Another day, another indignity as Malcolm Turnbull gets squirrelized

Big Mal Turnbull gets done over by squirrelizer

Supply your own caption

Who'll lead the Libs at the next election? Turnbull is blowing like a gale

Bookmakers Sportingbet no longer rate Malcolm Turnbull as a raging red hot favourite to lead the Liberals at the next election.

In June, when Peter Costello announced he was heading home and would not be around for the next election, Sportingbet rated Turnbull a near certainty to lead the Libs and offered odds of $1.15. Joe Hockey was seen as the only challenger with any prospects and was rated a $4.25 chance. Other pretenders (oops!) contenders that bookies rated were Tony Abbott ($11), Julie Bishop ($13), Andrew Robb ($15) and Peter Dutton ($15).

Turnbull's odds are now out to $1.90, while Jockey has firmed to $3. Other firmers are Abbott $5.50 and Robb $7.50. Bishop is out the door at $21. Dutton is also a blower and is now $21 - perhaps Costello should have kept his mouth shut rather than singing this bloke's praises.

Fairfax's Age and Herald report that Liberal staff and MPs despair about their prospects of winning the next election and continue to canvas leadership alternatives to Malcolm Turnbull. The mood is so bad that a gathering organised by Mr Turnbull's office at the B Bar in Canberra on Wednesday night to boost morale descended into a discussion about ''saving the furniture''.

According to one Liberal who attended, the leadership question - including the merits of replacing Mr Turnbull with Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey or Andrew Robb - was loudly discussed, with four or five of Turnbull's staff nearby.

''We were not talking about crunching numbers [for a leadership vote] … but the fact that it was being so openly discussed with so many people was just extraordinary.

''The dynamic was incredibly interesting. Turnbull's staff … didn't want to talk to anyone, they just sat in their own little group.''

The source said there was widespread dissatisfaction about poor tactics from the leader's office, a lack of preparation for the next election and the absence of an overall message.

Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton, Victorian senator and former Costello adviser Mitch Fifield, South Australian Liberal MP Jamie Briggs and NSW Liberal MP Alex Hawke were all present.

Pic credit: Fairfax

Clarence Valley Council intends to ask NSW taxpayers to fund a bigger slice of the jetty primarily being built for a privately-owned waterfront hotel

At its ordinary monthly meeting last Tuesday, after a small amount of argy-bargy, Clarence Valley Shire councillors unanimously voted to go ahead and build a jetty in front of Sedgers Reef Hotel at Iluka.

Never mind that the community preferred any new jetty to be sited elsewhere in Iluka Bay, the cost blow-out, a lack of transparency or a growing public perception that Council is doing favours for mates.

Just vote to ask New South Wales taxpayers to fork out all or part the $65,000 plus extra funds required to bring additional customers to the hotel.

For years local government has rightly complained about cost-shifting by the states and Commonwealth and called for this third tier of government to be taken seriously.

On Tuesday Clarence Valley Council voted for a good example of why local government is always a poor second-cousin twice removed; not to be taken too seriously by the rest of the political family.

So if you live elsewhere in New South Wales and are finding it hard to get additional funding for vital infrastructure like health services operating out of the local hospital, extra school sports equipment or that much needed community hall - just remember that Clarence Valley Council may have got into the Rees Government treasury ahead of you so that one North Coast hotelier can have his latest wish fulfilled.

Iluka jetty and pontoon: The Glass House revisited?

Secretary to the Treasury Ken Henry on the good, the bad and the ugly

From Dr. Ken Henry's speech to the Australian Economic Forum on 19 August 2009 concerning the Rudd Government tax review now underway:

"So what does this mean for the panel’s deliberations? As a first step, the panel is considering taxes and transfers on their individual merits, how they sit within the overall architecture of the tax-transfer system, and how they will meet the opportunities and challenges of the future. Importantly, this assessment is being undertaken without regard to the level of government which currently administers that particular tax or transfer.
The Panel’s concern is to ensure that our tax-transfer system is calibrated to emerging challenges and opportunities that arise from things like population ageing, the re-emergence of China and India and continuing technological change.
As part of its enquiry, the panel is assessing how different taxes and transfers rate against the standard policy assessment criteria – fairness, efficiency, simplicity, sustainability and coherence. These criteria will enable us to identify taxes which should be levied, taxes that are so irredeemingly poor that they should be abolished, and taxes that are reformable – the good, the bad and the ugly."

