Welcome to the fourth of The Conversation’s Election 2013 podcasts. Each week The Conversation will be sitting down with Australia’s top political minds to discuss all things election as we gear up for…
Former speaker Peter Slipper is virtually no chance to retain his Queensland seat of Fisher after a highly controversial last term in office.
AAP/Dave Hunt
A number of seats in Queensland may go a long way to deciding the outcome of the federal election. However, it is doubtful that the seat of Fisher, located in the southern part of the Sunshine Coast, will…
Drink drivers are more likely to be caught in the country than city, new research from the Queensland University of Technology…
Labor MP Bernie Ripoll is expected to be returned in the Queensland seat of Oxley in September unless a seismic shift against the ALP in the state.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The fate of the federal Queensland seat of Oxley in the 2013 election will provide some clues to the Labor Party’s long term future. If Labor loses Oxley, it is in serious trouble. The seat includes traditional…
Queensland’s groundwater is vital to the continued success of its agriculture.
Brian Yap
Mine operators have proposed nine major new coal mines for the Galilee Basin in central Queensland. Those proposals currently being assessed by the Queensland government could significantly impact water…
Love your gingerbread? Thank your Red Ferrosols.
Flickr/sheilaz413
Australia has some of the world’s most ancient soils, many of which grow delicious produce. In this series, “The good earth”, soil scientist Robert Edis profiles some of those soils and the flavours they…
Across Australia, the debate over national parks is escalating. This has been triggered by a series of significant changes in the approach to managing parks, with moves to open them to logging, grazing…
Lucky it’s dry: if the Channel Country was in flood, oil could have flowed into Lake Eyre.
Flickr/Euclid vanderKroew
In May oil spilled from a well in south-west Queensland owned by Australian oil and gas company Santos. In what may be the state’s third largest spill, more than 250,000 litres of oil flowed from the well…
Queensland farmers are used to dealing with variable seasons, but the long-term shifts of climate change are expected to create new challenges. Queensland farmers already do a good job of managing a variable…
Australia is already clearing land at world-leading rates.
Ray Christie/Indigo Skies Photography
Last week the Queensland parliament passed laws relaxing land clearing and opening up national parks to cattle grazing. Victoria has proposed similar clearing changes. It’s no surprise more clearing is…
When cows are going hungry, should their rights trump those of national parks?
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Due to a serious drought that has seen one-third of Queensland drought declared, farmers are struggling to feed their cattle. There’s inadequate feed on their own land, feed is hard to source in the marketplace…
Barren and isolated, Riversleigh is actually one of the most important fossil sites in the world.
Riversleigh from Shutterstock.
Australia is famous for its natural beauty: the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, Kakadu, the Kimberley. But what about the places almost no one goes? We asked ecologists, biologists and wildlife researchers…
Will the Great Barrier Reef be declared ‘In Danger’? We’ll have to wait until next year to find out.
AAP Image/Catlin Seaview Survey
UNESCO, the body that lists world heritage areas, continues to express extreme disquiet about the state of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. But it has now postponed to February 2014 consideration…
This Green and Golden Bell Frog is one of the few species to be successfully protected using offsets.
Flickr/eyeweed
Clive Palmer’s China First Coal Project is entering the last stages of review for its proposed coal mine in Queensland’s Bimblebox Nature Refuge. As part of the Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement…
To figure out where we’re safe from crocodiles, we need to know more about what makes them move around.
Jeff Keir
The estuarine crocodile is the top predator in waterways across Northern Australia. Large crocodiles pose a risk to humans, so local governments take measures to control crocodile abundance and distribution…
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman announces his government’s plan to outsource, rather than completely privatise, many public services.
AAP/Dan Peled
Back in July last year Queensland Premier Campbell Newman was in a very black mood. All was gloom and doom in the Sunshine State, as he warned Queensland was “on the way to being bankrupted” without tough…
Soon after revealing his plans to build a replica Titanic, Clive Palmer has set his sights on becoming Australian Prime Minister.
EPA/Jason Szenes
Queensland has a habit of raising the eyebrows of our southern cousins when it comes to politics “our way”. Visits to friends and family down south always have required explanations about Joh Bjelke-Petersen…