Nationals' candidate for Richmond bows out

Murdock quits: I've had enough
Northern Star
Murdock pulls out of election
Tweed Daily News

Tania Murdock will not be standing as a National Party candidate for Richmond in the next Federal election. Mrs Murdock accused some in her own party of ‘having their own agenda’ and also said her personal reputation had been unjustifiably attacked by Liberal candidate Joan Van Lieshout.

Mrs Murdock told The Northern Star:

"She (Ms Van Lieshout) flatly refused (to work in together) which was a bit of a surprise seeing we are both on the same side of politics.

“She then made inaccurate claims and deliberately created a negative impression about me personally.”

While conceding that she had made some novice mistakes since winning nomination in December, Mrs Murdock said many of these were blown out of proportion by her enemies within the party.

“Some internal people who have their own agendas politically have jumped on any little mistake they can,” she said.

Sources: The Northern Star and Tweed Daily News

Ask President Obama to reject a deal that would legitimize commercial whaling

Photographs by Byrant Austin

slideshow here and website gallery here

To get an image, Austin finds a pod of whales, and then stays at the surface of the water, waiting for one of the whales to approach him. When they do, he starts photographing them, swimming less than six feet away from them. After taking hundreds of high resolution images of a whale - all on the whale's terms - he pieces them together into one complete, life-size whole. He's the first artist to show photos of whales at life-size, and the impact is profound.

This week the Australian Government will commence legal proceedings against the Government of Japan in the International Court in The Hague, over the annual commercial slaughter of whales (including protected/ threatened species and females in calf) in the Antarctic conducted under the guise of 'scientific research'.

A petition to US President Barack Obama requesting that he reject a deal that would legitimize commercial whaling is now online for signing at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The International Whaling Commission meets again in June 2010 and Australia needs a strong ally in this fight - so use the NRDC link and personalise the message to Obama at the beginning of the online petition to let him know what the world thinks.

Now is the time to act!

The world according to Tony Mark I or II 0r III or IV or V...........

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Now just in case you think Oz Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has had a divine revelation on the 27th of May about global warming and climate change - remember that he tailors his opinions to his audience.

Here's Tony over the last six months:

"If you look at Roman times, grapes grew up against Hadrian's Wall - medieval times they grew crops in Greenland. In the 1700s they had ice fairs on the Thames. So the world has been significantly hotter, significantly colder than it is now. We've coped....

Well, look, if man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn't there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph."
{Tony Abbott in Lateline interview on 19th November 2009}

"I mean in the end this whole thing is a question of fact, not faith, or it should be a question of fact not faith and we can discover whether the planet is warming or not by measurement. And it seems that notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world's warming has stopped. Now admittedly we are still pretty warm by recent historical standards but there doesn't appear to have been any appreciable warming since the late 1990s."

{Tony Abbott in 2GB Radio interview with Alan Jones on 9th December 2009}

"In a wide ranging speech, Mr Abbott talked about climate change, the Liberal political fortunes and Kevin Rudd. Quote - the argument on climate change is absolute crap, he said."

{Editor of Pyrenees Advocate quoting Tony Abbott in North Coast Voices post on 8th February 2010}

"OK, so the climate has changed over the eons and we know from history, at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth the climate was considerably warmer than it is now....And then during what they called the Dark Ages it was colder. Then there was the medieval warm period. Climate change happens all the time and it is not man that drives those climate changes back in history.....It is an open question how much the climate changes today and what role man plays."

{Tony Abbott to a school class quoted in The Australian on 8th May 2010}

"I am confident, based on the science we have, that mankind does make a difference to climate, almost certainly the impact of humans on the planet extends to climate."

{Tony Abbott in a speech to 11th National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald on 27th May 2010}

Australian mining industry piles on the tax distortions as it tries to win over the electorate

If one relies on media reports it would appear that the Australian mining industry might have a case against the Rudd Government's proposed Resource Super Profits Tax which is due to activate in 2012.

The RSPT will replace the crude oil excise, and operate in parallel with State and Territory royalty regimes and Under the RSPT a refundable credit for royalties paid to State and Territory Governments will be available.

However, if one cares to open the media releases put out by the Mining Council of Australia the flimsy nature of arguments used by the anti-RSPT lobby begins to emerge.

To date my favourite assertion is; The super tax is, in effect, a Government-mandated sale of 40% of Australia's resources industry at a Government mandated price.

