Latest news with #AdamMorton
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
A major decision on a Woodside gas plant's future hinges on WA rock art
Unless something extraordinary happens, Labor's new environment minister, Murray Watt, looks set to extend the life of a huge Woodside gas plant in Western Australia. The decision hinges on the impact of the plant's continued operation on Murujuga rock art. A summary of an 800-page rock art monitoring report, released by the WA government, suggested concerns were overblown. However Adam Morton, Guardian Australia's climate and environment editor, says a deeper reading of the report is ringing alarm bells for some rock art experts
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Santos wins final approval for Barossa gas project as environment advocates condemn ‘climate bomb'
Santos has received federal approval to commence production from its Barossa offshore gas field off the coast of the Northern Territory. The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (Nopsema) decided to accept the environment plan for the project's production operations. It marks the final approval required for the project, clearing the way for the gas giant to extract and pipe the gas to Darwin. The Barossa field is known for its 18% carbon dioxide content, which is a higher concentration than other Australian gas fields. The development is projected to add more than 270m tonnes of heat-trapping CO2 to the atmosphere over its life once the gas is sold and burnt overseas. 'This is Australia's dirtiest gas project and it should never have been given the green light,' said Gavan McFadzean, the Australian Conservation Foundation's climate change and clean energy program manager. Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as an email 'Barossa is a massive climate bomb that will produce more climate pollution than usable gas.' McFadzean said despite repeated requests by ACF, Santos had not properly explained how the project would comply with Australia's safeguard mechanism or provided a 'proper assessment of how the greenhouse gas emissions from Barossa will affect Australia's environment'. 'Barossa remains on track for first gas in the third quarter of 2025 and within cost guidance,' a Santos spokesperson said in a statement provided to Guardian Australia on Tuesday. Kirsty Howey, executive director of the Environment Centre NT, said: 'It is unfathomable that it has been approved in 2025, when the climate science is clear that we can have no new fossil fuel projects if we are to avoid dangerous global warming'. 'This approval, in the middle of an election campaign, just goes to show the failure of climate policy in Australia to ensure the necessary phase-out of fossil fuels,' she said. 'If Barossa was a litmus test for the reformed Safeguard Mechanism, that policy has failed,' she said. The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, said if Labor was reelected at the forthcoming election, the Greens would be 'essential' in the new parliament to 'ensure real action is taken to address the climate crisis'. 'If the Albanese government wanted to, they could have worked with the Greens in this parliament to stop climate bombs like Barossa by putting a climate trigger in our environment laws,' she said. 'Instead, on the eve of an election, Santos has been given the green-light to produce some of the dirtiest gas in Australia.' Guardian Australia sought comment from Labor. Approval of the production plan follows legal challenges to other components of the Barossa project, including unsuccessful proceedings related to submerged cultural heritage that were launched by the Environmental Defenders Office on behalf of three Tiwi Island claimants, over a proposed export pipeline. The federal court ordered the EDO to pay Santos's full legal costs late last year.
The Guardian
17-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Nothing to see here, Press Council says after News Corp tabloids' front-page undisclosed advertorial gassing up fossil fuel
When is an undisclosed advertorial, paid for by the fossil fuel industry and splashed across the front pages of all the Murdoch tabloids, not a breach of press standards? When the Australian Press Council rules there is nothing to see and finds no breach. This week the APC delivered its surprising verdict four months after a series of articles extolling the virtues of gas were published on page one of the Courier-Mail, the Advertiser, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun. While the double-page spread inside the papers disclosed the sponsorship, the front-page articles did not. Those who read the main piece online saw no disclosure at all. Beneath headlines including 'Dark ages' and 'Step on the gas', the articles urged an end to lengthy gas project approval delays to avoid 'summer blackouts' or households 'being plunged into darkness'. 'Households face being plunged into darkness – while paying even more for power – without urgent action on Australia's gas shortage,' a 'special report' on page one said. The self-regulatory body investigated complaints that the front-page articles did not disclose to readers that they pointed to a series of sponsored content articles, paid for by the gas infrastructure business APA Group and the gas companies Tamboran, Santos and Jemena. Guardian Australia's climate and environment editor, Adam Morton, argued at the time that readers were 'sold a lie – that the story was straight news coverage'. News Corp, which is the biggest funder of the council, said the front-page articles were 'normal editorial content which is neither inaccurate nor misleading' and were written 'independently of the sponsors'. The APC found no breach of accuracy or transparency standards. 