Daily Archives: October 30, 2014

Clive Palmer and Environment Minister Greg Hunt. Photo: Andrew Meares

Direct Action: Clive Palmer and crossbenchers reach deal with Greg Hunt

CHRIS UHLMANN: Taxpayers will pay polluters billions to cut carbon emissions and the Abbott Government will investigate a policy it’s promised to never implement.

They’re the key outcomes of yesterday’s climate agreement between the Coalition and the Palmer United Party.

The Government has hailed the deal as a breakthrough.

Labor, the Greens and environment groups say the “Direct Action” plan is a complete disgrace and some analysts are sceptical Australia will meet its climate change targets.

This report from James Glenday in Canberra:

JAMES GLENDAY: The Palmer United Party is predictably unpredictable and Environment Minister Greg Hunt couldn’t hide his delight when the deal was done.

GREG HUNT: This is a tremendous outcome for the Government. One of our signature policies is being achieved.

JAMES GLENDAY: It does seem a good agreement for the Government.

The controversial centrepiece of its climate policy – the $2.5 billion Emissions Reduction Fund – will pass the Senate.

In return, Clive Palmer will get an investigation into an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). He scrapped one just a few months ago.

REPORTER: Wasn’t your position for an ETS and haven’t you just capitulated today?

CLIVE PALMER: No, we haven’t. You know, ETS hope is still alive. We’ve saved four things in the environment, you know it’s true.

JAMES GLENDAY: But both parties have done some relatively big back flips. The Government has reversed its decision to scrap the Climate Change Authority. The organisation’s chair Bernie Fraser will carry out the 18 month ETS investigation.

BERNIE FRASER: What you’ve heard today is perhaps the beginning, the beginnings of an emerging broader political consensus on climate change and the need to take effective action.

JAMES GLENDAY: That’s an optimistic view. No matter what the investigation finds, the Government won’t implement an ETS.

The major parties remain divided.

MARK BUTLER: Well, I don’t know what Jedi mind trick Greg Hunt just played on Clive Palmer but we don’t need another inquiry; we need action.

JAMES GLENDAY: Labor’s Mark Butler says Australia will be an international pariah.

Greens leader Christine Milne claims it’s a dirty deal between a climate-denying Government and a coal miner.

CHRISTINE MILNE: Malcolm Turnbull described direct action as fiscal recklessness on a grand scale and that’s what it is.

JAMES GLENDAY: Direct Action has two key components.

The first bit, the Emissions Reduction Fund, allows polluters to bid for money to reduce their emissions. They can do that in a variety of ways; for example, by planting trees or becoming more energy efficient.

But because the scheme is voluntary, it only works nationally if other companies don’t start polluting more.

HUGH GROSSMAN: I mean certainly on its own the Emissions Reduction Fund will fall short of Australia’s 5 per cent commitment by 2020.

JAMES GLENDAY: Hugh Grossman from market analysis group RepuTex says the success or failure of Direct Action depends on the second part of the scheme, the so-called safeguard mechanism.

It’s designed to stop pollution going up.

HUGH GROSSMAN: I think at this point we need to give the benefit of the doubt to the Government because we’re yet to really see the structure of the second part of the scheme.

JAMES GLENDAY: Independent Senator Nick Xenophon will vote in favour of Direct Action and wants the safeguard mechanism set up quickly.

The Government is promising to do that but the technical details still haven’t been released.

CHRIS UHLMANN: James Glenday.

source: abc.net.au

A scene from Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo’s ‘White God.’ The film opens the festival on Friday.

In 1914 Costas Bachatoris adapted a novel by Spyros Peresiadis to produce “Golfo,” a bucolic drama that became Greece’s first-ever feature-length fictional film. During the coming days, the 55th Thessaloniki International Film Festival – opening Friday and running through November 9 – will be celebrating the centennial of Greek cinema with a retrospective made up of fan selections from a list of 200 films representing the highs and lows of domestic film production.

With the exception of a few selections, the fans seem to have got it right too: the retrospective includes some of the most exciting, cutting-edge and thought-provoking works that the country’s filmmakers have produced in the past 100 years. “Golfo” did not make the cut, but Greek cinema lovers will have the opportunity to trace the different trends that marked domestic production, from Alekos Alexandrakis’s “Synoikia to Oneiro” (1961), Alexis Damianos’s “Evdokia” (1971) and Theo Angelopoulos’s landmark “Traveling Players” (1975) to works that address modern societal issues, such as Constantinos Giannaris’s “From the Edge of the City” (1998), and on to the new generation of filmmakers (Panos Koutras’s “Strella”) and those who heralded what has been dubbed “weird Greek cinema” (Yorgos Lanthimos “Dogtooth”). The Greek greats are on the list – Nikos Koundouros (“The Dragon”), Pantelis Voulgaris (“It’s a Long Road,” “Little England”), Michael Cacoyannis (“Stella”) and Tonia Marketaki (“The Price of Love”) – along with filmmakers who pushed the boundaries to explore the surreal and the avant-garde, such as Nikos Nikolaidis (“Sweet Gang”), and those who stuck to more conventional routes to produce films inspired by Greek history and aimed at a wider audience (Tassos Boulmetis “A Touch of Spice”). The omission of Costa-Gavras comes as something of a surprise, though he is considered a French rather than Greek filmmaker.

