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Professor John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow at the School of Economics, University of Queensland

“A striking feature of the data is that aggregate emissions have remained unchanged since 2008, although GDP has increased by 15 per cent in that time. The fact that the link between GDP growth and emissions has been broken is encouraging evidence that we can achieve substantial reductions in emissions without damaging living standards.”

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Professor Kevin Parton is from the School of Management and Marketing at Charles Sturt University. He is a Strategic Professor in the Institute for Land, Water and Society

“The National Greenhouse Accounts reveal that the total greenhouse gas emissions in Australia rose by 0.6 per cent over the last year and Australia remains on track to meet its Kyoto Protocol target. This result is just about what was expected, and indeed is ‘no big deal’. This target itself is a straw man, given that it involves an increase in emissions, when we actually need to reduce them.

What is much more important is what is likely to happen in the future. The carbon pricing under the government’s ‘carbon tax’ policy should assist the effort to contain the growth in emissions. However, even with the carbon price, it is unlikely that there would be a fall in emissions during 2012 unless there is a dramatic fall in economic activity in the remainder of the year (which none of us want).

To reduce Australia’s carbon emissions significantly will need a change in the way the economy works and a transition, as soon as possible, to a low carbon technology. However, there is currently not great optimism about the rate of progress. Electricity generation is the sector with the largest emissions. The best renewable prospect in this sector is wind power, but we are at an embryonic stage when it comes to the roll-out of this technology. Coal will be king for many years to come. Even with the carbon price regime implied by the introduction of the government’s ‘carbon tax’, there will be little incentive for generators to replace coal fired power stations.”

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Adjunct Professor Rob Fowler is Chair of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law at the University of South Australia

“I note that whilst these latest accounts indicate we appear likely to meet our 2012 Kyoto target, Australia continues to increase the rate of its national GHG emissions, especially from electricity generation. The broad international consensus is that reductions in the range of 25-40% by 2020 are needed to avoid significant climate change, so we are a long way behind the chase. That objective also makes the current nationalcarbon tax goal of a 5% reduction by 2020 look pretty lame.

The immediate, key question is what target for GHG emissions  reductions by 2020 will Australia indicate to the Climate Change Convention meeting in December this year, when the next commitments beyond the Kyoto protocol targets will need to be defined. A target of 5% will not put us anywhere near the level of reductions expected of us by the international community.”

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Professor Graeme Wines is a Professor in Accounting in the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance at Deakin University

“The release of the National Greenhouse Accounts assists in putting into perspective the magnitude of the task facing Australia in its attempts to reduce emissions from 1990 levels. It also highlights the specific areas in which major reductions are required.

The Greenhouse Gas report reveals that total net emissions are now 13.6 percent higher than in 1990. But the percentage change over that period varies greatly between sectors, with some sectors actually exhibiting decreased emissions. The land use (including land use change and forestry) sector has emissions 59.2 percent lower than 1990 levels, although the decreasing trend here has mainly been driven by declines in the conversion of forest land to cropland and grassland. Decreased emissions are also recorded for the agriculture and waste sectors (down 8.1 and 19.1 percent respectively).

While these percentage decreases appear significant, they need to be put into perspective by comparison with the sectors exhibiting increases. The three sectors noted above exhibiting decreases represented reductions of 65.3 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, down from 196.9 tonnes in 1990 to 131.6 tonnes in 2010. The energy sector, though, recorded the greatest increase in emissions, with a 44.2 percent increase from 1990 levels. But this increase amounted to an additional 127.9 tonnes of emissions, an increase roughly twice the magnitude of the decrease in the three decreasing emissions sectors.

This highlights the magnitude of the task facing the energy sector in attempting to substitute renewable energy sources for current ones.”

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CSIRO first initiated litigation in 2005 and settled major cases in 2009 against 14 companies, recording proceeds of $205 million for that year. Since that time, additional licenses have been granted. CSIRO will receive more than $220 million from this round of WLAN licensing. The WLAN technology was invented by a team of CSIRO scientists – Dr John O’Sullivan, Dr Terry Percival, Mr Diet Ostry, Mr Graham Daniels and Dr John Deane.