Clarence River topography as art

Small the Clarence River

The Mighty Clarence

Jessica Birk

Other Aussie pollies with domain names up for grabs

After the brief kefuffle over the fact that the Nats managed to corral nathanrees.com.au, I decided to have a looksee at which other Aussie pollies may be vulnerable at the next round of state and federal elections because of domain parking or cybersquatting on their names.
The first to surface was malcolmturnbull.net which is up for sale.
Followed by the rather puzzling active but restricted site kevinrudd.net (created in the USA) which was also up for eBay auction by Sean Slater in 2007.
It was still for sale just before Kevin07 won the federal title bout against John Howard.

User #20153 4024 posts Sean Slater Whirlpool Forums Addict

It's only worth what someone will pay for it at the end of the day. Anyone want to buy KevinRudd.net?? I tried to sell it a few months ago on eBay, and couldn't muster $300 for it ... I'll give it another go after the election...

anchor posted 2007-Nov-4, 1pm AEST

Although NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell has managed to get his dot coms all to himself, nobody in his party thought to capture barryofarrell.net or barryofarrell.org it seems.
As for NSW Nats Leader Andrew Stoner - well he has andrewstoner.com.au (andrewstoner.com is another restricted currently inactive site) but andrewstoner.net as well as andrew stoner.org appear to be up for grabs.
Which sorta makes the Nats open to a little payback after all their crowing on ABC News Radio yesterday.
And before other senior pollies start to feel smug - a fella in Los Angeles has parked on joehockey.net and tonyabbott.net is about to become available to the first taker.
Already available is tonyabbott.org.
One can almost feel the online political parodies forming out in cyberspace.

North Coast Voices: blog visitor profile

Earlier this week North Coast Voices received a rather nice email via Boy the Wonder Cat's address:

Just a short note to say what a good job you do at independent news gathering. The site looks great. Too many great contributions to reply to all, so pass on my regards. I felt a bit intimidated that there are no comments for any posts. Do you get many hits locally? I hope so, it is a much better read than the Star or the Echo.

Now it is true that there are few comments made on North Coast Voices posts and, it is always fascinating to see the number of emails sent to our blogging cat or mention made of us in the local media in lieu of using the blog's comment section.

However, this is not something that troubles us as we are like half the blogosphere ourselves - mostly 'lurkers' nor comment makers.

The email did get me thinking though about giving readers a little feedback.

Yes, we are getting a growing number of local northern NSW visitors to the blog and North Coast Voices now appears in blog roll links on a number of other Australian websites for which we are grateful.

Current readership is roughly divided into 50 per cent Australian visitors to the blog and 50 per cent visitors from overseas. Some readers stay for a minute or so and a few stay for half an hour or more.

Readers can be as close as the Tweed and Coffs Harbour or as far away as Tunisia and Chile. Both Canberra and Washington DC frequently feature in any location breakdown by month.

Various government department and university computers across the country also have a peek at what our authors have to say. As of course does Monsanto and other multinational companies we mention from time to time.

North Coast Voices has been up and running for twenty-two months and has it's second birthday in early October.

A big thankyou to all who read this blog.

Sounds of Australia film and sound archive nominations for 2010

Media has been reporting the fact that this month the 1954 Vegemite advertisement jingle has made it into the national film and sound archive, along with recordings of the Newcastle Steelworks Band, TI's Georgia Lee singing the blues, Bidjigal man Vic Simms' protest songs, and six more examples of Australiana.

