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New South Wales Mining has come under fire for running an ad on its website which claims that the state’s “high quality” coal is “needed for energy security” – and “needed for many years to come.”

Climate group Climate Integrity filed a complaint with the ACCC on Wednesday claiming these statements were misleading and deceptive conduct under the Australian Consumer Law.

Pro-Palestine protesters will be legally protected while marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday after a New South Wales supreme court decision.

The bridge is expected to be closed for about five hours, from 11.30am, and additional police are being mobilised to observe a march that could include up to 50,000 people.

In her judgment, Justice Belinda Rigg said “the march at this location is motivated by the belief that the horror and urgency of the situation in Gaza demands an urgent and extraordinary response from the people of the world”.

“The evidence indicates there is significant support for the march.”

50,000 seems a bit on the small side for a Sydney Harbour Bridge march. Hopefully there will be many many more than that.

cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/australianpolitics@aussie.zone/t/2500227

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has slammed reports that Australia still sells ‘weapons parts’ to Darth Vader, clarifying that any parts Australia makes for the construction of the Death Star are ‘non-lethal’.

“It is gross misinformation to say that we are in any way part of the Death Star trade just because we sell parts for it,” said Wong.

“The death laser is the lethal part. We don’t sell the laser energy. We only provide parts that help them shoot the laser beam.” [...]

A newly discovered stick insect which weighs slightly less than a golf ball may be the heaviest insect in Australia, scientists say.

The 40cm-long new species, named Acrophylla alta, was found in the high altitudes of the Atherton tablelands in north Queensland – and scientists said the habitat could be part of the reason for its large size.

“Earning a humanities degree was not only life changing, in terms of opening up a world of knowledge otherwise beyond my reach, it also turns out to have been enormously productive – for me and many, many people around me,” said Tim Winton this week. “My little arts degree has created jobs and cultural value for over 40 years.”

Winton is one of more than 100 high-profile Australians with Bachelor of Arts degrees who have signed an open letter by the Australian Historical Association (AHA). It urges Anthony Albanese to abolish the Morrison government’s widely condemned Job-Ready Graduates package and establish an equitable university fee system that “does not punish students who choose to study the humanities and social sciences”.

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In the lead-up to the 2022 election, Labor promised a review of the scheme. Two years and two federal elections later, it remains in place. “The idea that a Labor government would do nothing at all to right this wrong is utterly mystifying,” said Winton.

Signal president Meredith Whittaker is prepared to withdraw the privacy-focused messaging app from Australia — saying she hopes it doesn’t become a “gangrenous foot” by poisoning its entire platform by forcing it to hand over its users’ encrypted data to authorities.

Ms Whittaker says Signal would take the “drastic step” of leaving any market where a government compelled it to create a “backdoor” to access its data, saying it would create a vulnerability that hackers and authoritative regimes could exploit, undermining Signals’ “reason for existing”.

Pressure has been mounting on Signal and other secure messaging platforms. ASIO director general Mike Burgess has urged tech companies to unlock encrypted messages to assist terrorism and national security investigations, saying offshore extremists use such platforms to communicate.

archive.today

Key points

• The report found renewables remain the lowest-cost new-build electricity generation technology, while nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) are the most costly.
• Electricity systems rely on a mix of technologies, because no single option can deliver all the capabilities required for a reliable, secure and flexible supply.
• Rising construction costs in Australia and supply chain constraints for some technologies remain a challenge for reducing costs.

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The report found renewables (wind and solar) backed by storage and transmission remained the lowest-cost new-build electricity generation technologies.

Gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and large-scale nuclear are the next lowest cost options, but as neither are currently deployed for electricity generation in Australia, they could be subject to longer lead times and first-of-a-kind premiums.

Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) remain the highest cost option, even with new data from Canada’s Darlington project. This represented the first commercial-scale benchmark from a western country and fell within the range previously projected by GenCost.