I understand that some 10,000 coal ships per year, or more than one an hour, are forecast to make their way through the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area by 2020, up 480% from 2011.

The neocon agenda of deregulation and privatisation rolls on, with it's attendant aim of emasculating democratic government.

Krugman and Wells offer a useful (though somewhat US-centric) commentary on the associated phenomena of rising inequality, anti-Keynesianism and the failure of mainstream economics, and how they fit into the neocon agenda here:

http://politics.salon.com/2012/04/15/economy_killers_inequality_and_gop_ignorance/singleton/

We can expect the anti-Green vilification to move up a gear. More commentary along the lines of The Greens wanting to shut down the coal industry, tax the rest of mining into submission, force supermarkets to put up prices, and close down private hospitals and private schools.

They also want tariffs, and punitive tax rates on anybody who is even vaguely successful in their chosen field.

We can expect the anti-Green vilification to move up a gear."

Miranda Devine wastes no time. Bob Brown and the Greens are to blame for rising electricity bills.

"The Coalition states want more power to approve developments and they reject the idea of cooperative federalism."

Queensland's Campbell Newman is one who rejects cooperative federalism. He stands for "Everything for Queensland". He also wants to delegate the powers of the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act to the states to actually evaluate these projects.

Yet federal environmental legislation is sometimes the only thing that prevents pro-development state governments from giving bulldozers the green light--eg., Tasmania.

Victoria is the worst polluting state in Australia for greenhouse gas emissions, given its reliance on the overwhelming dominance of Latrobe Valley brown coal . the proportion of electricity generated from brown coal is around 95 per cent.