The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over
2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi).The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.CNN labelled it one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland.
A large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which helps to limit the impact of human use, such as fishing and tourism. Other environmental pressures on the reef and its ecosystem include runoff, climate change accompanied by mass coral bleaching, and cyclic population outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish. According to a study published in October 2012 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the reef has lost more than half its coral cover since 1985.
The Great Barrier Reef has long been known to and used by the Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and is an important part of local groups' cultures and spirituality. The reef is a very popular destination for tourists, especially in the Whitsunday Islands and Cairns regions. Tourism is an important economic activity for the region, generating over $3 billion per year.
In November 2014, Google launched Google Underwater Street View in 3D of the Great Barrier Reef. A March 2016 report stated that the reef was experiencing widespread coral bleaching as a result of warming ocean temperatures. And also the longest global reef bleaching event ever, which have been recording on planet since 1998.
Due to its vast biodiversity, warm clear waters and accessibility from the tourist boats called "live aboards", the reef is a very popular destination, especially for scuba divers. Tourism on the Great Barrier Reef is concentrated in Cairns and also The Whitsundays due to their accessibility. These areas make up 7%–8% of the Park's area. The Whitsundays and Cairns have their own Plans of Management. Many cities along the Queensland coast offer daily boat trips. Several continental and coral cay islands are now resorts, including the pristine Lady Elliot Island. As of 1996, 27 islands on the Great Barrier Reef supported resorts.
In 1996, most of the tourism in the region was domestically generated and the most popular visiting times were during the Australian winter. At this time, it was estimated that tourists to the Great Barrier Reef contributed A$776 million per annum. As the largest commercial activity in the region, it was estimated in 2003 that tourism generated over A$4 billion annually, and the 2005 estimate increased to A$5.1 billion.A Deloitte report published by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in March 2013 states that the Reef's 2,000 kilometres of coastline attracts tourism worth A$6.4 billion annually and employs more than 64,000 people.
Approximately two million people visit the Great Barrier Reef each year. Although most of these visits are managed in partnership with the marine tourism industry, there is a concern among the general public that tourism is harmful to the Great Barrier Reef.
A variety of boat tours and cruises are offered, from single day trips, to longer voyages. Boat sizes range from dinghies to superyachts. Glass-bottomed boats and underwater observatories are also popular, as are helicopter flights. By far, the most popular tourist activities on the Great Barrier Reef are snorkelling and diving, for which pontoons are often used, and the area is often enclosed by nets. The outer part of the Great Barrier Reef is favoured for such activities, due to water quality.
Management of tourism in the Great Barrier Reef is geared towards making tourism ecologically sustainable. A daily fee is levied that goes towards research of the Great Barrier Reef. This fee ends up being 20% of the GBRMPA's income.Policies on cruise ships, bareboat charters, and anchorages limit the traffic on the Great Barrier Reef.
The problems that surround ecotourism in the Great Barrier Reef revolve around permanent tourism platforms. Platforms are large, ship-like vessels that act as a base for tourists while scuba diving and snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef. Seabirds will land on the platforms and defecate which will eventually be washed into the sea. The feces carry nitrogen, phosphorus and often DDT and mercury, which cause aspergillosis, yellow-band disease, and black band disease. Areas without tourism platforms have 14 out of 9,468 (1.1%) diseased corals versus areas with tourism platforms that have 172 out of 7,043 (12%) diseased corals. Tourism is a major economic activity for the region. Thus, while non-permanent platforms could be possible in some areas, overall, permanent platforms are likely a necessity. Solutions have been suggested to siphon bird waste into gutters connecting to tanks helping lower runoff that causes coral disease.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has also placed many permanent anchorage points around the general use areas. These act to reduce damage to the reef due to anchoring destroying soft coral, chipping hard coral, and disturbing sediment as it is dragged across the bottom. Tourism operators also must comply with speed limits when travelling to or from tourist destinations, to prevent excessive wake from the boats disturbing the reef ecosystem.
Liam Hemsworth (born 13 January 1990) is an Australian actor. He played the role of
Josh Taylor in the soap opera Neighbours and as Marcus on the children's television series The Elephant Princess. In 2010, he starred in the American film The Last Song and in 2012, he starred as Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games film series, based on an adaptation of Suzanne Collins' best-selling novel series. Hemsworth's older brothers, Luke and Chris, are also actors.
