The Coalition has ramped up the race to fund the Great Barrier Reef’s protection. All three major parties have promised hundreds of millions of dollars, but where from, and what will they be spent on?
You’ve heard of cap-and-trade schemes for greenhouse gases. Perhaps we also need one to limit the amount of fertiliser runoff onto the Great Barrier Reef.
To win government, Labor needs a net gain of 19 seats nationally – and that’s the exact number of marginal seats being fought over in Queensland this election.
Political engagement in Australia has changed enormously over the past decade. New organisations such as GetUp! have taken the lead in channelling citizen voice into politics.
Australia’s government has lobbied hard to avoid the Great Barrier Reef being described internationally as being in danger. But that publicity wouldn’t necessarily hit tourism that hard anyway.
What are the issues facing rural and regional Australia? The challenges are many and varied – and only some have made the national political agenda – but these areas deserve better than neglect.
Peter C. Doherty, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity
There are several areas where Australia could be a world leader in innovation. If we can identify them and focus our efforts there, we could generate some genuine benefits here and abroad.
An estimated one-third of corals have now died in the parts of the Great Barrier Reef hit hardest by bleaching, meaning recovery could take years or even decades.
All mention of Australia has been removed from an international report on climate change on the grounds that it would damage tourism. Here’s the evidence.
The bleaching hitting the Great Barrier Reef not only harms corals. As these close-up photos show, it also deprives many other species of a home and livelihood.
Virtual reality is enabling researchers to get first hand experience of remote environments, helping them make better decisions about their conservation.
Bleaching has hit a huge swathe of the Great Barrier Reef, with many corals in the reef’s remote northern reaches now expected to die as a result of warm waters linked to this summer’s El Niño.