Tweets of the Week

The Australien Government has made an ad about the new media legislation it just passed, and it's surprisingly honest and informative! pic.twitter.com/iD5KRenxGT

— theJuiceMedia (@thejuicemedia) February 25, 2021

Who else needs to see this? pic.twitter.com/Y2B66ZOWaI

— Kailas Wild 🐨 (@kailaswild) March 1, 2021

Things you might have missed in the daily news

Financial Review, 3 August 2020:

Taiwanese lender Yuanta Securities Investment Trust has sold $27 million worth of bonds in Adani's Abbot Point coal terminal in Queensland, joining a rapidly expanding list of Asian and global lenders that have shunned the controversial project.

Yuanta was once the second-biggest investor in one of the project's bond issuances, holding more than 5 per cent of a $US500 million issuance due to expire at the end of 2022….

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According to an ABC News artilce published on 31 July 2020, a senior federal Border Force officer allowed 2,700 people to disembark the Ruby Princess cruise ship mistakenly believing passengers had tested negative to COVID-19, when they had instead tested negative for the common flu. 

Border Force command only realised the mistake more than 30 hours after passengers — including 13 who had been isolated in their cabins with fever — had left the ship.

The Ruby Princess COVID-19 cluster resulted in at least 662 infections and 21 deaths, the single biggest arrival of coronavirus on Australian shores.

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The Market Herald, 23 July 2020:

• The Chinese navy has confronted Australian warships in the South China Sea en route to a military exercise with Japan and the U.S.
• Five ships, lead by HMA Canberra, were travelling through disputed waterways when they encountered the Chinese military
• The Joint Task Force was heading to the Philippine Sea at the time, where it planned to conduct military movements ahead of the biennial RIMPAC conference
• The exercise aimed to increase interoperability between the Australian, American, and Japnese navies, but came amid increasing tensions between the U.S. and China over territory in the South China Sea
• Speaking to the encounter, the Department of Defence said all "unplanned interactions with foreign warships throughout the deployment were conducted in a safe and professional manner"….

Next month, all three navies will head to the biannual Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) in Hawaii — the biggest global maritime warfare activity.

However, in 2018, China invitation to RIMPAC was withdrawn based on its 'aggressive' territorial claims in the South China Sea.

It's understood China won't participate in this year's RIMPAC event either.

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The Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2020, p.27:

The crowd pleaser

With world-famous surf breaks, natural springs and coastal charm, Yamba is the beach break you never knew you needed.

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'Eve Black' dramatically arrested in Melbourne week after she filmed hersel laughing her way through a Bunyip Victoria police checkpoint. She was detained around 2pm on 29 July in arrest that forced police to smash her car window. Now facing up to $10k fine [News Corp 31.07.20]

— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) August 1, 2020

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According to recently released Australian Taxation Office data, in the 2017-18 financial year the amount of tax paid in main urban areas went as followed in the NSW Northern Rivers region:

• Grafton postcode 2460 – 14,500 individuals paid $117.32 million.
• Kyogle postcode 2474 – 3,336 individuals paid $24.66 million
• Ballina postcode 2478 – 15,690 individuals paid $186.06 million
• Lismore postcode 2480 – 24,989 individuals paid $207.96 million
• Byron Bay postcode 2481 – 9,050 individuals paid $114.50 million
• Tweed Heads postcode 2485 – 7,709 individuals paid $66.43million
• Tweed Heads postcode 2486 – 17,127 individuals paid $150.65 million.

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Former PM Tony Abbott, Alan Jones & George Pell ate at an exclusive club days before a staff member tested positive for COVID-19 [Daily Mail 01.08.70]. So were these men guests of a member. Or has the Australian Club sunk so low that it would now accept one this trio as a member?

— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) August 2, 2020

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ABC News, 4 August 2020:

A growing group of anti-maskers have been "baiting" and antagonising Victorian police, and in one instance smashed the head of a female officer into concrete until she was concussed, authorities say. 

Police said two female police officers approached a 38-year-old woman, who was not wearing a face covering, in the Frankston area last night. 

