No problems with any new Wild Cattle Creek tailing dams, according to the China Shandong Jinshunda Group

From A Clarence Valley Protest on 30 June 2011:

No problems with any new Wild Cattle Creek tailing dams for antimony mining by-products arsenic and mercury, according to the China Shandong Jinshunda Group

One has to admire the chutzpah of mining corporation China Shandong Jinshunda Group Co Ltd as reported in The Clarence Valley Review on 29 June 2011:

Anchor Resources managing director, Ian Price, said the Dorrigo mine would operate under vastly improved practices to those carried out in the past.

“One of the key aspects is containment of any of materials from the particular site so they don’t enter waterways, or don’t go off-site.

I think that’s the critical thing, and that’s proper containment of tailings in proper containment dams, and diversion of water around sites so they don’t enter the site … lots of old mining sites going back 50 or 100 years were not built with good tailings dams, and standards have developed over the past decades where those standards are much better,” he said.

First its spokesperson attempts to distance the mine from those North Coast local government areas in which residents are expressing concern, about the potential for negative environmental and public health impacts from mining for antimony and gold in an environmentally sensitive area within the Clarence and Nymboida river catchments, by calling it the “Dorrigo” mine.

Then the same spokesperson talks up modern tailing dams despite problems with these dams being experienced both in Australia and overseas and, finally he neglects to point out that the NSW Government allows mine owners to self-assess risk in relation to the design, construction and ongoing maintenance of the same tailing dams.

The primary goal of the DSC, relevant to this Guidance Sheet, is that all prescribed NSW tailings dam owners apply appropriate dam safety management practices to their dams using a risk management approach in line with a whole of Government approach to public safety.

Another goal is that risks to community interests from the potential for dam failure are tolerable, the owner’s determination in this regard being satisfactory to the DSC.

This requires that the risks are detected, identified and assessed, that they are reduced, when necessary, as soon as reasonably practicable and in a way that best serves community interests, and that they are kept under review throughout the life cycle of the dams.

It is for each dam owner to determine how these goals, including DSC requirements, (see Section 2.2) will be achieved and to demonstrate that the goal has been achieved, or will be achieved following safety improvements. The following sections of this sheet aim to provide guidance to assist dam owners in the achievement of the DSC goals.

[NSW Dam Safety Committee, June 2010, “Tailing Dams”,pp2-3]

Join in Schools Tree Day, Friday 29th July 2011

Life is Better with Trees

Planet Ark is calling on all green thumbs to join us this Schools Tree Day, by coordinating an activity with your school, landcare group or club. You’ll be joining thousands of other schools across the country getting outdoors and getting their hands dirty, to help improve their local environment.

Why not organise a tree planting day, or contact your local landcare group to help you organise another environmental activity? You could also take a bush walk or beautify your school grounds.

Schools Tree Day is Friday July 29th, but you can arrange an activity for any day that suits you and your local environment. Every Day is Tree Day.

In 2011 site coordinators who register a school or public site with Planet Ark before Friday 27 May will go into the draw to WIN a visit to their site from celebrity landscape architect and all round great guy Costa Georgiadis of SBS’s Costa’s Garden Odyssey !

To register or for more information visit Treeday.planetark.org or call the National Tree Day hotline on 1300 88 5000

(National Landcare Directory)

 

Is Chris Hartcher trying to flannel the Clarence Valley?

From A Clarence Valley Protest on 29 June 2011:

Energy and Resources Minister Hartcher is a little economical with the truth
On the 29 June 2011 in an article titled Toxic metal hunt at proposed site State Energy and Resources Minister Chris Hartcher's position on any future mining proposal in the Wild Cattle Creek area of the Nymboida sub-catchment of the larger Clarence River catchment was elucidated:

“An exploration licence allows a company to undertake exploration, environmental assessments and feasibility studies only.”
Before any mine was opened strict guidelines had to be adhered to.
"Any future mining proposal would be required to obtain development consent through the relevant consent authority...As part of this process, proponents are required to prepare and submit a comprehensive environmental assessment that assesses all potential impacts of the proposal, including potential impacts on aquifers and water resources as well as cumulative impacts.”
Planning approval rests with the State Government until its plan to scrap Part 3A of the Planning Act is legislated.
Then it would be up to individual councils to sign off on any approval for the proposed mine.
“Local communities and councils are fully involved in the process, with planning approvals going out for public consultation,” Mr Hartcher said.

