Fleeing conflict and war, asylum seekers are risking everything they have for new lives in Australia. On this edition of 101 East, they examine Australia’s predicament and one of the toughest immigration policies in the world.
Australia has announced a shift in its immigration policy to attract more highly skilled workers.
The government says the change will help fill shortages in the healthcare, engineering and mining industries. But the new rules will also impact the foreign student market which earns Australia billions of dollars every year.
Energy giant ExxonMobil has suspended work on a liquefied natural gas plant in Papua New Guinea after four local villagers were killed in a tribal dispute. A report from the Sydney Morning Herald:
The clash between two rival coastal villages near the capital Port Moresby occurred in an area where ExxonMobil is to build a plant to liquefy, store and load gas for shipment overseas.
The incident has forced the shutdown of road building works being undertaken by Curtain Bros, an Australian construction firm, to the planned plant site.
The fight erupted on Saturday afternoon after drunken Borea village youths threw stones at Porebada villagers as they were gardening in the area, half an hour’s drive west from Port Moresby.
Porebada villagers went to Borea village later that day to resolve the dispute, but four of them were shot dead.
PNG’s National newspaper reported the fight was linked to ongoing tensions regarding land ownership and LNG leases.
PNG’s Post Courier newspaper reported the two villages met on Sunday night, and Porebada clansmen vowed to close down the nearby LNG-related activities until the dispute was settled.
A spokesman for ExxonMobil in Port Moresby said a police investigation would provide more information about the “tragic event”.
“The safety and security of our workforce and the communities in which we operate are of the utmost importance and we are monitoring the situation closely,” he said.
“The project has temporarily suspended work in the area out of respect for the victims and their families.”
Last week the Post Courier reported 11 villagers were killed in PNG’s Southern Highlands Province (SHP) in a tribal fight tied to a land dispute over the LNG project.
ExxonMobil emphatically denied any LNG connection, while Oil Search, a partner in the $16 billion LNG project, said only two villagers died in the SHP clash.
Thousands of landowners from a variety of groups are set to profit from the LNG project, which will pump gas starting in 2014 from SHP to the plant site near Port Moresby 600km away, before shipping it to mainly Asian buyers for an estimated 30 years.
Landowners spent weeks last year cutting a deal with the PNG government, but some parties believe they missed out or were excluded from the talks.
The plant which will liquefy and load gas for export is expected to become a major pillar of the country’s economy.
But some people in the region are living in extreme poverty and activists say these large-scale projects will only benefit the rich instead of the poor, local population.
Australia has been one of the beneficiaries of China’s economic growth over the last two years.
Despite cooling off slightly during the global economic crisis, China’s continuing demand for raw materials has been a major boost to the Australian mining industry.
China’s need for commodities such as iron ore is helping mineral-rich Western Australia lead the rest of the country to recovery.
Al Jazeera’s Aella Callan reports from the small coastal town of Geraldton, where plans are under way to build a new deep water port by 2012 to keep up with the demand from China and other emerging economies in Asia.
Few prognosticators predicted the sub-prime collapse, and even fewer economists forecasted that global demand would fall so dramatically in the wake of the financial crisis.
What are the systemic risks, industry dynamics and normative changes affecting global demand today?
The Panelists:
-David Dollar, Economic and Financial Emissary to the People’s Republic of China, US Department of the Treasury; Global Agenda Council on Trade
-Caio Koch-Weser, Vice-Chairman, Deutsche Bank Group, Deutsche Bank, United Kingdom
-Ilian Mihov, Professor of Economics, Novartis Chaired Professor of Management and the Environment, INSEAD, Singapore
-Vincent Van Quickenborne, Minister of Economy and Reform of Belgium
-Wu Ying, General Partner, CTC Capital, People’s Republic of China
Chaired by
Ian A. Goldin, Director, 21st Century School, University of Oxford, United Kingdom; Global Agenda Council on Global Institutional Governance
Australia is the world’s biggest exporter and fourth biggest producer of coal, but its rich mineral wealth has had a serious impact on the environment.
The coal industry has made Australians the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitters per person ahead of the US.
Now the industry, which is the bedrock of the country’s industrial and economic success, says it is under threat as the government strives to introduce measures to reduce carbon emissions in the fight against climate change.
Labour unions have warned that the industry will have to slash production leading to the loss of as many as 25,000 jobs and earns the country $13 billion in exports.
But environmental campaigners say that Australia has a moral responsibilty to change.
Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reports from Newcastle, on Australia’s south east coast, home to the country’s coal industry.
Here’s one view expressed on Online Opinion, Australia’s online journal of social and political debate.
There’s an irony in the rushed construction of a new security fence around the Hazelwood power station, in anticipation of a community protest planned for next weekend.
The government, it seems, is more interested in protecting Hazelwood power station from protestors than protecting our future climate from Hazelwood.
Victoria has been shamed as the least climate-friendly state, running three of Australia’s four dirtiest power stations. And Hazelwood is one of the dirtiest in the developed world, originally scheduled to close this year but in 2005 given a lifeline by the State Government to 2031.
The timing is significant, because it reflects the core climate policy stance of the major parties: hang-on with dirty coal till 2030-35 and pray that by then carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will work. For now, pour money into CCS research and stall on serious emission-reduction strategies.
This is reflected in the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Treasury modelling for the defeated legislation assumes than Australia’s actual emissions don’t drop below the 1990 baseline till 2035, when it hopes CCS will be commercially viable. The “drop” in emissions in the meanwhile is engineered by buying carbon credits at the cheapest price, presumably from Papua New Guinea and Indonesian forest offset schemes which are already showing signs of being scams in the making.