Another favourite is the statement that; For the industry as a whole in 2007-2008, ATO statistics show mining companies paid 27.8% effective corporate tax rate, which rises to 41.3% when royalties are included.

While Mining pays a higher tax rate than any other industry stands out as a blatant attempt at misdirection.

All these quotes are found in the Mineral Council's The truth about the super tax –the myths and the facts, 25 May 2010.

So let's look at the forced sale argument.

No established mining corporation is talking of selling off the parent company or subsidiaries - in the middle of a resources boom most of these companies are very profitable and likely to continue so for many years even with mooted tax reform.

The only threats being made by some mining companies is that they will reassess their scheduled mining projects in light of the proposed tax and rebate scheme.

What about that colossal corporate tax rate quoted, I hear you ask.

Well in 2007-08 there were according to the Australian Taxation Office 2007-08 statistics; 4,290 mining companies having combined incomes which totalled $160,323,192,189, which in turn had combined taxable incomes of $29,010,243,407 and net tax actually paid was $8,068,463,15 after all allowed deductions had been made.

As for royalty payments made in Australia these added up to $3,924,902,975 in 2007-08, which was a little over half of all royalty payments across all listed industries made in that financial year. (Update: A hat tip here to Peter Martin for pointing out in a recent post that mining royalties are tax deductible)

What the Tax Office also points out is the fact that of these 4,290 mining companies there were some who paid no tax at all and, these comprised 68.3% of all mining companies.

In fact the mining sector has the second-highest percentage of 'no tax paid' than any other listed industry.

How did they do that?

Well there are at least 20 deductions, rebates, concessions, exemptions, offsets etc. available to the mining industry and their combined value is literally worth billions.

The industry total for expenses claimed under R&D concessions alone was $2,508,321,897 and immediate deduction for capital expenditure $3,785,347,506, in 2007-08.

So how does the claim that the mining industry is paying a higher tax rate than any other industry fare?

Quite frankly the mining industry tax rate does not stand alone from some other listed industries in terms of comparable tax percentages to taxable income.

It is worth noting that in 2007 the Business Council of Australia in Tax Nation calculated corporate tax (as a percentage of profit) at 20% for the mining industry.

Interestingly this same document stated; Taxes Collected are negative for the mining industry group because as major exporters survey participants reported a significant GST refund which more than offset other Taxes Collected.

It is also interesting to see that the Mining Council of Australia's advertisement presently being broadcast states that the mining industry currently pays 38% tax, which is a figure significantly lower than those quoted in other council documents which had the combined company tax and royalties running at 41.3%.

Next time you see a talking head spruiking for the mining industry or catch one of the industry's televised advertisements - remember that all is not as these miners would have you believe.

Image from Mumbrella

Stop the world - I want to get off!

Ever wondered how we're all going to respond to an increasingly hostile physical world?
What path we'll go down as we confront the dire consequences of our own collective actions?
In the face of one monumental environmental disaster the only psychological defence left for some is laughter:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – At a conference of oil leak experts in Washington today, attendees proposed plugging the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with executives of BP, the company responsible for the catastrophic spill.

"We've tried containment domes, rubber tires, and even golf balls," said William Cathermeyer of the National Oil Leakage Institute, a leading consultancy in the field of oil leaks. "Now it's time to shove some BP executives down there and hope for the best."

Submerging the oil company executives thousands of feet below the ocean's surface could be a "win-win" situation, Mr. Cathermeyer said.

"Best-case scenario, they plug the leak," he said. "And at the very least, they'll shut the fuck up."

But even as the oil leak experts proposed their unorthodox solution, environmental expert Marilyn Sufranski warned of the possible negative consequences of plugging the oil leak with BP executives.

"The Gulf of Mexico is slimy enough already," she said.

The Daily Examiner in Grafton holds its own in APN regional circulation breakdown

A general gloom still lingers over falling circulation numbers for major Australian newspapers, which this last quarter have been blamed on a slow news cycle as well as the proliferation of free online news and comment sites.
However for some regional mastheads it is slightly a different story.

The Daily Examiner on the NSW North Coast holds its own against larger newspapers within the APN group which in the week ending Saturday 22 May 2010 had a combined paid sales figure of 882,161 copies for its fourteen dailies.

The Daily Examiner which has been publishing in the Clarence Valley since 1859 came in with a daily circulation of 5,604 in 2010 year to date (YTD) terms. This showed a small percentage increase of 0.75%, which made it the only newspaper in the APN stable to be in the black for the year thus far.

