Tag: australia

xxcommunistd0gh8rxx:

overlyygayy:

So the Great Barrier Reef was pronounced dead today.
Do you even realize that is this our home. We were blessed with such a beautiful, loving, and magnificent home and look what we have done to it. Mother Nature doesn’t deserve this. We don’t deserve this world we were so graciously given.
Are you waking up yet

a PART of the GBR was declared dead, not the entire thing holy shit all this sort of thing does is make people want to give up when there’s still so much left that can be saved

http://fightforthereef.org.au/

GO HERE^ FOR ACTUAL INFORMED DETAILS AND WAYS YOU CAN HELP PROTECT AND CONSERVE THIS NATURAL WONDER OF THE WORLD. 

PLEASE HELP. SPREAD THE WORD. 

Hello! I’m sorry, this is probably not the kind of ask you usually get, but I heard that the great barrier reef is dead. Do you know is it true? :( I love your work!

Hey Nonnie! I live 100km away from the Reef, so I am actually very close to it. I get a LOT of news about the Reef.

No, it is not true. The Reef is NOT dead.

It is, however, in danger. Very grave, immediate, and serious danger.

Coral reefs are INCREDIBLY delicate ecosystems.

Leaving aside the long-established threat of Crown-of-Thorns starfishes (it swarms in the MILLIONS and destroys coral), man-made threats are now endangering the Reef beyond its capacity to adapt.  

Port and shipping traffic in and through the Reef is set to more than double by 2025. 

Expansion of the ports at Abbott Point and Gladstone would have involved dredging the Reef. Furious opposition has seen these plans scrapped, but there’s still noise and worry.

There has been fantastic action on the part of most farmers, whose pesticide runoffs were contributing to the decline of the Reef. Now there is common support for the Reef Guardian Farmers initiative – but it remains that farming runoff is a major MAJOR threat. 

Climate Change/Global Warming is causing coral bleaching as the seas warm faster than the delicate organisms can cope. As the oceans absorb pollution, the water gets more acidic. This is the most dangerous and the hardest threat to address, as it requires not only Australia-wide but world-wide action.

Tourism has too much footprint on the Reef. Tourism is so important to the economy of Eastern Queensland – hell, the town I live in was BUILT on tourism – but the damage that boats, divers, etc make as they view the coral and fish is a real concern. Many formerly popular diving places are no longer the beautiful, stunningly vibrant displays they were, but rather grey and drab and denuded, thanks to too much disturbance and human destruction. 

The Federal Government has put forward a long-term sustainability plan called Reef 2050. It has also come under some criticism for not addressing many causes of the damage, and for not allowing time and funding. 

To fix the Reef would cost $8.2 billion AUD, over 10 years. The Federal Government has only set aside $1 billion. 

I don’t know everything, but I can tell you that I am far from the only Australian (or Queenslander) worried about the Reef. 

Check here for more: https://fightforthereef.org.au

What’s happening in Australia

takealookatyourlife:

Australia still doesn’t have marriage equality.

Today the government announced that on February 11 2017, a plebiscite (compulsory vote) will be put to the citizens of Australia to answer the question: “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”

The Australian government is pledging $15 million in public funding (tax money) towards the “Yes” and “No” advocacy groups.

This means $7.5 million dollars worth of tax money is being spent on a campaign against LGBTI+ human rights.

This means 5 dehumanising months of LGBTI+ people being forced to have their humanity “debated” on.

Of children listening to hateful homophobic rhetoric. Of LGBTI+ people’s lives and well-being being put in danger.

Even worse, the fact that Parliament isn’t voting on the issue themselves means the likelihood of the plebiscite passing (allowing “same-sex” marriage) is actually very low. There’s no logical reason for Parliament not to vote on the issue because in Australia, the definition of marriage is civil (governmental), and not religious.

Essentially a tonne of money is being used in a bid to prevent marriage equality passing in Australia and endangering the lives of LGBTI+ citizens.

LGBTI+ people in Australia are hurting today.

