The Easter Bunny in Australia

This weekend the Easter Bunny will begin his dawn journey across Australia laden with a limitless basket of chocolate eggs.

If you listen carefully, you may hear him cry as he tops a hill close by - Don't shoot!

OECD politely tells Australia it can do better for the environment

The 2007 OECD Environmental Performance Reviews: Australia is now available.

 

"Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett says the Government will act on the report's findings.

"Our response to this report will be genuinely whole-of-Government," he said.

"We know environment issues don't rest with one or two portfolios and that these issues don't stop at borders either, it's a whole-of-planet challenge and it requires a whole-of-Government response."

As Peter Garrett is new to the ministry only time will tell if he has any ability to live up to his words.

Hopefully before then he will learn that the environmental picture is larger and more complex than the issue of plastic bags.

 

Some of the main conclusions and recommendations of the OECD review suggest that Australia might be falling behind in effectively addressing:

transport sector emissions, air pollution control monitoring, fine particle pollution, urban growth pressure, use of market-based instruments to advance ecologically sustainable development, exit assistance for business/industry to protect environmental integrity, water scarcity, energy sector net greenhouse gas emissions, agency data collection, monitoring and reporting, integration of traditional owners into whole-of-government policy on natural resource management, equity for all Australian stakeholders, public consultation mechanisms, environmental impact training for business operators, integration of environmental objectives into government procurement and operation policies.

Joe Hockey loses his cool, again and again and again...

WorkChoices may finally be on the way out and Australian Workplace Agreements dead and gone, but Liberal and Nationals MPs brought the House of Representatives to a state of near chaos yesterday when the Minister for Workplace Relations Julia Gillard put forward a motion asking that the House recognise the ills caused by WorkChoices and undertake that statutory individual employment agreements should never be reintroduced into Australian industrial relations law.

The Liberals Joe Hockey went ballistic and tried to shut the motion down. The Opposition then tried twice more in succession to gag debate of the motion.
Thwarted they tried a third time and then Uncle Joe unsuccessfully moved that the Deputy Speaker's ruling be dissented from.

On and on and round and round the arguments and divisions went, from 11.39am to 1.02pm, until Ms. Gillard's motion was finally voted in.

Immediately after that the Opposition Deputy Leader Julie Bishop rose to a make a motion praising WorkChoices and the whole uproar started again for another 21 minutes, as the Government retaliated by gagging this debate and forcing a vote.

Almost two hours of parliamentary mayhem, only lightened by the unconscious irony of former Howard Government minister Tony Abbott referring to another party's parliamentary tactics as "jackboot government" and Labor's Anthony Albanese losing patience and calling Hockey "fool".
Such a waste of taxpayers money.

News.com.au reported on aspects of the uproar yesterday.
Hansard records it all here.

Those life-style nongs are at it again

I frequently have to wonder whether there is anything at all in the brainboxes of some who decide to purchase small parcels of rural land, for a life style change or a gamble on future rezoning.

These people are thick on the ground now on the NSW North Coast and a few like these misguided souls are objecting to payment of the Rural Lands Protection Board levy.

Yelling that this is a tax on seachangers they refuse to cough up for years on end.

Rarely do you find owners like these keeping their land in good heart. Often their plots are weed filled and sour, with no crop or stock in sight.

The half-hearted attempts at bush regeneration are often abandoned before completion. 

I have little sympathy with their views. All I see is more agricultural land being removed from any meaningful productivity and court time being wasted.

Gimme, gimme folks one and all. They give genuine small-acreage farmers a bad name.

It's not easy being green: time for Australian governments to put their investments in order

This month the Australian Conservation Council released its 32 page report Responsible Public Investment in Australia.

 

3 RESPONSIBLE PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN AUSTRALIA

Few of the government funds interviewed for this report appeared to have linked ESG factors with their material influence on returns and the associated risks and opportunities in investment management.

This demonstrates a worrying disconnection between many public sector funds and industry best practice developments.

In many cases government asset managers lack the transparency of private sector asset managers in terms of their investment strategy and portfolio holdings.

However, a small number of asset managers were aware of ESG developments and reported

that the UN PRI was being considered at board level.

Government investments in the energy sector may be undermining stated environmental policy

objectives.

The investment practices of government funds have the potential to support or detract from government policy goals.

Most Australian jurisdictions, for example, have policies and laws that related to climate change and energy.

But investment priorities sometimes appear to undermine stated policy objectives.

The total investment of all State, Territory and Commonwealth funds in the listed energy sector is estimated as follows:

Industry: Holdings ($ million):

Nuclear/uranium $ 559

Fossil fuels $ 5,379

Renewable energy $ 126

There appear to be contradictions between these investment holdings and the stated policy goals of some States and Territories.