Another indication of the punt on coal is the federal government’s expansion of Australia’s coal export capacity. The two infrastructure projects announced in 2008 will result in destination nation emissions 17 per cent greater than Australia’s total emissions.
If you are going to bet your house on a horse, you would be very foolish not to be assured that it is going to hit the winning post first. But already CCS, badged as “clean coal” technology, is stumbling.
It won’t be ready in time. Recent analysis from a team at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, whose work was influential in the emissions reduction work published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is startling.
Coal’s technological fix will simply be too late.
A second assumption is that, once available, CCS technology will be able to capture all emissions for all existing power stations or that new power stations will be built to use the technology. The increasingly grim observations of global warming demand that we move to a zero-emissions energy system, and no one is promising that CCS will deliver such an outcome.
Recently the UK government admitted that proposals to require existing plants to fit CCS technology would force their closure on cost grounds. Retrofitting current generators isn’t worthwhile, so CCS depends on building a whole new array of coal-fired power stations if and when it works, at which point our carbon budget will already be in planet-threatening deficit. Waiting to see if that is technologically viable at scale, let alone cost competitive in two decades time, defies the principles of sensible risk management.
If you thought driving on the other side of the road was a pain on holiday, spare a thought for the residents of Samoa. They’ve just become the first country to change lanes since the 1970s. Motorists have switched from driving on the right to the left hand side of the road. But why? Sky’s Alistair Bunkall explains.
This fascinating film charts the life of the mutton bird, known also as shearwaters, in the Bass Straits of Tasmania. Focusing on the nesting season, when local islanders traditionally hunt the fledglings for their meat, the film poses questions about the potential future of these birds. As it explores the work of the Fisher Island research centre throughout the early 20th century, the film also offers an important insight into the development of early environmental science and environmental conservation.
Journeyman Pictures is a London-based independent distributor of topical news features, documentaries and footage.
Breaking the Drought follows the dreams, hopes and the harsh realities of drought-stricken outback Australia to find out if the mayor’s measures can really safe Wudinna from extinction.
In the southeast Australian city of Melbourne, hundreds of police swept through 19 houses, arresting four young men in what they say was a plot to blow up a large army base outside Sydney. Officials said the men were Australian citizens of Somali and Lebanese descent with ties to a group linked to al-Qaeda.
In Somalia, pirates have released a German container ship and its crew. The ship was captured 400 miles off the coast of Somalia and the crew was held for ransom. On Monday, the owners of the ship paid the pirates almost $3 million.
Sarjoh Bah, a senior fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the chaos in Somalia, Somali militants abroad and Hillary Clinton’s expected visit with the president of Somalia.
More on the arrests in Melbourne from The Australian:
Four men – all Australian citizens – were arrested this morning as federal and state police, armed with search warrants, swooped on members of the suspected terror cell this morning in the second-largest counter-terrorism operation in the nation’s history.
Those arrested included a 26-year-old Carlton man, a 25-year-old Preston man, a 25-year-old Glenroy man and a man, 22, from Meadow Heights
About 400 police raided homes in the northern Melbourne suburbs of Glenroy, Meadow Heights, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Westmeadows, Preston and Epping. They also raided homes at Carlton in inner Melbourne and Colac in southwestern Victoria.
“Police believe members of a Melbourne-based group have been undertaking planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Australia and allegedly involved in hostilities in Somalia,” a joint police statement said.
The men are expected to be charged with a range of terrorism-related offences.
Authorities believe the group is at an advanced stage of preparing to storm an Australian Army base, using automatic weapons, as punishment for Australia’s military involvement in Muslim countries. It is understood the men plan to kill as many soldiers as possible before they are themselves killed.
Members of the group have been observed carrying out surveillance of Holsworthy Barracks in western Sydney and other suspicious activity around defence bases in Victoria.
Electronic surveillance on the suspects is believed to have picked up discussions about ways to obtain weapons to carry out what would be the worst terror attack on Australian soil.
The cell has been inspired by the Somalia-based terrorist movement al-Shabaab, with two Melbourne men, both Somalis, having travelled to Somalia in recent months to obtain training with the extremist organisation, which is aligned with al-Qa’ida.
One of those men has already returned to Melbourne. The other is still in Somalia.
Al-Shabaab, which is using suicide bombers and jihadist fighters to try to overthrow the Somali government, seeks to impose a pure, hardline form of Islam, and sees the West as its enemy. It has been declared a terrorist organisation by the US and it has close links with al-Qa’ida leaders, including Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, an architect of the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 223 people died.
The investigation of the group, dubbed Operation Neath, involves about 150 members of the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police and ASIO. It was launched in late January.
Search warrants for at least 19 properties across Melbourne have been prepared to allow authorities to obtain more evidence against the group, which is believed to number about 18, with a smaller, hardcore element.
The suspects include Australians of Somali and Lebanese decent, most of whom are labourers employed in Melbourne’s construction industry, or taxi drivers.
It is understood that several members of the group also wanted to travel to Somalia to fight with al-Shabaab, but when travel became difficult, they turned their attention to carrying out a terrorist attack in Australia.
Al-Shabaab is currently searching for jihadist recruits around the world, including in Australia. Authorities fear that Australian Muslims who travel to Somalia to fight for al-Shabaab could return to Australia as sleeper agents for future attacks in this country.