Latest news with #BassStrait
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Labor's no-confidence motion to oust Tasmanian premier Jeremy Rockliff set to succeed
A no-confidence motion in the Tasmanian premier appears likely to succeed on Wednesday. Jeremy Rockliff has been under increasing pressure over his handling of the state's budget, Bass Strait ferry delays, a plan to sell assets and a new stadium. The Labor opposition on Wednesday moved a no-confidence motion in the Liberal premier, after a day earlier threatening to if it could find the numbers. The motion will be debated on Wednesday. The independents Craig Garland and Kristie Johnston and Jacqui Lambie Network MP Andrew Jenner have indicated they will support the motion. The Greens, who have five MPs, voiced their support for the no-confidence motion on Wednesday morning, meaning it has the numbers to pass. 'The deals the premier struck for minority government after the last election have collapsed,' the Labor leader, Dean Winter, told parliament. 'Three independent members of the crossbench have lost confidence in the premier. '(This is) due to his financial mismanagement, his appalling handling of the Spirit of Tasmania project, and his plan to privatise Tasmania's most precious assets.' If a no-confidence motion against Rockliff is successful, convention dictates he resign. In a social media post, Rockliff said a successful no-confidence motion would force Tasmania back to the polls. 'An election just over 12 months since the last one,' he said. 'That's the last thing Tasmania needs. That's the last thing Tasmanians want.' The Liberals, who have been in power since 2014, are governing in minority with just 14 of 35 seats in the lower house. Last week's 2025-26 budget predicted debt would more than double to $10.8bn in four years' time, with deficits each year. The Greens leader, Rosalie Woodruff, said the premier had brought the no-confidence motion on himself. 'Poll after poll have made it abundantly clear that Tasmanians do not, will not, support a new stadium at Macquarie Point in Hobart,' she said. The stadium, which is supported by Labor, is a condition of the Tasmania Devils entering the AFL in 2028.
Daily Mail
14-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Chris Bowen launches a brutal post-election attack on his critics - as he pushes ahead with plan to phase out coal-fired power plants
Chris Bowen has doubled down on his green energy drive, citing Labor's landslide election victory as evidence that voters in the suburbs and the bush support renewables. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy has claimed that a 'silent majority' of Australians are in favour of solar and wind farms, backed up by gas and storage. ' Peter Dutton described the 2025 election as a referendum on Australia's energy choices. Fair enough,' Bowen wrote in an opinion piece published in The Australian newspaper. 'And the results of that referendum are clear: in uncertain times Australians want an affordable plan, backed by the experts.' Bowen cited swings towards Labor in seats where candidates had advocated for offshore wind farms, such as Bass and Braddon in Tasmania, which adjoin the Bass Strait offshore wind zone. He slammed the Coalition's nuclear policy, repeating Labor's scare campaign price tag of $600 billion while insisting the policy was all about 'securing internal political peace at any cost to taxpayers'. 'Dutton paid a particularly high price for his support of Ted O'Brien's nuclear policy: 47 per cent of voters in Dickson said the nuclear policy was their reason for withholding their support in the leader's constituency,' Bowen added. The Smart Energy Council, a Labor party donor, came up with the $600 billion price tag, which was disputed by independent body Frontier Economics, who estimated the the Coalition's plan would cost around $331 billion. Bowen, 52, took aim at what he believes is a fallacy in the argument against renewables: that they are supported by inner-city dwellers and opposed by those in the suburbs and rural communities. 'One of the great myths of the climate change debate in Australia is that inner-city dwellers support strong climate action and the rest of us are lukewarm or hostile,' he wrote. 'In fact, people in the suburbs and regions are living the transition and benefiting from it. 'The top three suburbs in NSW benefiting from our electric vehicle discount aren't in the inner city or North Shore. They are Baulkham Hills, Marsden Park and Kellyville, deep in northwest Sydney. 'You're more likely to see an EV in Werribee than Toorak.' He added: 'When it comes to solar panels, there are 10 times more solar arrays in Blacktown (in my electorate) than in Bondi (in the seat of Wentworth).' Although Bowen resigned himself to the fact that conservative commentators would still argue about 'how unpopular renewable energy is, at least now there is real-world data to remind us how wrong they are'. He committed to replacing Australia's ageing coal-fired power stations with renewables. The Labor administration has an ambitious target of the national electricity grid being made up of 82 per cent of renewables by 2030. On Tuesday, the new Liberal Leader Sussan Ley would not confirm or deny whether the Coalition would dump its unpopular nuclear policy or its commitment to achieving net-zero by 2050.
