Hiroshima Day Candlelight Rally, Sydney, 6 August 1994 with Lesbian and Gay Solidarity's Enola Gay banner. A very small rally with low turnout - do people think it can't happen again??
Hiroshima Day Rally, Sydney, 7 August 1999
Hiroshima Day Rally, Melbourne, 5 August 2001
Dear Kendall and Mannie
Thanks for your email and your suggestion. I think you are right about women being much less willing to embrace nuclear power - indeed the poll published in the Australian this week showed a marked gender difference on the issue. I know Dr Helen Caldicott's work well and have her latest book to which you refer, indeed I quoted her in a speech I made on the subject in the Senate last week. We do in fact have a 'Parliamentarians for a Nuclear Free Future' group in the parliament, of which I am co-convenor but have not so far attracted a member of the Liberal or National Parties to its ranks. This unfortunately prevents us from becoming affiliated with the international Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament. If you can persuade women from the Coalition to be part of our organisation that would be good!
-----Original Message-----
From: josken_at_zipworld_com_au [mailto:josken_at_zipworld_com_au]Dear Senator,
This is not a trivial request. We are appealing to you to consider forming a bi-partisan group made up of all, or at least a majority, of the women members of both houses of the federal parliament to demand a genuine, non-party debate on the safety, reliability, risks and impacts of nuclear power and uranium mining on the country’s ecology, the ozone layer, global warming, on people, birds, animals and of course the economy.
We think women are likely to be more aware of the risks involved in the production of this form of energy. With twenty-seven of you in the Senate and another thirty- seven currently in the House of Representatives, you have the combined strength to weigh-in formidably.
In fact, you have a right to question this government on behalf of all Australians, particularly Australians who are too young to vote, about its links to three of the country’s most powerful businessmen’s private company called Australian Nuclear Energy Pty Ltd. The company was registered 1st June 2006, five days before the Prime Minister announced the Switkowski review into Australia’s nuclear potential. Curiously, now, during the week Switkowski was appointed by the federal government (3.3.07) to head the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), media reports were speculating on meetings with a couple of State premiers and one of the three businessmen, Ron Walker, about building the first nuclear power plant in one of their States (The Age Business Analysis & News front page etc. 28.2.07; SMH 3.3.07; Melbourne Herald-Sun 4.3.07; ABC World Today, 27.2.07 ).
Just when people are beginning to value their threatened natural surroundings, the government is offering us a system of competing profiteers, who know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
And in Focus (The Age, 5.3.07), Wendy Frew’s full page article lifts the lid on uranium mining, and the rush to embrace nuclear power to combat climate change. The damage uranium mining does to the environment seems to have been almost forgotten. Wendy Frew, Leonie Wood and Katherine Murphy of The Age have done their job in bringing to light information we need to know.
Sadly, not enough reference is being made to perhaps the most influential Australian on the risks of nuclear power, Dr Helen Caldicott. She says: “One is led to believe that the nuclear reactor stands alone, an autonomous creator of energy. In fact, the vast infrastructure necessary to create nuclear energy, called the nuclear fuel cycle, is a prodigious user of fossil fuel and coal.”
The Parliamentary Library must have copies of Caldicott’s latest book, “Nuclear Power is not the answer to global warming or anything else,” and all of her six other books on the issue. The Library will certainly have the newspaper articles mentioned.
May we expect genuine consideration of our request? Sincerely, Signed: Kendall Lovett and Mannie De Saxe.
Letter in the Sunday Age:
I CAN'T agree with Clive Hamilton that Earth Hour is tokenistic. The small crowd gathered outside Martin Ferguson's office in High Street, Preston, wasn't there to tick a box and then go home to resume carbon-intensive lifestyles. Instead, they highlighted the connection between Ferguson as their federal member for Batman and his role as the Rudd government's energy and resources minister, in which he ceaselessly promotes the fossil fuels that scientists say must be phased out if we are to avoid dangerous warming.
Ferguson is, in essence, our local member for global damage. Climate risk - unlike coal - can never truly be exported. Wherever the stuff is burnt, its carbon emissions accumulate in the only atmosphere we have and we all share the impacts while the coal companies keep the profits.
Calling for Ferguson to turn away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy didn't feel at all tokenistic.
DARREN LEWIN-HILL, Northcote