I couldn’t agree more with Jess’ post:

I love that in Australia voting is both a right and a responsibility. I love that the electoral commission does what it can to help Australians be registered and have their say.

So needless to say, I wasn’t happy when I heard that the Howard Government quietly passed legislation last year to close the electoral roll at 8pm on the day the election is called!

It’s pretty clear that the government is simply trying to prevent first time voters from participating, based on their view that young voters tend to be more liberal.

The background notes on the bill are pretty telling:

According to Senator Abetz, the problem with the current seven day period is that:

During the rush to enrol in the week following the announcement of a general election, incredible pressure is placed on the Australian Electoral Commission’s ability to accurately check and assess the veracity of enrolment claims received.

Sounds half reasonable I guess. But keep reading …

Senator Abetz’s view is not, however, shared by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), which noted, in its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) in 2002:

The AEC is on record repeatedly expressing its concern at suggestions to abolish or shorten the period between the issue of the writs and the close of the rolls. That period clearly serves a useful purpose for many electors, whether to permit them to enrol for the first time (tens of thousands of electors), or to correct their enrolment to their current address so that they can vote in the appropriate electoral contest (hundreds of thousands of electors). The AEC considers it would be a backward step to repeal the provision which guarantees electors this seven day period in which to correct their enrolment.

So what to do?

1. Get over to GetUp and sign their petition.
2. Get over to the AEC and check your details.

Up until now I’ve kept my tongue tied as Howard goes around talking crap about climage change. I’ve been busy, and I guess I was expecting some journalist to actually do their freakin job and hit Howard with a few tough questions. But of course that hasn’t happened.

Howard’s mantra these days seems to be “Australia’s meeting its Kyoto targets and Europe’s not”.

Most recently he was spotted yesterday spouting crap on radio:

SHOCK JOCK:

Prime Minister, speaking of the environment the European Union’s top environmental official has again criticised the US and Australia .. over their policy on carbon dioxide emissions .. Is that a fair call?

PRIME MINITURE:

Well no it’s not a fair cop and can I say in reply to that gentlemen, and I have just got a list here of the Kyoto performance for countries that he represents; Australia is one of the few industrial countries meeting its Kyoto target. … 12 of the 15 EU countries are currently not on track to meet their Kyoto target. Now Australia by contrast, is actually on track to meet the target set for us by the Kyoto agreement.

This is in fact almost true, and at the same time it’s a blatant misrepresentation of the actual issue. Classic Howard.

So according to a recent report several EU states are missing their targets. Several other EU states are on track, and several are well ahead. No mention of that from Howard.

On balance though it looks like the EU might achieve a reduction of 4.6%[1]. This would mean they’ll miss their target by 3.4%. According to the Australian report we’re on track to acheive a planet saving reduction increase of 8%.

So yes it’s true, we are on track to meet our target of an 8% increase. On the other hand the EU is a little off track of its target, but still likely to achieve a 4.6% decrease. Now who’s actually trying harder John, you halfwit?

Still this begs the question, why didn’t we sign Kyoto? According to Howard it’s something about sacrificing our economy to the Europeans and all having to wear rags and eat rats. But .. we’ve achieved our target, and as far as I can tell the economy’s doing fine, so why not sign? It certainly wouldn’t be some sort of dogmatic anti-europe pro-US mentality within the government would it?

The other interesting thing to look at is just how has Australia gone about meeting its target? That is, what bold steps has our government taken to prepare us for the inevitable shift to a reduced carbon economy?

Fortunately that same report (pp 10) from the AGO has a nice breakdown by sectors. This graph shows change in emissions (in millions of tonnes CO₂ equivalent) for each sector, and they’re stacked on each other (click the graph for a bigger version).

If you’re reading it right you should be thinking “what the hell is LULUCF?” Afterall that’s the only significant area of reduction.

LULUCF stands for Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry. And basically the story is all we’ve done is:

• Stopped chopping down trees (-83 Mt CO₂-e) …
• Planted some trees (-21 Mt CO₂-e)
• … er? … (0 Mt ..)

[1] They actually think they’ll get the full 8% reduction, but some of the measures to get there might be on the creative side.