North Coast pensioners took your advice, Kev - so how about it?

The Prime Minister gave pensioners a one-off bonus payment in December 2008 and told them to go out and spend to help the Aussie economy.
As far as I can tell on the NSW North Coast they did just that.
They spent it at the dentist, at the vet, buying clothes, sheets for the bed, tyres for the car, a new fridge, shoes for the grandkids and extra Christmas groceries - simple things like that which sent money straight into the tills of local businesses.
So Rudders not including a commitment to Aussie pensioners in his latest stimulus package anounced this week was a little alarming.
Is the Rudd Government going to put the promised mid-year payment increase for single pensioners on the backburner as it did paid maternity leave?
I second Senator Bob Brown when he called on the Rudd Government to once again include pensioners in the stimulus package by ensuring that they get a pension increase this year.
On the North Coast pensioners and seniors (besides being the backbone of many not-for-profit community groups and the bulk of the population in some areas) are what makes the money go round. I kid you not.

Australian national political donations: who gave to which party in 2007-2008

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) released the 2007-08 annual returns for political donations and expenditure this week.

Here is a brief breakdown:

Australian Labor Party [National] - 81 donations listed
Biggest donor Village Roadshow Limited at $205,000

Liberal Party of Australia [National] - 66 donors on record.
Largest donor Brickworks at $250,000

National Party of Australia [National] - 20 donations are recorded
Largest donor Hong Kong Kingson Investments at $250,000

Australian Greens [National] - 1 donation listed
Only donor Mr. Russell Thompson at $20,000

Family First [National] - 1 donor
Only donor Grocon Pty Ltd at $5,000

Christian Democratic Party [National] - 0 donors

In addition: the Business Council of Australia spent $2.3 million on political publication and broadcasting and the Australian Council of Trade Unions outlaid around $15.8 million across the spectrum.

AEC Search

• Party
• Party Group
• Donor
• Associated Entity
• Political Expenditure

Monsanto fruit?

From Animal Magic: or what happens when graphic artists get bored

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Australian senators' financial interests now online

Open Australia is in the process of putting all senators declared interests online at its website.
All senators can be found here. Just follow the links.
Starting with the "A"s and continuing downwards it is remarkable to see the number of senators declaring a laptop computer given to them by that notable 2008 corporate collapse ABC Pty Ltd.
It's also fascinating to see just how many senators appear to be living on their parliamentary income alone, like Senator Conroy who (from memory) states a mortgaged family home and a single savings bank account along with that ubiquitous laptop.
However, others like Senator Coonan give a gentle hint at cash investments, jewellery, antiques and a handful of 'freebies', while Senator Heffernan presents a fairly typical country MP profile of investments, shares in own and other companies, trusts, and land a little land and starry skies above.

Rudd's $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan outlined

The Prime Minister announced today a second stimulus package which includes these key elements:

• Free ceiling insulation for around 2.7 million Australian homes
• Build or upgrade a building in every one of Australia’s 9,540 schools
• Build more than 20,000 new social and defence homes
• $950 one off cash payments to eligible families, single workers, students, drought effected farmers and others
• A temporary business investment tax break for small and general businesses buying eligible assets
• Significantly increase funding for local community infrastructure and local road projects

More offical detail can be found here.

Crickey has graphs showing which electorates will get the bulk of child and school related payments and funding at Kevvie Cash Rewards

Red face for Nationals Luke Hartsuyker over fuel prices

Despite a great deal of wasted ink, Nationals MP for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker just could not support his contention that the Rudd Government was wrecking all for North Coast motorists and businesses.

Federal Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker has slammed the country's Petrol Commissioner and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for failing to help local motorists still forking out unnecessarily high prices for unleaded fuel.

First the Petrol Commissioner told him that the difference between Kempsey and city unleaded petrol average retail prices was only around 4 cents a litre for the second half of 2008.

