Sunday 28 July 2019
Clarence Valley Council Living Sustainably Awards - nominations accepted until 5 August 2019
Clarence
Valley Council, media release, July 19, 2019:
Rewards
for those who live sustainably
THE
call has gone out to nominate those who have made outstanding
contributions to environmental sustainability in the Clarence Valley.
The
Clarence Valley Council is calling for nominations for its annual
Living Sustainably Awards and has categories for individuals,
community groups, businesses, schools and ‘our backyard’.
The
our backyard category is new and according to council environmental
officer, Suzanne Lynch, has been introduced to applaud the commitment
to backyard sustainability that many residents make.
“We
would love to get applications from everyday people who are shrinking
their carbon footprint and making a difference in their own backyards
or their streets,” she said.
“This
award is open to individual families or groups of residents in a
street who have gone the extra mile by growing and sharing food,
using renewable energy, incorporating energy efficiency and
sustainable building practices, being committed recyclers, growing
sustainable gardens or other great sustainable initiatives.”
The
winner of the 2018 community group section was the South
Grafton-based Mend and Make Do Crew and its spokeswoman, Ursula
Tunks, said that for many people recycling was a way of surviving.
“The
huge issue is there's more than enough to go around on this planet
and there's absolutely no reason anyone should be going without,”
she said.
“For
us it's literally redistributing the wealth via what people throw
out/donate. The environment is vital to all humans and not wasting
anything is an important part of minimising the impact on all the
environment.
“The
award was an amazing opportunity for our team to get encouragement
and acknowledgement that the work we do is valued outside our
existing client agency base.”
For
further information and to download a nomination form, visit
http://bit.ly/2XKeACGsustainable
Nominations close August 5.
Release
ends.
Labels:
Clarence Valley Council,
sustainability
Saturday 27 July 2019
Quote of the Week
"I
don’t even think the bastardry is intentional, it’s just what he
[Scott
Morrison]
is. In a sense it is the inevitable culmination of
his bankrupt and moribund party. His re-election might provide a
reset but I am not optimistic.”
[Journalist
and commentator Mungo
McCallum
quoted in The
Monthly,
July 2019]
Labels:
Scott Morrison
Tweets of the Week
In 2018, the Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, against the Russian Federation et al. Donald Trump Jr is one of the defendants. There is a court hearing today - Trump Snr trying shut lawsuit down #USPolitics pic.twitter.com/hT2ioGEhPS— no_filter_Yamba (@no_filter_Yamba) July 19, 2019
Good morning @ScottMorrisonMP— 💧🌏🏳️🌈Jenny Frecklington-Jones; #NotMyPM (@Triplejay58) July 20, 2019
While you're off to Hillsong to clap your hands & speak in tongues, just wanted to let you know that my 90yo Mum who was once a milliner is busy today making this for you in Blue.
Let me know if you'd prefer black text.
& you're welcome. #auspol pic.twitter.com/hG4MVQJ5H7
exciting to see major media have worked out that #RaiseTheRate would be an actual stimulus measure. Looks like we’re just waiting on how government can work it into their economic narrative and it might just happen. Priorities. #Insiders— Ingrid M (@iMusing) July 20, 2019
Labels:
court,
Donald Trump,
law,
Scott Morrison,
US politics
Friday 26 July 2019
Land clearing law in New South Wales
Environmental
Defenders Office NSW (EDO), 17 July 2019:
It’s
been almost two years since the NSW Government introduced a new
scheme for regulating land clearing and biodiversity in NSW. While
the business of tree clearing has continued apace under self-assessed
codes and a new Vegetation SEPP, fundamentally important parts of the
scheme are still missing. This EDO NSW series of legal updates looks
at how the laws are being implemented and the regulatory gaps that
are putting our wildlife and healthy sustainable landscapes at risk.
Our
first
update looked at clearing in rural areas and outlined the
fundamentally important parts of the scheme that are still missing
even while tree clearing has continued apace under self-assessed
codes. The second
update looks at elements of the new scheme that are missing or
lack clarity for tree clearing in urban areas and e-zones. This third
update looks at compliance and enforcement of new clearing laws.
Read
the third update here.
Australian Education Minister Dan Tehan gives working parents in rural and regional areas unrealistic advice
"Nearly
300,000 children in regional and remote areas receive formal
childcare. However,
unlike capital cities where a glut of childcare centres is reported,
access to childcare continues to be a problem in regional areas.”
[Centre
for Independent Studies,
23 September 2018]
City centrism is alive and well in the Morrison Government.
Here is the Minister for Education and Liberal MP for Wannon Dan Tehan (pictured left) blithely assuming that every town across Australia not only has a chilcare centre it has more than one.
In Dan's world parents in rural and regional areas are apparently able to shop around for competitively priced childcare.
[cue cynical laughter]
The Daily Examiner, 22 July 2019, p.5:
Photograph: ABC |
In Dan's world parents in rural and regional areas are apparently able to shop around for competitively priced childcare.
[cue cynical laughter]
The Daily Examiner, 22 July 2019, p.5:
Greedy
childcare centres have gobbled up almost half the money parents were
meant to save from new subsidies by raising their fees.
