Writer
Melissa Haswell
Dr Melissa Haswell is the Professor of Practice in Environmental Wellbeing, Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Strategy and Services) and an Honorary Professor in the School of Geosciences at University of Sydney. She is also a Professor of Health, Safety and Environment at Queensland University of Technology. She has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students, researching and advocating for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing, the epidemiology and control of infectious and chronic disease, environmental toxicology and planetary health for over 40 years.
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Inquiry raises deep concerns over Labor’s $1.5 billion cash splash for new NT gas hub
A Senate inquiry has failed to reach agreement on whether the Federal Government should spend A$1.5 billion on a major industrial hub in Darwin – spending critics say amounts to a huge fossil fuel subsidy. Continue reading »
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The gas industry has power and freedom to wreck the world
By now many citizens of our planet recognise that the destructiveness of climate change is moving faster than they imagined, leaving our defences at serious risk and even the money men are concerned about the burgeoning costs and possible economic collapse. Continue reading »
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Climate adaptation: government action on life support systems is lamentable
The foundation for effective climate change adaptation must be the preservation of ecological life support systems for humans and all other species. We must prioritise the protection and expansion of water, biodiversity and ecological services to provide food security for future generations instead of environmentally damaging industries, especially fossil fuels. Continue reading »
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Government’s abject failure to understand the gas industry’s huge health impacts
Current articles on the government’s climate policies increasingly use words such as reckless, hypocrisy and betrayal referring to approval of coal mines. But it is even more difficult to find words to describe the gas industry’s infliction of pain on humanity by the approval of gas mines. Continue reading »
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Beetaloo gas field: Resurrect health impact assessments to save lives
Our new government walks both sides of the street on fossil fuels. Continue reading »
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‘Let it rip’ mentality underlies Australia’s cruelest policy failures
Australia’s Covid ‘let it rip’ mentality is deeply ingrained in the nation’s past and, through climate and environmental inaction, is driving a larger peril. Continue reading »
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The EPBC Review says good-bye to environmental and human health on Planet A
The Samuel Report and its rejection of an independent regulator by the Minister have ‘grave’ implications for the health of countless communities around Australia. Continue reading »
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The Battle of Narrabri may well decide our climate future
Approval for the Narrabri gas project will say goodbye to any hope of an effective climate policy and usher in an expanding national gas industry with a rise in emissions and untold direct damage to the sustainability of this drying continent. Continue reading »
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The Climate Tide roars in, yet leaders fail to understand and act
Climate change is a massively complex ‘wicked’ problem hence solutions require human capacities of logic and imagination guiding action. Our leaders appear bereft of science-based logic, acknowledging neither magnitude nor urgency of climate change. Continue reading »
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DAVID SHEARMAN and MELISSA HASWELL; The EPBC Act Review is a once in a decade chance to prioritise our Environment, our Health and our Future
After COVID 19, many of us have a flicker of hope that our government will apply some of its demonstrated sense of responsibility on medical advice to the larger health emergency on our doorstep. Continue reading »
