Tyrone D’Lisle, spokesperson for ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ despite not being a member of the Australian Greens! Either D’Lisle lied and then lied about lying, or at best he is covering up someone else’s lies.
Update (Jan 2024): In addition to his involvement in the fraudulent and possibly illegal ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ scam, Tyrone D’Lisle now works for a fossil-fuel funded scam called WePlanet (previously RePlanet). Here’s a short article in the British Electrical Review publication:
“It is worth looking at who actually finances RePlanet – the organisation behind Swedish teenager La Anstoot, who is very publicly asking Greenpeace to get on board the nuclear train via a slick website and multiple media interviews. Well, according to its EU filing, 94% of RePlanet’s two million euros per year comes from the Quadrature Climate Foundation. This was established by Quadrature Capital which owns $170 million in fossil fuel companies, including a $24 million stake in ConocoPhillips, the multinational oil giant behind the controversial Willow project that will drill in the Arctic. So why on earth would the fossil fuel lobby be promoting fissile fuel? Perhaps it has something to do with the decades-long nuclear construction times – which is already up to 17 years, according to the Sunak government. Just think of all those carbon-burn dollars that can be generated in the meantime.”
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The Australian Greens have strong, principled anti-nuclear policies (with some obvious allowances for the beneficial uses of nuclear technology e.g. nuclear medicine).
A group called ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy‘ has nothing to do with the Australian Greens. The spokesperson for the group, Tyrone D’Lisle, is NOT a member of the Australian Greens. He resigned as convener of the Queensland Young Greens in 2013 following behaviour which he attributed to stress and exhaustion. (D’Lisle refuses to provide any more detail.) A Greens representative said: “Mr D’Lisle’s views do not represent Greens policies.” D’Lisle resigned from the Greens altogether in 2017.
It is unclear if there are ANY members of the Australian Greens in ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’. The group is either partially fake (it includes non-members of the Greens) or completely fake (with NO members of the Greens). We do not know if the group is breaking any state or federal laws by calling itself ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ when some or all members of the group are not members of the Australian Greens.
We’ve only come across two people who identify as members of ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ (and only one of them claims to be a member of the Australian Greens). They may be the only two people in this group. ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ acknowledge that they are a “relatively small group”.
Update: ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ claim that the ‘real’ name of their group is ‘Greens for Nuclear Energy Australia’ but they can’t change their facebook group name ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’! Evidently the group has tried to change its name, an implicit acknowledgement that they have been falsely misrepresenting themselves as members of the Australian Greens and as a sub-group of the Australian Greens political party.
Furthermore, they are shifting their propaganda over to new sites called ‘Australians for Nuclear Energy’ … another implicit acknowledgement that they have been falsely misrepresenting themselves as members of the Australian Greens and as a sub-group of the Australian Greens political party.
It was only after Friends of the Earth exposed the fakery of this ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ group that they announced that their ‘real’ name is ‘Greens for Nuclear Energy Australia’ and decided to shift their propaganda to new sites which make no mention of the Australian Greens political party.
What to make of the new name ‘Australians for Nuclear Energy’? As far as we know there are only two members in the group, so it should be called ‘Two Australians for Nuclear Energy’. Or to use their own terminology, ‘A Relatively Small Number of Australians for Nuclear Energy’.
Update (July 2023): The fake ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ social media sites (facebook and twitter) are still alive but have not been used for over six months. That can be read as yet another implicit acknowledgement of the fakery of ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’. All that remains to be done is for the social media sites to be deleted to put an end to this fraudulent and possibly illegal ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ scam. All in all, jiggery-pokery of the highest order and the lowest repute.
The Big Lie
D’Lisle has been asked on countless occasions to substantiate or retract that claim but he has done neither. There is no truth to the claim. It is a fabrication. It is a lie.
D’Lisle claims he was not responsible for the lie but he refuses to say 1) who was responsible for it, 2) who else apart from him posts on facebook as ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’, and 3) whether anyone other than D’Lisle posts on facebook as ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’.
The claim about Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace is a dishonest fabrication and it is also defamatory. Perhaps that is why ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ are concealing authorship of the lie.
Perhaps D’Lisle was responsible for the lie, in which case he has lied about Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace and then lied about lying. Or perhaps another member of ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ was responsible for the lie, in which case D’Lisle is concealing the deceit of another member of his group.
D’Lisle acknowledged in correspondence with Friends of the Earth that he has zero evidence to support the accusation against Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. So why no public retraction and apology?
A concoction of misinformation, half-truths and outright lies
As for the contribution of ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ to substantive energy debates, it’s a concoction of misinformation, half-truths and outright lies:
* They claim that “civilian nuclear energy programs don’t lead to nuclear weapons programs” even though they repeatedly have.
* D’Lisle thinks “the world is going nuclear”. In fact, nuclear power has been stagnant for the past 30 years and its future is bleak, largely because nuclear power is far more expensive than renewables (including storage and transmission costs).
* They claim there were no radiation deaths from the Fukushima disaster DESPITE BEING WELL AWARE of the World Health Organization report which concluded that for people in the most contaminated areas in Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated increased risk for all solid cancers will be around 4% in females exposed as infants; a 6% increased risk of breast cancer for females exposed as infants; a 7% increased risk of leukaemia for males exposed as infants; and for thyroid cancer among females exposed as infants, increased risk of up to 70%.
* They make dishonest claims about the Chernobyl death toll. They suggest a death toll of less than 100. Blatant deceit. They ignore studies such as: the estimate of 16,000 cancer deaths across Europe in a study published in the International Journal of Cancer, and the World Health Organization’s estimate of “up to 9,000 excess cancer deaths” in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. For a longer discussion on pro-nuclear deceit regarding Chernobyl, click here.
* ‘Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy’ trivialise Chernobyl (and other nuclear disasters) by peddling the argument that the psychological trauma was greater than the biological effects from radiation exposure. There’s no dispute that, as the World Health Organisation states, the relocation of more than 350,000 people in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster “proved a deeply traumatic experience”. How to compare that psychological trauma to estimates of the cancer death toll from radiation exposure, such as the UN/WHO estimate of 9,000 cancer deaths in ex-Soviet states or the International Journal of Cancer study estimating 16,000 deaths across Europe? They can’t be compared. Apples and oranges. Most importantly, why on earth would anyone want to rank the biological damage and the psychological trauma from the Chernobyl disaster? Chernobyl resulted in both biological damage and psychological trauma, in spades. Psychological insult has been added to biological injury. One doesn’t negate the other.
* They support the systemic racism of the nuclear industry including the Australian government’s efforts to impose a national nuclear waste dump in SA despite the unanimous opposition of the Barngarla Traditional Owners.
* And they make false and indefensible claims about numerous other nuclear-related topics.