Redfern Railway station is one of the busiest stations in the country, with over 40,000 people passing through its gates each day, yet it doesn't have a single lift.
Never mind the residents nearby with children, disabilities or heavy luggage; never mind the elderly, frail or unwell; never mind the thousands of students of diverse backgrounds and needs who use the station on a daily basis.
No, if you want to catch or get off a train at Redfern, you have to climb one of the steep concrete staircases, or - if you're lucky - catch an equally steep escalator to the underground platforms.
For many people, this challenge is simply too difficult - or too dangerous - to seriously contemplate, and they are effectively excluded from relying on rail transport to get around. This is an outrage, and is totally unacceptable.
It is, of course, nothing new, nor is the empty government rhetoric about 'reviews' and 'plans' for upgrades. Successive governments have been making - and breaking - promises to fix the situation since at least the 1990s.
So, in January this year, the people of Redfern launched the broad-based Lift Redfern campaign to get the NSW government to pull its finger out.
The debate over genetically modified (GM) food has flared up again recently, after Greenpeace destroyed an experimental CSIRO wheat crop in Canberra on July 14.
The Australian Federal Police is now investigating Greenpeace over the incident, which CSIRO scientists claim has set their research back by up to a year.
Greenpeace argued the crop posed a threat to the environment and to human health. Plans are underway for human trials of the GM wheat before tests are first conducted on animals.
Greenpeace also accused the CSIRO of a conflict of interest for its closeness to several biotech companies, including NuFarm (the exclusive Australian distributor for biotech giant Monsanto), agribusiness giant Monsanto and Arcadia Biosciences (a US company with close ties to GM-giant Monsanto).
It also criticised Australia’s weak regulation of GM crops.
The CSIRO rejected that the wheat posed a threat, arguing that the modified wheat contained no genes from other organisms, and was designed to improve the crop’s nutritional value.
GM crops have become the source of increasing contention recently, in Australia and overseas.
Testimony to the NSW Upper House inquiry into the sale of the retail arm of NSW electricity has revealed that only a tiny fraction of the $5.3 billion price tag will reach the public purse, with billions of dollars eaten up by a number of “associated costs”.
These include nearly $1.5 billion in government funding for the new Cobbora coal mine north-east of Lithgow to ensure a cheap coal supply for energy producers, and a guaranteed further $1 billion in coal price subsidies to the private energy companies over the life of the mine.
In addition, the legal and administrative expenses for negotiating the deal amount an estimated $300 million alone.
While NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal has crowed that the sale would free taxpayers from future risk in the sector, the Inquiry has heard that this is far from the truth.
Treasury Secretary Michael Schur, who appeared before the inquiry on January 18, criticised the “Gentrader” model under which the sale took place, calling it a “second rate” model that retained future risk for NSW taxpayers.