An infographic on the development of the Wi-Fi technology is available here

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.  If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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 Nigel Poole is Acting Group Executive, Information Sciences Group at CSIRO

“We are delighted to have made further progress in licensing this very important technology contribution from Australia. The wireless LAN technology, commonly known as wi-fi, is in over three billion devices worldwide – and it will grow to five billion products by 2013 when the patents expire – we guess that means most households in the developed world have more than five wi-fi consumer devices connecting themselves reliably to the internet and to each other without wires.  CSIRO’s commercial and legal teams on both sides of the Pacific have worked very hard over the past several years to gain a reasonable return and I would like to pay particular tribute to them for their extraordinary efforts. Of course, it was the inventors, led by Dr O’Sullivan, whose brilliance in the 1990s made all this possible.  CSIRO has been delivering results to Australia for over 80 years, and to have such an important breakthrough deliver the significant returns announced by the Minister makes us all very proud.”

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 Dr Mark Gregory is a Senior Lecturer in network engineering in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at RMIT University, Melbourne

“The CSIRO Wi-Fi licensing outcomes have now brought in about $430M since the CSIRO patent claims started in 2005. About three billion items now include Wi-Fi and this number is expected to increase to five billion before the patents expire in 2013. CSIRO is a powerhouse of invention and this is a major outcome for Australia. The CSIRO outcome has highlighted the capability to successfully make a patent claim against some of the largest multi-nationals in the world. Wi-Fi has enhanced the development and use of mobile devices and should be seen to be a major contribution to world society.”

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Dr Paul Stephen-Gardner is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Computer Science, Engineering & Mathematics at Flinders University, Adelaide

“The WiFi patent victory for CSIRO is important, not just for drawing license fees into our country, but for giving Australian researchers a great morale boost as they continue to innovate in many areas, punching well above our population would suggest.

Hopefully the government will have the wisdom to invest this windfall into further research and development activities that can generate value, just as the invention of WiFi now helps billions of people to connect, a value that dwarfs the considerable financial return that his invention has generated.

This is also a case where the value of ‘basic’ or ‘fundamental’ research has been clearly proven, with WiFi emerging from radioastronomy.  This is well worth the government’s notice, given that such basic research is discouraged under government research funding schemes in favour of more applied research.”

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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Professor Roger Jones is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University in Melbourne

“It is good to see this legislation passed. Its main benefit will be in creating institutions and markets focussed on lower carbon technology, emissions production and in generating services for greater efficiency. It is clear from the number of industry comments so far, that this capacity is ready to go in many areas. The 2020 target is useful and can be amended but the critical target in the legislation is that of 80% reductions by 2050.

It’s also clear that the public wants to learn more about the legislation, what its benefits are and how both the costs and benefits affect them. A great deal of misinformation in the media and elsewhere has hindered this. The motives of those who cast doubt on the science in order to further their own agenda needs to be seriously questioned.

Some key points are:
• The legislation gives Australia credibility in ongoing negotiations for international climate policy, where it is currently with Norway involved in crafting a proposal to move forward.
• Australia is not going it alone. From a global business as usual case a few years ago that would have given a roughly 50% chance of exceeding 5°C warming by 2100, the current policy mix ends up at around 3.5°C but could go either way.
• Australia faces an estimated reduction of 160 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to reach the 5% target by 2020. This is equivalent to a 0.0038°C reduction in global warming by 2100. A far more important figure is the 80% reduction by 2050 target. That would reduce global warming by about 0.02°C and sees 115 million tonnes CO2 equivalent emitted compared to 577 Mt in 2010.
• In comparison, Kejun Jiang from the Energy Research Institute in China was in Australia last month and showed that current Chinese policies would save an estimated 1,800 million tonnes CO2e by 2020 and 3,800 by 2050 from their baseline. A more stringent set of policy scenarios they are looking at would double that benefit by 2050. China is also investigating a carbon price and are looking closely at Australia.
• Similar plans are being developed in a number of US states, the EU, various Asian countries. Research in the US to reduce emissions is ongoing, even if it’s not influencing policy just yet. So Australia is not going it alone and stands to benefit from their own actions and those of other countries.
• For example, the benefits to Australia by 2050 of their own actions could see somewhere between 23-55 square kilometres of the Great Barrier Reef kept below critical bleaching. The benefits bestowed by other countries would be far greater. However these benefits will only be realised if global warming is kept below 3°C. Preventing the bulk of the GBR from being critically affected would require a much lower peak warming.”

