Snow Manners, a leader of the successful 2006 Toowoomba community campaign to defeat a plan to force them to drink recycled sewage, warned Queenslanders not to be fooled by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's apparent backflip on her Government's plans to impose recycled sewage aon all of south East Queensland.

See also: Bligh backflip on water recycling; Traveston dam delayed of 25 Nov 08.

Merilyn Haines, spokesperson person for Queenslanders For Safe Water questioned Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's apparent stated intention to fill to capacity the Wivenhoe Dam, which was built, not as water storage dam, but as a flood minitagation dam following the catastrophic Brisbane floods of 1974.

Merilyn Haines will be standing as an independent candidate against Anna Bligh in her seat of South Brisbane at the next state elections.

It now seems these sacrifices were in vain, because in Queensland our present government is a dictatorship. One person, Anna Bligh, forcibly medicates us through our water supply with fluoride chemicals and we shall have water that has been sourced from sewerage whether we like it or not.

Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation media release

What you can do: attend public meeting
Date: Saturday, 15th Nov, 2pm–5pm,at Ahimsa House, 26 Horan St, West End, Brisbane

Farmers from the Felton Valley in Queensland's Darling Downs occupied Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's Office in West End in order to prevent the destruction of irreplacable farmland from the ravages of an out-of-control boom in coal mining, coal seam gas extraction and coal liquefaction. The protest was typically ignored by Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper which is far more interested in drumming up enthusiasm about the claimed prosperity that the coal industry will bring to the Darling Downs.

See also: www.friendsoffelton.blogspot.com, YouTube broadcast of (Oct 2008(?)) "Coal Mines To Replace Farms in Australia", "Darling Downs community fights farmland for mine move" in Sunday Mail of 1 Nov 08 (Friday's protest not reported), "Coal vs cropping fight widens" in Stock and Land of 15 Oct 08, "Lone stand as coalminers poised to bulldoze Acland" in the Courier Mail of 18 Oct 08, "Darling Downs farmers vow to resist coal miners" in the Courier Mail of 5 Oct 08.

Australian National University Emeritus Professor, Patrick Troy, an authority on water infrastructure, on the 29th October was widely reported with advice that it was not possible to prevent potentially harmful organisms from entering southeast Queensland's water supply when recycled sewage is added to it in February.

See also: "Queensland Premier Anna Bligh tells water plan critics she will drink recycled sewage" in the Australian of 31 Oct 08 (including readers' comments), www.qawf.org, "Disease expert warns on recycled sewage" in the Australian of 30 Oct 08, "Bligh says academic ill-informed on water claims" in the ABC on 29 Oct 08, "WA slow to recycle sewage as drinking water" in Perth Now of 29 Oct 08, "Recycled sewage 'will have bugs', Queensland Government warned" in the Australian of 29 Oct 08, "Flush then drink in the Sunshine State" in the Australian of 30 Oct 08, "Water talkfest simply a farce" by Bill Hoffman in the Sunshine Coast Daily of 15 Oct 08

At a summit to save the Great Barrier Reef on 24 October, Premier Anna Bligh asked the public how to improve the sediment-laden water that threatens to choke the Reef. She still plans to triple Queensland's record export rate of climate-changing coal by 2030, and ignores Greens MP Ronan Lee's advice to restore water monitoring programs axed by her Government in 1999.

See also: "Queensland Government cracks down on farmers near Barrier Reef" on the ABC of 27 Oct 08, "Qld may regulate farms to save Reef" in SMH of 24 Oct 08, "Great Barrier Reef summit today" in The Australian of 24 Oct 08.

Whilst the Bligh Government has scrapped the environmentally damaging shale oil mining project in the Whitsundays, a rural community further south faces the threats of an open cut coal-mine and coal-to-liquid plant in their midst. These projects could devastate one of this country’s most beautiful & fertile valleys, pollute the Murray Darling river system, destroy nationally significant populations of rare & endangered species, and produce huge quantities of Greenhouse gases.

See also: www.friendsoffelton.blogspot.com, Qld farmers want new rules for mining in Sunshine Coast Daily of 2 Sep 08.

Demand that former protest singer and former President of the Australian Conservation Society Peter Garrett use his ministerial powers to prevent the tripling of Australia's coal exports by 2030 and prevent the destruction of Shoalwater Bay.

