Jennifer Marohasy

AN historic piece of legislation, The Carbon Pollution Reduction Bill, currently rests on the Senate table which, if passed, will have a huge impact on Australia’s economic and social future.  The legislation will next be considered on August 13th.   If passed what will this mean for the Australian environment? It is generally agreed that the legislation [...]

“The Buyat controversy has taken away precious three and half years out of my family’s life, but we still feel that justice delayed is still justice.” Eric Ness was writing about yet another court ruling vindicating his father, Richard Ness, and American gold mining giant Newmont of any wrong doing at his blog www.richardness.org. Eric [...]

The mining thread at this blog has been dominated by the Buyat Bay saga; the alleged deliberate pollution of the bay, fishing village and its fringing coral reef in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, by US mining giant Newmont and in particular its Indonesian boss Richard Ness. I attended the verdict in the criminal trial of Mr [...]

“An Indonesian court has thrown out a lawsuit brought by a mining executive against the New York Times over reports the firm dumped toxic waste into an Indonesian bay, lawyers said Thursday. Richard Ness, an executive with US mining giant Newmont, sued the newspaper and one of its reporters for more than 64 million dollars [...]

Earlier this week the Australian chapter of ‘Friends of the Earth’ posted a statement on their website in response to comments made by Australian Senator Ian Macdonald. The press release stated: National environmental organisation, Friends of the Earth (FoE) Australia, has responded angrily to a statement made in the Senate by Ian Macdonald implying that [...]

The response by our society to mining on one hand and logging on the other in the jarrah forests of Western Australia could not be more in contrast. Alcoa’s bauxite mining is met with silence, but to oppose logging of virtually any sort (even of plantations in some cases) has become a normal part of [...]

One of the most interesting anomalies in Australian environmentalism is that the alumina industry is destroying the jarrah forest – and nobody seems to care. At least, nobody is complaining. Open cut mining of State Forests in Western Australia by two alumina producers (Alcoa and Worseley) has been going on for about 40 years. Mining [...]

Abu Bakar Bashir, the well known spiritual leader of militant Islamic group, Jemaah Islamiya, has now joined forces with Indonesia’s largest environmental organisation, WALHI, to protest against US-based mining corporation Newmont. from http://richardness.org/blog/walhisstrangebedfellows.php I’ve previously written about the Buyat Bay saga – where Richard Ness and Newmont were accused of having polluted a fishing village [...]

Hi Jennifer, On the 26th of June 2007, Jakarta-based reporter Mr. Geoff Thompson aired a program for ABC’s Foreign Correspondent on the Buyat Bay Case entitled “The Battle of Buyat Bay”. This documentary has some revealing statements from NGO activists, and it gives a good insight into how the Buyat controversy originated and how it [...]

We have followed the ‘Buyat Bay’ saga at this blog beginning with my post entitled ‘Did Newmont Do it?’ in November 2005. And I was in Indonesia in April to visit Buyat Bay and hear the verdict in the criminal trial. Richard Ness and Newmont were cleared of all charges. The ABC TV program ‘Foreign [...]