Dirt Radio

The Australian government has used an environmental activist who became involved in the “alternative music scene” as an example of violent extremism, in a booklet aimed at helping teachers identify students who are becoming radicalised and linked to terrorism. Her name is "Karen", and she's with Dirt Radio this week to explain how she came to have such a high public profile and why the government needs to re-tune its focus on "youth".

The almost 600 environment groups that hold tax-deductibility status in Australia are being scrutinised by a federal government inquiry, with reports that more than 100 of them face being struck off the list. And Friends of the Earth has been specifically targeted.As Dirt Radio went to air this week, the inquiry was holding its session in Melbourne.FoE's Melbourne based campaign co-ordinator Cam Walker talks about the inquiry's background and its ideological agenda. Then a cross to the inquiry itself, where we hear from the community rally outside the inquiry supporting environmental camapigners.

"From country to city, we come together to protect our land, our water and our health from unconventional gas. Help us send a clear message that fracking and gasfields will never be welcome in Victoria". That's Lock the Gate Victoria, on their website. This week, we hear about the humble beginnings of the Lock the Gate campaign in NSW, the move into Victoria and the extensive and successful community work being done throughout the Gippsland region to stop the development of unconventional gas mining in prime farmland.An inquiry into the future of the extraction of unconventional gas is concluding, and the current Labor government needs to know that this industry has no place in Victoria.

Front Line Action on Coal’s Leard Blockade is the first coal mine blockade camp in Australia. And the longest. Starting in August 2012, over 3 years, hundreds of people made history by visiting the the Blockade campsite and participated in a variety of activities to show opposition to the destructive Whitehaven coal mine.This week, Dirt Radio looks back on the Blockade and Front Line Action on Coal's critical role in mobilizing and sustaining the campaign. Then we look forward to the next big grassroots coal battle - the mega-Shenwua mine project in NSW. The plan is to construct an open cut mine to extract 10 million tonnes of coal a year from the slopes adjoining the Liverpool Plains, an area known for its fertile and highly valuable black agricultural soils.

When you take the Green Pledge you choose 5 actions from a list of 10 that can see you reduce your carbon emissions by up to 50% and create potential for broader political change. Funds raised will help Friends of the Earth Melbourne campaign for a world powered by renewables, not dirty fossil fuels. Comedian and tireless campaigner Rod Quantok, 2015 Green Pledge ambassador explains, in the first  part of Dirt Radio this week.Also this week the Environmental Film Festival begins in Melbourne. One of the co-directors of the Festival takes us through some of the highlights.

The yakka skink is a robust lizard around the same size as a blue tongue lizard. And the ornamental snake is a brown, grey-brown or black snake growing up to 50 cm in length with a prefeered habitat within, or close to, habitat that is favoured by its prey – frogs.These were the little critters pivotal to overturning the approval of the Carmichael coal mine – a A$16 billion mine, rail and port project proposed for the Galilee Basin in Queensland, right on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef. But not without some serious campaign and legal work.We talk to a key campaigner from the Mackay Conservation Group, the local ENGO that spearheaded the legal challenge. In the same week as the court ruling, demonstrating further that this is a dead-end investment, Australia's biggest bank, the Commonwealth Bank, cut ties with this project, joining 11 international banks who refuse to fund the controversial project.But, right now Australia's government is revising their approval plan. So the fight is not over.

A planning blunder led to the destruction of almost 900 towering old native trees after VicRoads severely underestimated the environmental impact of a highway project it is managing.  WHAM (Western Highway Alternative Mindsets) is a community campaign pushing back and asking why. Dirt Radio talks with Wham's spokesperson about how it happened.Coal is cheap, renewables are expensive: the Abbott government mantra heard with monotonous regularity when future energy needs in Australia get a public airing. This sham claim is pulled apart in the second part of the show.

That's what Professor Simon Chapman called members of the most recent inquiry into wind energy. This is what he had to say: 'I have... catalogued and publicised public statements about 244 different diseases and symptoms said to be caused by turbine exposure. These include, in all seriousness, herpes, haemorrhoids, and disoriented echidnas. Look for yourself and be amazed. These public statements deserve serious critical scrutiny, which the Committee declined to apply.'There have been 10 wind energy inquiries in 5 years.This week Dirt Radio talked with Leigh Ewbank, co-ordinator of FoE's Yes2Renewables campaign, about the built-in bias of the inquiry, the response of the wind industry and where the campaign is heading next.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a secret trade agreement that will adversely affect the environment, worker’s rights, cost of medicines, internet freedoms, food safety, intellectual property rights and indigenous rights. The TPP covers 40% of global trade and will impact 800 million people in the partnering nations. The deal is being negotiated behind closed doors in secret. The content will only being released to our elected representatives and the public once it has been signed off on. This agreement is not only undemocratic but would also open the possibility of transnational corporations suing the Australian government, with the possible loss of billions of taxpayer dollars. Currently the TPP has been put on hold due to some unresolved hitches. But the push is on to get it through before the US presidential election in 2016This week, members of FoE's recently reinvigorated Economic Justice Collective discuss the TPP, and their new report 'Fracking the Planet: How the Trans Pacific Partnership will expand fracking in Australia and around the globe’.

The Barmah-Millewa Collective has decided its time for a new name: the 'River Country Campaign'. This is an exciting evolution in our campaign, which points to a broadening effort to protect the ecosystems of the Murray-Darling Basin and to support land and water justice for Indigenous peoples.This week Dirt Radio hears from Morgana Russell, the campaign's new co-ordinator. as she talks about her background and the issues at hand.