After questioning the woman about why she was not wearing one, police allege she pushed one officer and struck the other in the head. "After a confrontation and being assaulted by that woman, those police officers went to ground and there was a scuffle," 

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said. "During that scuffle, this 38-year-old woman smashed the head of the [26-year-old] policewoman several times into a concrete area on the ground." 

Police said the constable was taken to Frankston Hospital with "significant head injuries". 

The woman's alleged assault left the young police officer with a concussion and a missing clump of hair, Police Association of Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt said. 

"The offender had a clump of our member's hair in her hands and said to our member 'what's it like to have your hair in my hands' or words to that effect," he said. "That's just horrible conduct — it's not human-like to be quite honest." 

Police have charged the alleged attacker with nine offences, including two counts of assaulting an emergency worker and one count of recklessly causing injury. 

She had no previous criminal history and was granted bail to appear before the Frankston Magistrates' Court on March 31, 2021.... 

Chief Commissioner Patton said in the past week police had seen a trend of people calling themselves "sovereign citizens" who "don't think the law applies to them". 

"We've seen them at checkpoints baiting police, not providing a name and address," he said. 

"On at least four occasions in the last week, we've had to smash the windows of cars and pull people out to provide details because they weren't adhering to the Chief Health Officer's guidelines, they weren't providing their name and address."

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While North Coast Voices was on its annual break….

On Christmas Eve the Morrison Government released the following:

By the time a reader clicks on this link, http://epbcnotices.environment.gov.au/publicnoticesreferrals/,

there will only be 8-9 days left to submit comments.

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In what they are now trying to pass off as an attempt at humour the Liberal National Party of Australia posted this petty, divisive Christmas meme on their Facebook page.

LNP’s removal of this meme did little to stop the negative response on social media.

Tone deaf and abysmally stupid was the general consensus.

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The Guardian, 26 December 2018:

A man has been shot by police in New South Wales after he allegedly lunged at officers with a knife, and has been taken to hospital in a critical condition.

Police were called to a home in Waterview Heights, west of Grafton, in the early hours of Wednesday morning following concern for the 36-year-old’s welfare.

Police said he lunged at officers with the knife upon their arrival.

The man was flown to Gold Coast University hospital in a critical condition.

A critical incident team will investigate the circumstances of the incident.

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Stock market volatility continued over the Christmas break as President Donald Trump tweets further personal attacks on the US Federal Reserve and its personnel. Mr Trump's latest attack heightened fears about the economy being destabilised by a man who wants control over the Fed.

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Another young child died whilst being held in custody of US Customs and Border Protection. Eight year-old Felix Alonzo-Gomez died on December 25th after a medical diagnosis of “common cold” proved inaccurate. The boy's death follows that of  7 year old Jakelin Caal Maquin, 7, also of Guatemala, who died in Border patrol custody earlier this month. 

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SBS News, 26 December 2018:

The Coalition could be at risk of losing 24 seats at the next federal election, including those of six frontbenchers, according to a Newspoll quarterly analysis. The analysis, published in The Australian, reveals the government has failed to claw back electoral ground from Labor in both regional and metropolitan seats. While Prime Minister Scott Morrison remains ahead of Bill Shorten as preferred leader, his satisfaction ratings have dropped into the negatives.

According to this Newspoll survey analysis covering 25 October to 9 December 2018, 45% of voters over 50 years of age dissatisfied with Australian Prime Minster Scott Morrison’s performance.

On a two-party preferred basis, polling stands at Labor 53 and Lib-Nats Coalition 47.

Rumours of an early March election, to be called just after Australia Day, persist according to The Guardian.

@nobby15

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@Quad_Finn, 27 December 2018:

Japan has announced its first commercial whale hunt since leaving the IWC. The hunt will take place in July 2019 and will target Endangered Sei whales along with Minke whales & Bryde’s whales. It is not known how many whales of each species Japan intends to kill each season. 

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On Thursday 27 December 2018 Marble Bar in the Pilbarra, Western Australia experienced it's hottest day on record reaching 49.3C at 3.40pm.

           

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The Daily Examiner, 28 December 2018, p.1:

The $300,000 fine issued to Clarence Valley Council by the NSW Land and Environment Court last week for the destruction of a rare Aboriginal object in Grafton will be reinvested into the area, rather than go back into State Government revenue coffers.

