New USYD Chancellor an Extractive Industry Heavyweight

New USYD Chancellor an Extractive Industry Heavyweight

by SallyNo Comments
In February this year, the University of Sydney appointed a new Chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson. This appointment opens the door to the mining industry on our campus and reflects the neoliberal orientation of our education system. Ms Hutchinson is currently a director of one of Australia’s largest companies. AGL makes its money through coal seam gas extraction, a technology that threatens Australia’s productive farmland, fractures our waterways and underground aquifers and pours climate-change-causing methane into the air in large quantities. It is a corruption of a public office for Ms Hutchinson to remain a director of AGL whilst also directing the interests of our supposedly independent University. Ms Hutchinson is also a former director of the Centre for Independent Studies, a right wing think tank that churns out neoliberal ideas for business interests. With her at the helm we can be assured that our education will be geared to make profit. That means more deals to do research and courses for the...
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CSG coming to a backyard near you!

by incubateNo Comments
We’re standing on the edge of a quarry. At the far wall my eyes travel up through a dissection of the earth’s first 50m, layers of shale, sandstone and earth in shades of grey, yellow and brown. Atop the hill, grey-green against the fields and the sky is a gas plant, the central point of a new generation of resource extraction South West of Sydney, sucking gas from drills up to 4km underground in a radius of 100km around the plant. The Camden gas fields are 66 well sites spread across a 160 square kilometer area in northern Campbelltown and Camden, traversing the Nepean river and both residential and rural properties. The gas field is believed to be Australia’s first coal seam gas drilling project in residential areas. The suburbs of Kearns, Currans Hill, Raby, Eschol Park, Varroville and Gregory Hills could have wells in their backyards. House and land packages are currently on sale in the freshly developed suburb of Gregory...
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The coal mines of Leard State Forest, NSW

by ASENadminNo Comments
After an hour of searching through wattle and gum, here’s the break in the fence- here we’ve found the thin edge where the forest  drops out into  blue sky and dust, where we dig ever deeper in mineral lust   From this height it’s a theatre of industrial might, a stage for our reasons to stand in the light- we examine them each in the magnified glare of once fertile soil that’s now been stripped bare   It’s a show staring greed masqueraded as need, feat. invasion, coercion, compliance- the seed that was planted when ‘value’ was stripped from the land, to live in the palm of an invisible hand- not guided by Country, it bows to Demand (of it’s own fabrication!) grips the throat of our nation, cuts airways and limbs til a whole generation is left paralysed, our mouths hanging open we watch the tide rise, and the hand keeps force feeding those few ‘lucky’ mouths, but it brews its own poison in the pit of our bowels, and its spat and its thrown and its spilt down our cheeks, it’s a rage that keeps growing as we watch them reap from the hope we had pinned on our lucky star, cause we’re told from the...
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The coal mines of Leard State Forest, NSW

by incubateNo Comments
After an hour of searching through wattle and gum, here’s the break in the fence- here we’ve found the thin edge where the forest  drops out into  blue sky and dust, where we dig ever deeper in mineral lust   From this height it’s a theatre of industrial might, a stage for our reasons to stand in the light- we examine them each in the magnified glare of once fertile soil that’s now been stripped bare   It’s a show staring greed masqueraded as need, feat. invasion, coercion, compliance- the seed that was planted when ‘value’ was stripped from the land, to live in the palm of an invisible hand- not guided by Country, it bows to Demand (of it’s own fabrication!) grips the throat of our nation, cuts airways and limbs til a whole generation is left paralysed, our mouths hanging open we watch the tide rise, and the hand keeps force feeding those few ‘lucky’ mouths, but it brews its own poison in the pit of our bowels, and its spat and its thrown and its spilt down our cheeks, it’s a rage that keeps growing as we watch them reap from the hope we had pinned on our lucky star, cause we’re told from the...
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Globalising Resistance to Radiation – From Mutiny Zine #66

by ASENadminNo Comments
The below article appears in the July/August issue (#66) of Mutiny Zine, a paper of anarchistic ideas and actions from Sydney. You can find the entire zine online HERE as well as individual articles from the zine on the Mutiny Zine blog. Another article from this issue of the zine which might be of interest to ASEN folks is by Kylie and discusses climate summit counter-protests and some ways forward for the climate justice movement. Love and solidarity- Mutiny Zine editors. Globalising Resistance to Radiation: From Australia to Japan By Alexander Brown, Tokyo Throughout June and July thousands and now tens of thousands of people have been gathering every Friday outside the prime minister’s residence in Tokyo, to protest prime minister Yoshihiko Noda’s plans to re-start Japan’s nuclear reactors. Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March last year, nuclear reactors that went offline for routine maintenance and testing were not restarted due to stringent new testing requirements imposed by the government as a...
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