Stormy Weather

"I'm here for the kids, I'm here to talk to the kids." - Malcolm Turnbull, yesterday.

Well, in the midst of the longest drought in SE QLD history, we are now being walloped by massive storms:

Jonty Hall from the weather bureau says the rainfall figures are unseasonal.

"These are incredible totals, especially for the month of August," she said.

At least we can all sleep tight in the knowledge that our government is doing everything possible to counter the problem of global warming, right? Errr....

This week, Downer wrote in Fairfax newspapers: "Climate change demands an effective and enduring global response. The Kyoto Protocol is not it ... Kyoto covers barely a third of global emissions. Kyoto demands nothing of big developing economies in our region."

But de Boer, a Dutch citizen, said Kyoto has been ratified by 175 nations accounting for more than 70 per cent of global emissions, including Asian developing nations such as China, India and Indonesia.

Climate change is supposedly going to be the focal point of the upcoming APEC meeting, which makes one suppose that Howard has some big agreement up his sleeve. But whatever he announces now will be no excuse for not having signed up to Kyoto years ago. Rather than admitting they were wrong on Kyoto, Howard and Bush keep coming up with new options that amount to the same thing, or much less. Like the whole GWOT crapola, it would be laughable if it were not such a serious problem.

Here's just one small, local example of how deeply cynical our PR-driven politicians are:

PRIMARY school children became political footballs yesterday when the Queensland Government banned media from covering federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull's visit to a Gold Coast school.

Mr Turnbull labelled the ban "a disgrace", and "blatantly political ... censorship" after the Surfers Paradise State School, acting on the orders of State Education Minister Rod Welford, posted a guard at the school gate to stop media entering.

Mr Welford hit back, accusing Mr Turnbull of trying to use the school for "cheap political purposes".

Mr Turnbull went to the school with Gold Coast Liberal MP Steven Ciobo to present one of the Federal Government's $50,000 green vouchers to help buy water tanks and solar power systems, and to talk to students about climate change.

Turnbull, who only advised the school of his visit on Wednesday afternoon, insisted he was just there to talk to the kids. If that's so, why did he make such a fuss about the media being barred from entry? The kids of Australia deserve much better - it's their future, after all, that we are talking about here.