Well done to the team at DEX.

The Clarence River as part of Earth's big picture

Clarence River mouth from the air at Blue Skies

From the abstract for Continental rifting and drainage reversal: The Clarence River of Eastern Australia by R. J. Haworth and C. D. Ollier, Department of Geography and Planning, The University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia:

The Clarence River on Australia's east coast has an anomalous drainage pattern. Its right-bank tributaries are markedly barbed, suggesting reversal, whereas Tertiary volcanism has disrupted its left-bank drainage. The southeast-flowing Clarence is closely aligned with the northwest-flowing Condamine River just across the Continental Divide. The Condamine-Clarence alignment is continued by a large southern tributary, the Orara River, which flows northwest, away from the sea, to meet the southeast-flowing Clarence. A broad river with a quite different character flows east from near the Orara-Clarence junction to the sea. This is essentially an overflow channel.
This series of aligned streams, the Condamine-Clarence-Orara, represents the remains of an earlier northwest-flowing stream that extended the full length of the Clarence-Moreton Basin, an eastern extension of the Great Artesian Basin. During the Jurassic, the Clarence-Moreton Basin was filled with sediments from the surrounding highlands, including those to the east of the present coastline. Continental rifting from Late Cretaceous times onwards led to the opening of the Tasman Sea, causing the reversal and beheading of the original northwest-flowing streams and the formation of the Great Escarpment.
The evolution of the Clarence River does not fit into most conventional geomorphic paradigms such as cycles, climatic geomorphology or steady-state landforms. It is the result of a succession of unique events on a very long timescale, and as such is a classic example of evolutionary geomorphology.

Water spouts on the NSW North Coast

Local photographer Steve Young manged to catch these two water spouts and the Coffs Coast Advocate reported last Friday:
"Coffs Harbour Bureau of Meteorology duty observer Roger Brown said water spouts were uncommon here but not rare.
“They usually form in a thunderstorm,” Mr Brown said. “It is a type of tornado, although they are usually much less potent than the ones we see in the mid-west of the US. We probably see a couple every year – when they’re forming you often see a couple at a time.”

Here's another pic from Port Macquarie on the mid-North Coast in 2007, found at Flickr's 'australia waterspout' tag:


Pics by Steve Young and beachcomberaustralia

Colourful National Party character will be back on the road again

(with apologies to Willie Nelson)

District Court Judge James Black has changed a sentence for drink-driving handed down early this year to Nationals stalwart Murray Lees.

Lismore's Northern Star reports:

Judge Black yesterday set aside Murray Lees’ eight-month suspended prison sentence, handed down by Magistrate Michael Dakin at Murwillumbah Local Court in January for Lees’ fourth drink-driving offence in five years.

Mr Dakin had also banned Lees, 44, of Dulguigan, north of Murwillumbah, from driving for three years.

Lees, who ran the Nationals’ Page campaign in 2007, stepped down from his leadership positions within the party while he dealt with issues around depression and drinking.

Yesterday’s decision will let Lees get back behind the wheel on September 17 – a year after he blew 0.085 after being stopped by police while racing to get to his brother-in-law, who had just been in a bad traffic accident.

Judge Black allowed Lees to enter the interlock program, which would allow him to drive so long as he fitted a device to his car that forced him to pass a breathalyser test before starting the engine. He won’t be allowed to drive without the device for two years from September 17.

The court heard Lees had been celebrating his birthday and was waiting with his wife for a taxi to go out to dinner when the couple got a call from Mrs Lees’ brother, who had just been in a traffic accident.

The couple jumped in the family car, with Lees behind the wheel, and drove off to help, but ended up being stopped by police.

Sources: The Northern Star and absolutelyrics.com

What goes on behind closed doors should stay there, says Daily Examiner editor

A bouquet for The Daily Examiner editor David Bancroft's Page 10 comment on 26 May 2010:

IN the past week we have seen some parts of the media lurch dangerously towards titillation over substance, highlighted by the "outing" and subsequent resignation of the former transport minister, David Campbell.

Throughout our history, Australians and the Australian media have shied away from intruding into the private lives of politicians, but the treatment of Campbell and, earlier, John Della Bosca suggests the old rules no longer apply.

Della Bosca was forced to resign after the media revealed an affair with a younger woman, and Campbell last week handed in his resignation after Channel Seven secretly filmed him entering a gay night club.

It appears, in Campbell's case in particular, that he was set up.

