Posts tagged ‘Bill Shorten’
Will Bill Shorten step up ’emergency’ climate action or is it just more gas?
Bob Hawke’s death on the eve of the climate election will likely boost Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and the Labor Party success. Labor must not squander the opportunity to address the climate crisis by taking climate emergency action or engage in expanding fossil fuel coal and gas extraction.
At Blacktown today, in the same hall that Gough Whitlam launched Labor’s 1972 campaign, Bill Shorten stated that a Labor government would “take this emergency seriously”. It needs to be not empty words. The time for developing new coal or gas is over. It’s time to Stop Adani. It’s time to go 100 percent renewables by 2030.
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Vale Bob Hawke, Former Prime Minister and MP for Wills, an early champion of climate action

Bob Hawke. Photo by Eva Rinaldi (CC BY-SA 2.0)
There will be many highlighting his role as a union leader and Secretary of the ACTU, as Prime Minister in restructuring the Australian Economy, but he was also important for environmental action through the term of his Prime Ministership. This started with his pre-election commitment to stop the construction of the Franklin Dam, for the Franklin River to flow free.
It also included initial moves in assessing the problem of Australian greenhouse gas emissions and setting targets on climate action.
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Students want to meet Bill Shorten, but his staffers hung up on them
Who could resist talking to these polite kids? Well they phoned Bill Shorten’s office last Friday (Feb 8) while outside (I was there and heard the call), and the staffer hung up on them, then put the office phone line on Messagebank.
Bill Shorten should make a time to listen to the kids and their grievances and demands. That should be an essential part of his duties as an MP, Leader of the Opposition, and Prospective future Prime Minister. As a former Union leader he should know that strikers demands should at the very minimum be listened too, and that should have been an essential part of his former job to represent those demands to employers.
Come on Bill, give these kids a hearing so they can discuss the climate crisis, their future and put their basic demands to you.
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Pressure on Bill Shorten over Adani with Sit-Down protest scheduled
With Adani announcing they are proceeding with building the Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin in Queensland last week, snap protests were called in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and Cairns for Saturday 8th December that attracted thousands. In Melbourne the intersection of Flinders Street and Swanston street was occupied in a sit-down protest for over half an hour.
Stop Adani and climate action groups have called for a sit-down protest at Bill Shorten’s office in Hall street, Moonee Ponds on Wednesday 12 December at 8 AM – 11 AM (Facebook Event)
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