Cartoons of the Week

Cathy Wilcox

Bill Bramhall

David Rowe

Tweet of the Week

 

The Edvard Munsch tree in my neighbourhood- just in case you feel like screaming 😱 - or having a laugh 😆 #Scream #edvardmunch pic.twitter.com/8TF1rsyShP

— 💧Jenny Dowell OAM 🌈 (@JennyRDowell) August 18, 2021

 

Northern NSW Local Health District is urging people in the Yamba area with even the mildest symptoms to get tested for COVID-19 following detection of fragments of the virus that causes COVID-19 in the Yamba sewage treatment plant

 

Clarence Valley Independent, 18 August 2021:

Lynne Weir, Acting Chief Executive for Northern NSW Local Health District is urging people in the Yamba area to get tested for COVID-19 with even the mildest of symptoms following detection of fragments of the virus that causes COVID-19 in the Yamba sewage treatment plant.

There are no new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in residents of Northern NSW Local Health District and no known cases in the Yamba area, which could indicate undetected infections.

Sewage testing is an additional surveillance tool which can help provide early warning of undetected infections.

The Yamba sewage treatment plant serves approximately 6,500 people. Additional samples are being taken this week. An additional sample taken from the Ballina sewage treatment plant on 15 August returned a negative result.

Anyone who is even slightly unwell is urged to come forward for testing immediately, then isolate until they receive a negative result.

We are also strongly encouraging people who may live on properties which are not connected to the town sewage supply systems, to please be alert for any symptoms of COVID-19 and get tested immediately.

Getting tested not only helps our public health teams respond quickly, it also means that if you do become more severely ill, we can provide necessary medical care and treatment.

A new testing clinic….. in Yamba:

• QML Pathology Drive Through Clinic, Raymond Laurie Sports Centre, 78 Angourie Rd, Yamba. Open 9am- 3pm. No appointments required. [my yellow highlighting]

Other testing clinics in the Clarence Valley are:

• Yamba Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology, 72 Yamba Road, Yamba. Open Monday to Friday 7.30am – 2.00pm, appointments required.

• Yamba Respiratory Clinic, 12 Clarence Street, Yamba. Open Monday to Friday 8.00am – 5.00pm, appointments required.

• Grafton Base Hospital clinic, 184 Arthur Street, Grafton. Open seven days 9.00am – 5.00pm, no appointment required.

• Grafton South Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology, 94 Bent Street, Coles Complex, South Grafton. Open Monday – Friday 7.00am – 2.00pm, appointments required.

To find your nearest testing clinic, visit https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/how-toprotect-yourself-and-others/clinics or contact your GP.

The Daily Telegraph, 19 August 2021:

Clarence Valley Council general manager Ashley Lindsay says it was only a matter of time until Covid would return to the region after testing showed fragments had been detected in wastewater…...

“It was going to get to us eventually and Yamba being a tourist location with lots of people passing through adds to the likelihood of it being in the community,” Mr Lindsay said.

“We’re also looking at a pretty contagious strain of the virus so it’s to be expected that it would arrive here at some stage.” The Clarence Valley hasn’t had a positive Covid case since early 2020. Of the eight positive cases in April last year, two were identified as residents from the Yamba area.

Mr Lindsay said the positive result arose from testing carried out by NSW Health’s sewage surveillance program on Monday.

“We’ve tested again this morning and that’s already been sent off for analysis,” he said. “As for the positive result, which came from testing done on Monday, I understand it’s not that significant an amount ... quite minor, much like Lennox Head when they found traces.

“Sewage obviously takes a while to get from the home to the treatment plant so it’s difficult to determine whether or not the person that might have Covid might be long gone; we’re just not sure how long it’s been in our community.” …..

IMAGE: The Daily Telegraph

Yesterday cars began to line up before the new drive-through testing clinic in Yamba had opened.

Ewingar Rising 3-day live music festival to return to the Clarence Valley NSW in April 2022 after rescheduling due to pandemic

The Daily Telegraph, 13 August 2021:

The fundraising festival will reschedule to April 1-3 next year.

“When the Covid outbreaks began to creep into regional areas, we figured we’d need to postpone and started our planning,” organiser Nadine Myers said.

“The good news is that all but two of the artists who were to play in September have confirmed that they will play at the Festival in April.

“There will be some changes to the schedule – with Ash Grunwald playing on the Sunday night, and we’re negotiating some additional surprises and treats for the audience.”

Ewingar Rising brings live music to the beautiful Clarence Valley area and is this small rural community’s way of ‘saying thank you’ to the artists who helped their community raise funds after the area was devastated by the 2019 Black Summer bushfires. Many of those artists who generously played for free then went on to lose gigs during the lockdowns.

