Queensland State Election 21 March 2009: Virtual Tally Room and other live online links on the night

Queensland Electoral Commission links to Virtual Tally Room, candidate details etc.

ABC and Antony Green cover the 2009 Queensland Election - includes links to TV, radio, reporters' live blogs, as well as analysis of initial results as they come to hand.

Crikey is live chatting the election from 2pm this afternoon at Pineapple Party Time.

On hearing about the latest Conroy Internet censorship antic [insert date and name of folie de jour]

How are you going to vote at the next Federal election?

Byron Bay Bluesfest at Belongil Fields, 9 - 13 April 2009

The Bluesfest: the East Coast Blues and Roots Music festival is 20 years old and still going strong with its birthday bash on the 2009 Easter Long Weekend at Belongil Fields, Byron Bay.


A new stage has been added dedicated to indigenous artists and fully endorsed by the local Arakwal community.
Claiming this space this year will be artists such as Saltwater Band, Christine Anu, Dan Sultan, Marlene Cummins and Ngaiire.
They will be joining a spectacular festival line-up of over 100 artists across six stages.

2009 Playing Schedule.

More info here.

Digital Liberty Coalition anti-censorship march, Canberra 21 March 2009

March in March is an upbeat event to give people an opportunity stand up, be heard, and hold the government accountable for their plans of forcing mandatory censorship on a very unwilling public.

With a mix of live entertainment of bands and DJs, speakers from all sides of the political spectrum and other special guests, the day will be topped off with the annual Canberran Skyfire Festival, just for us ... okay, maybe not.
So whether it's the social activism, the free gigs, or the big bangs in a V for Vendetta-esque climax in prime position at the front gates of Parliament, come along!

This is YOUR opportunity to stand up, your TIME to say no to censorship, your chance TO BE HEARD!

Where and When?
1pm at Federation Mall, Canberra ACT on Saturday 21 March 2009

Exclusive Brethren take a political hit

This was sent out by The Greens late on Wednesday 18th March. Thought I might pass it on.

The so-called 'Exclusive Brethren clause' in the Fair Work Bill was knocked out by a 33-31 vote in the Senate tonight.

Moved by Greens Leader Bob Brown and supported by the Government and Senators Xenophon and Fielding, the long-held provision for Exclusive Brethren businessmen to refuse union entry to workplaces has been removed.

A large contingent of Exclusive Brethren elders left the Senate gallery after the vote.

Senator Brown thanked the Government and Senators Fielding and Xenophon saying parallel provisions privileging the sect which exist in all states except Victoria should also be removed.

I looked up Hansard and found that the senators who sided with the Exclusive Brethren were all from the Coalition - Abetz, Back, Barnett, Bernardi, Birmingham, Boswell, Boyce, Brandis, Bushby, Cash, Eggleston, Ferguson, Fierravanti-Wells, Fifield, Fisher, Heffernan, Humphries, Joyce, Kroger, Macdonald, Mason, McGauran, Minchin, Nash, Parry, Payne, Ronaldson, Ryan, Scullion, Troeth, Williams.

Mackie's Mate
Maclean, NSW

Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.

The Big Joke Comedy Festival, Bangalow 26-29 March 2009

Poster from The Big Joke website

Bangalow is holding its third annual comedy festival at the A & I Hall between 9am to 6pm daily on the 26-29 March 2009.

Details of the comedy line up, times and ticket costs are here.

Come along and blow those global recession blues away!

Well that really pulled me up short........

Sitting at the bus stop minding my own business this week when my eye spied a piece of graffiti neatly written in black Texta.

Justify Your Existence

A command which certainly left me somewhat chastened because almost every reason I could dredge up was so patently self-serving!

Have a go yourself and see how you do.

Hey Google, you're banned! Wikileaks has published an alleged Australian Government URL blacklist

Prime Minister Rudd and Senator Conroy continue to pretend that they are still in control of the proposed national mandatory ISP-level filtering of the Australian Internet.

However, with Wikileaks publishing an alleged Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) blacklist from mid-2008 and new mirror sites becoming available (as Wikileaks sites and known mirrors become difficult to access due to congestion), it is apparent that they are beginning to get some small idea about what users of the Internet can accomplish when they put their minds to it.

Having read an online article, which linked an article, which linked an article et cetera, I finally found the hard information as it were and immediately collapsed in a gleeful heap - a Google group was on the list right near the top.
Not only that, the discussion group listed was mainly all about the technical difficulties associated with Mozilla/Sea Monkey/Firefox/Linux.

Now that's the worst sort of p#rn in the world. Shame, Google, shame!