Now according to The Land on Saturday:

The difference between city and country fuel prices is no reason for alarm, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
This is despite calls for a full investigation into the price gap by country MPs last week.
The ACCC says some country petrol prices last week were cheaper than Sydney and Melbourne prices.
ACCC commissioner and petrol spokesman, Joe Dimasi, visited Central Queensland last week to talk to angry country motorists and see for himself what was going on with petrol prices.
The visit followed a formal request from Nationals leader, Warren Truss, and Opposition spokesman for competition, Luke Hartsuyker, for the ACCC to thoroughly investigate the disparity between petrol and diesel prices, and city and country fuel prices.
Mr Truss said diesel was traditionally much cheaper than petrol, and its current high price was flowing through to the cost of transport and food.

It would appear the Mr. Hartsuyker is not beginning the year with any political flourish.

'Truffles' Turnbull's latest tack

Dear Voter,
I'm writing to let you know that Edward Gough Whitlam is alive and well and heading the country as Australian Prime Minister in 2009.
You may have been a little confused because his official biography doesn't mention him being a rather younger, chubby fellow hailing from Queensland.
But do not be fooled - the PM is really Gough after a clever makeover paid for by Unions Australia.
If Gough-in-disguise comes to your door asking for your vote it would be wise to have lots of garlic and holy water handy to ward him off.
Australia's economy depends on returning to government all those politicians who so enthusiastically supported a deregulated global financial system.
Julie, Joe and Tony join me in saying: Remember, greed is good for the nation.
Sincerely,

Malcolm Bligh Turnbull

P.S.
This letter was paid for by donations from my friends Bankers International and Big Business.

Storm Financial: if it looks too good to be true then it is

Storm is one of Australia's largest and fastest growing Financial Services firms. Our strength comes from providing services and advice, based on sound research, which integrate smoothly with your life goals and ambitions.
Investing successfully is about fulfilling your full financial potential; not about being constrained by the limits of your present position.
We take the confusion and complexity out of investing and provide free investor education so you can make informed choices to create the quality of life you desire.

So said Storm Financial (formerly Ozdaq Securities and Cassimatis Securities) in 2005.

Supposedly the principals now have to sell all after the company's financial collapse leaves them facing personal bankruptcy.

Though the media have been somewhat silent about another company Ignite Financial Systems & Research Pty Ltd (formerly Storm Financial Research and Ozdaq Research) apparently owned by Storm principals and rumoured to be operating in Victoria as well as in Queensland and, which has Storm Financial as a client.
It is not clear whether this firm has been protected from the financial meltdown or indeed if any of the other companies which appear to be associated with Storm are not at risk.

It has also been reported that the Financial Planners Association has terminated Storm's membership with some stern words.

Matters are likely to go from bad to worse for Storm clients, for besides having to meet horrendous margin calls it is possible that the Australian Tax Office may come calling about how various advisers structured their tax.

Legal action by former Storm clients against everyone they can think of may be the only way to stave off further loss/debt.
At last count their combined debt was estimated at $100 million.

Courtesy of The Wayback Machine here are website screen shots from October 2007 and January 2009.

Then...................

Now....................

Update:

• Emmanuel Cassimatis admits it was he who discussed with the Commonwealth Bank the fact that many Storm clients would be unable to meet margin calls, two weeks before the bank contacted these clients.
• Supreme Court freezes bank account linked to Storm Financial, 4 Februaury 2009

Scorching Australia: interviews with Wong, Lindesay and Evans on climate change

Photograph from the ABC

Australia's southern states are struggling through what is likely to be a once-in-a-century heat wave. ABC's Canberra correspondent, Linda Mottram in an extended interview with Doctor Janette Lindesay, associate professor of climatology, Australian National University last week.
Interview can be heard here:
Listen: Windows Media

An earlier interview with Julie Evans, meteorologist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in Sydney, Penny Wong, Australia's Climate Change Minister, Doctor Janette Lindesay, associate professor of climatology, Australian National University can be heard here:
Listen: Windows Media

ABC News report on last year's southern heatwave.