'The Council accepts on the information before it, the publications' submissions that the front-page articles are editorial content and not undisclosed sponsored content,' the APC said. After the publication of the adjudication, the articles carry a note which tells readers the press council has 'not upheld a complaint about this article'. It's little wonder even News Corp's own journalists mock the council's findings. Guardian Australia is not a member of the Australian Press Council but it has an independent readers' editor that investigates complaints and publishes corrections and clarifications. An episode of Four Corners about the Australian War Memorial's $500m expansion did not breach the ABC's editorial standards on accuracy, impartiality or fair and honest dealing, the ABC ombudsman has found. In Sacrifice, the Gold Walkley award-winning journalist Mark Willacy reported on links between the memorial and the global arms industry and examined conflicts of interest, corporate influence and the memorial's future. Sign up to get Guardian Australia's weekly media diary as a free newsletter Unsurprisingly, the War Memorial didn't like it and shared its complaint with the Daily Telegraph, leading to extensive coverage this week across the News Corp tabloids as well as Sky News Australia, the West Australian and the Daily Mail. The complaint was based on a belief the ABC cut together the Last Post ceremony alongside vision of construction works, giving the false impression that construction work had occurred during the Last Post. ''Cannot help themselves': ABC's Mark Willacy caught out in another doctored footage claim,' was Chris Kenny's contribution on Sky News. The stories linked the complaint to an earlier accusation about the ABC 'editing footage to vilify a military institution', the Daily Mail reported. In that case an independent review found that five additional sounds of gunshots were 'inadvertently but inaccurately' introduced into footage showing a commando firing from a helicopter in the Line of Fire stories, which investigated activities by Australian commandos during a 2012 deployment in Afghanistan. But this time around the ombudsman found no case to answer. Fiona Cameron said in her lengthy report that the episode did not suggest that construction noise from the development site had disrupted a Last Post ceremony. Ramping up the criticism on Wednesday, the Tele ran a story suggesting the ABC should be stripped of the rights to broadcast Anzac Day next week. The former New South Wales veterans minister David Elliott told the Tele the ABC was 'manipulating footage to create a sense of drama using innuendo'. 'In my mind the ABC has now forfeited the right to cover the Anzac Day March' Elliott said. The live broadcast of the Anzac Day dawn service from the Australian War Memorial and live coverage of dawn services, local marches and other key commemorative events in towns and cities around Australia is one of the largest events the ABC broadcasts. 'It is regrettable that News Corporation in its reporting of the Council's complaint has attempted to link this editorial issue with the Anzac Day coverage the ABC provides for Australians each year across our platforms,' an ABC spokesperson said. Sign up to Weekly Beast Amanda Meade's weekly diary on the latest in Australian media, free every Friday after newsletter promotion The Daily Telegraph was quick to pile on the then SBS broadcaster Lucy Zelić in 2018, calling her 'pretentious' and a 'show-off' for accurately pronouncing soccer players' names during the World Cup tournament in Russia. The columnist Claire Harvey, now the editorial director at the Australian, agreed with critics on social media who didn't like Zelić's custom of pronouncing players' names in the same way they would be in their home country, labelling her 'spectacularly silly and flamboyant'. 'Because although we'd all agree it's good manners to pronounce foreign words as carefully as you can, there's a line beyond which you just sound like a show-off,' Harvey wrote. 'And that's what viewers bristle about with Lucy Zelic's on-air persona. It's not about pronunciation. It's about pretension. People feel you're hectoring them.' A lot has changed in seven years. This week Zelić was appointed a regular Daily Telegraph columnist, focusing not on sport but on equality in sport. James Glenday has been on the ABC News Breakfast couch for three months now and says he is accustomed to rising at 3.30am. The former Europe and North America correspondent joined Bridget Brennan as co-host in January and has no complaints about the early mornings or the 15 hours of live television a week. But this week Glenday, Brennan and the meteorologist Nate Byrne had to throw out their usual gruelling schedules and get out of bed at 1.30am because the show was broadcast live from Western Australia. The crew did three outside election broadcasts: in central Perth, Cottesloe beach and York. After the local council announced on Facebook that ABC News Breakfast would be positioned on the main street of York from 4am, some locals turned up at 3.50am to welcome them. 'You get adrenaline from being on the road that helps carry you through the early mornings, especially when you know people who have been watching come down and say hello,' Glenday told Weekly Beast. 'It gives you a bit of extra energy.' Byrne said it was unusual for the weatherman to be on an election tour but since WA is his home state 'I get to be tour guide'. Two more outside election broadcasts are planned, one from western Sydney and one from Queensland. BBC News has dramatically expanded its bureau in Australia, not long after the New York Times quietly withdrew as a major presence after opening with great fanfare in 2017. The BBC bureau has previously concentrated on writing content for the world about Australia rather than news for Australians, focusing on 'down under' stereotypes like crocodile hunting and sharks. This is set to change after the broadcaster hired half a dozen new journalists led by the news editor, Jay Savage. 'This change is aimed to enhance global breaking news content for UK BBC News online audiences, bolster 24-hour news coverage for all audiences globally, and increase BBC News' editorial presence in Australia,' the BBC said. The former Spotlight producer Steve Jackson, whose text messages about securing an interview with Bruce Lehrmann were made public at the defamation trial, has been hired by the Australian as media diarist. The court heard that another Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach had texted Jackson in 2022: 'I've got the yarn. I've just been on the piss with Bruce Lehrmann.' Jackson has been writing for the Daily Mail since his appointment to the $320,000-a-year role as media adviser to the New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb was rescinded in the wake of the reports about his earlier work as a journalist. At Lehrmann's trial last April the court heard that Auerbach had fallen out with Jackson and left Seven after allegedly sustaining a psychiatric injury at the hands of his former friend and former Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn.