Sharing the honours with Google, I also found a legal betting website, a consortium of design consultants, a site that comments on Internet culture and a very Internet savvy dental practice.
Other reports indicate that the list also contains a tour operator and a boarding kennel.

But the true laugh of the moment was this brief report:

The list was originally believed to be the ACMA blacklist, but Communications Minister Stephen Conroy issued a statement within the last hour or so which said it was not, despite having some URLs in common.

Conroy has also condemned the leaking of the list, threatening criminal prosecution to the person who originally made it public.

Which would mean that Conroy would be instigating prosecution based on a fake blacklist?

The lesson in all this for the Rudd Government is fairly straightforward. Although Australians are generally law-abiding and infrequently given to demonstrating social unrest, at heart we harbour an almost anarchic response to being told to obey for the sake of obeying (our betters).

What if you gave an Internet censorship party and nobody came?

What if you gave an Internet censorship party and nobody came?
This bad dream is coming true this month for Prime Minister Rudd and his Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

A lone Foad has belled the Australian Communications and Media Authority cat by making a 'complaint' which saw that body place an anti-abortion website page on its URL blacklist, issue a take down notice and threaten to fine a server host around $11,000 a day if it didn't immediately get one of its clients to remove the offending URL from a forum page.

Small problem though.
Partially obscured Wikipedia screenshots of the banned URL are on the web as I write and, using that meagre amount of information, major search engines in Australia and around the world not only still display this indexed site but the site can be opened, searched and the page reached. [please note that the anonymous researcher did not inhale when testing the suspect page status]

Oh, and until that single public servant (or small coffee klatch of public servants) decided to act on Foad's stand alone complaint no-one at North Coast Voices had any idea the site existed.

However, even if ACMA decides never to mention specific banned URLs when it replies to complainants, the complainant is likely to already know the exact Internet address because they made the complaint in the first place and I'm sure that twittering a friend or two will be almost irresistible.

As for placing certain Wikileaks pages on the ACMA blacklist - what do they say about horses and stable doors?
I swear that there would be many hundreds of home PCs across the country which have looked at those Wiki pages about overseas banned URLs and more than a couple of web surfers who have taken a screen shot for posterity. [and yes, before you ask, this was another case where our anonymous researcher successfully refused to inhale]

Can you hear the cynical laughter yet Messrs Rudd and Conroy?
Or is the sound of the ocean rushing in to drown your foolish policy too loud?

Update 21 March 2009:

Wikileaks issues its own legal threat:

Anti-censorship site Wikileaks has threatened Australian Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy with criminal prosecution if he attempts to discover the source of its leaked Australian Internet blacklist. Wikileaks says that under Swedish law it is a criminal offence to try to breach confidentiality agreements between the press and sources.
Senator Conroy yesterday issued a statement in response to the release of the Australian Internet censorship list by Wikileaks, saying that his department, "is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution."Describing Senator Conroy as the person "responsible for Australian Internet censorship", Jay Lim, the legal adviser of Wikileaks publisher Sunshine Press stated: "Under the Swedish Constitution's Press Freedom Act, the right of a confidential press source to anonymity is protected, and criminal penalties apply to anyone acting to breach that right. "Source documents are received in Sweden and published from Sweden so as to derive maximum benefit from this legal protection."Should the Senator or anyone else attempt to discover our source we will refer the matter to the Constitutional Police for prosecution, and if necessary, ask that the Senator and anyone else involved be extradited to face justice for breaching fundamental rights."

What Senators Conroy and Fielding (as well as Usher of the Black Rod Brien Hallett) don't want Parliament to see?

The Australian Protectionist Party (APP) has declared itself and states it will be applying for status as a registered political party.
A quick look at its website points to the possibility that this is yet another far-right group which would be fairly comfortable with everyone from Howard to Hanson and perhaps even the late, unlamented Oswald Moseley.

However, it appears on first glance to avoid defamation, sedition, hate speech or incitement to violence as defined by legislation.
So in a democratic society it would normally expect to be tolerated as political opinion or dissent, even swimming against the tide as it does with a platform opposing multiculturalism and political correctness.

Or would it?

According to ABC Radio National Background Briefing on 15 March 2009 this potential political party URL is on the Australian Parliament/Websense blacklist.

Also reported to be on the blacklist is E-evolution, an online news site for the gay community.

It seems that Australian MPs are such delicate flowers that they must be protected from news about a significant group of citizens in many electorates.

The Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, has baldly stated that national mandatory ISP-level filtering will be installed (whether the majority of Australians want it or not).
He is also on record as including what he terms 'unwanted' and 'inappropriate' material in content which would be subject to mandatory filtering by secret blacklist.