How Rudd & Labor can lose the 2010 federal election

What with Turnbull and Truss still rummaging around for a hat to match that Coalition overcoat, it looks nigh on impossible for the Rudd Government to lose the next federal election.
Ah, but wait.
Every Australia Day the ugly little republican imp is let loose and the media delightedly stir the common pot.
According to the Canberra Times the Australian Republican Movement wants Rudd to fire the starter's gun so voters can decide if Australian is to be a republic.
The BBC weighs in with a little ambivalence on the subject.
For once David Flint writing for the ABC News hits the nail on the head with a piece titled Republican push divisive, expensive and irresponsible.
The Courier Mail baldly says that Rudd has ditched the plan because of a feared voter backlash.

Faced with the increasingly nasty effects of climate change and in a long period of economic uncertainty affecting every facet of life; all Australia needs to turn it snarling on the ruling political party is for that party to decide that we need more disruptive change and insist the country debate and vote on a republic.
If Rudders resists the urge to begin this republican debate then all will be well.
If not - then bring on the next federal election and I for one will delight in voting the bustards out 2010.
We need the short-sighted and naked self-interest of pollies messing with the Australian Constitution like we need the discovery of mad cow disease within our borders.

First bumper stickers, t-shirts and coffee mugs - now Obama is a worm!

During the 2008 presidential election campaign the Obama for America team branded almost everything that moved with logos and slogans promoting Barack Obama.

During the transition period for President-elect Obama his face began appearing on even more merchandise.

Now as President Obama his face appears on PC monitors if these have been infected with an Obama Worm.

The worm spreads via USB drive, using the Windows autorun feature to install itself automatically on any drive it connects with. Unlike most of today's profit-driven malware, the Obama worm doesn't steal your credit card number or turn your PC into a remote-controlled zombie system. In fact, it isn't designed to do anything besides float a small picture of Obama at the bottom right corner of your desktop all day every Monday.

Unfortunately, it is so badly written that the worm gradually renders any PC it is run on completely useless, according to Rob Koliha, Walling Data's director of innovation. "It will basically prevent execution of any kind of files."

Because antivirus programs don't detect it yet, it's also hard to know when you've been infected, except on Monday.

Australian genetically modified foods update

This post is by way of a catch-up on news about genetically modified (GM) food and crops in Australia.

ABC News reported last week:

When New South Wales and Victoria dropped their bans on genetically modified canola crops, GM supporters claimed farmers would have greater yielding crops as a result.
However recent trials showed there was little difference between the two.
So why bother growing GM canola if you can't get anything extra out of it?....
Chris Preston is associate professor at the School of Agriculture at the University of Adelaide.
He says trial results depend on region and climate, and the drought hampered the GM canola trails.
He says the trials do give an indication how canola performs in drought conditions, and if that's where it's being grown it's probably not worth growing GM canola variety. xxxx

WA Business News also ran this short article on 16 January:

Genetically modified canola crops in Victoria have performed no better than their non-genetically modified counterparts as Western Australia prepares to hold trials later this year.
Results from Grains Research and Development Council showed the yields, from the first independent trial crops in Horsham and Forbes in Victoria, were 0.7 tonne per hectare for GM and 0.8t/ha ha for non-GM.
The results are not good news for those wanting to farm GM canola, as to break even with the technology, profits must increase by up to 16 per cent.

Comment on the Business News article:

This article talks of yields, but what about sales? Thanks to this environmentally toxic rubbish being foisted on us Australians I simply boycott everything with Canola in it now because no-one can quickly prove to me it's GM free.

I'm not going to waste my time trying to find out either as you either encounter people who don't have a clue or spin doctors.

I'm becoming more aggressive with fish shops etc too, if they are using canola or cottonseed oil, the food could be GM contaminated.

We Can't Eat A Scorched Earth! Climate change and food security

Free public meeting promoted by Gene Ethics

Thursday 5th February 2009
5.45 pm for 6.00 pm talk start, concluding 7.15pm
NSW Teachers Federation

23 - 33 Mary St, Surry Hills Sydney - (between Albion & Reservoir)

True Food Network latest guide to GM-free food and what to avoid

Australian Office of Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) list of genetically modified product approvals:
GM products approved as food, food additives and processing aids (PDF 79 KB)
GM products approved as therapeutics (PDF 19 KB)

OGTR current list of applications and licences to release GMO into the environment, laboratory trials and low risk dealings.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Bernard Keane on Turnbull & Bishop is my quote of the week

Bernard Keane writing an open letter to Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop in Crikey (arriving via Peter Martin's blog) contains what has to be my favourite quotes this week.
The entire letter is well worth a read.