ABC News
12-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Northern Tasmanian offshore salmon farming trial set to start, but opponents stand firm
The opponents of salmon farming off northern Tasmania may not have had the numbers of their southern counterparts, but they had equally strong convictions as they gathered on Monday afternoon. Many of the attendees at the Burnie Surf Life Saving Club came wearing bright red T-shirts emblazoned with the logo NO TOXIC SALMON. The group of about 50 was attending a public meeting hosted by Blue Economy, the cooperative research centre behind a trial testing offshore fish farming in Bass Strait. On Monday, Blue Economy began towing equipment for two fish farming pens to Commonwealth waters 12 kilometres north of Burnie. It says the installation of the pens will be completed in July when nets are added prior to the introduction of Atlantic salmon. Kingfish will be introduced to the site in October. Blue Economy is part of the CRC program which supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community. Blue Economy policy director Angela Williamson was at the centre of the meeting to answer the group's questions about several controversies Tasmania's aquaculture industry has faced in recent years. Ms Williamson said the installation was a "significant step forward in sustainable aquaculture research for Commonwealth waters". She said it would be a three-year research project attempting to gather evidence about how fish farms might affect other species in Bass Strait, recreational fishing in the area, and the impact of the marine environment on aquaculture infrastructure. The project has been approved under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Initially, barges will be operating out of the port of Burnie to deploy the infrastructure, which includes a mooring grid to secure the pens in place, and two large, round floating "collars", like those in place elsewhere around the state. Ms Williamson said the company's research was being conducted on behalf of aquaculture companies, governments and other international research organisations. As well as members of the public, representatives from North West Tas for Clean Oceans attended the meeting alongside Bob Brown Foundation campaigner Scott Jordan, Greens candidate for Montgomery Darren Briggs, and Tasmanian independent Braddon MP Craig Garland. In the first hour of the meeting, no attendee spoke in support of the industry or the research project. Mr Garland said he believed the industry had "no social licence" and that residents of the electorate disliked salmon farms and "don't want them here under any circumstances". At the recent federal election, Braddon voters swung heavily to the Labor Party, which was emphatic in its support for the salmon industry. Prior to the election, the Albanese government introduced and passed legislation in part to protect salmon farming jobs on Macquarie Harbour where the endangered Maugean skate was being threatened. Meeting attendees on Monday afternoon referred to issues the industry had experienced in Tasmania in recent months, including the use of antibiotics in the water and the welfare of the fish. Questions were also asked about the transparency of the research results, and whether the public would have access to them, as well as concerns about how much information had been made available prior to the meeting. Ms Williamson vowed to provide the requested information, but was greeted with apparent scepticism from some in attendance. Speaking prior to the meeting, NW Tas for Clean Oceans president Cass Wright said she did not trust the fish farming industry and was staunchly opposed to the research being carried out. Ms Wright said she believed the industry was too environmentally damaging to be allowed to run a trial in Bass Strait. Mr Garland said the community did not support fish farming and therefore any research trial was unnecessary. "Why do we need research when we don't want them here?" he asked. He also said he was concerned about any pens — research or not — being installed in Bass Strait. Ms Williamson, however, said the project was strictly a "research trial site" and that all equipment would be decommissioned at the end of the trial in three years. Any commercial fish farming operation in Bass Strait would then be a question for aquaculture companies and would require further government approval. "There is a lot more work that needs to be done by the federal government on regulatory regimes, and what that would look like," Ms Williamson said. A spokesperson for industry peak body Salmon Tasmania said they backed Blue Economy's trial. "Tasmania's salmon industry encourages innovation, research and development," the spokesperson said in a statement. "The work being done by Blue Economy CRC to test infrastructure 12 kilometres offshore in the notoriously rough and exposed Bass Strait waterway is a testament to Blue Economy CRC and we look forward to monitoring the progress of the research." The spokesperson did not answer questions about whether the industry could or would be likely to move Tasmanian operations further offshore, or whether it believed the community was supportive of Bass Strait research.