Unfortunately this is not the entire range of possibilities for progressing any future mining development application within the Nymboida or Clarence River catchment areas.

O'Farrell Government policy documents concerning the repeal of Part 3A of the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 reveal that certain mining proposals will still fall into a category which can attract a State Significant Development (SSD) classification which allows the Minister to ‘call in’ a development application and possibly hand it back to the Planning Assessment Commission or over to the Department of Planning and Infrastructure for determination.

Should any mining proposal in the aforementioned catchment areas be ‘called in’ in this way then:

Under the proposed delegation, the PAC will determine larger and more controversial projects, while senior officers of the Department of Planning and Infrastructure will determine projects which have attracted fewer than 25 submissions by members of the public objecting to the proposal and where the local council has not objected.
[NSW Planning & infrastructure (June 2011) Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Part 3A Repeal) Bill 2011: an overview]

This is a flow chart indicating the more likely route that any development application by China Shandong Jinshunda Group Co Ltd, Sunstar Capital Pty Ltd and Anchor Resources Ltd will take with regard to anitimony mining at Wild Cattle Creek.


Given the background of the mining corporation and Minister Hartcher's previously expressed sentiments on regional mining, I sincerely doubt that local communities will be more than a token consideration in any development determination.

Background:

Is Chinese Government policy encouraging mining in the Clarence River catchment in order to conserve its own national resources?

Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Part 3A Repeal) Bill 2011

The major project assessments system

Policy statement: State significant development – procedures
Policy statement: Proposed State significant development and infrastructure classes
Policy statement: Ministerial ‘call in’ for State significant development
Fact sheet

Farewell, Bananaby & Uncle Steve

Steve Fielding is not the full bottle - Erica Abetz

The guy is a psycho chook - Bananaby

Farewell Bananaby and Uncle Steve,
Finally time for you to leave
Though you're both very small
You could scare us all.....

NOTE: A little bit of wishful thinking was going on here as
Senator Barnaby Joyce was re-elected at the last federal election
and is now
Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Water,
as well as Leader of The Nationals in the Senate

Saying it with pictures for the benefit of Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott told the 55th Federal Council of the Liberal Party of Australia on 26 June 2011; As I said in my maiden speech and have been repeating ever since, middle income families with children are Australia’s new poor.

Leaving aside both the fact that Tony Abbott entered Parliament seventeen years ago and the suspicion that he is using this tired old argument to advocate tax cuts for comfortably off families like his own - it is immediately obvious that this statement by Abbott is not true.

So for the benefit of this shabby economic illiterate politician I will say it with pictures.

The mean weekly equivalised disposable household income has been rising for the entire time Tony Abbott has been the Member for Warringah and, the number reporting financial hardship had fallen to below twenty per cent of total households by 2009:


Individuals and families with low household incomes remain the poor - period.
Individuals and families on middle incomes fare better and, have been doing so consistently for at least the last twelve years.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2010; The headline indicator shows that the middle income group had a slightly greater gain in real income between 1997-98 and 2007-08 than the low income group (46% compared with 41%) and middle income households have maintained around a seven percentage point lead on low income households when it come to a percentage share of total income received by persons between 1994-95 and 2007-08.

Those most likely to experience financial difficulties are not middle income individuals and families:
By 2009-10 there were 2.9 million families with children living at home. In 2011 The Australian Institute of Family Studies stated; Of all four groups, families comprising couples with dependent children were in the second best financial position, with an average disposable income of $810 per week, and with 19% of people reporting the experience of at least one of the seven financial hardships.

The Report for National Families Week 2011 included the observation that in 2010 couples with children were more likely to have one of the parents in paid employment than lone women with children:

Voluntarily filtering the Australian Internet - another reason to despise Stephen Conroy

Browsers which have attempted to access blocked sites will be directed to an Interpol page explaining why the site has been blocked [IIA 27 June 2011]

The Australian Internet Industry Association (IIA) on 25 June 2011:

The voluntary industry code of practice for ISPs in Australia would entail blocking child pornography sites which would otherwise be available to Australians. It would rely on a blacklist compiled and supplied by Interpol, in cooperation with the Australian Federal Police ('AFP').