"But you seem determined to maintain the fiscal hairy-chestedness. As part of that, you like to maintain that when you were in Government, you were the height of fiscal responsibility.

That's complete bollocks and I'm sick of hearing it. The first two Howard Budgets were excellent. They cleaned up the profligacy of the last Keating budgets and began seriously implementing a small-government agenda of the sort a lot of us had been looking for for years. But after that, you dropped the ball. Subsequent budgets got slacker and slacker, especially once the mining boom kicked in. After 2001, your budgets got downright bad as you shelled out money to buy votes. After 2004, you were shovelling money out the door so fast slow-moving people were getting buried under it.

If you'd had just a little regard for the longer term you could have used the boom years to hand out tax cuts and built the surplus up further, or make a serious start on fixing our infrastructure, or get an ETS up and running so we had it built into our economy before the crisis hit.

But no, you died vomiting money to anyone registered to vote."

The Global Financial Crisis by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (preview)

In The Monthly out on 4 Feburary 2009:

From time to time in human history there occur events of a truly seismic significance, events that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next, when one orthodoxy is overthrown and another takes its place. The significance of these events is rarely apparent as they unfold: it becomes clear only in retrospect, when observed from the commanding heights of history. By such time it is often too late to act to shape the course of such events and their effects on the day-to-day working lives of men and women and the families they support.

There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time: barely a decade into the new millennium, barely 20 years since the end of the Cold War and barely 30 years since the triumph of neo-liberalism - that particular brand of free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed which became the economic orthodoxy of our time.

The agent for this change is what we now call the global financial crisis. In the space of just 18 months, this crisis has become one of the greatest assaults on global economic stability to have occurred in three-quarters of a century. As others have written, it "reflects the greatest regulatory failure in modern history". It is not simply a crisis facing the world's largest private financial institutions - systemically serious as that is in its own right. It is more than a crisis in credit markets, debt markets, derivatives markets, property markets and equity markets - notwithstanding the importance of each of these.

This is a crisis spreading across a broad front: it is a financial crisis which has become a general economic crisis; which is becoming an employment crisis; and which has in many countries produced a social crisis and in turn a political crisis. Indeed, accounts are already beginning to emerge of the long-term geo-political implications of the implosion on Wall Street - its impact on the future strategic leverage of the West in general and the United States in particular.

The global financial crisis has demonstrated already that it is no respecter of persons, nor of particular industries, nor of national boundaries. It is a crisis which is simultaneously individual, national and global. It is a crisis of both the developed and the developing world. It is a crisis which is at once institutional, intellectual and ideological. It has called into question the prevailing neo-liberal economic orthodoxy of the past 30 years - the orthodoxy that has underpinned the national and global regulatory frameworks that have so spectacularly failed to prevent the economic mayhem which has now been visited upon us.

Not for the first time in history, the international challenge for social democrats is to save capitalism from itself: to recognise the great strengths of open, competitive markets while rejecting the extreme capitalism and unrestrained greed that have perverted so much of the global financial system in recent times. It fell to Franklin Delano Roosevelt to rebuild American capitalism after the Depression. It fell also to the American Democrats, strongly influenced by John Maynard Keynes, to rebuild postwar domestic demand, to engineer the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and to set in place the Bretton Woods system to govern international economic engagement. And so it now falls to President Obama's administration - and to those who will provide international support for his leadership - to support a global financial system that properly balances private incentive with public responsibility in response to the grave challenges presented by the current crisis. The common thread uniting all three of these episodes is a reliance on the agency of the state to reconstitute properly regulated markets and to rebuild domestic and global demand.