While filming The Last Song in June 2009, Hemsworth began a relationship with his co-star Miley Cyrus.After three years of having an on-again, off-again relationship, the couple announced their engagement in June 2012. They lived together in Los Angeles but ended their engagement in September 2013. In July 2014, Hemsworth noted that he and Cyrus would "always be best friends" and they had "an instantaneous and powerful connection." Despite rumors in early 2016, stemming primarily from sightings of the couple together at his Malibu home and the reappearance of the engagement ring on Cyrus, Hemsworth confirmed in an interview with TV Week in April 2016 that he was not engaged.
Hemsworth is the ambassador of the Australian Childhood Foundation. Hemsworth talked about his association with the foundation, "I have the best parents you can have. They have worked in child protection for twenty years and have only ever given me encouragement and support. The world is a scary enough place as it is for children. It is important that home should always be a safe place for them." When asked if he believed he was a hero to children, Liam said he did not know, but that he would like to be a good role model.
Hemsworth is vegan and told Men's Fitness that he found "no negatives to eating like this. I feel nothing but positive, mentally and physically."
It's the Ripponlea fine diner where Ben Shewry, the Kiwi chef we've fully Russell
Crowe'd (except we actually want to keep Shewry), has rocked the world for a decade plating personal narratives in the medium of native ingredients. And having likely claiming a place on the World's 50 Best Restaurant List for the third year running (the results are announced today), it's probably considered one of Australia's best known dining destinations. But fun fact, restaurant twitchers: unless you've dined here since Shewry took sole ownership last year, you don't know it as well as you think you do.
To start, Shewry bought out owners Helen and David Maccora last July. "For 11 years it was somewhere I worked," says Shewry. "Now it's somewhere I own, and it's the biggest change of my life other than having children. Everything you can imagine has been rebuilt."
The chef's chef (few command the kind of global following he does) has given everything from the menu structure to the fire drills an emotional overhaul. He's even working the floor.
"I'm the guy who puts the fire out. Then it falls to my sous chef. That sort of stuff is really important to me. I want this to be a model of how to run a small business in Australia."
Come in for dinner and expect Shewry at your table ladling foam from the heart of a pumpkin. On the speakers, no music. In the kitchen, a whole new pastry lab where diners drop tulips from the garden to form a dessert.
It's still Attica, but it's also a whole new restaurant. Quieter, but faster and a whole lot more interactive.
This kind of temporal shift is not without its risks. The room's energy is tethered to the mood of the diners, and those long silences can be heavy going. The newly tooled interactive game, loved by many, is yet to run as smoothly as the greased-rails service of the past.
Major wins come in the form of a more nimbly paced degustation where the finger-led snacks come thick and fast. Less bulk up the back of the menu has given the kitchen more freedom to play with proteins. Simple interludes between the trademark garden-fuelled delicates – consomme floated with 26 herbs and petals that differ with every bite – might be juicy slices of smoked pork neck, mountain pepper-fragrant or a bright, intense vinaigrette-poached ruffle of beef on a sharpened rib with charred macadamia salt that tastes lightly touched by fire. It's a one-bite argument for ditching big meat finales.
The Australian Greens (commonly known as The Greens) is an Australian green
political party.
The party was formed in 1992 and is today a confederation of eight state and territory parties. In addition to environmentalism the party cites four core values: ecological sustainability, social justice, grassroots democracy and peace and non-violence.
Party constituencies can be traced to various origins – notably the early environmental movement in Australia and the formation of the United Tasmania Group (UTG), one of the first green parties in the world, but also the nuclear disarmament movement in Western Australia and sections of the industrial left in New South Wales. Co-ordination between environmentalist groups occurred in the 1980s with various significant protests. Key people involved in these campaigns included Bob Brown and Christine Milne who went on to contest and win seats in the Tasmanian Parliament and eventually form the Tasmanian Greens; both Brown and Milne subsequently became leaders of the federal party.
Federally, the Greens have ten senators and one member in the lower house, 23 elected representatives in state and territory parliaments, more than 100 local councillors, and over 13,000 party members (as of 2015).