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Revealed: nearly 2m hectares of koala habitat bulldozed since 2011 – despite political promises to protect species
Nearly 2m hectares of forests suitable for endangered koalas have been destroyed since the iconic species was declared a threatened species in 2011, according to analysis for Guardian Australia. The scale of habitat destruction in Queensland and New South Wales – states in which the koala is formally recognised as being at risk of extinction – has continued despite political promises it would be protected. Analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation using state and federal government data found 1,964,200 hectares of koala habitat were cleared between 2012 and 2021, the latest year for which there was complete data. The total amount of destroyed forest and bush covered an area larger than greater Sydney, taking in the Blue Mountains, the Illawarra, the southern highlands and the Goulburn and Shoalhaven regions. It is more than 10 times larger than the area the NSW government is assessing for a possible 'great koala national park'. But most of the cleared area – 81% – was in Queensland. About three-quarters of the lost forest is estimated to have been cleared for agriculture, to create cattle pasture and crop fields. The analysis found 13% was removed by the forestry industry and 5% for development of infrastructure, including mining. Just 4% was likely due to natural causes, such as bushfire and drought. Nearly all of the forest destruction occurred on a small scale that did not require consideration under federal environment law. Less than 2% of it was approved by the federal environment minister. Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as an email Campaigners say it shows the national Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – which the Albanese government promised to rewrite in this term before delaying its plans indefinitely – is deeply flawed. Darcie Carruthers, an Australian Conservation Foundation nature campaigner, said: 'It beggars belief that with nearly 2m hectares of potential koala habitat gone in just a decade, the federal government would continue to approve projects that bulldoze koalas' homes. But that's exactly what's happening.' A separate analysis by the foundation found that almost 3,000 hectares of potential koala habitat were approved for clearing in 2024. Carruthers said the outsized contribution of the beef industry towards habitat loss showed 'the food system can do much more for koalas'. 'There are solutions to make sure people, farms, koalas and the forests we all depend on can all thrive,' she said. Gemma Plesman, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the data showed the 'complete failure' of federal environment laws to protect 'Australia's most iconic' endangered species. 'Every year koalas lose more of their home – mostly driven by beef production – and neither of our major parties have been able to stop the destruction,' she said. Koalas in Queensland, NSW and the Australian Capita Territory were formally listed as being vulnerable to extinction in 2012. In 2022 the threat level was raised to endangered after scientists concluded that numbers were likely to have dropped by half over the previous 20 years. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion A more recent national project to better estimate the number of koalas suggested there are between 95,000 and 238,000 in the states where the species is considered endangered and between 129,000 and 286,000 in Victoria and South Australia. The species faces a host of threats in addition to losing its habitat, including the climate crisis and disease. Dr Christine Hosking, a conservation scientist at the University of Queensland who has researched how the climate emergency will shrink the koala's habitat, said the threat was 'playing out now in real time'. 'Areas of New South Wales and Queensland have seen big reductions [in koala numbers] and that's been down to protracted droughts and heatwaves,' she said. 'Koala's can't thermoregulate above about 37C and we now get successive days above that [as well as] days over 40C in a row. They simply can't survive.' Hosking's research shows that as temperatures rise the koala's habitat in Queensland and NSW contracts eastward, pushing them into already developed areas where they face other risks such as vehicles and dog attacks. A University of Sydney study in February on one of the country's few chlamydia-free koala populations – located in south-western Sydney – found urban development had effectively isolated the population, leading to high levels of in-breeding that made the species more susceptible to disease. 'We're losing koalas for complex reasons,' Hosking said. 'Habitat loss is the No 1 threat because they're so limited in what they can eat, but then you have roads, urbanisation, chlamydia and, of course, climate change.' Prof Mathew Crowther, a conservation biologist and koala ecologist at the University of Sydney, said the marsupial's specialised diet – eucalyptus leaves – put it in conflict with humans. Eucalyptus trees that grow on flatter, more fertile soils generally produce leaves higher in nutrients and lower in toxins. But those flat, fertile soils are where humans like to settle and grow food. 'Koalas and people want the same kind of land,' Crowther said. He said national parks tended to be in more rugged country, which was not the koala's preferred habitat. Many live outside national parks on private land. 'We need to make sure there's enough habitat that is linked together, we need to make sure regrowth and plantings are allowed to happen and we have to give incentives for landholders,' he said.