A
subsidy system which began on July 2 last year was meant to save the
average family $1300 in childcare fees a year.
But
new data shows that in the year leading up to the subsidy’s
introduction, the average parent with a child in care 48 weeks of the
year is paying $622 more than they were 12 months ago.
Of
this $276.50 of that came from cost increases between July and
September 2018, after the subsidy was introduced.
Labor’s
childcare spokes-woman Amanda Rishworth said the government should be
“naming and shaming” centres who lifted fees to take advantage of
the subsidies.
But
Education Minister Dan Tehan said out-of-pocket costs for child care
had still fallen almost 9 per cent, and urged those getting a raw
deal to “vote with their feet and find a new service”.
Education
Department data recording costs in September 2018, the first released
since the subsidies came into place, revealed the increased costs.
It
showed the average family, which pays for 28.8 hours a week, had fees
increase by $13 a week between September 2017 and September 2018,
including $5.80 a week increase in the quarter the subsidies were
introduced….
Labels:
childcare,
costs,
government funding
Thursday 25 July 2019
Australian Politics in 2019: the betrayal
Echo
NetDaily,
15
July 2019:
Thus
Spake Mungo: The betrayal
Scott
Morrison really likes quiet Australians – as quiet as possible. So
it was really no surprise that his response to his minister, Ken
Wyatt’s modest and tentative proposal to consider reviving an
Indigenous Voice through the Uluru Statement from the Heart was
simple and direct: bloody well shut up and do what you are told.
We
will decide who speaks for Indigenous Australia and the circumstances
in which they speak, and by we, I mean me, and Eric Abetz and Peter
Dutton and the Institute of Public Affairs and Andrew Bolt – not
Indigenous Australians. They can do what they are told.
So
the glimmer of hope last week was extinguished as soon as it began.
Wyatt knew it probably would be – when he delicately referred to
‘reticence’ within his party room, he was prepared for a
backlash, but maybe not one as cynical, hypocritical and downright
vicious as the one that transpired.
In
nanoseconds the same old lies were trotted out, most outrageously the
one about the Voice being a third chamber of parliament. If the
deliberately ignorant ever thought that was the case, they have
certainly been informed by now that it never was and never is – the
proposal is for a Voice, an advisory body with no power to legislate
or veto whatever the parliament decides.
This
must have been clear even to Dutton. But this did not stop him
repeating the fabrication on national television. What he actually
means, of course, is that the truth is irrelevant – what matters is
that it can be turned into a massive scare campaign to deceive the
gullible in much the same way the coalition devised the invention of
Labor’s death taxes, which worked on May 18.
And
if that involves rejecting, traducing and misrepresenting the long
and tortuous process that led to Uluru, well they can just suck it
up. Everyone knows there are no votes in Aborigines.
So
Wyatt meekly surrendered to the inevitable and will now go back to
what he called pragmatism, negotiation, compromise – we must have
consensus before we even think about going to a referendum, otherwise
there is a risk of it failing.
And
indeed there is, but only because of the intransigence of the
reactionary rump that now holds sway over his government. The deep
strain of latent racism that prevails throughout the joint party room
and its acolytes is not confined to the fringes of the National Party
– it has infected Liberals as well, some of whom call themselves
the protectors of mainstream Australia.
They
are worried about what they regard as causing divisions – offering
rights and privileges to one group to disadvantage the rest. This is
precisely what they demand for the religious zealots, but no matter.
As they well know, there are no votes in Aborigines. And there is a
sneaking suspicion that their predicament, while deplorable, is
somehow their own fault – if they could just forget the past and
get on with it, the incarcerations, the mortality rates, the
unemployment, the homeless, the poverty and despair would simply
disappear.
So
we have the always predictable Craig Kelly say he did not want to
spend money on a referendum – he would rather spend it on closing
the gap (actually he would rather spend it on a coal fired power
station, but let that pass). Barnaby Joyce says the solution is to
break up the senate to bring in more rural members. Amanda Stoker,
apparently attempting to remake herself into a transgender Peter
Dutton, is against anything even vaguely progressive on principle.
And
she is not the only one – come in Morgan Begg, of IPA, which by no
coincidence is secretly funded by a large chunk of the mining
industry, a traditional enemy of Indigenous rights. Begg sprang into
the pages of The Australian (where else?) to claim that a Voice would
violate all principles of racial equality. And he went back to the
hugely successful 1967 referendum to boost his thesis: by agreeing to
count Aborigines in the national census, Australians voted to remove
race from the constitution.
But
that was only part of that they voted for. They also voted to give
the Commonwealth Parliament the right – even the duty – to
legislate specifically for Aborigines, a considerably more
substantial outcome. This was the power John Howard used in 2006 to
bring in his military intervention of allegations of child abuse.
There is no record of Begg inveighing against such blatant racism
division, illiberalism.