Richard Di Natale became leader of the Australian Greens following Christine Milne's resignation, on 6 May 2015.
Under Richard Di Natale, the party has taken a much more pragmatic approach to policy and dealing with government legislation than under previous leaders.
The party voted in support for legislation that saw assets testing for age pensions reduced from $1M down to $800,000. The Greens also negotiated with the government and secured a tax disclosure threshold for big businesses earning more than $200M a year.
The various Australian states and territories have different electoral systems, all of which allow the Greens to gain representation. In New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, the Greens hold seats in the Legislative Councils (upper houses), which are elected by proportional representation. The Greens also hold a seat in the unicameral Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly since the 2012 election, down from four after the 2008 election. In Queensland and the Northern Territory, their unicameral parliaments have made it difficult for the Greens to gain representation.
The Greens' most important area of state political activity has been in Tasmania, which is the only state where the lower house of the state parliament is elected by proportional representation. In Tasmania, the Greens have been represented in the House of Assembly from 1983, initially as Green Independents, and from the early 1990s as an established party. At the 1989 state election, the Liberal Party won 17 seats to Labor's 13 and the Greens' 5. The Greens agreed to support a minority Labor government in exchange for a number of policy commitments. In 1992 the agreement broke down over the issue of employment in the forestry industry, and the premier, Michael Field, called an early state election which the Liberals won. Later, Labor and the Liberals combined to reduce the size of the Assembly from 35 to 25, thus raising the quota for election. At the 1998 election the Greens won only one seat, despite their vote only falling slightly, mainly due to the new electoral system. They recovered in the 2002 election when they won four seats. All four seats were retained in the 2006 election. After gaining 5 seats in the 2010 election, in April 2010 Nick McKim became the first Green Minister in Australia.
In the 2011 NSW State election, the Greens claimed their first lower-house seat in the district of Balmain. In the 2014 Victorian election, they won two lower-house seats, those of Melbourne and Prahran.
Three Greens have become ministers at the state/territory level: Nick McKim and Cassy O'Connor in Tasmania until 2014, and Shane Rattenbury in the ACT to the present.
LABOR leader Bill Shorten said indigenous people were dispossessed from their land
and he understands why they believe Australia was invaded by the British.
He has also signalled a Labor Government could back a treaty with indigenous people in addition to indigenous recognition in the constitution.
Mr Shorten last night declared Australia didn’t “handle Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people well”.
“I actually think that calling out racism in this country isn’t part of the set election script, but it’s true,” Mr Shorten said, adding that he wanted more indigenous Australians in the parliament.
The declaration came after Mr Shorten was asked by indigenous man Doug on ABC’S Q&A if he believed Australia had been invaded by the British in 1788.
“If I was an Aboriginal or indigenous person, yes, I would,’’ Mr Shorten replied on the program.
Mr Shorten declared reconciliation needed to be both practical and symbolic, reverencing changing the constitution and considering a treaty.
He also said Australia needed to move “beyond” recognition in the constitution.
“Do I think we need to move beyond just constitutional recognition to talking about what a post-constitutional recognition settlement with indigenous people looks like, yes I do.”
When pressed if this could be a treaty, Mr Shorten replied “yes.”
Pressed on whether he believed colonisation constituted an invasion, Mr Turnbull recalled his family’s convict heritage.
Mr Shorten was quizzed on the program by several people about how Labor would fund policies such as its proposal to expand the National Broadband Network.
He was also challenged by a small-business owner to support company tax relief.
Mr Shorten said a Labor Government would dump Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s plan to cut the tax rate for large companies and would further restrict negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions.
“It’s about choices. I choose to use scarce taxpayer dollars and find the money through hard decisions to help save Medicare, properly fund our schools and make sure we can back in our kids going to university,’’ he said.
“Mr Turnbull chooses to make his economic plan giving away $50 billion to large corporations.”
The Opposition has come under pressure in recent days after announcing it would slow the reduction in budget deficits over the next three years.
Mr Shorten said many of the savings Mr Turnbull was relying on were “zombie measures’’ which would never be passed by the Senate.
“We will not reduce the deficit as fast as the Government in the first three years because they’re relying on cuts which are fake and bogus,’’ he said.
