Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Joanne Rea on May 26, 2012 at 12:41pm

The green movement is now advocating for regulations and restrictions that enable them to capture and transform primary industries. Driven by some of the world’s largest green groups including the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, the international green movement is strongly advocating for primary industry output to be legally required to be certified against supposedly ‘independent’ certification standards, such as those available through the Forest Stewardship Council and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, among others. But considering these schemes are effectively owned by green groups it’s questionable that they’re independent. As they outline in their own reports, their interest is in capturing the supply chain of commodities and exercising influence to transform markets.

 

So says keynote speaker at the Property Rights Australia Conference, Tim Wilson in a paper for the Institute of Public Affairs,

 

 An Unsustainable Economic Transformation

How green groups are creating false foundations and restricting the Australian economy

He also says:-

Without the exceptions for environmental groups under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 it’s possible the conduct of green groups would breach the exclusive dealing, third line forcing and secondary boycott provisions of the Act. As a consequence the breadth of the exceptions given for permissible environmental boycotts under Section 45DD of the Act should be reviewed to ensure that Environmental Non-Government Organisations advancing their professional and commercial interests should be held to the same standard as businesses.

In the meantime retailers should be particularly concerned because the exceptions that protect green groups under the Act do not protect them as well.

If businesses, particularly retailers, work with green groups to put pressure up the supply chain industries may be exposed under The Act to provisions relating to abuse of market power. A recent speech by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chairman, Rod Sims, demonstrates they are looking for opportunities to exercise their power where this occurs, especially towards retailers. Pushing anti-competitive and higher cost messages up the supply chain could leave them naked and exposed.

Permalink Reply by Joanne Rea on May 26, 2012 at 5:30pm

Cate

This year in the interests of people who would like to bring their children, we are offering family packages.

I do not have a closed mind to your other suggestion but it has to be doable. More after consultation.

At the rate we are going we will need 2 days.

Permalink Reply by Dixie Nott on June 2, 2012 at 4:34pm

Joanne,

Probably my slow internet connection but I had trouble downloading the rego form on first attempt so when I got it I did a save as a pdf which is a smaller file, I think.

Attachments:

• PRA conference rego form.pdf, 93 KB

Permalink Reply by Joanne Rea on June 3, 2012 at 9:49am

Thanks for that Dixie. I'll have it put up as a pdf as well.

More information on the Conference soon.

Permalink Reply by Joanne Rea on June 11, 2012 at 8:25am

PRA Conference speaker Tim Wilson has a piece in today’s Australian, “Pause Aid Budget and Audit for Political Activity”

 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/pause-aid-...

In speaking of foreign aid distributed through NGO’s Mr. Wilson says,

For transparency reasons there should be close tabs kept on how taxpayers' money is spent through them [NGO’s].

For example, in 2008 and 2009 the Australian Conservation Foundation received a total of $200,000 from Australia's program.

In the 2010 and 2011 financial years the World Wildlife Fund Australia collected $400,000 from AusAID

Tim Wilson claims that many of the NGO operations are stalling development in developing countries.

The whole article is well worth a read.

Tim Wilson

 

In 2009 he [Tim Wilson] was named by The Australian newspaper as one of the ten emerging leaders of Australian society. He was mentioned as a possible Liberal candidate for the seat of Higgins following the departure of Peter Costello, but eventually chose not to nominate.