policy

The release of the Queensland budget yesterday provides an important insight to the government's credibility on the climate change - particularly when you compare their investments in renewable energy and climate adaptation against their continuing subsidisation of the coal industry.

We've done a bit of a comparison, and the figures stack up this way: even on a conservative account,subsidies to the coal industry in the budget is 23 times greater than the TOTAL climate change initiatives (including renewable projects, adaptation, energy efficiencies and disaster preparation).

Allegedly, the Queensland Government is reviewing, updating and consolidating its current climate change policy. But since the release of the issues paper on 7th November last year, there have been no announcements, no policies and no position statements released by the Queensland Office of Climate Change. In fact, the so-called "news and events" page on their website hasn't been updated since the 12 August 2008.

It has now taken the Office of Climate Change almost 7 months to review a 36 page document which is mostly pictures! 

Queenslanders have a right to ask - with the coal industry continuing its expansion, what are the people in the Office of Climate Change doing? To coin a phrase, why are they fiddling while coal burns?