our national security.

Hello, I am Michael Kiely, Climate Change Coalition candidate for Parkes

AND HERE IS A SUMMARY FOR THE TIME POOR:

•Breakthrough strategy for agriculture crisis
•Australian soils robbed of organic carbon for 200 years by ‘strip mining’ land management
•Lost 50% topsoil and 80% soil organic carbon in 200 years
•Soil carbon critical for growing pastures and crops; holding water in soil; preventing salt infestation; resisting drought.
•Composting can restore agricultural soils
•12 million tonnes city garden waste, food scraps go to landfill sites each year
•Should be going onto agricultural soils
•Cost of transport is the barrier.
•Solution: empty coal and wheat rail trucks returning from terminals
•National Crisis Partnership: composters, rail transport authorities, coal miners, wheat industry.

…….

The catastrophe facing Australia’s soils should be declared a national emergency. Our soils are the source of our food and clothing. Their degradation is a national security issue. Some people seriously argue that Australia’s natural environment should not be subject to the strain of agriculture. Hand it back to the kangaroos. But where will our food come from? Overseas?

Two words: “Food security”. You cannot let foreign countries decide if you will be fed.

Soil degradation and desertification has led to the fall of great civilizations like the Incas and the Egyptians. A sustainable society is based on sustainable agriculture. But today Australian agriculture is not sustainable.

Since the first plough turned Australian soil, we have lost 50% of our topsoil. The half we have left has lost 80% of its nutrients: organic matter, like humus, has been strip-mined from our soils by generations of Australian farmers following government advice.

The more soil organic matter we lose, the faster erosion eats into our greatest national asset. Loss of soil fertility by ‘strip mining’ agriculture leads to the breakdown of soil structure,. Poor soil cannot hold or use water effectively. It lacks essential minerals. It produces sickly plants which in turn produce sickly animals. And we eat those plants and animals. If soil biology is right, grasses, crops and animals are healthy.

The active constitutent of soil organic matter is carbon (captured by the plants during photosynthesis and stored down near the roots). In Australia, approximately 75% of soils now contain less than 1% organic carbon. And 80 % of Australian soils are estimated to have lost up to 50 % of the total soil organic carbon in the top 20 cm of the soil profile (Australian Greenhouse Office, 2000). Globally, grassland and forest soils tend to lose 20 to 50 % of the original SOC content after 40-50 years of land use change.. In Australia, the loss of carbon varied from 10 to 60 % over 10-80 years of cultivation (Dalal and Chan,
2001).

Even with the most sophisticated modern chemical fertilizers, crop yields continue to fall. Land that was once grazed in central Australia is now abandoned. Land that once grew hard wheat now grows only oats for stock feed.

While this is going on in the country, in the cities of Australia around 12 million tonnes of compostable organic matter – garden waste, food scraps – are going into landfill sites each year – at great expense. Once there it leaches methane as it decomposes. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 23 times more powerful than CO2. At the same time trillions of litres of human wastes are being pumped into our oceans. All valuable compost.

Our soils are staggering. Our landfill sites are overflowing. Our oceans are being poisoned with sewerage. Will someone see the connection? The Federal Government should declare a national emergency and immediately ban all compostable matetrials going to landfill, as the British Government is doing gradually. Then the Australian composting industry should be engaged to produce soil-renovating compost.

The major problem has always been the cost of getting the compost to the farm. Well the cost of not getting it there is far higher. Doesn’t the State Government own a rail system? Surely it could be dragooned, as the armed services have been in other national emergencies. What about all those coal trains carrying coal from country locations to the coal loaders. Don’t they go back to the mine empty?

Our soils need organic matter so they can produce healthier plants and animals. So that they can capture more CO2 and store it as soil carbon. So they can be restored to their former health. This is a national emergency, Prime Minister. And there is a solution staring you in the face.

