The Labor government will give a $204 million boost to the protection and management of the Great Barrier Reef, bringing the total investment in the reef to $1.2 billion (US$751 million). Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on Friday unveiled the new package, noting it will go into replanting parts of the reef with new corals, catchment restoration, improving…

The Great Barrier Reef is seeing record high levels of coral cover across two-thirds of the world’s largest coral reef system since monitoring began 36 years ago, according to a new report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). Between August 2021 and May 2022, the 87 representative reefs surveyed revealed average hard coral…

An Australian geophysicist has called a new government report—which claims Australia’s ecosystem is at risk of collapse—a “political statement” that deliberately omits important data to fulfil the climate change narrative. The State of the Environment report recently released on July 19 by Tanya Plibersek, the federal environment and water minister, was compiled by a group of…

An Australian geophysicist has called a new government report—which claims Australia’s ecosystem is at risk of collapse—a “political statement” that deliberately omits important data to fulfil the climate change narrative. The State of the Environment report recently released on July 19 by Tanya Plibersek, the federal environment and water minister, was compiled by a group of…

Commentary On June 3, the National Assembly of Quebec, Canada, passed an Act respecting academic freedom in the university sector. The law’s purpose is described in the legislation: “to recognize, promote, and protect university academic freedom in order to support the mission of university-level educational institutions, which includes the production and transmission of knowledge through…

All Australian universities have now adopted policies to strengthen and protect free speech on campus, two years after the recommendation was made. University chancellors have also agreed to publicly report on how they are upholding academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus on an annual basis from 2021. Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge said…

Commentary The High Court Of Australia has now unanimously rendered its judgment in the Peter Ridd case. The facts of the Ridd case are well known. James Cook University sacked Peter Ridd, a physics professor, in 2018 for criticising his colleagues’ research on the preservation of the Great Barrier Reef. Professor Ridd went public with…

Marine geophysicist and Great Barrier Reef (GBR) expert Peter Ridd has lost his appeal to the Australian High Court, which determined that his sacking from James Cook University (JCU) was not a violation of his right to intellectual freedom. Ridd was fired in 2018 after he questioned the quality and reliability assurance processes of his…

Corals are able to cope with climate change and changing sea temperatures better than previously thought, a new study found. Published on Monday, the study led by James Cook University’s (JCU) Coral Centre of Excellence found that coral is good at passing on adaptive traits onto new generations, such as genes for living in warmer…

The act of questioning the quality of his colleague’s work has turned into a fight for intellectual freedom in Australia’s apex legal institution, the High Court. Marine geophysicist Peter Ridd’s legal battle for freedom of speech is nearing its end after his appeal was heard in the High Court on June 23. Former Professor Ridd,…