ABC News
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
The Black Woman of Gippsland uses a colonial legend to highlight present-day injustice
Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this article contains references to people who have died It's 1839. Three Gunaikurnai people come across a wet lump on the beach. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a body, with face down in the sand, lips blue. The woman is a survivor of a shipwreck, perhaps the Britannia or the Britomart, both ships that were lost in the Bass Strait that year. This story is told in the opening scene of The Black Woman of Gippsland, a new play written and directed by Yorta Yorta/Gunaikurnai theatre-maker Andrea James (Sunshine Super Girl), presented by Melbourne Theatre Company for YIRRAMBOI festival. The Gunaikurnai people give the woman food, water and a possum-skin cloak, and she follows them when they move camp. Eventually, she becomes "kin": "And Auntie makes her a daughter / And Uncle makes her his wife." According to colonial legend, the woman on the beach is the White Woman of Gippsland, who colonial settlers believed was captured by local Gunaikurnai people in the 1840s. The story transfixed Melbourne at the time but had tragic repercussions for Gunaikurnai people that are still felt today. Though never confirmed, the woman's rumoured existence sparked several rescue expeditions. It resulted in the arrest of a Gunaikurnai lore man known as Bungelene, who died along with his wife after being imprisoned without charge for 18 months. "The capture of this woman was pinned on him, and he died in custody. He was one of our first black deaths in custody in this country," James tells ABC Radio National's The Stage Show. The play's protagonist, Jacinta (Chenoa Deemal), is a researcher completing her PhD, a "blakademic" who James says she modelled on women she admires, including Lou Bennett, a senior lecturer in Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, writer Romaine Moreton and artist Fiona Foley. "I've been influenced by so many incredible Aboriginal women scholars … so I knew I wanted this woman to be uber-smart, tussling it out in academia." Through Jacinta, we learn about the legend of the White Woman of Gippsland, the subject of her thesis. In 1840, Angus McMillan, a Scottish-born pastoralist and early coloniser of Gippsland, stumbled upon a group of Gunaikurnai people near Port Albert. "He said that he saw a woman clad in a cloak who kept looking back at him," James says. The group disappeared, leaving behind them a collection of objects typical of what might wash ashore after a shipwreck: clothing, tools, sewing supplies, blankets, bottles and a Bible. In a letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald in December 1840, McMillan — who went on to perpetrate numerous massacres of Gunaikurnai people, including the Warrigal Creek massacre in 1843, where 150 people were shot — suggested the woman was European and "a captive". McMillan also found the body of a two-year-old baby wrapped in a kangaroo skin bag, who he believed was also of European descent. "They assumed that it was this woman's baby. And so, from that, a legend was generated," James says. As rumours of sightings of the woman continued to circulate, the city's power brokers, meeting at the exclusive Melbourne Club (still in existence today), decided to act. "By then, all sorts of letters to the editor are being written about this poor, fluttering pigeon in a nest of vultures," James says. "They raised money to find this damsel in distress … [and] they sent this expedition party out." The rescue party pinned handkerchiefs embroidered with messages in English and Gaelic to trees, in the hope the woman, who was said to be Scottish or Irish, would find them. "There's a family on Gunaikurnai country who has one of these handkerchiefs in their possession," James says. Although the woman was never found, the story made its way into Gunaikurnai culture, too. References to shipwrecks and a white woman appear in traditional songs, which feature in the play. "There's [also] a story about a legend of a woman with long red hair who lived in a cave," James says. In these stories, the Gunaikurnai people don't hold the woman captive; they help her. It shows how the official historical record can mislead, James says. "[The colonisers are] thinking they're seeing one thing, but