Opinion Editorials

Occasionally, the Senators and their staff will write articles, letters and other written pieces for publications around Australia and the world. You can read some of them here.

Macklin Announces Massive Changes To Welfare

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Thursday 26th November 2009, 1:10pm
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Late on Tuesday in Canberra, while the eyes of the nation were focussed on a climate split in the Coalition party room, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin quietly briefed a few selected journalists on controversial plans to roll out welfare quarantining nationwide.

Both the timing and manner of the release were highly suspicious - with the announcement being embargoed to minimise any coverage of negative reaction to the announcement from lawyers, human rights advocates and the Greens.

At what price Gorgon?

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Monday 21st September 2009, 10:54am
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As its name suggests, Gorgon is a monster-sized project. With an export capacity of 15 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually, it will become Australia's biggest-ever resources project, with an estimated $43 billion of investment and more than $140 billion of contracts to supply China, Japan, India, South Korea and North America from Australia's largest known gas reserve.

R&D for landscape futures

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Friday 10th July 2009, 3:04pm
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The recent axing of Land and Water Australia (LWA) and cuts to critical funding programs under the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) cast doubt on the way the Rudd government is managing Australia's natural resources. Together with the slashing of funding for regional natural resource management (NRM) groups and the mishandling of the Caring for our Country program, we have a picture of a federal government that simply does not understand the challenges facing regional Australia.

Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Sunday 14th June 2009, 7:40pm
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As we celebrate World Environment Day this Friday June 5 - the theme of which is ‘UN-ite to stop climate change' - the Liberal and Labor parties continue to argue over what extent greenhouse-intense industries should be protected under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Unfortunately, the Rudd government's current scheme is more like a ‘Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme'.

Job Network decisions show neither rhyme nor reason

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Monday 6th April 2009, 9:40am
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The previous government privatised the Commonwealth Employment Service to create the Job Network - by outsourcing its services to a mixture of community based non-for-profit organisations, Australian based for-profit companies and one or two international for-profit companies. In 2002 a Productivity Commission into the manner in which Job Network services were being outsourced concluded that this was not an efficient way to run a tender process.

False dawn, GM future

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Wednesday 27th August 2008, 10:04am
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The Australian community and state and federal government are being seriously manipulated by the GM industry into rushing unthinkingly into the brave new world of GM food. Despite pumping millions of dollars into research on genetically manipulated crops, government has not properly questioned the industry's claims, looked at the facts or put in place an appropriate regulatory system.

The safety of GM crops and GM foods has not been established. In fact there is considerable scientific evidence of GM health risks. And yet there are inadequate safeguards to ensure that we are not exposed to such risks. In surveys over decades, Australian consumers have repeatedly stated that they do not want to eat GM foods and have called for labelling so that they might avoid GM ingredients. Unfortunately, our GM food labelling laws fall well short of those of the European Union and there is virtually no policing of the laws we do have.

Award modernisation - what’s going on?

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Tuesday 15th July 2008, 12:00am
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Massive upheaval is occurring to Australia's standard employment conditions and minimum wages, with little to no understanding or public attention.

The ‘award modernisation' process currently underway in the AIRC, following a request from the Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard, will impact on all Australian workers ... either directly through loss of conditions or indirectly through lowering the base from which agreements can be made.

While the Rudd Government likes to compare its IR policy with Work Choices (...so it can say things are slightly better than they might have been), a better way of evaluating their policy is to look at the industrial relations system that existed in Australia before the aberration of Work Choices. On this test the Government is failing to provide adequate protection for workers.

Surprisingly, when it comes to stripping awards, this ALP Government is going further than Howard and Reith were able to (before the Coalition had the numbers in the Senate) in reducing award conditions and fundamentally changing the nature of the award system.

The Intervention, One Year On

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Thursday 26th June 2008, 12:00am
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Last Saturday marked the first anniversary of the Northern Territory Intervention, but it is far from something we should be celebrating. It has been a long year for those living with this paternalistic, top down policy; one that will no doubt make future generations ashamed.

This legislation was a knee-jerk reaction that seemed designed purely to gain an election bounce for the Coalition (made even more ludicrous by the recent admission from former Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough that the whole plan was thought up in one 48-hour session), but it is the Rudd Government's decision to stay the course that has been most disappointing. Frankly, we expected better.

A quick scan of the recently released Northern Territory Emergency Response: One Year On report shows a fanciful set of claims boasting dramatic improvements, without the figures to back them up.

Caring for our Country - or is it?

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Tuesday 24th June 2008, 12:00am
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At the end of March, Environment Minister Peter Garrett finally announced the Government's new environment funding package ‘Caring for Our Country'. I say ‘finally' because the funding under the Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) was coming to an end, and they had been dragging their heels so long that nobody had any idea about the future funding of environment and natural resource management projects.

Up to that point, the Government had not announced an overarching vision for environment and natural resource management, and all we had to go on was a small number of ad hoc election commitments.

It was obvious that the announcement, once it was finally made, was a rushed response that hadn't been thought through. The program is not strategic. It is unfocused and is in danger of undoing much of the progress we have made over the last three decades in conservation and natural resource management (NRM). Unfortunately it takes us right back to the bad old days, of disconnected one-off short-term ‘bitsy' projects, and it is clear that the Government is still scrambling to work out what to do.

Where's the Intervention Train Going?

Opinion Editorial | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Friday 2nd May 2008, 12:00am
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I've just been on the road with the Senate Inquiry into the NT Emergency Response Consolidation Bill - the Government's proposed changes to Howard's original legislation.

It has been obvious for a while that there are some serious flaws with the NT Intervention and some alarming unintended consequences of the emergency response - but now it is becoming increasingly so.

It has become particularly apparent what a mistake the new Government made in Opposition, when they unreservedly and enthusiastically signed up to the Intervention without knowing the detail.

Despite a commitment, as part of the national apology to the Stolen Generations, to an evidence-based approach to Indigenous affairs - and assurances that never again would such an injustice be perpetrated on Aboriginal Australians - the Rudd Government has done little to date to moderate or curtail the Intervention juggernaut. Instead, everything still hangs on the promise of a 12 month review, to take place post June this year.