The Greens have consistently stood up for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights and I'm proud of the action we're taken in the Senate on such things as the Stolen Generations, opposing the NT intervention and the roll out of income quarantining, on health services, petrol sniffing, stolen wages and kidney dialysis.

Australians in PNG begin to cast their votes this week as polling for Australian elections has started in Australia Foreign Missions around the world. The PNG Greens Party in support of the Australian Greens has called for Australians in PNG and the Pacific to vote for Australian Greens.

Many people have been asking about the Greens position on reform of the National Electricity Market - the NEM.

While this is not a topic that is of much interest to mainstream media, it is hugely important because the design and regulation of NEM fails to create any incentive to improve energy efficiency - in fact it creates barriers to energy efficiency and peak demand reductions, as well as both large renewable energy generators and small distributed co-generation systems.

This is a problem because electricity prices, which have already jumped significantly in recent years, are expected to rise by up to 42 per cent over the next few years (even before the imposition of carbon pricing). This is because the monopolies that manage the electricity grid are planning to spend more than $40 billion on expanding and augmenting the network.

Rather than spending billions on more generators and expanding the electricity grid to meet increasing demand, what we should be doing is investing in energy efficiency to avoid the need for new generators and grid augmentation in the first place. From the broader economy point of view, this is the much cheaper option.

As TV programs from Masterchef to Food Safari show, we Australians love our food. But many of us, including our governments, are complacent about where it is grown and who produces it.

While people discuss the threat of obesity in the suburbs and in the seat of power, nobody talks about the threat of global food scarcity. No one in Government seems worried about where the world will source its food or the consequences of shortages. Few are concerned about land being bought by overseas interests, about farmers being driven from the land by low farm gate prices and trade rules which discriminate against Australian growers. In fact, the Labor government in its 2010-11 budget cut programmes for natural resource management and land stewardship in the face of climate change and peak oil.

Over five weeks ago the Commission of Inquiry into the Montara Oil Spill handed its report to the Government. We are still waiting for this report to be made public.

Did the Australian Government play a role in bringing down another nation’s tax on mining profits?

Following concerns raised by Mongolian Greens, Bob asked questions to the Minister for Foreign Affairs about what representations had Australia made to Mongolia regarding mining and the taxation of mining? The Minister provided the following answer in Hansard:

“The current Australian Government has made representations to the Mongolian Government that a stable regulatory environment is essential to attract foreign investment and would be beneficial to Mongolia’s economic development. Such representations have been made, for example, during visits to Mongolia by Australia’s non-resident Ambassador and in meetings with Mongolia’s Ambassador to Australia.

In a meeting held on 22 July 2009 between the Hon Stephen Smith MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Mr Damdin Tsogtbaatar, State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Mongolia, Mr Smith said Australia would like to see an investment agreement for the Oyu Tolgoi mine progressed by the Mongolian parliament.”

Why was Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs so interested in this particular mine in being progressed?

The Oyu Tolgoi mine is located in the South Gobi region just north of the Chinese-Mongolian border. It is owned by Rio Tinto, Ivanhoe Mines as well as the Mongolian Government. Prior to proceeding with the development, Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe mines were lobbying intensely to remove the windfall profit tax. The tax had been introduced in 2006 on copper and gold amid a mining boom that saw metals prices hitting record highs.

In August 2009 the Mongolian Government cancelled the windfall profits tax clearing the way for a final investment agreement for the $US3 billion Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project.

The question that remains unanswered is whether this was the outcome that the Foreign Minister had been hoping for when he spoke to the Mongolian Ministry in July, just one month before the tax was cancelled?

The Questions on Notice also revealed that Australia provides aid support for mining in this part of Mongolia.

In 2008 AusAID provided $100,000 to the World Bank to assist development of an Infrastructure Strategy for Southern Mongolia (where the Oyu Tolgoi project is located). Supporting the development of this strategy, a delegation including 11 senior Mongolian Government officials, four private sector officials and three World Bank representatives undertook a study tour to Australia in November 2008, focused on mining infrastructure in Newcastle, the Hunter Valley and Western Australia.  In 2008-09, Australia provided $500,000 to enable the start-up and capacity building of an independent mining sector policy think tank in Mongolia.

Link to an article in The Australian newspaper about this story

It was greatly disappointing to see both the Government and Coalition support the expansion of income management measures in the biggest change to Australia’s system of social security since the Second World War.

In the next month, Kevin Rudd faces a bleak choice - will he backflip on a commitment he made to his favourite global body, the G20 or will he open up a new front in the pitched battle with the mining industry?

The only comfort for the Prime Minister is that the dilemma is over an issue that, while very important in policy terms, has never managed to get much public traction: subsidies to fossil fuels.

In the debate around carbon pricing, both here in Australia and globally, one of the elephants in the room has long been the fact that, currently, the playing field is skewed dramatically in the direction of 'carbon discounting', with a multi-billion dollar array of fuel tax credits, exploration subsidies, fringe benefits tax concessions, accelerated depreciation, research grants and much more.

With forest industry jobs being lost at a great rate and communities clearly suffering, there is little doubt that there will be yet another proposal for a Forest Industry Rescue Package for Tasmania before the federal election. It is vital that, this time, the rescue package truly restructures the industry to create long-term jobs and protect the forests at the same time.

But it worth asking, at this critical stage - how did we reach this parlous state when more than $650 million has been handed out of the pockets of the community to the forestry industry since 1997 on the basis of claims that it would protect jobs?

Were those claims false? Does the industry misunderstand global trends? Was the money wasted? Who decided where it should go and to whom? Who will now take responsibility for the "efficient and effective use of public money"?