The court’s ruling handed down on December 21 included a series of detailed orders as part of the penalty that includes several Clarence-based directives that were reached after consultation with the Local Aboriginal Lands Councils and community members.

It is believed this case is the first of its kind to be ordered with this directive.

The council was prosecuted for the unlawful maiming and removal of a red/black bean scar tree that occurred in 2013 and 2016. The tree, which stood on the corner of Breimba and Dovedale streets in Grafton and was a surviving original specimen from the flood plain before white settlement, was a registered culturally modified object under the Aboriginal Site Register.

The council will pay the fine amount of $300,000 to the Grafton Ngerrie Local Aboriginal Land Council which will be applied to remediation actions.

These include a feasibility study to establish a Keeping Place in the Grafton area for Aboriginal cultural heritage items including long-term storage for the scar tree remnants.

It will also provide research funding into local Aboriginal cultural heritage for educational purposes including training of council field staff and senior management.

The money will also be used to establish a permanent exhibition and fund a series of one-day Clarence Valley Healing Festivals to be held in various Clarence Valley Aboriginal communities throughout 2019 and 2020.

The council was also ordered to, at its own expense, publish a notice in several newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald, Koori Mail and The Daily Examiner and on the council’s website and Facebook pages.

Additional costs include a $48,000 legal bill which will bring the total costs to the council to more than $350,000.

The council was convicted of the offence against s 86(1) of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 of harming an object that it knew was an Aboriginal object.

The original fine was $400,000 but an early plea of guilty made council eligible for a 25 per cent discount on the penalty. The council potentially faced a penalty of up to $1.1million for its actions.

Council general manager Ashley Lindsay said the council agreed it had done the wrong thing by removing the scar tree and accepted the court’s decision.

“As the mayor and I have said previously, we acknowledge the importance of the scar tree to our Aboriginal community and are deeply sorry for the hurt and sense of loss the removal of the tree has caused,” Mr Lindsay said.

“The tree’s destruction does not represent who we are or who we strive to be as an organisation.

“This council values its connections with the Aboriginal community and I genuinely believe we generally work well together.

“But on this occasion we did the wrong thing and for that we apologise.”

BACKGROUND

Chief Executive, Office of Environment and Heritage v  Clarence Valley Council  [2018] NSWLEC 205 (21 December 2018), excerpt:

A scar tree is harmed

1. Until May 2016, a culturally modified tree stood in Grafton, on the corner of Breimba and Dovedale Streets. The tree was either a Red Bean or Black Bean tree. It had a bifurcated trunk with scarring on two parts of it. The larger scar faced a south westerly direction and was approximately 1.4m tall and 40cm wide. The smaller scar faced a westerly direction and was higher up the trunk.

2. Various reasons for the scarring have been passed down by the knowledge holders to local Aboriginal people. Aboriginal elders have said that the scar tree is culturally significant to the local Gumbaynggirr people and that the scarring was made using a stone axe either as a directional marker directing visitors to nearby Fisher Park, or for ceremonial purposes in connection with other sites in the area, or by someone wanting to make a shield.

3. In 1995, the scar tree was registered as a culturally modified tree on the Aboriginal Site Register. In 2005, the information about the scar tree was transferred from the Aboriginal Site Register to the Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System (“AHIMS”) maintained by the Office of Environment and Heritage (“OEH”). The scar tree was thereby identified as an Aboriginal object for the purposes of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 (“NPW Act”). Under s 86(1) of the NPW Act, it is an offence for a person to harm or desecrate an object that the person knows is an Aboriginal object.

4. The local government authority for Grafton and the Clarence Valley,  Clarence Valley Council  (“the Council”), lopped the crown of the scar tree in July 2013. The Council was issued with and paid a penalty notice for harming an Aboriginal object, in breach of s 86(2) of the NPW Act.

