and furious festival goers when the police shut down the Brazilian band Monobloco who spontaneously started playing on the street after midnight. Sydney has all the makings of one of the world's great festival cities, but we won't get there with an overbearing police presence and midnight curfews. As the curtains closed on the failed United Nations conference on sustainable development Rio+20, one question hung over the crowd. If the world is sitting on a ticking environmental bomb, why have we put off a strict and ambitious plan of sustainable development? The economic crisis and the structure of the forum were blamed for the uninspiring outcomes of the week, but they don't change the fact that we have made little progress on the world's most pressing issue. Has the era of a grand global vision of environmental sustainability come to an end or are rich countries once more kicking the can down the line? It's hard to imagine that the ambition of Gina Rinehart to control Fairfax Media represents a threat to Australia's democracy. But the fear is far from an idle one. Fairfax Media offers an important counterbalance to News Ltd. Amidst massive structural change in the media landscape which is resulting in layoffs and reduced reporting budgets, Rinehart's success would almost certainly restrict freedom of speech in Australia. But the Government is right not to get involved with heavy handed state sponsored buyouts or ownership controls. Instead, they should look to the diverse and rapidly expanding sphere of