“We’re hoping that by April – a really beautiful time at Ewingar – we’ll be able to gather safely – and even dance,” Ms Myers said.

Ticket holders can automatically roll over their tickets or request a refund by midnight 31st October 2021.

In the meantime, the organising team is looking at ways to support all the Ewingar Rising artists over the next months. They’ll share these opportunities on the Ewingar Rising Music Festival Events Page on Facebook, and on the website www.ewingarrising.com.au, and welcome suggestions.

“We’re really keen to find ways to help these artists who helped us after the bushfires,” organising team member Hayley Katzen said.

“Music – and artists – are essential to the wellbeing of our communities – they’re our frontline workers. We’re keen to do what we can to help them survive these financially and emotionally tough times.

“We’re also really grateful that the funding bodies are allowing us to roll over the grant money.

“With grants from Destination NSW, Healthy North Coast Primary Health Network, Essential Energy, the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal, The Yulgilbar Foundation and sponsorship from local business Mountain Blue we are able to pay the artists and offer affordable ticket prices for what will – eventually – be a great weekend.”

Tickets for the 2022 Festival are available through Eventbrite.com.au. Early bird tickets have been extended, and refunds will be available if the event is again postponed.

“At this stage, we have decided to keep numbers capped to ensure we can hold a Covid safe event in April 2022”, Ms Myers said.

All inquiries can be made to ewingarrising@gmail.com

Prime Minister Morrison may no longer be able to successfully hide politically inconvenient advice/facts from the national electorate

The Saturday Paper, 14 August 2021:

The prime minister may no longer be able to use a special one-man cabinet committee to so readily conceal government advice from public view, after a judge rejected it as a way to keep national cabinet’s deliberations secret.

Contrary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s insistence, a ruling by Justice Richard White in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) confirmed that all working documents for the meetings of federal, state and territory leaders are accessible under freedom of information law.

The government cannot cover them retrospectively by taking them to federal cabinet either, because their legal status is based on their purpose when they are created.

The ruling potentially has implications beyond national cabinet because of the mechanism Prime Minister Scott Morrison used to extend federal cabinet’s secrecy provisions. That mechanism is the cabinet office policy committee, or COPC.

Since creating it in 2019, Morrison has used this committee, of which he is the only permanent member, to extend cabinet confidentiality over anything he wants shielded from public view.

He simply declares particular meetings to be configurations of the policy committee and asserts cabinet secrecy over their deliberations. This is how he claimed cabinet secrecy when the old Council of Australian Governments was renamed “national cabinet” last year.

But Justice White ruled that simply calling national cabinet a federal cabinet committee did not make it one. He confirmed that a cabinet committee featured members of a single cabinet, from a single government and parliament. While he did not rule out external members, he found that having one federal cabinet minister was not enough.

It’s expected the senate’s Covid-19 inquiry will now seek to have numerous documents handed over, after various departments first refused access to them, citing cabinet secrecy via COPC. [my yellow highlighting]

Justice White was ruling on an application to the AAT by independent senator Rex Patrick, made after the prime minister’s department rejected two freedom of information (FOI) requests last year.

“Fundamentally, what he’s done, is to create a device that he hopes will bring all these entities under the umbrella. But it is a device and it’s an illusory device.”

Read the full article here.

On 8 April 2020, the Senate resolved to establish a Select Committee on COVID-19 to inquire into the Australian Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Thus far public hearings have been held between 23 April 2020 and 31 July 2021 and two interim reports have been produced to date. This Inquiry is due to present its final report on or before 30 June 2022.

The committee has not set a due date for submissions and has decided it will consider submissions provided throughout the inquiry. Submissions can be sent using the Senate's online submission system or they can be emailed to the committee.

WATER IS LIFE: policy failures at Australian federal and state level just keep rolling on

 

The Guardian, 3 August 2021:

The Barwon-Darling is the main tributary for the Darling and was the focus of allegations in 2017 of water theft and users taking more than their allocations. Photograph: Mark Evans/Getty Images

New South Wales has been found to have exceeded its water allocations for 2019-20 in the Barwon-Darling catchment, one of the main cotton-growing areas of the state, raising new questions about the effectiveness of the state’s water enforcement rules.

The Barwon-Darling is the main tributary for the Darling and was the focus of the 2017 Four Corners report which raised allegations of water theft, pumps being tampered with and water users taking more than their allocations.

It led to a number of reports, prosecutions and an overhaul by NSW of its compliance regime.

But in the first year of compliance reporting, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority found NSW had exceeded what are known as the sustainable diversion limits (SDLs) in three areas – the Barwon-Darling watercourse, the Upper Macquarie alluvium and the Lower Murrumbidgee deep groundwater catchments.