At the start of the program, Mr Shorten condemned the massacre of 50 people at a gay nightclub in Florida.
“This wasn’t just an attack on our humanity, this was an attack on our right to be proud of who we are, our right to choose who we love,’’ he said
Asked about housing affordability, Mr Shorten said negative gearing should be restricted to new investment properties to make it easier for first-home buyers to compete for properties.
The Labor leader said other issues, including land release, were impacting on the affordability of housing.
William Richard "Bill" Shorten (born 12 May 1967) is the current Leader of the
Opposition for the Australian Labor Party and Leader of the Australian Labor Party in the Parliament of Australia following the 2013 federal election and subsequent 2013 Labor leadership ballot. He is leading the Labor Opposition against the incumbent Turnbull Liberal/National Coalition Government at the 2016 federal election on Saturday 2 July.
Shorten was first elected to the House of Representatives seat of Maribyrnong in Victoria upon the defeat of the Liberal Government at the 2007 federal election and was immediately appointed as a parliamentary secretary. Following the 2010 federal election he was elevated to Cabinet and served as Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation in the Gillard Government. From June 2013 he served as Minister for Education and Minister for Workplace Relations until the defeat of the Rudd Government. Prior to entering Parliament, he was the National Secretary of the Australian Workers' Union from 2001 to 2007.
In March 2000, Shorten married Debbie Beale, the daughter of businessman and former Liberal MP Julian Beale. They divorced in 2008. In 2009, Shorten married Chloe (née Bryce), who is the daughter of Michael Bryce and Quentin Bryce, who was the Governor-General of Australia at the time. Shorten and Chloe live in Moonee Ponds with their three children: their daughter, and Chloe Shorten's children from a previous marriage.
In May 2012, the Shortens issued a public appeal requesting the cessation of an unspecified smear campaign about their marriage; Shorten was quoted by The Australian saying "personal lives and families should be off limits". Shorten has a twin brother, Robert.
Despite their sharp political differences, Shorten was best man at the wedding of his close friend John Roskam, executive director of the anti-Labor Institute of Public Affairs.
Malcolm Bligh Turnbull (born 24 October 1954) is the 29th and current Prime Minister
of Australia. Turnbull became Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia after he defeated the incumbent Tony Abbott at the September 2015 Liberal leadership ballot. He is leading the incumbent Liberal/National Coalition government against the Shorten Labor Opposition at the 2016 federal election on Saturday 2 July.
Turnbull attended Sydney Grammar School before going to the University of Sydney, where he attained a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws. Turnbull then attended Brasenose College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he attained a Bachelor of Civil Law. For over two decades prior to entering parliament, Turnbull worked in both personal and managerial positions as a journalist, a lawyer, a merchant banker including Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Australia, a venture capitalist, and Chairman of the Australian Republican Movement. A self-made multi-millionaire, Turnbull purchased a stake of internet service provider Ozemail in 1994 for $500,000 and sold his stake just months before the dot com bubble burst in 1999 for $57 million, paving the way to his current estimated net worth of above $200 million with entries in the BRW Rich 200 list.
Though Turnbull had attempted Liberal preselection at a 1981 by-election and later at the 2001 federal election, he was first elected to the House of Representatives seat of Wentworth in New South Wales at the 2004 federal election. Elevated to the Howard Cabinet in January 2007, he briefly served as Minister for the Environment and Water. Following the defeat of the Liberal government at the 2007 federal election, Turnbull declared himself as a candidate at the 2007 Liberal leadership ballot, but lost to Brendan Nelson by three votes. Following a period of poor polling, Turnbull defeated Nelson by four votes at the 2008 Liberal leadership ballot and was elected party leader and Leader of the Opposition. Turnbull was considered part of the progressive Liberal minority at the time due to his differing views on issues such as Australian climate change, Australian republicanism and Australian marriage equality. Turnbull's support for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme proposed by the Rudd government split the Turnbull opposition, resulting in Abbott defeating Turnbull at the 2009 Liberal leadership ballot by a single vote. Initially intending to leave parliament, Turnbull remained and eventually became Minister for Communications in the Abbott government following the defeat of the Labor government at the 2013 federal election.
