The environment emerged as the sleeper issue of Australia's Oct. 9 election yesterday, with Prime Minister John Howard -- once regarded as the nemesis of conservationists -- vigorously courting the green vote.
As the six-week campaign reached the halfway mark, Howard's conservative coalition and the opposition Labor Party engaged in a frantic bidding war of environmental pledges.
Opinion polls put the Green vote at about 6 percent, well above the 2.2 percent swing required to unseat Howard.
Howard this week pledged A$2 billion dollars (US$1.4 billion) to save the country's ailing river systems, prompting Labor leader Mark Latham to respond with a billion-dollar river package of his own.
The prime minister also said his yet-to-be-released forests policy would stop logging in Tasmania's iconic old-growth forests, only to have Latham pop up on a Perth beach launching a multi-million dollar policy to keep the nation's coast clean.
At the same time, Howard's government has maintained its attack on the Greens' "kooky" non-environmental policies in a bid to stop disaffected coalition voters switching to the minor party.
Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson said voters should realize the Greens were "like a watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside".
Environmental groups said the sudden conversion to their cause was due to internal party polling that showed green issues were increasingly important to the swinging voters that will decide the election.
"We're very cynical about the approach of the big parties on the environment but if we can use the situation to force them into some meaningful commitments, we'll do so," said Greenpeace Australia campaign director Danny Kennedy.
Greens senator Bob Brown said Howard's environmental credentials were damaged by his refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gases and his past support for logging in the island state of Tasmania.
The Tasmanian forests -- vast wilderness areas containing some of the oldest trees on the planet -- are looming as the major green issue of the campaign.
Already 104 British politicians and 101 Australian scientists have signed open letters to Howard calling for an end to the logging of old growth forests for woodchips.
Howard said earlier this month that he wanted to stop old growth logging, but not at the cost of timber workers' jobs.
Speculation on how he will attempt to achieve the goal has centered the possibility of compensation payments to the industry in return for an end to logging in areas of high conservation value.
ALIGNED THINKING: Taiwan and Japan have a mutual interest in trade, culture and engineering, and can work together for stability, Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan and Japan are two like-minded countries willing to work together to form a “safety barrier” in the Indo-Pacific region, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said at the opening ceremony of the 35th Taiwan-Japan Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium in Taipei. Taiwan and Japan are close geographically and closer emotionally, he added. Citing the overflowing of a barrier lake in the Mataian River (馬太鞍溪) in September, Cho said the submersible water level sensors given by Japan during the disaster helped Taiwan monitor the lake’s water levels more accurately. Japan also provided a lot of vaccines early in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
TEMPORAL/SPIRITUAL: Beijing’s claim that the next Buddhist leader must come from China is a heavy-handed political maneuver that will fall flat-faced, experts said China’s requirement that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation to be born in China and approved by Beijing has drawn criticism, with experts at a forum in Taipei yesterday saying that if Beijing were to put forth its own Dalai Lama, the person would not be recognized by the Tibetan Buddhist community. The experts made a remarks at the two-day forum hosted by the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama titled: “The Snow Land Forum: Finding Common Ground on Tibet.” China says it has the right to determine the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, as it claims sovereignty over Tibet since ancient times,
Temperatures in some parts of Taiwan are expected to fall sharply to lows of 15°C later this week as seasonal northeasterly winds strengthen, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. It is to be the strongest cold wave to affect northern Taiwan this autumn, while Chiayi County in the southwest and some parts of central Taiwan are likely to also see lower temperatures due to radiational cooling, which occurs under conditions of clear skies, light winds and dry weather, the CWA said. Across Taiwan, temperatures are to fall gradually this week, dropping to 15°C to 16°C in the early hours of Wednesday
RSS