Despite suggestions in Channel Seven's early report that Campbell had misused his ministerial car he, in fact, committed no crime and no breach of ministerial guidelines.

This was not news.

Channel Seven had no right to first pry and later report what Campbell did in his private life.

Being homosexual is not an offence and did not prevent him from carrying out his ministerial or electorate duties.

It should be a matter for Campbell, his wife of 30 years and his children.

To air his personal life on national television only serves to further erode public confidence in the media.

What politicians do behind closed doors should stay there unless it impacts on their duties or conflicts with moral statements they have made.

I, for one, certainly don't want to know what people like Wilson Tuckey get up to in their bedrooms and I think most Australians would feel the same.

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill 2010: when 'we told you so' is hopelessly futile and any penalties imposed on polluters not enough to satisfy

The U.S. Public Broadcasting Service is running a meter calculating the amount of oil now devasting the marine environment, sea creatures both large and small, bird life, foreshore and estuary ecosystems for hundreds of miles along the Gulf of Mexico thanks to British Petroleum and partners.




PBS 'The BP Spill's Impact on Wildlife'
Watch
Listen
Transcript
WARNING: Some images are distressing

UPDATE on 30 May 2010:
There is some talk that BP executives are pressuring the mainstram media and organizations involved in the oil spill clean-up not to give regular accounts of numbers of wildlife killed or rescued and not to give a daily reckoning of the amount of oil still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
The fact that PBS paused its meter (above) on 28 May 2010 seems to lend credence to this claim.

Don't do it Swanee! Don't water down the RSPT

Here I was thinking that at last the big bloated mining companies operating in Oz might finally be made to pay a realistic tax on the huge profits they make out of a very finite resource.
Even in the middle of the global financial crisis they were all doing nicely thank you.
I switch on the radio today and find that Swan and Bowen are being tipped to back down and give in to the dishonest media campaign those same big miners are running.
Don't do it fellas - those Aussies battling their way towards retirement and facing less and less in the way of social infrastructure to help in old age are standing squarely behind this tax rearrangement.
Swanee - forget the meeja, ignore the polls, remember the people!

How some of that filthy lucre's adding up:
17 May 2010 Leighton announces third quarter profit of $400m and $37.5bn of work in hand....These are strong results for the nine months which reflect solid performances in mining and infrastructure
26 Feb 2010 ... Perilya announces net profit after tax of $28.5 million in six latest month report.
Rio Tinto's net profit after tax came to $5.43 billion in 2009
Fortescue Metals Group reported net profit after tax for the 12 months to June 30, 2009 of $626.13 million
30 June 2009 On an underlying basis, Centennial returned a record $82.0 million after-tax result.
9 September 2009 Hillgrove Resources Limited (ASX: HGO) is pleased to announce a net profit after tax (NPAT) for the six months ended 31 July 2009 of $53,973,885 (2008 6 months: $2,208,242 loss) after tax expense of $27,170,778
Industrea have announced an adjusted net profit after tax (NPAT) of $41.3 million for the 12 months to 30 June 2008, up 122% from the previous year's result
2008 Alumina Limited's net profit after tax for 2008 was $168 million...AWAC's 2008 net profit after tax was US$592 million compared to US$953 million in 2007
ERA's net profit after tax for the full year ended 31 December 2008 was a record $221.8 million, compared with $76.1 million for the same period in 2007. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) were $318.0 million (2007: $108.0 million)

Australian Federal Election 2010: Bowen does Hartsuyker on superannuation

Australian Federal Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law and Minister for Human Services Chris Bowen, speaking of NSW Nationals MP for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker, according to Hansard on 24 May 2010 courtesy of OpenAustralia:

One month ago the shadow minister for superannuation—and, yes, there is one; it is the member for Cowper—gave a speech to the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees.

It was a scripted, written speech.

As far as we know the member for Cowper might have even rehearsed in front of the mirror, so we should have been able to take what he said as the gospel truth.

He said that the opposition in government would allow people over 50 to make concessional top-ups to their superannuation payments.

That was a commitment from the shadow minister for superannuation.
It lasted one month.
On 19 April this was announced as policy by the shadow minister for superannuation.
On 19 May, the shadow minister for finance announced this was no longer opposition policy; it had been discontinued.
It lasted a month. Their commitment to people aged over 50 lasted a month.
How inconsistent can you be?
But the Leader of the Opposition is probably very pleased with this. He is probably pleased with the inconsistency.