5. The lopping of the scar tree exacerbated the decline in the health of the tree. In 2015, the Council included the scar tree on the Council’s annual stump grinding list for removal of the tree. On 19 May 2016, the Council completely removed the scar tree. The scar tree was cut into four pieces, including a cut through the lower scar. Remnants of the scar tree were taken to the Council’s nursery in Grafton. On 20 May 2016, the Council realised what it had done and self-reported to the OEH that, in completely removing the scar tree, it had harmed an Aboriginal object in breach of s 86(1) of NPW Act.

6. On 27 May 2016, the OEH after an investigation of the offence, seized the remnants of the scar tree pursuant to s 156B(4) of the NPW Act. On 9 June 2016, the remnants of the scar tree were relocated to the National Parks and Wildlife Service’s premises at South Grafton, where they remain today.

Full judgment is here.

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Perth Now, 30 December 2018:

Four months after losing the leadership spill he instigated, Peter Dutton has broken his silence in an extraordinary spray at Malcolm Turnbull.

Calling the deposed prime minister spiteful and indecisive, the Home Affairs Minister told Brisbane's The Sunday Mail that Mr Turnbull had brought about his own downfall through his lack of political nous.

"Malcolm had a plan to become Prime Minister but no plan to be Prime Minister," was Mr Dutton's damning evaluation.

He also criticised the former leader for actions he saw as undermining the Morrison government.

"I am the first to defend the legacy of the Turnbull government. Malcolm was strong on economic management, borders and national security, but Malcolm will trash his own legacy if he believes his position is strengthened by seeing us lose under Scott (Morrison),'' Mr Dutton said.

He excoriated Mr Turnbull for not supporting the Liberal Party's candidate in his old seat of Wentworth.

"Walking away from (his seat of) Wentworth and not working to have (Liberal Wentworth candidate) Dave Sharma elected was worse than any behaviour we saw even under (former Labor prime minister Kevin) Rudd."

Stating emphatically that he wasn't a stalking horse for former leader Tony Abbott or a right wing "Bible basher", Mr Dutton said Mr Turnbull's poor management had lost the Libs 15 seats in the 2016 election, leaving the government "with a one-seat majority which just made the parliament unmanageable. We were paralysed.".....

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Unanswered questions at the start of 2019. 

The last federal general election was on 2 July 2016. A year later and the Federal Liberal Party was still $3,711,956 in debt. 

Has the party managed to pay down this debt and how much money have they received as political donations since 1 July 2017?

One might safely assume that sacked prime minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull will not be personally donating $1,750,000 to the Liberal Party this time around and one wonders if the banks were as generous with their donations once the Royal Commission began requesting their presence at public hearings.

This is the last available donor list. Will the corporations on this list still back the Liberal Party so strongly? 

List of donors to the Liber... by on Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/document/396376025/List-of-donors-to-the-Liberal-Party-of-Australia-Federal-2016-17

On the problem of fake news....

Digital Trends, 6 December 2016:

It’s been half a decade since the co-founder of Avaaz, Eli Pariser, first coined the phrase “filter bubble,” but his prophetic TED Talk — and his concerns and warnings — are even more applicable now than they were then. In an era of fake news, curated content, personalized experiences, and deep ideological divisions, it’s time we all take responsibility for bursting our own filter bubbles.

When I search for something on Google, the results I see are quite different from yours, based on our individual search histories and whatever other data Google has collected over the years. We see this all the time on our Facebook timelines, as the social network uses its vats of data to offer us what it thinks we want to see and hear. This is your bubble…..

Filter bubbles may not seem too threatening a prospect, but they can lead to two distinct but connected issues. The first is that when you only see things you agree with, it can lead to a snowballing confirmation bias that builds up steadily over time.

They don’t overtly take a stance, they invisibly paint the digital landscape with things that are likely to align with your point of view.

A wider problem is that with such difference sources of information between people, it can lead to the generation of a real disconnect, as they become unable to understand how anyone could think differently from themselves.

A look at any of the left- or right-leaning mainstream TV stations during the buildup to the recent election would have left you in no doubt over which candidate they backed. The same can be said of newspapers and other media. In fact, this is true of many published endorsements.

But we’re all aware of that bias. It’s easy to simply switch off or switch over to another station, to see the other side of the coin.

