War on the environment a distraction from climate change policy

After almost six months in office, it seems that the Abbott government™s reputation for action on climate change and the environment in general is in tatters. Overseas, condemnation has been directed at a government now labelled as the ˜most hostile to its nation™s environment in history™. And that assessment is made with scant attention to what the Coalition government is doing on climate change, where it has pulled out all the stops to bring climate change policy to heel before the interests of big coal and big mining.

Balancing economic growth with sustainability had been at the forefront of legislative and regulatory protection, including the Howard government™s Environment Protection and Bio-diversity Conservation Act (1999). But the scrapping of the Environment Defenders Office (EDO) is symbolic of the distinctive shift we are seeing with this government.