Michael Kiely can be contacted via Michael@carboncoalition.com.au



A FEW FACTS

• “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself”, President Franklin D. Roosevelt

• “We stand, in most places on earth, only six inches from desolation, for that is the thickness of the topsoil layer upon which the entire life of the planet depends” (Sampson 1981).

• Loss of topsoil has been a major factor in the fall of civilizations. You end up with a country like Iraq, formerly Mesopotamia, where 75% of the farm land is a salty desert.

• Iowa has some of the best topsoil in the world. In the past century, half of it’s been lost, from an average of 18 to 10 inches deep.

• Productivity drops off sharply when topsoil reaches 6 inches or less, the average crop root zone depth.

• Crop productivity continually declines as topsoil is lost and residues are removed.

• Erosion is happening ten to twenty times faster than the rate topsoil can be formed by natural processes

Why vote for the Climate Change Coalition?

Or “Why am I standing in this election?”

My grandsons will be young men in 20 years’ time. At the current rate of climate change, I fear for their safety. Will there be enough water for them to live here in Australia? Will there be enough food? Will they have jobs or will the economy have been shattered by catastrophe like New Orleans? Will millions of refugees from low lying lands in Asia and the Pacific swamp our fragile continent? Will wars break out over access to water and land?
It all adds up to the big question: Will my family survive Climate Change?

I realise – looking at these two little boys – that I won’t be of much help to them if the wheels really fall off. So I am doing what I can do about it right now, while I can.

That’s why I am standing as a candidate for the Electorate of Parkes in the upcoming Federal Election. I am standing to set a fire inside people like you, to make you feel the danger and the urgency of this threat.




CLIMATE CHANGE IS LIKE WAR!

Climate change is not an environmental issue. It is not even an issue. It is the issue. It is like war – it effects everything we do and hope to do in our lives. Like a war, there will be casualties. The first we are seeing are the farmers relying on our disappearing river systems for their living. And the farmers being dispossessed by woody weed invasion in the far west. Consumers will feel the pinch soon when food prices go up. More towns will be flooded like Newcastle. More bushfires will destroy homes. More electrical storms will cause havoc. Entire species of fish will disappear from the market. New diseases will appear: Ross River Fever is coming south. Cane toads are coming south. There are predictions that old diseases like scarlet fever and diptheria will reappear. And this is only the mild version of Climate Change.

IS CLIMATE CHANGE REAL OR A MYTH?

But how likely is all this? Many scientists (and people who describe themselves as scientists) say Global Warming is a myth. They say that all these extreme weather events – melting ice caps, chronic drought, seasons coming 2 weeks early, massive flooding in Asia, catastrophic bushfires in Greece, coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef – are normal. These people are called “sceptics”. Many people believe them, especially in the bush. Farm journals feature ‘sceptics’ as regular columnists in their pages. Regional radio presents them as experts. I once heard an expert from the University of Newcastle say “Tim Flannery doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Who are the sceptics being sceptical of? The biggest group of scientists ever assembled by the nations of the world – 2500 of them – agree that climate change is real, that it is caused by us, and mainly by burning fossil fuels. They have been appointed by their governments to work together in a United Nations body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These scientists are all experts in climate change, up-to-date and working in their fields, and their scientific papers appear in peer-reviewed journals. They are respected by their scientific colleagues.

The ‘sceptics’ have been discredited by a series of investigations into their activities.(1) The scientists they quote are usually not climate change specialists, many of them are retired, most do not have recently published papers in legitimate, peer-reviewed scientific journals, and few of them are highly regarded by their scientific colleagues. The journals that accept their papers have been established by sceptics to give their fellow sceptics a place to be published. (2)

Sceptics do not debate the science with the climate scientists directly, by publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals or participating in international conferences on climate science. Instead, they focus their attention on the media, the general public, and politicians with the goal of delaying action on climate change

Do many legitimate scientists support the sceptics? One study examined every article on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over a 10-year period. Of the 928 articles on climate change the authors found, not one of them disagreed with the consensus position that climate change is happening or is human-induced.