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Dr Frank Jotzo is Director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at The Australian National University in Canberra

“The carbon pricing legislation gives businesses more certainty for their investments, after many years of policy uncertainty. Companies will adapt their operations to the carbon price, and investment decisions will be taken with more consideration of emissions savings and energy efficiency. Once the scheme is in place, most industries will not be too eager to get rid of it again, especially if it means that it would be replaced by a different set of policies. The detailed design will always be contentious, and no doubt the scheme will evolve over time, along with changes to the overall policy landscape affecting greenhouse gas emissions. But the fundamental point is that putting a price on carbon is the economically best way of reigning in emissions growth. What was voted in today could well be the first step on the journey to effective and economically sensible climate policy in Australia.”

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Professor John Cole is Director of the Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development at The University of Southern Queensland

“Political hype aside, today Australia took a once in a generation step forward as a progressive member of the international community. Climate change unchecked ranks as the greatest threat to the future of humanity and today Australia began to pull its weight consistent with its capacities. Admittedly, there is a long way to go in the transition to a low carbon world. Irrespective of what politicians may say and threaten to do with the carbon tax, the suite of measures is so complex, so embracing, and has been achieved with so much political capital spent – on all sides – that to talk about a future where we will go back to the past is simply to strain the bounds of credulity.”

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Professor Snow Barlow is Professor of Horticulture and Viticulture at the Melbourne School of Land and Environment at the University of Melbourne

“The passing of the carbon bills through the House of Representatives today is an historic moment for Australians because it is the most significant move the nation has yet made to address Anthropogenic Climate Change. It will restructure the economy to dramatically decrease its carbon intensity and position current and future generations for continued prosperity. The bills cover the major sources of fossil fuel emissions within our economy, energy generation and transport.

Perhaps more importantly, the well-conceived architecture of these carbon pricing bills gives government the capacity to meet current and future national and international emissions reduction targets while encouraging the development of less carbon intensive industries.

Contrary to much of the public debate we are not ‘going it alone’. We are in the very good company of many of our major trading partners such as China, Korea, the nation state of California and the EU, who are concurrently introducing measures to decrease the carbon intensity of their economies. This well-structured carbon pricing package, competently implemented, has an excellent chance of achieving its objectives of controlling emissions, promoting low carbon innovation and ensuring that disadvantaged sectors of the community and industry do not suffer unfairly.

Within my particular area of expertise in the land-based sector, the package provides a much needed research, development and demonstration program. This will equip land managers to generate carbon credits by decreasing the carbon intensity of their activities while maintaining productivity and improving sustainability. Although agriculture is not a covered sector in the first phase of pricing carbon, the income flows will allow the sector to reconfigure the landscape into a more sustainable design while preparing our food production industries to remain competitive internationally in a future carbon-constrained world.”

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Prof John Foster is Director of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group at The University of Queensland

“It is NOT a ‘carbon tax’!! It is an emissions trading scheme with a temporary fixed price period (all such schemes have a temporary period where there is a fixed price as the system beds down).

I really despair when even science journalists are completely incapable of being clear on this and, in so doing just confuse the public, many of whom still think that they will see a carbon tax charge on their receipts, just like the GST.”

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Professor Steven Sherwood is co-Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at The University of New South Wales

“This policy is only the first step compared to what will be needed in the years ahead to avert severe global warming. That will ultimately require leaving a lot of economically viable coal, shale oil, and other resources in the ground forever, or else capturing the carbon as they are burned — not just burning through them all a bit more slowly. The policy passed today seems to be as large a step as can be justified now; people will have to adjust to it, other nations will have to take further steps, and the consequences will have to be assessed. Then in a few more years, as we begin to adjust to new realities and learn from this experiment, we and the rest of the world will have to decide what stronger steps should follow it. We are in for a very long haul on this issue.”