Online, the bias is more covert. Google searches, social network feeds, and even some news publications all curate what they show you. Worse, it’s all behind the scenes. They don’t overtly take a stance, they invisibly paint the digital landscape with things that are likely to align with your point of view…..

This becomes even more of a problem when you factor in faux news. This latest election was one of the most contentious in history, with low-approval candidates on both sides and salacious headlines thrown out by every source imaginable. With so much mud being slung, it was hard to keep track of what was going on, and that was doubly so online, where fake news was abundant.

This is something that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tried to play down, claiming that it only accounted for 1 percent of the overall Facebook news. Considering Facebook has near 2 billion users, though, that’s potentially a lot of faux stories parroted as the truth. It’s proved enough of an issue that studies suggest many people have difficulty telling fake news from real news, and in the weeks since the election, both Google and Facebook have made pledges to deal with the problem.

Also consider that 61 percent of millennials use Facebook as their main source of news, and you can see how this issue could be set to worsen if it’s not stoppered soon…..

While Zuckerberg may not think fake news and memes made a difference to the election, Facebook employee and Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey certainly did. He was outed earlier this year for investing more than $100,000 in a company that helped promote Donald Trump online through the proliferation of memes and inflammatory attack advertisements. He wouldn’t have put in the effort if he thought it worthless.

Buzzfeed’s analysis of the popular shared stories on Facebook shows that while fake news underperformed compared to its real counterparts in early 2016, by the time the Election Day rolled around at the start of November, it had a 1.5 million engagement lead over true stories.

That same analysis piece highlighted some of the biggest fake election stories, and all of them contained classic click-baiting tactics. They used scandalous wording, capitalization, and sensationalist claims to draw in the clickers, sharers, and commenters.

That’s because these sorts of words help to draw an emotional reaction from us. Marketing firm Co-Schedule discovered this back in 2014, but it’s likely something that many people would agree with even without the hard numbers. We’ve all been tempted by clickbait headlines before, and they’re usually ones that appeal to fear, anger, arousal, or some other part of us that isn’t related to critical thinking and political analysis. Everyone’s slinging mud from within their own filter bubbles, secure in the knowledge that they are right, and that everyone who thinks differently is an idiot.

And therein lies the difficulty. The only way to really understand why someone may hold a different viewpoint is through empathy. But how can you empathize when you don’t have control over how the world appears to you, and your filter serves as a buffer to stories that might help you connect with the other side?

Reaching out to us from the past, Pariser  has some thoughts for those of us now living through his warning of the future. Even if Facebook may be stripping all humanity from its news curation, there are still human minds and fingertips behind the algorithms that feed us content. He called on those programmers to instill a sense of journalistic integrity in the AI behind the scenes.

“We need the gatekeepers [of information] to encode [journalistic] responsibility into the code that they’re writing. […] We need to make sure that these algorithms have encoded in them a sense of the public life, a sense of civic responsibility. They need to be transparent enough that we can see what the rules are and […] we need [to be] given some control.”

That sort of suggestion seems particularly pertinent, since it was only at the end of August that Facebook laid off its entire editorial team, relying instead on automated algorithms to curate content. They didn’t do a great job, though, as weeks later they were found to have let a bevy of faux content through the screening process.

While it may seem like a tall order for megacorporations to push for such an open platform, so much of a stink has been raised about fake news in the wake of the election that it does seem like Facebook and Google at least will be doing something to target that problematic aspect of social networking. They can do more, though, and it could start with helping to raise awareness of the differences in the content we’re shown…..

Dumbing Down The News: Google decides tourism promotions with a biblical theme are important news

 

This nonsense was displayed by Google News on 28 October 2012:

 

A date with biblical history

 

The Dead Sea is the stuff of biblical legend and mystery. In the book of Genesis, Moses explains the Dead Sea was formed when God told Lot and his family to flee the area. They were told not to look back. Lot's wife couldn't resist, and when she did look back, she was turned into a pillar of salt - and the Dead Sea was born.

 

A ride from the airport to Dead Sea Spa Hotel

 

Setting sail in the Dead Sea

 

“You know Jordan is a country rich with biblical history, Dead Sea which is mentioned a lot in the bible is where I am taking you people. You will be residing in a hotel which is constructed along its shores, another place you should not miss to see is Mt Nebo which is famously known in the world history because it is the place where Moses died and his remains where buried there.”

