The Australian Greens will today launch their '5-Point Plan to End Cruelty and Expand Jobs' that would quickly transition the live sheep export trade to a boxed, chilled meat trade processed locally.

The plan has the backing of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU).

Charging interest on people that owe a Centrelink debt will disproportionately affect Australians on low incomes and who weren’t intentionally committing fraud, Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said today. 

“The Government has pointed to very rare circumstances of extreme fraud to justify the measure.   

Queensland Greens Senator Andrew Bartlett is calling on the Mayor of Ipswich to explain if waste sector donations were behind the councils decision to bin recycling.

"Politics is broken when we can’t trust our politicians to handle something as simple and common sense as recycling.

"We know the biggest donor to the Mayor of Ipswich's election campaign was from the waste sector.

"What did they expect for the tens of thousands of dollars pumped into the campaign?  

"Who profits when recycling goes straight to landfill?

Abbott-friendly NEG is a dog: Greens

Greens energy and climate change spokesperson Adam Bandt MP today said that as Tony Abbott starts tweeting in support of the NEG, Labor should toughen up and demand better of the Federal government than this dog of a policy.

“The NEG is a dog,” said Mr Bandt. 

“The NEG was designed to appease the coal-huggers on the backbench and Tony Abbott’s latest endorsement suggests that plan is working.”

The live animal export trade is a barbaric practice that must end despite Liberal National Government infighting over the issue, Australian Greens trade spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

“This morning Agriculture Minister David Littleproud criticised Sussan Ley of being ‘emotional’ in  her response to live exports – I bet he wouldn’t have said that if she were a Liberal man,” Senator Hanson-Young said.

The stranglehold fossil fuel companies have over our political system is slowly killing off the Great Barrier Reef, says Queensland Greens Senator Andrew Bartlett.

Another study published today in Nature shows the Reef has been transformed by back to back mass bleaching.

“The Coalition government’s obsession with burning coal makes no sense until you consider the millions of dollars pumped into the Liberal and National parties by the fossil fuel industry.

“Burning fossil fuels impact lives and livelihoods.