As they do in the USA, local sceptics have formed a series of inter-linked front organizations to give the appearance that theirs is a grassroots movement. In Australia these groups include the Australian Environment Foundation, the Lavoisier Group, the Carbon Sense Coalition, and the Institute of Public Affairs.

SCEPTICS FUNDED BY BIG EMITTERS

Worldwide, the sceptics front groups have been financed by the big CO2 emitters, notably Exxon Mobil. Their aim is to create doubt about the science of Climate Change. They succeeded: President Bush and PM Howard used the argument “uncertainty about the science” to justify walking away from the Kyoto solution that the rest of the world has chosen to follow. This action sabotaged the global response to climate change and delayed serious action by at least a decade. The ‘confusion’ strategy was developed by an American PR firm employed by Exxon Mobil. (3)

A documentary called The Denial Machine identified several ‘scientists’ who were hired to create uncertainty about the link between tobacco and cancer and the cancer risk with asbestos. The same names are now prominent in the attack on the link between CO2 and global warming.

Finally, sceptics dismiss the 2500 IPCC scientists and their findings, charging them with cooking the books and faking their results because they want to keep their high-paying jobs and climate change is paying the bills. This is an astonishing attack on the integrity of these scientists. Sceptics accuse Al Gore of being only in it for the money. (4)

WHAT IF THE SCEPTICS ARE RIGHT?

What if the 2500 scientists are wrong? What is the worst that can happen if Climate Change is a myth and the sceptics are right? The world will spend a lot of money on a problem that doesn’t exist. Britain’s chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern (and former Governor of the Reserve Bank) estimated that if we move quickly, the cost of action would reduce worldwide GDP 2%-3%. At worst it could spark a worldwide economic collapse like the Great Depression. Horrible.


WHAT IF THE SCEPTICS ARE WRONG?

But what if the sceptics are wrong and we act on their advice and do nothing? What is the worst that can happen? Imagine Sydney slammed by a Hurricane Katrina and reduced to a wasteland like New Orleans. The Newcastle Floods. The Death of the Murray Darling. Climate change will not simply make it hotter or dryer. It can destroy the foundations of civil society. The transport system, the police service, the emergency services system, the health system, the food distribution system, the water supply… things we take for granted can be stripped away in an instant.

For my money, I would rather look a bit silly if climate change suddenly sorts itself out. The odds of it being a threat to our way of life, to world peace, and to the future safety and wellbeing of our children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren are too great – even at 50:50 – for me to sit by and let it happen.

WHAT WILL THE CLIMATE CHANGE COALITION DO FOR YOU?

The Climate Change Coalition has three jobs it wants to do for you if we are elected to Parliament:

1. We will be the voice of urgency, ringing the bell and keeping the issue in the faces of our leaders.

2. We will inspect every piece of legislation and government plan to see where it could be harnessed to the war on climate change.

3. We will act as a resource for others wanting to take part in the waron climate change.

We are all in this together. We each of us have a responsibility to the future, to do what we ca to protect those who are not yet born. They will inherit our legacy. You will decide what that legacy will be by the decisions you make.

Decide. Vote 1 Climate Change Coalition




FOOTNOTES:

(1) “The Denial Machine”, ABC's 4 Corners, (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) 26/2/2007, "The Greenhouse Mafia", ABC 4Corners, 13 February, 2006, Clive Hamilton, “Scorcher”, Black Inc., 2007, Guy Pearce, “High & Dry”, Viking, 2007
(2) These include journals with legitimate-sounding names like Energy & Environment, Climate Change, and World Climate Review (which became World Climate Report) which was funded by the coal industry.
(3) The Royal Academy of Science wrote to Exxon Mobil to formally request that it cease financing these denialist organizations which are undermining public confidence in the scientific community. This is the first time in history the Academy has done such a thing.
(4) One respectable gentleman who heads a sceptics organization called Al a ‘charlatan’, most unbecoming language coming from someone who objected to my revealing on a blogsite that he has a background in the mining industry – a very relevant fact given his climate change views – complaining that it was bad manners.