The Guardian
10-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘Every year matters': Queensland's critically endangered ‘bum-breathing' turtle battles the odds
A rare 'bum-breathing' turtle found in a single river system in Queensland has suffered one of its worst breeding seasons on record due to flooding last December. It has prompted volunteers to question how many more 'bad years' the species can survive. A freshwater species that breathes by absorbing oxygen through gill-like structures in its tail, the Mary River turtle is endemic to south-east Queensland. Its population has fallen by more than 80% since the 1960s and its conservation status was upgraded from endangered to critically endangered last year. Volunteers have worked for more than two decades at Tiaro, about 200km north of Brisbane, to save the species. The Mary River typically flows low at the start of summer – about two metres depth. But when Guardian Australia visited in December it had surged above 10 metres after unusually heavy rain. The result was the number of nests on the riverbanks – and the number of hatchlings that survived – was one of the lowest in the conservation program's 24-year history. Seventeen nests, known as clutches, were laid during the season. Usually 30 to 40 are expected during the turtle's breeding months of October, November and December. Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as an email Eggs in nine clutches hatched successfully but eight were lost to flood waters. The head of the conservation effort and Tiaro Landcare project leader, Marilyn Connell, said the Mary River turtle already had 'lots of things going against it, making it difficult to recover'. 'You sort of can't believe it,' she said. 'We felt despondent.' The volunteers made the difficult decision to intervene and move two nests higher up the riverbanks. One of these survived the flood waters. The river eventually peaked at 11.5 metres at Tiaro in December, one of only six times it has been recorded at that height at that time of year in the past 100 years, according to Connell. The Mary River turtle's formal listing of critically endangered means scientists consider it one rung away from extinction. The remaining wild population is estimated to be about 10,000. They face threats from foxes and other nest predators, invasive species and developments that disturb the flow of the river, including dams and weirs. 'Every year matters, that's how we feel,' Connell said. 'You just have to ask: how many of these bad years can a species that has already declined this much deal with?' Community volunteers protect nests and hatchlings on the riverbanks from predators but even after successful breeding seasons the population has not recovered. The turtle is a long-lived species and can bounce back from a poor breeding season. But too few turtles are reaching maturity, which occurs after about 25 to 30 years. The volunteers are now working with researchers from Charles Darwin University to investigate why many juvenile turtles are not surviving to adulthood and what can be done to address this. Results are expected later this year. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion Dr Mariana Campbell, a researcher at the university, said 'obviously there is something else happening in the river', and little would be being done to help the turtle were it not for the Tiaro community. Connell said volunteers were concerned that the climate crisis was compounding the threats facing the species. She said sea temperatures off the southern Queensland coast had been at record levels before the floods. Scientists say this leads to more intense rain as the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere increases. 'You think to yourself, is more of this what we've got to look forward to?' Connell said. She said despite the turtle's critically endangered status, volunteers have had to rely on fundraising drives, selling chocolate turtles and chasing financial support from overseas to continue their conservation work. She was shocked in 2010 when the Landcare group received a conservation grant from the United Arab Emirates. The same fund gave them further grants in 2011 and 2018. After a 2022 flood in Queensland and New South Wales, volunteers also received a $300,000 grant through a state government disaster fund. Connell said this was typical of her experience – that 'you have to have a disaster, or the species has to be on its last legs, to get funds'. 'It is ironic but that's the way conservation works in Australia,' she said. She said while community projects like hers could 'chip away' at environmental work they ultimately needed serious government and philanthropic support. 'We can't be doing it all off our own backs,' she said.