His lack of transparency in relation to the introduction of national Internet censorship does not impress and, his attempt to 'blame' the larger ISPs for their non-inclusion in his live filtering test and his calls to have faith in government integrity are falling on deaf ears in this house because I'm old enough to remember the prolonged fall-out from political witch hunts in the decade after World War Two.

There is nothing that Senator Conroy has put forward so far which gives me any confidence that the Rudd Government (or subsequent federal governments) would resist turning mandatory censorship to their own political or socio-economic ends.

Conroy's Clean Feed [producer/presenter Wendy Carlisle]:

Listen Now - 15032009

Download Audio - 15032009

Tsar of all the oceans? Pull the other one, Bazza!

There's nothing the average Aussie hates more than a blow hard.
So former federal politician, and Hawke Government environment minister for around three years until 1987, Barry Cohen must have taken leave of his senses to call himself tsar of all the oceans when recalling those years.
The current Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garret must have also entered lala land to have appointed Bazza to the ersatz Pew Whaling Commission (when did the Pew Institute's barely concealed lobbying on behalf of whaling interests suddenly morph into a commission to rival the International Whaling Commission?)
The International Whaling Commission was formed under a United Nations convention and Australia became a member long before Bazza's time in the political limelight.
So I'm at a loss to see how much he would have personally mattered in putting the international commercial whaling moratorium in place when it was formally adopted in 1982; but he was still around when that bl**dy loophole was allowed to develop into commercial whaling by stealth and he sounds just the sort of bloke we don't need now.
And the result of the recent 3-day lovefest bears out the Rudd Government's folly, because Japan has outmaneuvered the anti-whaling nations and p#ss poor reps like Cohen who helped create the problem of 'scientific' whaling in the first place.

STOP the CELL OFF - NO PRISON$ FOR PROFIT$! Will Grafton gaol be sold off next?

The NSW Government is planning to privatise the state’s prisons.
While Minister Robertson claims there will only be two privatisations, the Department has other plans. At the recent Parliamentary Inquiry, Commissioner Ron Woodham said Grafton would be next.
Private Prisons mean more assaults on staff and inmates, lower paid and untrained staff and more escapes. Prisons should not be run for profit.

Stop the Cell Off!

Sign the petition here.

www.stopthecelloff.org.au

Those annoying targeted browser ads....and what to do about them

Find advertising a bit much in the real world?
Just can't stand it when it's in your face in cyberspace?
From this week the ads Google displays won't just pull from the search terms you're using. Google will also look at all the sites you've visited lately.
Rather not have those inevitable ads targeted to fit your browsing habits?
Here's how to opt out of Google's new intrusion.

While we're all busy swatting mosquitoes....

While we are busy swatting at summer's mosquitoes, fighting to keep ants out of the kitchen and frequently disabusing stray spiders of the idea that they own our living rooms, it is easy to overlook the fact that the number and types of insects, bees and butterflies found in urban gardens across much of the NSW North Coast appear to be falling away.

Prolonged droughts, land clearing and general loss of native habitat have a lot to do with the fact that some species are becoming rarer occupants of our gardens.

As we are all encouraged to make the garden a low-water collection of plantings we shouldn't forget that it is much better to hunt out suitable Australian natives or dry condition plants with high flower/pollen yields or other insect attracting natural assets.

Go to Aussie Bee for a few tips and to find out which of the 1,500 species of natives bees are in your area.
The ABC's Gardening Australia has fact sheets on native plants and biological controls.
The CSIRO also has a comprehensive data base on its National Insect Collection.
The National Botanic Gardens webpage on Growing Australian Natives is a good A-Z starting point for searching out plants, as is your local library.

So as summer ends - have another look at the garden, do a little research and make an attempt (no matter how small) to bring a little more life back into your yard.



Pictures are of the Blue Banded Bee which is no longer a frequent visitor to my own garden.

'Allo, 'allo is anybody home? A regional response to the Rudd Government ETS

I read this week that Labor's heartland is objecting to Rudders' emissions trading scheme because it would mean severe job loss in parts of regional Australia.
Hello? Is anybody home? Even a duffer like myself can figure out that regional Oz will also feel the direct effect of climate change more heavily than most, because metro-orientated governments right across the country will give less funding and less on the ground help when dwindling river flows, groundwater and soil salinity, coastal land loss, severe storm damage, bushfires, major widespread flooding and the rest take a huge toll on regions like the NSW North Coast.
It makes more sense for regions to take an economic hit now, in the hope of lessening the much harder hits that climate change will deal out in the future to local residents.
Come on, La Trobe, Gladstone, Newcastle and The Isa - suck it up and think of your grandkids!
After all, it's not all bad news - export quality black coal gets an easy ride under the ETS as far as I can tell.