actually another thing is happening from our point of view. "It's about reading between the lines." Setting the story in the present day was a deliberate choice. "If it was just a purely historical telling, then people would say, 'That happened in 1840 — we've moved on,'" James says. When Jacinta goes off-grid to throw herself into her thesis, she inadvertently triggers a missing-persons case. Her Auntie Rochelle (Ursula Yovich) has to return to the police station where her sister, Jacinta's mother, died in a cell years earlier. "For her to put in a missing-persons report and to find her missing niece, she has to return to the scene of a crime," James says. James wrote the play against a tragic backdrop: the scourge of Aboriginal deaths in custody, including that of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day, who died in a police cell in 2017. At last count, there have been at least 590 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991. As James was writing the play, "these deaths in custody just kept happening", she says. "I couldn't help but feel the irony, the juxtaposition between all of the resources that were poured into this white woman that may never have existed, as opposed to the absolute violations that were happening right now to Aboriginal women. Or, as Jacinta puts it, "They spent all this time and money looking for a white woman … But who are the women who are really missing and dying?" The play also explores the tension between Indigenous and Western understandings of history. Jacinta has reached an impasse in her research; she's read her way through the archives, but "it feels like something is missing". She tries to explain the conflict to her PhD supervisor, who doesn't quite get it. The historical record is "contradictory", she tells him. She wants to yarn with her Elders; he wants her to seek approval from the ethics committee to conduct formal interviews. When he tells her the archives should be her primary source, she responds, "How valuable can they be when my people's voices are absent and the language is offensive and racist?" It's a conflict that still plays out today. Several monuments to McMillan remain in Gippsland, despite efforts by the Gunaikurnai community to have them removed or altered to explain his role in frontier conflict. "That's why it's really important to keep telling these stories because only one side of this story has been told for a very, very long time," James says. The Black Woman of Gippsland is at Southbank Theatre The Sumner, as part of YIRRAMBOI festival, from May 5-31, 2025.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'Botched' Bass Strait ferries suffer new cost blowout
People will be able to sail Bass Strait on a new ferry from the end of 2026, according to a state government which has revealed a further cost blowout to the already-delayed ships. Delivery of the two new larger Spirit of Tasmania vessels has been dubbed one of the greatest infrastructure stuff-ups in Australia's history. One of the two ships has been in Scotland since December because an upgraded port at Devonport in Tasmania hasn't been built. The saga forced Tasmania's deputy premier Michael Ferguson to relinquish his portfolios and prompted resignations at government businesses in charge of the project. The government had previously flagged the new Devonport berth would be ready between October 2026 and February 2027. On Friday, it said construction would be finished by October 2026 and the vessels would be operational for the 2026/27 summer. The price tag has continued to blow out, to $493 million from the most-recent estimate of $375 million. It was originally slated to cost $90 million. The ships, one of which is in Finland undergoing sea trials, were originally meant to get to Tasmania in late 2024. Tourism companies and businesses that prepared for a greater influx of people have criticised the government for delays. "The government is confident it now has the right people and robust project governance, discipline and controls in place," Transport Minister Eric Abetz said. The ship in Scotland will arrive in Hobart in mid-July where it will undergo a final fit-out expected to take two months. TT-Line, which operates the ferries, is considering where to berth the ship in Hobart once it is fully complete. The government tried unsuccessfully to lease the ship during its stay in Scotland.
