ELEANOR HALL: The Auditor-General today flayed the Federal Government over its tender process for the Australia Network contract, pointing to several serious flaws in the process. The Auditor General’s report, which was released this morning, says the process cost the two tenderers the ABC and Sky News time and money. …
DetailsKIERAN GILBERT: We’re now going to cross to Adelaide Liberal frontbencher Senator Simon Birmingham, spokesman for the Coalition on Murray-Darling and [in the Senate see below] Communications. Senator, thanks for your time. First of all, can I get your thoughts on this [Australia21] report and the prominent Australians calling for a rethink…
DetailsLEON BYNER: Now, New South Wales and other states’ environmental groups have joined together and they’ve got some legal advice and they’re saying that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s draft Plan is illegal. The advice says the Plan contravenes the federal Water Act because it prioritises social and economic impact instead of the river’s long…
DetailsDAVID BEVAN: Well, by now, everything was meant to be hunky-dory. We were well into the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and everybody was getting along and the river was looking better. That’s by now because this agreement was signed off… remember the big meeting we had here in Adelaide? I think it was at the…
DetailsMICHAEL SMYTH: Now, a major announcement today has been made in relation to the National Broadband Network, with plans announced to roll out to 3½ million homes, schools and businesses including about 330,000 here in South Australia. This is over the next three years or so. If you’ve got any questions about what the…
DetailsSIMON BIRMINGHAM: It beggars belief that the Weatherill Government, which has been one of the harshest critics of this Basin Plan, didn’t take every opportunity to be involved in its development. South Australians will rightly wonder why this Government thought it was too much trouble to send a couple of public servants to Canberra…
DetailsPHILIP RUDDOCK: … on behalf of my colleagues as members of the Parliamentary Amnesty group [Amnesty International Parliamentary Group] that this is an important occasion because almost all Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate have endorsed the view, following the Amnesty report, that China and Russia should be involved in changing…
DetailsLEON BYNER: Now, the River Murray is an important issue for us. Thank goodness nature is giving us a few gifts at the moment. There’s even the possibility of flooding but the State Government has turned down the chance for senior staff to be involved in drafting the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Now, the chairman…
DetailsSIMON BIRMINGHAM: Labor appears to be deaf to the cost-of-living pressures that Australians are facing at present. They appear to be blind to the mounting evidence around the carbon tax the world’s biggest carbon tax and the reality that it will leave Australia with the world’s largest electricity bills. This ‘hear no…
DetailsLEON BYNER: Now, we find that South Australia has the highest power prices in the world or soon will have. Now, there are a number of reasons for this. One, we sold off the industry to retire the debt from Bannon’s State Bank debacle, governments invented a complicated economic model of a grid supposed…
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