The 55th TIFF has also put together a tribute in its Balkan Survey section – a staple at the event showcasing production in the region – to Serbian filmmaker Zelimir Zilnik, the only surviving proponent of the critical Yugoslav Black Wave movement of the 1960s and early 70s. The tribute includes films that marked his career – either by earning him international acclaim or by prompting the ire of the censors, sometimes both – as well as more recent work which since the start of 2000 has focused on issues pertaining to immigration.

In other tributes to prominent artists, the film festival will honor Hanna Schygulla with a special ceremony at the Olympion Theater, starting at 8.30 p.m. on Friday, November 7, during which the German chanteuse and muse of Rainer Werner Fassbinder will be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. She will also perform live before a screening of short films she either directed herself or starred in. Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo, winner of the Grand Prix in the “Un Certain Regard” section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, will also be present at this year’s festival with “White God,” which has been selected as the event’s curtain-raiser on Friday. The tribute to his work will further include four more of his feature films. Another exciting tribute is to Ramin Bahrani, an influential director of American independent cinema hailed by the late Roger Ebert as “the director of the decade” for his 2007 drama “Chop Shop.” Absurdist Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson is also the subject of a tribute with screenings of “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence,” “Giliap,” “Songs from the Second Floor,” “Swedish Love Story” and “You, The Living.”

Fun facts

* Costas Bachatoris’s 1914 romantic drama “Golfo,” Greece’s first domestic, feature-length fictional film, cost 100,000 drachmas to produce but failed to make an impact at the box office, leading to the closure of Bachatoris’s production company.
* Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos was so delighted by Dimitris Gaziadis’s “Astero,” first screened in 1929, that he decided to reduce the tax on Greek films from 30 to 10 percent.
* In 1939, Filopimin Finos, the prolific producer and founder of Finos Films, which backed 175 films during the so-called Golden Era of Greek cinema, shot his first and only feature, “The Parting Song,” in 1939. It was the first Greek talkie to be recorded exclusively in a Greek studio.
* In 1948, Giorgos Tzavellas’s comedy “Marinos Kontaros” became the first Greek film to travel to an international festival, while in 1954, Grigoris Thalassinos (aka Gregg Tallas) became the first Greek filmmaker to win an international award, taking first prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival for “Barefoot Battalion.”
* When Michael Cacoyannis’s “Electra” was screened at Cannes in 1962, Hollywood heavyweight Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer invited its producer, Filopimin Finos, to join the company after being impressed by the film’s technical qualities. He declined.
* Theo Angelopoulos’s 1975 screening of “The Traveling Players” at Cannes earned him a standing ovation. German filmmaker Werner Herzog was in the audience and kneeled in front of Angelopoulos to kiss his feet.

source: ekathimerini.com

In the wake of revelations that a huge burial mound being excavated at Ancient Amphipolis, northern Greece, has no fourth chamber, the Culture Ministry’s general secretary Lina Mendoni indicated that the central tomb could be located beneath the level on which the dig is currently taking place and did not rule out the possibility that the tomb had been raided.

“If the the tomb has been looted, then this would mean that it was someone very great buried there, a very important personality,” Mendoni said of the site which is believed to date to the time of the death of ancient Greek warrior Alexander the Great.

source: ekathimerini.com

Cyprus’ Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides (c) shakes hands with his counterparts of Egypt Sameh Shoukry (r) and Greek Evangelos Venizelos after their meeting at the foreign ministry in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Wednesday.

The governments of Egypt, Greece and Cyprus urged Turkey on Wednesday to stop trying to chart gas deposits in areas of the east Mediterranean claimed by Cyprus, saying the work was illegal.

Cyprus, a member of the European Union, is anxious to develop the gas reserves in its so-called exclusive economic zone — an offshore region lying south of the island.

Turkey does not recognize Cyprus, ethnically split between its Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations, and the government in Nicosia has accused it of dispatching a research vessel to collect seismic data in the disputed area.

The foreign ministers of Egypt, Greece and Cyprus met in Nicosia on Wednesday to prepare for a summit between the three nations next month, and condemned Turkey’s actions.

“The ministers deplored the recent illegal actions perpetrated within Cyprus’s EEZ, as well as the unauthorized seismic operations being conducted therein,” they said in a statement.

Cyprus discovered an estimated 5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas in one offshore field in late 2011 and has licensed US energy firm Noble, Italy’s ENI and France’s Total to search for gas.

“We are hopeful all activity in the eastern Mediterranean will conform with international regulations … understandings which are based on good neighborly relations,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri told reporters, flanked by his Cypriot and Greek counterparts.

The gas row has already triggered a suspension of peace talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the island partitioned by a 1974 Turkish invasion that followed a brief coup engineered by the military junta then ruling Greece.

Egypt, which lies south of Cyprus, has penned a deal with the Nicosia government recognizing sea boundaries between the two countries for the purpose of commercial exploitation. Cyprus has also signed a similar deal with Israel.

Egypt is facing its worst energy crisis in decades, with declining gas production and high consumption that has turned the country from an energy exporter to a net importer in the past three years.

Last week BG Egypt, a subsidiary of global energy company BG, said it had held talks with Cypriot officials on the potential of Cyprus supplying Egypt with gas.

Cyprus has become particularly keen to develop offshore gas reserves as a potential source of revenue since it was compelled to seek an international financial bailout in early 2013.

source: ekathimerini.com