On 14 September 2015, citing consistently poor opinion polling for the Abbott government, Turnbull challenged Abbott at the subsequent Liberal leadership ballot and won by ten votes. Turnbull once again became Liberal leader, was sworn in as Prime Minister the following day, and formed the Turnbull government. Opinion polling for the 2016 federal election indicated a honeymoon period which lasted for several months until the start of April when Turnbull began to register net negative satisfaction ratings and, though voting intention has since been tight, from there on the government also ceased leading the two-party vote in all but a few exceptions.
Turnbull is married to prominent businesswoman and 2003–04 Sydney Lord Mayor Lucy Turnbull AO, née Hughes. They married on 22 March 1980 at Cumnor, Oxfordshire, near Oxford by a Church of England priest while Turnbull was attending the University of Oxford. They and their two children, Alex and Daisy, live in Sydney.
The use of Bligh as a male middle name is a tradition in the Turnbull family. It is also Turnbull's son's middle name. One of Turnbull's ancestors was colonist John Turnbull, who named his youngest son William Bligh Turnbull in honour of deposed Governor William Bligh at the time of the Rum Rebellion.
Turnbull and Lucy became grandparents in September 2013, when their daughter gave birth to a boy.
Raised Presbyterian, Turnbull converted to Roman Catholicism in 2002. However, he has found himself at odds with the church's teaching on abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage. Turnbull supported legislation relaxing restrictions on abortion pill RU486 and he also voted for the legalisation of somatic cell nuclear transfer. He did so despite the vocal public opposition to both proposals by Cardinal George Pell, the then-Archbishop of Sydney.
In 2005, the combined net worth of Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull was estimated at A$133 million, making him Australia's richest parliamentarian until the election of billionaire Clive Palmer in the 2013 election.
Turnbull made the BRW Rich 200 list for the second year running in 2010, and although he slipped from 182 to 197, his estimated net worth increased to A$186 million, and he continued to be the only sitting politician to make the list. Turnbull was not listed in the 2014 list of the BRW Rich 200. As of 2015, his estimated net worth is in excess of A$200 million.
THOUSANDS of CFA volunteers have rallied at the Treasury Gardens to defy a union
bid to have greater control over the organisation.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told 3500 volunteers firefighters and supporters at the rally he would block the planned union takeover of the CFA if he was re-elected on July 2.
The PM received a rock-star welcome at the Melbourne rally, with thousands of volunteers in uniform chanting his name and CFA volunteers telling Federal MPs they will campaign against Labor on polling day.
THOUSANDS of CFA volunteers have rallied at the Treasury Gardens to defy a union bid to have greater control over the organisation.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told 3500 volunteers firefighters and supporters at the rally he would block the planned union takeover of the CFA if he was re-elected on July 2.
The PM received a rock-star welcome at the Melbourne rally, with thousands of volunteers in uniform chanting his name and CFA volunteers telling Federal MPs they will campaign against Labor on polling day.
Mr Andrews is understood to be privately scathing of Jane Garrett, who resigned as emergency services minister on Friday, but party insiders are shocked by the Premier’s handling of the dispute and confused about his motivations in backing the UFU.
“Why would you be prepared to lose the CFA board, a minister and the goodwill of country people for a bully like (UFU secretary) Peter Marshall?” said one.
Jockeying has begun to replace Ms Garrett in the ministry. Mary-Anne Thomas and Gayle Tierney, both from senator Kim Carr’s half of the Socialist Left faction, are thought to be candidates.
The “moderate Labor” grouping, run by former minister Adem Somyurek, is understood to be pushing for Marlene Kairouz.
Garth Head, a former ALP adviser working with Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria, said the VFBV was not taking a political stance but “the anger coming through is overwhelming, and building”. The government’s struggles to find a replacement board were complicated yesterday by the revelation that the CFA Act, and normal practice, dictates that the VFBV chooses nominees for their skills, and they are not controlled by the volunteer body, but the chances are they would also oppose the EBA because it hurts volunteer interests.
Insiders have warned it will be a tough task finding new CFA board members prepared to “trash” their reputation by supporting the deal and then firing chief executive Lucinda Nolan.
2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi).The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