 

We checked in to the Spa Club Hotel

Re-creating Australian websites

Fair dinkum, those Aussie webby blokes are clever! They often take a perfectly respectable website with a loyal following and ‘improve’ it beyond all recognition.

First they decide to give the website an ability to only function at optimum level via one browser. You know, one with only a small percentage of users across the country.

Then they remove some of the original functions they gave the website. Teeny weeny unimportant things like how to contact website administration.

Follow that up by reducing the number of posts on the home page to around a third of what was there before, removing the editor’s recommended read, ditching msm links, taking away the post rating function and sending the blog roll to a separate page - when it’s painfully obvious that most netizens don’t bother to turn the digital page or look for hidden features. Even a big mainstream media site like the ABC (Australia) has over half its readers not moving off the first page they light on, according to Alexa.

So if only about 11% of your home audience gets a really decent view of the new and improved website on their home or work PC monitor and around 80% of your total audience only stay for one page view anyway – just how long will a website’s followers stay loyal and not flitter off to a more attractive digital flower like wayward cyber-butterflies?

Even sturdy old bogong moths like me can feel an immediate urge to take flight once I catch sight of a 'rebuilt' boast.

NEWS FLASH: Penbo's head swells alarmingly!

Poor Penbo! His delusions of grandeur are showing – he clearly believes that every reader (including casual online readers like myself) actually vote for his own personal political opinions and those of Teh Great Rupert by perusing the tripe regurgitated daily by www.news.com.au:

“What these people fail to understand, and what Brown doesn’t get, is that newspapers have constituencies in the same way that political parties have constituencies.” {David Penberthy, Editor-in-Chief of News.com.au in The Punch on 23^rd May 2011}

 

David Penberthy stands reality on its head in an effort to avoid a rap over the knuckles from the Press Council

This was David Penberthy on 1 April 2011 in Penberthy: Waking up from the Green dream:

Screen snapshot

To the enduring disgust of the Labor Party, the Greens chose to direct preferences to the One Nation founder ahead of the ALP, and she may now creep into the Upper House courtesy of their support.

This is David Penberthy on 4 April 2011 in Sorry Greens, we’re not apologising:

Screen snapshot

The Greens are taking The Punch to the Press Council over my column of last Friday accusing them of pushing Pauline Hanson ahead of the ALP by refusing a preference swap with Labor at last weekend’s NSW election.

The story has definitely changed - from preference being officially identified by The Greens to no preferences being identified. This journalist obviously thinks that readers are fools with little short-term and no long-term memory.

The Punch should be ashamed of allowing this cowardly wriggle to be published online. Definitely not Australia’s best conversation by any definition of that term.

Australian Broadcasting Commission - anything but the whip!

When ABC Radio began a dedicated twenty-four hour news broadcast I was delighted and it is probably still my first preference for national news and current affairs over the airwaves.

When ABC Television announced it was following with a dedicated twnety-four hour news channel I expected at least the same level of immediacy and range of subject matter as that on the radio.

How wrong I was. ABC TV News24 is the most basic of news padded out by endless self-promotion and current affairs repeats of repeats of repeats over day after day after day.

If one tries to use this TV channel as a primary source of information one comes away feeling flayed. Thank heavens it’s free to air because no-one would possibly want to purchase access as it now stands!

What gives with Kwoff these days?

Every so often this warning turns up when I try to have a look at Aussie news aggregate site Kwoff. As far as I can tell this notice is unwarranted, so who dislikes this site so much that they are reporting it?

Real news item

While earth-shattering news about events in Afghanistan, Canada, North Korea, South Africa and even down-town Canberra grace the headlines it's refreshing to know that a Clarence valley punter is able to eloquently express his concerns about a local matter of vital importance.

The punter, who hails from Junction Hill (a satellite suburb of Grafton), wrote to the local paper (The Daily Examiner) about a rumour circulating in the valley that his favourite tipple will not be available at next month's Grafton racing carnival.

John 'Loves Black Beer' B********'s (surname deleted) letter