Consistent with industry commitments made almost 12 months ago to develop a voluntary industry program to block child abuse materials, the IIA announced the final elements of the scheme were moving into place in preparation for a launch of the code in July.

IIA member ISPs in Australia have confirmed their intentions to support a code based approach.

"We anticipate that we will have ISPs representing between 80-90% of the Australian user base complying with the scheme this year," said IIA's chief executive Peter Coroneos.

Apparently this national filter will be based on the Interpol child abuse site blacklist, which as part of its inclusion criteria states that; The whole domain is deemed illegal if any part of it is found to contain sexual abuse material with children. One image of a child that fits the above criteria will be enough to classify the whole domain as illegal until the illegal material is removed.

As Interpol insists that there are no accidental domain name/web page errors in its black list and only it and the Australian Federal Police are envisaged as official arbitrators (ACMA seemingly having been reduced to a mere receiver of Australian complaints), one can almost see the problem rolling down the line for web hosts such as Blogger.com or Facebook and countless public forums.

Especially when the naturally malicious discover how easy it will be to bring a halt to online political debate, by taking a quick tutorial on YouTube, hacking a website and hiding a simple illegal image (or an image containing illegal content in an internal winrar file) on one of its pages and then making an anonymous complaint to the Australian Federal Police.

Many bloggers already find themselves spammed or linked to adult porn sites whenever they offend certain flying monkeys. At the very least I predict a large number of 'please explains' being swapped between bloggers and their ISPs as this so-called voluntary Internet filtering rolls out.

Raising repetition to an art form in the media

eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die(t)
anon

Going into the break at the end of last week these were some of the headlines displaying online on the subject of medication and the older person:

Fatal cocktail of common drugs putting elderly at risk
Telegraph - Jun 24, 2011
Which drugs pose a risk?
Telegraph – Jun 24, 2011
Q&A: Danger of mixing drugs
BBC News – Jun 24, 2011
Study looks at medication risk for elderly
NHS Choices - ‎Jun 24, 2011
GPs warned of fatal risk to elderly patients from common drug ...
Pulse – 24 June 2011
Well known OTC Drugs could put elderly at increased risk for dementia and even ...
Health Aim - ‎Jun 25, 2011
Common Drugs Linked to Cognitive Impairment and Possibly to Increased Risk of Death, Study Suggests
Science Daily - June 25, 2011

Fox et al have obviously sent out a rather sexy media release from their academic eyrie to coincide with publication in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and, this has caught the eye of a number of journalists.

Now before you rush to the bathroom for a precautionary check of the medicine cabinet, take some time to notice one small fact. This 'news' isn't actually new.

Data on the subject was first collected in the late 1990s and the knowledge (that some drugs may produce cognitive impairment, balance problems and other health issues in older people) has been available as news items online since at least September 2000 when the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine published the results of the Mitzer & Burns study.
In April 2008 it was again reported online after Tsao and Heilman released their findings.
In 2009 The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association also published the results of yet another study on the subject by Richardson, Fox et al. Yes, that's the same Chris Fox being repeatedly mentioned over the last few days.

While the subject is a serious one deserving of careful consideration, I'm becoming rather jaded with all these public warning from the medical profession. It seems it is bad for our health to be too fat or too thin and we must avoid or limit our consumption of nicotine, fats, salt, sugars, alcohol and now even the humble over-the-counter anti-histamine product is on the suspect list.

Life has been turned into one long obstacle course by ardent medicos eager for a little media mention and my grey hairs find me in sneaking sympathy with the salt 'n' pepper-maned Oliver Pritchett writing two days before this not-so-new story 'broke' this month.

The Fox et al study which is currently causing some journalists to hyperventilate can be found as a PDF file here - Anticholinergic Medication Use and Cognitive Impairment in the Older Population: The Medical Research Council Cognitive Function and Ageing Study