The federal government's announcement that it will introduce fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles is long overdue.
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Australia is one of the few developed countries in the world, standing alongside Russia, that does not have such standards.
One impact of this lack of standards has been that car companies around the world have dumped less fuel efficient and higher emitting vehicles on the Australian market, leading to greater fuel costs for individuals and higher carbon emissions than would otherwise be the case.
It has been estimated that the new standards will save approximately $1,000 per vehicle per year. Imagine if they had been introduced 10, or even 5, years ago. The less emitting vehicles would now be well and truly entered into the used car market and most of us would be saving money on fuel.
It was only the dogged intransigence of successive LNP federal governments that stopped it happening years ago.
In a sense the Abbott - Turnbull - Morrison years have cost each of us up to $10,000 in lost fuel savings.
Some in the Liberal and National parties are already calling it the "end of the ute", somewhat like the "end of the weekend" that they trumpeted a while back.
They have no policies, no conscience, no awareness and no chance.
On another front, you may remember that the Victorian and Western Australian governments announced last year that they would be stopping native forest logging.
Closer to home we seem no closer to such a ban in NSW. This was great news at the time. It meant that, in those states at least, public money would stop subsidising an unviable and destructive industry. In NSW the bill to the taxpayer runs into millions of dollars per year.
The Minns' state government has changed the rules about logging so that loggers are no longer required to check for endangered Greater Gliders in their known den trees before starting logging.
It looks suspiciously like this is a response to logging being suspended at Tallaganda last year when a dead glider was found and it emerged that loggers were checking the trees visually from the ground in the daytime, when the gliders were asleep in their dens and therefore not visible.
They would then commence logging when they saw no gliders. The change is straight out of the script of Yes Minister. When a government agency like Forestry Corp can't or won't comply with the rules then you change the rules.
It will be left to community volunteers and protesters to check for these vulnerable creatures.
This is an appalling decision from a government that loudly proclaims its environmental credentials and has committed to the Koala National Park.
It looks like any endangered animals may well be logged to extinction before the park comes into existence.
It is well and truly past time that the NSW government followed the lead of Victoria and Western Australia an banned native forest logging.