Queensland Labor Premier Anna Bligh, in a letter published in the Courier Mail on 8 August, claimed concern at the decline in South East Queensland's koala population. However, it was her Government which only recently legislated, against community and local council objections, to fast-track the destruction of much of the remaining koala habitats in South East Queensland to make way for residential development.

What you can do: Email Premier Anna Bligh (premier [AT] ministerial qld gov au) and Deputy Premier Paul Lucas (deputypremier [AT] ministerial. qld. gov. au) to demand that they act now to end Queensland's economic dependency upon population growth, which threatens the koala and other native species, including the lungfish, with extinction.

See also: Locals join koala 'crisis' taskforce in the Bayside Bulletin of 7 Aug 08 including readers' comments.

Why is Queensland Premier Anna Bligh threatening Shoalwater Bay, which was saved from sand mining in 1994 by vigorous community protests, with a new coal terminal?

What you can do: attend public meeting at Yeppoon Town Hall, Wednesday 30th July at 7pm. Phone 07 4938 1818.

The locally based Shoalwater Wilderness Awareness Group expresses its concerns about the harm that the proposed now coal terminal will cause to the RAMSAR wetlands in Shoalwater Bay.

See also: www.shoalwaterbay.org, www.cccqld.org.au, Capricornia Conservation Council fights expansion of Queensland coal industry, Coal port proposal another insult to Queensland's biggest wilderness region.

What you can do: attend public meeting at Yeppoon Town Hall, Wednesday 30th July at 7pm. Phone 07 4938 1818.

A public meeting is to be held at Yeppoon Town Hall at 7PM on Wed 30 July to save Shoalwater Bay and fight Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's plans to expand Queensland's climate-changing coal industry.

See also www.cccqld.org.au, About Coal

The Electrical Trade Union's threat to disaffiliate from the Labor Party in protest at its treatment by the Queensland and Federal Labor Government begs the question of how trade unions can ever hope to be adequately represented in Parliament.

See also: QLD Labor stung by protests, poll in the Brisbane Times of 21 June 08.

A rally to protest about the costs of growth to the community and the invasion of housing and infrastructure into high biodiversity areas of South East Queensland will take place outside the Labor Party Conference at the Convention Centre on the Gold Coast this Saturday, 21st June at 10:30am.

See also: Protest at Queensland State Labor Party conference to Save the Mary River

At the elections of 15 March pro-developer councils were trounced in Redland City and on the Sunshine Coast, but this popular rejection of over-development means little to the State Labor Government of Anna Bligh and the property developers she serves.

See also: More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 14 May 08, How to end the Queensland economy's addiction to population growth? of 26 Apr 08, Courier-Mail beats up on public for complaining about cost of 'progress' of 14 Apr 08, The Australian laments outcome of Queensland local government elections of 30 Mar 08.

“The opposition of local communities on both sides of the river to the Lord Mayor’s ill conceived toll bridge proposal has been clearly and repeatedly expressed, most forcefully in thousands of public submissions during the now notorious project consultation process.”

Stop the Hale Street Bridge Alliance Media Release, 1 Jun 08

In 2007 the Queensland Government forcibly acquired the water assets of South East Queensland local governments. Now, in 2008, having lost control of their water assets, residents in these areas face hikes in their water bills.

See also: Water prices to surge of 19 June 08 in the Bayside Bulletin, The Australian's April fool's joke of 20 May, More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08, The Australian laments outcome of Queensland local government elections of 29 Mar 08, Water prices to soar of 15 May 2008

Mayor Bob Abbot's plans to cap Sunshine Coast population: applauded by residents; opposed by developers, Murdoch newsmedia, Queensland State Government.

See also Gold Coast's new Council urged to reconsider growth targets

Queensland's Premier Anna Bligh, Deputy Premier Paul Lucas and the developer Multiplex have all declined an opportunity to convince the Brisbane public of the merits of their plans to cover the northern third of the Brisbane River adjoining the CBD with a high-rise residential apartment complex.

Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper ponders how Queenslanders' opposition to over-development can be thwarted.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh acts out of character in order to save one of the few remaining icons of Queensland's history in Brisbane's CBD.

State Premiers must recognise that continued economic growth is not sustainable and give precedence to the environment recognising that the size of the economy is bounded by Nature's ability to sustain it, say conservationists in the wake of the Garnaut Report on Climate Change economic impacts.

Environmental laws don’t apply to mines is the message from Premier Bligh’s promise to pass special laws to override yesterday’s Court decision against Xstrata Coal, said the Greens today.