The second challenge for social democrats is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. As the global financial crisis unfolds and the hard impact on jobs is felt by families across the world, the pressure will be great to retreat to some model of an all-providing state and to abandon altogether the cause of open, competitive markets both at home and abroad. Protectionism has already begun to make itself felt, albeit in softer and more subtle forms than the crudity of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. Soft or hard, protectionism is a sure-fire way of turning recession into depression, as it exacerbates the collapse in global demand. The intellectual challenge for social democrats is not just to repudiate the neo-liberal extremism that has landed us in this mess, but to advance the case that the social-democratic state offers the best guarantee of preserving the productive capacity of properly regulated competitive markets, while ensuring that government is the regulator, that government is the funder or provider of public goods and that government offsets the inevitable inequalities of the market with a commitment to fairness for all. Social democracy's continuing philosophical claim to political legitimacy is its capacity to balance the private and the public, profit and wages, the market and the state. That philosophy once again speaks with clarity and cogency to the challenges of our time.

Social-democratic governments across the world must rise to the further challenge of developing a practical policy response to the crisis that rebuilds shattered economic growth, while also devising a new regulatory regime for the financial markets of the future. This is our immediate challenge. But if we fail, there is a grave danger that new political voices of the extreme Left and the nationalist Right will begin to achieve a legitimacy hitherto denied them. Again, history is replete with the most disturbing of precedents.

We therefore need a frank analysis of the central role of neo-liberalism in the underlying causes of the current economic crisis. We also need a robust analysis of the social-democratic approach to properly regulated markets and the proper role of the state, in a new contract for the future that eschews the extremism of both the Left and the Right. And we must integrate this analysis with the unprecedented imperative for global co-operation if governments are to prevail in their task.

Around the world today, there is understandable public bewilderment at the speed, severity and scope of the unfolding crisis. While the causes of the global financial crisis are complex, a small number of simple metrics are capable of conveying its magnitude and the havoc it has wrought in financial markets, the real economy and government finances.

Financial markets have suffered the greatest dislocation in our lifetime. Global equity markets have lost approximately US$32 trillion in value since their peak, which is equivalent to the combined GDP of the G7 countries in 2008. Credit markets have all but dried up, with credit growth at its lowest level since World War II. And, at the core of the crisis, house prices are plummeting in many countries, with American prices falling at their fastest rate since modern records began.

The real economy is facing one of its toughest periods on record, with the IMF predicting that advanced economies will contract for the first time in 60 years, causing the number of unemployed to rise by 8 million across the OECD. In developing countries, the International Labour Organization predicts that the financial and economic crisis could push more than 100 million people into poverty.

Furthermore, the crisis is producing unprecedented costs and debts for governments which will be felt for decades to come. It is estimated that the 2009 deficit in the United States will be as high as 12.5% of GDP. And estimates of the combined (actual and contingent) liabilities from the array of bank bailouts and guarantees run to more than $13 trillion - more than the cost of all the major wars the United States has ever fought. What this means for future American international borrowing is equally unprecedented.

Bewilderment, however, rapidly turns to anger when the economic crisis touches the lives of families through rising unemployment, reduced wage growth and collapsing asset values - while executive remuneration in the financial sector continues to go through the roof, apparently disconnected from the reality of recent events. In 2007, S&P 500 CEOs averaged $10.5 million (some 344 times the pay of typical American workers). The top 50 hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers averaged $588 million each (19,000 times the pay of typical workers). In 2007, the ?ve biggest Wall Street firms paid bonuses of a staggering $39 billion - huge payments to the executives whose investment banks have since been bailed out by American taxpayers.

These are epic numbers, generated by a greed of epic proportions. For a bewildered and increasingly enraged public, they raise the following questions: How was this allowed to happen? What ideology, what policy, what abuses made this possible? Were there any warnings? And if so, why were they ignored? [First 1,500 words of Kevin Rudd's essay, The Global Financial Crisis,The Monthly online magazine,Feburary 2009]

Media reports on Rudd's essay:

Time for a new world order: PM

Rudd's point is one of difference

Kevin Rudd's plan to rescue capitalism: essay

Australian Electoral Commission to release 2007-08 political financial disclosure returns on 2 Feburary 2009

The 2007-08 annual financial disclosure returns from political parties, associated entities, donors, and people who engage in political expenditure will be made available for public inspection from 9:00am (AEDST) on Monday 2 February 2009.

The annual returns will be available on the Australian Electoral Commission's (AEC's) website at www.aec.gov.au