In particular:

• NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia all have significant holdings in uranium-related equities, despite legislative or political bans on uranium mining;

• All jurisdictions have very low holdings in the renewable energy sector, despite a stated strong commitment to renewable energy as a critical part of future energy generation; and

• All jurisdictions have significant exposures to fossil fuel industries, despite a range of policy commitments relating to the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The imbalance between investment in fossil fuels and renewable energy sources is striking, given the public commitment of all Australian governments to renewable energy.

 

The report also identifies the Commonwealth Futures Fund as not taking social, environmental and governance issues into consideration when making investment portfolio management decisions.

 

It's time for a whole of government approach to public investment. The Rudd Government needs to lead the way by example on this and then drag the states, kicking and screaming if necessary, into a green investment plan.

Five long years of war in Iraq - time to reflect on our sins

March 19 Blog Swarm logo.

Professor Gideon Polya from Australia writing on Iraq War death toll last year.

"As of September 2007: (a) the accrual cost of the Bush War on Terror stands at $2.5 trillion (as determined by US 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz) ; (b) there are 4 million Iraqi refugees; (c) the post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 1.1 million; (d) post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.5 million (a corrected estimate based on the latest UN data); (e) there were 1.7 million excess Iraqi deaths associated with the Western-imposed 1990-2003 Sanctions War; (f) there were 1.2 million under-5 year old infant deaths in the 1990-2003 Sanctions War; and (g) Coalition military deaths now total about 4,086 (see: http://icasualties.org/oif/ )."

Opinion Research Business (ORB) Iraq casualty survey media release January 2008.
ORB full survey data here.

Obama 08: Send me votes, lots of votes and a starry sky above

The race for Democratic nomination is so relentless one has to wonder if either Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama will have any energy left to contest John McCain for the Oval Office.

 

Here's Obama's latest email effort yesterday.

 

Dear [redacted],

When Michelle and I decided to enter this race more than a year ago, one of our hopes was to bring people back into the political process.

Like so many Americans, we'd been exhausted and frustrated by the slash-and-burn politics that had come to dominate our elections. Smallness and pettiness were the rule, not the exception. And it seemed like every day, more and more Americans were tuning out their democracy.

This election, we're seeing something different.

Nearly as many people have participated in the Democratic primary this year than in 2000 and 2004 combined. And there are still ten contests left to go.

As we enter the final stretch of elections, we have a unique opportunity to shape the outcome -- and the outcome of elections up and down the ballot this November.

The last day to register new voters in Pennsylvania is March 24th. In North Carolina and Indiana, it's in early April. And in West Virginia and Kentucky, the voter registration deadline is a little more than a month from today.

So today we're launching a national initiative to register an unprecedented number of voters in each of the upcoming states.

No matter where you live, you can help get people registered in the upcoming states. You can make phone calls from home, reach out to people you know in these states, or even sign up to travel to one of these states to be on the ground for this massive voter registration effort.

Learn more about what you can do to bring as many voters as possible into the political process:

http://my.barackobama.com/morevoices

Young voters have shaped this presidential primary like no other.

In Iowa, South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and Mississippi, the youth vote has tripled since 2004. And in all other states it has reached record levels. And these young voters are breaking 2-to-1 Democratic.

Statistics show that if we can get young people to vote Democratic now, they are far more likely to vote regularly -- and vote for Democrats -- throughout their lives.

So by getting involved and helping to register voters, you're not just increasing the number of voters in this election. You're increasing the number of people who will be engaged Democratic voters for the rest of their lives.

Sign up to help bring More Voices into the Democratic primary today:

http://my.barackobama.com/morevoices

More than fifteen years ago, after I finished law school, I came back to Chicago and led a voter registration drive on the South Side.

For months, our passionate and hardworking volunteers pounded the pavement -- registering folks everywhere they could, from barber shops to grocery stores to apartment building lobbies to local fairs. One particularly enthusiastic woman -- who until then had never been involved in politics -- made it her personal goal to register 100 voters a day, and ultimately registered 3,000 new voters.

In the end, we made a real difference in Illinois. Our team registered more than 150,000 new voters, not only impacting local elections, but helping to shift the balance in state and national races as well. Illinois went from voting Republican in 1988 to Democratic in 1992.

That lesson has informed how we've run this campaign. And now we have an unbelievable opportunity to apply it on a massive scale.

When new or returning voters participate in the Democratic primary, they are far more likely to come back and participate in the general election.

That's not just good for presidential candidates; it's good for Democrats up and down the ticket. More engaged, committed Democratic voters in the primaries means more votes this November in all fifty states -- from competitive statewide races to state legislative and city council seats everywhere.

You can make a difference right now. Encourage someone to register in time to participate in the presidential race in their state.

Learn more and get involved here:

http://my.barackobama.com/morevoices

Thanks for all your hard work,

Barack

P.S. -- Here's an example of how you can get involved right now.

In Pennsylvania, Independent voters must register as Democrats by March 24th in order to vote in the primary. One supporter made calls this weekend and reached 10 Independent voters who wanted to vote for us -- four of whom needed information about how to register.

Our team has created an online tool that provides all the information you need to make calls from home.