#NoPlebiscite is the tag being used on Twitter in protest, please consider helping.

scrapironflotilla:

danny-spikes:

April 25th is Anzac Day, however please don’t forget the aboriginal soldiers/black diggers who served us. Despite being second class citizens, they served Australia. When they came back they expected there courage to be respected. However this wasn’t the case in fact they were not even allowed to march in the Anzac parades. [ learn more here ]

Lest We Forget, Every Single Solider.

It wasn’t just that they were second class citizens, though they truly were, it was that they were legally prohibited from joining up in the first place. The Australian identity that the government wanted to project was one of proud British whiteness. Keeping in mind that this was also the era of the White Australia Policy. 
So despite being discriminated against and legally disallowed from joining the AIF hundreds of indigenous Australians managed to join up anyway. Numbers are very difficult to gauge because their records were falsified by recruiting officers to allow them to join. They used pseudonyms, had their race changed and joined up far from their homes.
They suffered through the same terrors of the War as their white comrades, and whilst on service many noted that their treatment was as that of equals. They had the same expectations put on them and they lived up to them. Their race was acknowledged, but generally, not looked down on. 

However after the War and on their return to Australia it was as if nothing had changed at all. Many were refused pensions, kicked out of Anzac Day parades and barred from joining the Returned Servicemen’s League. For people who had been treated poorly by their country and decided to fight for it anyway, their treatment was despicable.

clive-gersbermps-palmer:

I like how lazy we are about naming things in australia. it’s like. build a bridge over the harbour, let’s call it the harbour bridge. build an opera house. just call it the opera house. build a big pointy tower in the centre of town. centrepoint tower. new territory to serve as nation’s capital. australian capital territory. that state that’s in the west. western australia. what do we call those mountains with all the blue fog? blue mountains. great big road that goes along the ocean? great ocean road. A+ naming skills australia good on ya guys awesome job

theauspolchronicles:

The blatant stupidity of attacking the Safe Schools Program is that the Liberals saw a program that would be instrumental in decreasing suicide rates in teenagers and decided it’d be fine to just gut it because one of them spoke up against it. The Liberal Party had a way to help prevent suicide rates in people of all sexual orientations and decided that it wasn’t in their best interests to keep it intact. Regardless of misguided intentions it reeks of willful ignorance of the issues that surround queer youth and is downright malicious. I am so pissed off. Fuck the Liberal party for not prioritizing saving the lives of children.

theauspolchronicles:

Politicians are divided over whether or not bullying children to the point of depression and high risk of suicide is morally OK or not.

The Safe Schools program has come under fire recently for “trying to make LGBT teens feel safer” which somehow got garbled and translated into “supporting pedophilia”, “brainwashing kids into being gay”, and somehow even promoting Marxism… because fuck it why the hell not?

The evil trilogy of Conservative fuck-trumpets – Eric Abetz, George Christensen, and Cory Bernardi are threatening to combine into an evil Conservative Megazord and are screaming “CHILDREN ARE NOT WORTHY OF OUR SYMPATHY! SURVIVAL OF THE HETEROSEXUALS!” over and over.

Tony Abbott has been sighted scowling at everyone who isn’t him with a mopey demeanour. He has been described as “surprisingly still present” and “really unsettling to look at.”

Richard Di Natale, leader of the Greens, has repeatedly just sighed and whispered “I literally don’t understand the moral relativism going on in this room right now. I can’t cope with this stupidity” as he watched Bernardi attempt to climb onto the shoulders of a sweaty Christensen.

“We gotta rise above the gay agenda! Help me up! The floor is gay-lava!” a panicked Bernardi yelled as Abetz tried pushing him into a better position onto Christensen.

Malcolm Turnbull has reminded everyone to “choose their words carefully” when discussing whether or not children deserve respect and decency.

“Don’t say anything too cruel… we’re not school yard bullies here” he said knowing full well his party was full of people who would’ve been school bullies towards queer youth many years ago.