Indigenous Say It on Film

0 Comments read Features, Indigenous

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 24.05.2011 (IPS): From the Australian bush to Alaska’s Arctic wilderness, indigenous peoples’ stories and perspectives take centre stage at the Message Sticks Film Festival, the only annual event of its kind in Australia.

Message Sticks opened at the Sydney Opera House on May 13 and tours nationally until August 24, through remote Aboriginal communities in the towns of Broome, Townsville, Cairns, Alice Springs and Yirrkala, besides screening to mainstream audiences in state and territory capitals.

“The festival has grown in terms of audience and the quality of works,” said Australian indigenous film and documentary director Rachel Perkins.

“The pool of indigenous filmmakers has also grown with more access to targeted programmes for skills development. This, coupled with the means of production becoming more economically viable, has meant that there is more content to draw from,” Perkins, who has been the festival curator for the past 12 years, told IPS.

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India, Australia must build thorium based N-reactors: Dr Kalam

0 Comments read Diaspora, Nuclear Disarmament

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 20.05.2011 (IANS): India and Australia should work together in building Thorium-based nuclear reactors to meet the growing energy needs, said former Indian President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, during his recently concluded four-day (May 17-20) visit to Sydney.

He said, “Thorium-fuelled reactors are supposed to be much safer than uranium-powered ones, use far less material (1 metric ton of thorium gets as much energy as 200 metric tons of uranium, or 3.5 million metric tons of coal), produce waste that is toxic for a shorter period of time (300 years as against uranium’s tens of thousands of years), and is hard to weaponize. In fact, thorium can even feed off of toxic plutonium waste to produce energy. And because the biggest cost in nuclear power is safety, and thorium reactors can’t melt down, they will eventually be much cheaper, too”.

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New Trade Winds

0 Comments read Business and Trade

By Neena Bhandari

(Opinion piece for Business Standard): From cricket and the Commonwealth, India-Australia bilateral ties have moved to embracing commerce. Recent months have seen Indian companies making huge investments in Australian mines and setting up joint ventures to secure the much needed resources for meeting India’s growing energy needs.

The “U” word, as the issue of uranium sales to India is often referred to in diplomatic circles, made front-page headlines and prime time news, and even dominated talkback radio airwaves. So much so that at the visiting US president and Australian prime minister’s joint press conference, one of the questions asked by an Australian journalist was on uranium exports to India to which President Barack Obama replied, “I will watch with interest what is determined.”

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