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Dr Richard Corkish is Head of the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at The University of New South Wales

“The advent of the carbon pricing legislation and the associated support for clean energy developments in the coming years is very exciting. It will bring this issue of global warming back to its rightful place as the most important facing our generation and bring to prominence Australia’s special place in the world as an R&D leader in renewable energy technology. It will encourage us to discuss our special advantages that allow us to be one of the few developed countries that could very easily be 100% reliant on renewable energy. This is a very positive step!”

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You can open/download the document for this section of the budget, “Health Overview ‑ Delivering Better Hospitals, Mental Health and Health Services”, here:
http://budget.australia.gov.au/2011-12/content/download/glossy_health.pdf

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.  Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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Professor David Copolov is Pro-Vice Chancellor and Professor of Psychiatry at Monash University

“”The mental health initiatives in the 2011-12 budget are one of the most important financial commitments to Commonwealth support of mental health reform for many, many years.

I’m particularly impressed with the component  that tackles the issue of severe, debilitating and recurrent psychiatric illnesses because this is the tough end of the spectrum. The budget has included measures for care facilitators, personal helpers and has also included support for employment. Very importantly, there is money in the budget to improve the coordination of mental health care between the states and the Commonwealth Government.  That’s very important, because historically, public sector mental health care has been the preserve of the State Governments, and it’s only since the Hawke Government involvement in mental health, introduced by the then Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, that there has been any substantial Commonwealth commitment to this area of health. The two limbs of government haven’t coordinated their strategies very well and much more needs to be done in this regard.

The idea of setting up a National Mental Health Commission is a very good initiative, as is the strategy of developing a 10-year plan. The mental health components of the budget demonstrate long-term thinking and pave the way for an objective assessment of how mental health care is progressing in Australia. It also sets the scene for developing new service innovations, especially because it also includes dedicated and quarantined additional mental health research funding to be allocated via the National Health and Medical Research Council. So I think the mental health initiatives get many ticks, because it shows that the Commonwealth Government is serious about this vital area of health. It was also terrific to hear that there was broad support for new mental health initiatives by both the major parties and also the Greens, and that was very welcome.

My particular support for this is in the initiatives to help people with severe, debilitating and recurrent mental health problems.”

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Associate Professor Julian Troller is Chair, Intellectual Disability Mental Health at the University of New South Wales

“I welcome the mental health initiatives in the budget. However, the budget fails to speak to the stark disadvantage faced by people who have both an intellectual disability and a mental illness.

People with intellectual disability have high rates of mental illness but very poor access to mental health services. The complexity of this group means that specialist services are necessary to meet the mental health needs of this population. However, there is very little funding available for such specialist services and no money is available for training and education of health professionals in this needy area. The budget fails to provide for the specific needs of this population.  Australia has ratified the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disability, in which equity of access to health care (Article 25) is enshrined. It’s time funding was made available to make the aspiration goals of the UN Convention a reality for people with Intellectual Disability and mental disorders.”

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It takes a lot to get scientists out in the streets to protest. So what’s all the fuss? In a move reminiscent of large UK protests over budget cuts to science research that were being proposed last year, Australian researchers are planning rallies in four cities on Tuesday (and in Perth on Thursday) over proposed cuts of up to $400 million to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) budget.

The cuts are being proposed as part of a slash and burn federal budget to help pay for recent natural disasters such as the Queensland floods and return the budget to surplus. The rallies are part of a  campaign that also involves significant use of social media such as a Twitter rally and iPetitions.

Also, you will find a statement from AAMRI (the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes) regarding the proposed cuts on their website.

The brief discussed the following issues:

• Who initiated the protests and why?
• How does Australia compare to other countries in terms of spending on medical research?
• How will the proposed cuts impact on research spending?
• Is this just scientists looking after their jobs? Why should we care?

Watch the full presentation here (Webex). A transcript of this event is also available here.

SPEAKERS:

• Professor Doug Hilton, Director, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne | Listen (mp3)
  
• Professor Suzanne Cory, President, Australian Academy of Science | Listen (mp3)
  
• Dr Cathy Foley, President, Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies (FASTS) (Sydney based) | Listen (mp3)
  
• Listen to the Q and A session here (mp3)
  

BRIEFING DETAILS:

DATE:  Tue 12 April 2011
START TIME: 10.30am AEST
DURATION: 35 min
VENUE:  Online

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 or email.