Gai

#democracy #sustainability #integrity in politics (DM me for an instant block!)

[David Pocock @DavidPocock]

Invasive species are doing huge damage to our continent's incredible biodiversity. Cats alone kill over two billion reptiles, birds and mammals per year. Add in foxes, cane toads, carp and other invasives, and native species are under massive pressure.

We have the resources and tools to protect native species - all that's missing is political will and investment.
https://t.co/0MhxlQxQ09

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Three months ago today, a war began that no one voted for — and the cost has been paid by people who had no say in it.

Thousands of civilians have lost their lives. Thirteen U.S. servicemembers will never come home to their families.

Americans across this country and our city have watched prices rise at the pump and the grocery store, their budgets strained by a conflict launched without a single vote of Congress.

Every life lost abroad and every dollar squeezed from a working family here is part of the same reckless bill, handed to the people who could least afford it by those who will never pay it themselves.

I opposed this war from the first day. I oppose it still. It must end.

[mary poppins @ozgal1965]

This is a view from a plane ✈️ of what the Labor government has done to our parklands.

Birds dead
Possums dead
Flying foxes dead

Did liberal’s vote for this ?

I need to know. I’m hearing conflicting stories

[💧Michael West @MichaelWestBiz]

BHP sues us, we publish on BHP suing us, BHP says we must be silenced even more urgently.
#minterellison #auspol #streisandeffect
https://t.co/pCZ5rzNhvJ

[David Shoebridge @DavidShoebridge]

Very happy to report the Senate has just supported the Greens move to force Commissioner Brereton and the Deputy NACC Commissioners to appear at the upcoming Senate Estimates hearings - accountability has to include everyone at the NACC even at the top!

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

Who benefits from Australia's 50% CGT discount (2022–23, Treasury)

Top 10% of earners: get 86% of the benefit
Top 20%: get 89%
Over-60s: get 52%
18–34 year olds: just 4%

Avg benefit to top earners: $86,000+
Avg benefit to bottom 60%: ~$5,000

ie - the young do not benefit from CGT disc

[Christine Milne AO @ChristineMilne]

Albanese has allocated $28m over 2 yrs to allow logging to continue under its new Env laws. More subsidies to destroy Nature. Trumpeting the new laws as a great step forward and encouraging MPs to pass them wasn’t such a great idea after all. Time for Env M’ment to get real.

[mary poppins @ozgal1965]

It is likely that after a thumping electoral victory on 21 March, Premier Peter Malinauskas might claim that he has a “mandate” to carry out his planned assaults on your Park Lands to cater for elite FIFO professional sports.
But does he?
The Premier has made no secret of the fact he wants to chop down, by his own admission:
•585 trees to build a “championship” grade golf course on the urban forest of Possum Park / Pirltawardli (Park 1); and
•another 45 trees in your eastern Park Lands, widening and extending a bitumen racetrack for an annual three days of motorcycle racing.
There is no guarantee that tree losses, biodiversity and habitat destruction would be limited to these numbers. Indeed, expert opinion suggests much greater destruction might be required to realise the Premier’s elite FIFO professional sport ambitions at least in the urban forested Possum Park.
Before the State election, the Premier refused to release details of planning for either of these Park Lands attacks. Questions directed to the Government over the extent of the proposed impact on Possum Park / Pirltawardli (Park 1) went unanswered.
Not even the State Government’s own Park Lands advisory body has a clue of the extent of damage that’s been calculated by State bureaucrats behind closed doors.
Therefore, you would have voted in the 21 March State election, without any way of knowing how much damage the Premier was planning to inflict upon your Open, Green, Public Park Lands.
The only information the Premier was prepared to release before the State election, were these two diagrams, not any actual plans.

n 2025, the Premier’s response to questions about the costs of new golf course plans, the re-development time-line, and public consultation were all deflected by promising answers only when "draft designs are available.”
But even after the incomplete diagram above was released on 18 December 2025, no “consultation” was offered in the leadup to the 21 March State election.
Therefore, no mandate
Neither the Premier nor any of his Ministers can claim any mandate to inflict Park Lands damage when they were unwilling (either before or during the election campaign) to put forward their proposed Park damage plans.

The author of this article, Shane Sody, was the President of the Adelaide Park Lands Association from 2017 to 2025 and remains the editor of the semi-monthly newsletter, "Open Green Public".

———
Mali back flipped on fishing bans for Rec fish to get the votes

Then put a ban back on a few weeks ago

Same as possum park - wouldn’t tell the public the truth.