The state claimed there was a “reasonable excuse” for exceeding the limits, and that it was adhering to its draft water resource plans for all three.

The MDBA accepted that as a reasonable and valid explanation for two of the areas, but not for the Barwon Darling.

“The MDBA found that NSW did not operate in a manner fully consistent with the submitted water resource plan in the 2019–20 water year for the Barwon–Darling,” the report said.

All other states were found to be compliant.

The NSW independent MP Justin Field said this was another black mark against the NSW Nationals on water management.

“Communities will be furious that water management has been non-compliant over a period which included the end of the worst drought on record and the first flush event. To have extractions exceeding limits over such a critical period raises serious questions about who benefited from the failures to properly implement water sharing rules.

“These findings make it all the more important that downstream targets to protect the environment and communities are included as part of any floodplain harvesting licensing regulations in the Northern Basin, including in the Barwon-Darling.”

Read the full article here.

On 5 August 2021 the Australian Government's Office of the Inspector-General of Water Compliance (IGWC) became operational. Responsibility for enforcing compliance with the Basin Plan now resides with the IGWC.

Image:IGWC

The IGWC is described as an independent regulator and its Interim Inspector-General of Water Compliance is former NSW Police officer & former NSW Nationals Member for Dubbo from 2011-2019, Troy Grant (left).

As NSW Police Minister Mr. Grant did not always obey the road rules and in his two year and one month stint as NSW Deputy Premier he failed to impress. Between April 2011 and  2019 Grant was a minister nine times over - with three tenues lasting less than six months.

In 2019 he did not re-contest his seat at the state election and in 2020 he resigned from the National Party of Australia.

His appointment as Interim Inspector-General was not universally approved when announced in 2020:

 “They’re not even pretending anymore,” Nature Conservation Council Chief Executive Chris Gambian said.

“Troy Grant was in charge when some of the worst policy decisions that favour big irrigators at the expense of communities, farmers and nature downstream.

“Fresh from stinging criticism from ICAC about water management in NSW, the federal government has appointed the fox to be in charge of the hen house.

Vaccination rates in NSW and along North Coast

 

ABC News, 13 February 2021:

Vaccination rates in NSW are soaring as a growing number of regions go into lockdown and the state continues to battle the highly infectious Delta COVID-19 variant, data analysis shows.

The number of daily doses of vaccine administered in NSW accelerated from around 66,000 on average per day at the start of August to nearly 80,000 a day this week, according to Department of Health data.

Using the rate for second doses of vaccine administered, the data shows NSW will have 50 per cent of its adult population fully vaccinated by September 25.

That is second only to Tasmania, with its much smaller population set to reach that threshold just six days earlier.

Changes to the distribution of first and second doses — for example, by bringing forward or delaying second doses — could affect the dates targets are met….

Tasmania and NSW are leading the race to get their populations vaccinated

Date when proportions of adult population over 16 fully vaccinated

The Daily Telegraph, 13 August 2021:

With nearly 195,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses having been distributed, the Australian Government’s most recent geographic vaccination rates show more than 45 per cent of the eligible North Coast population has had one vaccine dose.

This compares to 46 per cent of the eligible NSW population and 44 per cent Australia-wide.

However, overall, the North Coast falls to 20 per cent having received their second dose, compared to 23 per cent in NSW and 22.5 per cent overall in Australia.

The Mid-North Coast keeps this figure high, with 21.6 per cent having had their second dose while the Clarence Valley lags at 17.8 per cent, almost five per cent under the national average.

As our statewide vaccination map shows however, across the region the vaccination rate has jumped at least three per cent in the last week alone.

Healthy North Coast Chief Executive Julie Sturgess said it was fantastic to see the Mid North Coast leading the region in vaccinations and encouraged people in all the areas to get the jab to protect themselves and the community.

“Our second dose rate is a little bit lower than the NSW and national average, but it is increasing in line with supply availability,” she said.

“It’s also in line with other regional areas in NSW. This may be because in outbreak areas like Sydney, second AstraZeneca doses are being brought forward, so people are getting them more quickly than here.

“If you’ve had your first dose, please ensure you get your second for maximum protection.”.....

According to NSW Health as of 8pm on 15 August 2021 a total of 5,069,640 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in NSW since the national vaccine rollout began on 22 February 2021.

An interactive map showing vaccination rates by NSW postcode is available at:

https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/find-the-facts-about-covid-19#map-of-nsw-vaccinations-by-home-postcode

An interactive map showing showing locations, cases and tests at:

https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/find-the-facts-about-covid-19#map-of-nsw-covid-19-case-locations-cases-and-tests