Get started now:

http://my.barackobama.com/callpa

Nelson's 'headland' speech obviously written on the rocks below

Well, I have to say Brendan Nelson's speech to the National Press Club yesterday was really something.

He invoked the ghost of Ming and called on the political corpse of Howard to pick up its bed and walk, as he uttered the mother of all redundant speeches.

Nothing new in it or the subsequent Q&A. In fact he went so far as to promise that there would be no change from the status quo.

The whole thing was just a reworking of Liberal Party broad motherhood statements with a dash of the (by now obligatory) half-repudiation of former policies. 

The right's usual anti-Islamic rhetoric tossed in to spice the mix and a verbal dump on indigenous Aussies for good measure.

Little Brennie going on to garnish the whole with a sudden discovery of the very issues which have troubled this country for the last eleven years, and an earnest pledge to do-something-about-it.

A short blast on a dog whistle to establish his credentials as leader of the morals police.

Then throwing in a tear jerker or two to let us know that he has a heart after all.

Barefaced hypocrisy at its best.

The Age today labelled the 'vision' speech as "rose water" and "gobbledegook".

Myself, watching the entire speech on ABC 1 fair made me want to chunder.

"Big Screen" film festival coming to Yamba 4-6 April 2008

The Australian Film Commission's 2008 Big Screen film festival is on its way to Yamba.

The festival runs between Friday 4 April and Sunday 6 April 2008, with screenings at both Yamba cinemas.

 

Highlights of this year's festival include:

• Meet Wendy Hughes, the star of Careful He Might Hear You and Return to Eden at the NSW premiere of her new film, The View From Greenhaven Drive
• A fantastic double bill with My Brilliant Career and The Man Who Sued God
• Fabulous free school screenings, including Dr Plonk and The Caterpillar Wish
• Our Town and short films by local Indigenous filmmakers
• A special family screening of Elephant Tales

Out Town is of special interest to the Clarence Valley as it is "A spirited film by young locals about the importance of the Clarence River to their lives and to their Indigenous culture. When the government proposes a dam, how do they feel?"

There is a free showing of this film at Yamba's Treelands Drive Cinema on Sunday 6 April at 5.15pm.

 

Phone (02) 6646.3430 or (02) 66.4656 for festival details.

Gillard wipes the floor with Bishop during Workplace Relations debate

The Monday 17 March 2008 Hansard record of Julia Gillard's response to Julie Bishop during the second reading of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward With Fairness) Bill 2008.

 

"I am advised by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that she has nearly finished her remarks. If that is the case we will hear again from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and then do what the Australian people want us to do, which is to pass the bill which they voted for. In relation to the last representations and silly statements by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—no doubt she will stand at the dispatch box and make another series of silly statements which I will leave unanswered—the Howard government never produced any economic modelling of Work Choices. I will not stand here as a member of the Rudd Labor government and be lectured by the current opposition on the question of the production of economic modelling. Indeed, her request for it is the height of hypocrisy. For the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to describe her proposal in her speech on the second reading as something that has been satisfied through the Senate inquiry process is a cover-up of the fact that she has clearly been rolled by her party room again. She tried to achieve yet another extension of Australian workplace agreements, because she believes in Work Choices—she believes in AWAs that can rip people off. She put that position to the party room, she got rolled and she clearly got rolled again on the amendment. I will give the Deputy Leader of the Opposition this: at least she knows what she believes in and she is prepared to stand up for it. I have to give the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that. I can understand her high state of anger with her colleagues whom she described in the media as having 'gone to water'. I can understand that. She at least knows what she believes in. She believes in Work Choices and she always will. But this government was elected to deliver something different. It is this bill. We are seeking passage of it through the House of Representatives today. We will receive the Senate inquiry report. We always supported there being a Senate inquiry with a proper time frame. We will consider what the Senate inquiry report says. But having had that consideration I can see no reason why this bill cannot pass the parliament this week so we can end forever the spectre that Australians walk into their workplaces to be confronted by an Australian workplace agreement that takes away an award condition from them without any, or any proper, compensation. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition can carry on about nominal expiry dates and time periods for agreements, but what she and the Liberal Party know is this: the only thing that ensured the end of Australian workplace agreements that can rip conditions away was the election of the Rudd Labor government. We would never have got to this point had the Howard government been re-elected. She will dismiss it—she will carry on about nominal expiry dates—but the Deputy Leader of the Opposition must concede that next week when this bill is proclaimed there will never again be an Australian worker who walks into their workplace fearful that that is the day when an Australian workplace agreement gets shoved into their hands that takes away an award condition for no proper compensation or perhaps no compensation at all. I think that is a truly historic step. The Rudd Labor government believes it to be a truly historic step. It is what the Australian people voted for when they repudiated Work Choices and the party of Work Choices—the Liberal Party."

 

It would have been interesting to read Ms. Gillard's response to what Malcolm Turnbull might have had to say during the second reading, but he appears to have been steadfastly silent during the debate. Did he even bother to turn up?