People are calling for his resignation.
We know that won’t happen but there would be true joy within SA if he was gone as premier …

[David Shoebridge @DavidShoebridge]

A budget detail many missed last night was how the Albanese Labor government is addressing what it calls social cohesion. It is cutting $9 million from the Australian Human Rights Commission, the independent body that protects and serves every community equally.

[Wendy Bacon @Wendy_Bacon]

Professor Andrew Markus has told the RC into Antisemitism that survey findings showing that Greens voters have low levels of anti Jewish sentiment but highest ( cf other parties) levels of anti-Zionism does not mean they are anti-semitic. Seems significant.

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

@MichelleZee20 Is that the immigrants who are simultaneously not skilled, but taking all of the jobs, and also on welfare, but buying all the houses?

[Gai @Cubasmum]

I like @JEChalmers because he actually answers the journalist questions. Others, like Albo just ramble off on their speaking points. Or try to weasel out.

[Animal Justice Party @animaljusticeAU]

WESTERN AUSTRALIA TO FAIL ON NET-ZERO TARGET 🌏

"WA will fail to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 under its current trajectory, according to modelling commissioned by gas giant Woodside Energy."

https://t.co/Z1OnaBUP8C #AusPol #WAPol #ClimateAction #NetZero #Environment #AnimalJusticeParty

[mary poppins @ozgal1965]

Good morning, everyone, on 12 May 2026.

We still have a Premier who will stop at nothing to create debt and diminish biodiversity. It’s ironic that the shiny punter, Mali, wanted COP31 in Adelaide when it’s evident he couldn’t wait for the marine crisis to end, and now he’s creating the collapse of an entire ecosystem in possum
Park .

Tell me again how Mali cares or any Labor MP, for that matter. They are environmental vandalises.

The hypocrisy oozes from labor …. labor are liars …

They believe in climate propaganda only when it suits them. More fool the people who voted for Labor.

Trees are being destroyed
Chainsaws are out

The anger is growing .
Mali won’t survive this next election.
He’s finished ✅

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

When Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday that he wants to reduce American military support to Israel to zero, most commentators treated it as an Israeli story. It isn’t.

“We’ve come of age,” Netanyahu said, announcing his intention to draw US financial support down to zero. Israel currently receives $3.8 billion in annual military aid annually. Netanyahu said he does not want to wait for the next Congress. He wants to start now. 

He is not alone.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer appeared on stage together to launch the “Global Europe” initiative, calling for a joint roadmap toward a strong and sovereign Europe with its own security strategy. Germany’s rearmament plan explicitly aims to replace Europe’s defense dependency on what Berlin officials now openly describe as an increasingly unpredictable United States.

A recent Kiel Institute report projects that Europe is on track for military independence from the US in most areas by the 2030s, at a cost of roughly 500 billion euros. 

Canada is moving the same direction. During last year’s election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that the old relationship between Canada and the United States is simply over. Canada has since hit the NATO 2% spending target for the first time, and declined to participate in the 2026 Iran war. 

European leaders from Macron to Merz to Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever have converged on the same argument: strategic autonomy is no longer an ideological preference but a condition of freedom. 

The lesson drawn from the Trump years is simple and shared: an alliance built entirely on one partner’s political will is not an alliance. It is a dependency. And one by one, America’s closest partners have decided they are done depending.

[Australia Institute @TheAusInstitute]

A 25% tax on gas exports is popular with voters across the political spectrum.

Which is unsurprising considering it would raise $17 billion every year to help pay for essential services!
#auspol

[Gai @Cubasmum]

Does everyone write their tweets with AI now? So many tweets sound the same. Full of “facts” but the style is bland and the rhythm of the prose is repetitive. AI makes us boring.

[RS Archer @archer_rs]

Another five Reform Party councillors forced to resign today.

[Gai @Cubasmum]

Rings true for Australia and One Nation’s politics of division.

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

PM Carney: "Across all other countries, the same conversation is taking place at kitchen tables and factory floors and chat rooms. People feeling a loss of control ... and it has fed a politics of grievance, one that thrives on scarcity, feeds on division, and promises strength through demolition. And it won't be addressed by the old ways."

[Gai @Cubasmum]

@AlboMP timid imitations will get us no where.

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

PM Carney: "Those whose politics is to destroy, to demolish, dismantle, they're not going to change their instincts. This is, in many respects, this is their moment. We can't match them by being timid imitations of them. We can't answer them by pining for an old order that's not going to return ... it can only be answered by positive action, by building that which comes next."