And
his hypocrisy is echoed by many conservatives, including Morrison,
who is determined to avoid embedding any suggestion of a Voice in the
constitution – the key, the non-negotiable plank in the Uluru
Statement. Morrison says that if there is to be a Voice – and mind
you, he is not saying there will be – an advisory body established
by parliament will be quite sufficient.
But
this misses the point: not only would such a body be vulnerable to
political interference, in the same way Howard abolished the former
Australian and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 2004, but the
whole idea is that the Voice should be endorsed by the Australian
people, not just by the politicians of the time.
This
after all, was the argument of the conservatives over same sex
marriage – the change was so important it had to go to a
plebiscite. But obviously reconciliation with Indigenous Australians
can be regarded as relatively trivial – there are no votes in
Aborigines.
In
the end, Morrison and Wyatt will probably be able to cobble together
some anodyne words, some impotent tokenism he can take to a
referendum
In
the end, Morrison and Wyatt will probably be able to cobble together
some anodyne words, some impotent tokenism he can take to a
referendum which may or may not pass, and who cares anyway. But it
will be a travesty of Uluru, a betrayal of the painstaking months of
good faith the delegates invested in the hope that this time, at
last, someone would listen.
Wyatt
has been lauded as the first of his race to join cabinet as the first
Minister for Indigenous Australia – Morgan Begg and Andrew Bolt
would no doubt call this divisive in itself. But the task was too
much for him or probably anyone else. Ken Wyatt could have been a
hero – not only an Indigenous hero, but a hero for all Australians
of goodwill, the majority who are willing to support the long march
to real reconciliation. Instead, he has become just another casualty,
yet another victim of the casual racism and cruelty of the right wing
rump……
Wednesday 24 July 2019
Successive NSW Governments have believed that construction risks are best managed by builders - how wrong they were
This was the position of the NSW
Liberal-Nationals O’Farrell Government in May 2013 after reviewing
changes made to state building regulations and
certification:
As
the Government’s April 2013 White Paper – “A New Planning
System for NSW” points out, building regulation and certification
are a significant part of the NSW planning system.
The
general outcomes that regulation and certification seek to secure are
two-fold. First, a level of building performance consistent with the
needs of an advanced society in terms of health, safety, amenity and
sustainability and second, compliance consistent with planning
expectations as defined by the planning system.
The
current system of certification has evolved from the introduction of
private certifiers in 1998, enabled by amendments to the
Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EP&A) and
Regulations. Following the 2002 Campbell Inquiry into the quality of
buildings, administrative changes were put in place within the then
Department of Urban Affairs and Planning for regulatory oversight of
certifiers and in 2005 the Building Professionals Act established the
Building Professionals Board (BPB), which took over this function.
Subsequently,
there have been numerous legislative amendments and changes to
regulations relating to certification. These have been essentially
accretive and so the legislative framework has become unnecessarily
complex and in some cases no longer relevant. With the establishment
of a new planning system, the opportunity presents to take a fresh
look at arrangements which have essentially developed as flow-ons
from the last major reforms dating back to the 1979 commencement of
the EP&A. Accordingly, the well established principles of
developing regulatory systems that are efficient in an economic
sense, as well as effective having regard to ease of administration,
achievement of desired outcomes and minimizing the compliance burden,
should now be applied……
It
follows that improvements to building regulation must have regard to
regulatory impacts such as cost and effective administration and
ensure that certifier resources can cope with a higher level of
activity.
However,
regardless of the effectiveness of improvements that can be made to
regulation, building construction
risks are best managed by the builder and outcomes for
consumers will depend on the clarity with which the roles and
accountabilities of all the participants in the process are specified
in statutes and regulations. [my
yellow highlighting]
By 2013 private building certifiers were estimated as issuing at least 50 per cent of all building approvals, according the NSW Dept. of Planning & Industry.
In 2019 the wheels fell off this particular ill-advised policy change, with reports of private certifiers acting like cowboys and forced evacuations of defective, dangerously unstable multi-story apartment buildings.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 July 2019:
It
gives me no pleasure, watching the looming disaster that is the NSW
construction industry, to say we told you so ("Toxic
secret kept from unit owners",
July 20-21).
In
the early 2000s, along with my local government colleagues, we begged
the NSW Government not to deregulate the supervision of building
construction and give it over to private certifiers paid by the
developers.
We
warned it was putting the "fox in charge of the hen house"
and would result in poor quality buildings that failed to comply.
Decades
later successive state governments have ignored thousands of
complaints from the community and numerous private certifiers
declaring themselves bankrupt to avoid liability.
The
industry is failing the consumer with all the benefits flowing to
developers. The only real solution it to put government back in
charge of regulation of the building construction process and that
can only be done efficiently by a local authority. - Genia
McCaffery, former president Local Government NSW
The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 July 2019:
Professional indemnity insurance premiums have skyrocketed following the discovery of severe defects at a string of apartment buildings in NSW and Victoria's flammable cladding problems, and other types of building insurance products are expected to follow.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 July 2019:
Professional indemnity insurance premiums have skyrocketed following the discovery of severe defects at a string of apartment buildings in NSW and Victoria's flammable cladding problems, and other types of building insurance products are expected to follow.
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