"The first Climate Change natural disaster in the developed world"

The photos in this post are from our property "Uamby" during the recent drought which started in 2002.

That was also the year Australia refused to ratify Kyoto, refused to take Climate Change seriously and followed the USA out the door. Ironically we were slipping into what has been described by the Independent newspaper in Britain said the drought "what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation."

"The irony of Australia, the Kyoto refusenik, being one of the first nations to be clobbered by climate change, will be lost on no one," wrote another Independent columnist wrote in April.

People in the regions have no reason to thank the Howard government for its record on Climate Change. Farmers in the west and central west are in the frontline of the war on Climate Change. We are the first casualties of this war."

The drought - the long drought, the 1000 Years Drought - that we thought was over has returned. Or it never really left. It beggars belief but there are many in the country who don't believe in Global Warming. (AT least half John Howard's Cabinet - including the PM himself - are climate sceptics. Howard was forced by public opinion to change his political stance.

The Independent reports: "Until a few months ago, Mr Howard and his ministers pooh-poohed the climate-change doomsayers. The Prime Minister refused to meet Al Gore when he visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He was lukewarm about the landmark report by the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which warned that large swaths of Australia's farming land would become unproductive if global temperatures rose by an average of four degrees. Faced with criticism from even conservative sections of the media, Mr Howard realised that he had misread the public mood - grave faux pas in an election year."

Environmentalists point to the increasing frequency and severity of drought-causing El Niño weather patterns, blamed on global warming. They also note Australia's role in poisoning the Earth's atmosphere. Australians are among the world's biggest per-capita energy consumers, and among the top producers of carbon dioxide emissions. Despite that, the country is one of only two industrialised nations - the United States being the other - that have refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The governments argue that to do so would harm their economies.


Columnist Michael McCarthy reports on the performance of the Howard Government's Climate Change hitman, Alexander Downer. "Two years ago at a lunch in the Australian high commission in London, with Sidney Nolan's paintings of the sunburnt country on the wall, I heard the pugnacious Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, explain why his country would not ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
Australia was being asked to screw down its greenhouse gas emissions, he said, while its immediate industrial competitors, such as Indonesia, were not. ... If Australia jacked up taxes on the electricity used by its aluminium plants, say, to cut back on CO2, but Indonesia didn't, the Australian plants would simply become uncompetitive and go bust, and the business would move to Indonesia, where environmental regulation was very much laxer - and just as much carbon was being emitted.Who was that helping?
To be honest, I thought it was a pretty solid argument, given Australia's particular circumstances. But the flaw in it was the implication that these circumstances gave his country a convenient get-out - and with global warming, there are no get-outs. It is a truly worldwide phenomenon, and even if you don't feel you need to act to prevent it, you will be affected just the same. The irony of Australia, the Kyoto refusenik, being one of the first nations to be clobbered by climate change, will be lost on no one. The lesson is that collective action on the climate, from the developing and the industrialised countries together, is the great imperative for the world."



How UN warned Australia and New Zealand

Excerpts from UN's IPCC report on the threat of global warming to Australia and New Zealand:

"As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water security problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in south and east Australia and, in New Zealand, in Northland and eastern regions."

* "Significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur by 2020 in some ecologically rich sites, including the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland's tropics. Other sites at risk include the Kakadu wetlands ... and the alpine areas of both countries."

* "Ongoing coastal development and population growth in areas such as Cairns and south-east Queensland (Australia) and Northland to Bay of Plenty (New Zealand) are projected to exacerbate risks from sea-level rise and increases in the severity and frequency of storms and coastal flooding by 2050."

* "Production from agriculture and forestry by 2030 is projected to decline over much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand, due to increases in droughts and fires."

* "The region has substantial adaptive capacity due to well-developed economies and scientific and technical capabilities, but there are considerable constraints to implementation ... Natural systems have limited adaptive capacity."