The National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia is a public registry of recordings that celebrates the unique and diverse recorded sound culture and history of Australia. It was launched in February 2007 with a foundation list of 10. Each year, public nominations are called and 10 recordings added to the Registry, selected from the nominations by a panel of experts from the recorded sound industry and cultural institutions.

Complete archive list.

Nominations for next year's inclusions on this list officially begin in January 2010.
How to nominate, including online form, here.

About Vegemite:

In 1922, Dr Cyril Callister, a young food chemist, created a distinctive 'pure vegetable extract' at the Fred Walker Cheese Factory and food processing plant in Dandenong, Victoria. A nation-wide competition in 1923 yielded the name Vegemite. In 1926 Walker sold their creation to Kraft Foods of Chicago and passed over the secret recipe.
The first radio jingle for Vegemite appeared in 1954. In this, three 'Happy Little Vegemites' sang their toe-tapping song almost ad nauseam. With the advent of television in 1956, the jingle became a television commercial. The Vegemite jingle has been used in advertising campaigns for Vegemite ever since.

NSW Nats caught namejacking in cyberspace. Labor not amused

ABC TV let the cat out of the bag last night and the NSW Nats are red faced and protesting that purchasing this domain name and setting it up with Melbourne Information Technologies Australia Pty Ltd was sooooo innocent - not namejacking the Premier at all, at all:

Whois Record

Domain Name: nathanrees.com.au
Registrar ID: Melbourne IT
Registrar Name: Melbourne I
Status: ok

Registrant: NATIONAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA - NSW
Registrant ID: ABN 40538388169
Eligibility Type: Registered Business

Registrant Contact ID: 0322O988805
Registrant Contact Name: NATIONAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA - NSW
Registrant Contact Email: Visit whois.ausregistry.com.au for Web based WhoIs

Tech Contact ID: 0323T988805
Tech Contact Name: Nathan Quigley
Tech Contact Email: Visit whois.ausregistry.com.au for Web based WhoIs

Name Server: rns1.melbourneit.com.au
Name Server IP: 203.27.227.123
Name Server: rns2.melbourneit.com.au
Name Server IP: 203.27.227.124

Update:

A Cameron Jackson of Rosebery, NSW has owned nathanrees.org since September 2008.
Ownership expires in September this year unless renewed.
The same person appears to own nathanrees.net.au
While Privacy Protect hides registration details for nathanrees.com, nathanrees.net and nathanrees.info since September 2008 and is probably a domain name reseller.
It seems Nathan is a popular boy.

What do they say? No press is bad press - just spell the name right

The hard working North Coast Labor MP for Page Janelle Saffin found herself picked out for a rather truncated mention in a bible-quoting Canadian market opinion blog post courtesy of Joel Bowman, reporting from Taipei, Taiwan on 17 August 2009.

This post was apparently echoing seven other blogs or media reports, mostly from earlier in the year, which commented on the fact that $900 2008-09 tax refunds sent out as part of the Australian Government stimulus package also went to the estates of taxpayers who had died in or after the last financial year.

Apparently the general sentiment was; when it comes to tax refund money you're not supposed to take it with you no matter how hard you worked when alive.

Never mind, Janelle - at least they all spelt your name correctly!

A case of the biter bit, but few are chortling over AFP intelligence fiasco

I was watching ABC Four Corners last Monday when this little comment came up:
"ANDREW FOWLER: The site was called root-you.org, and for the last two weeks the Australian Federal Police in cooperation with the South Australian Police have run the perfect sting.

TIM DAVIS, FEDERAL AGENT, HIGH TECH CRIME OPS. AFP: We've infiltrated that site and so now we've got control as well.

NEIL GAUGHAN: What we've done with that particular network is we've captured all the identities of all the people that've been using that network. We can operate in a covert activity here fairly seamlessly with no harm to our members with continual and actual significant penetration.....

ANDREW FOWLER: In the case of root-you.org, the Federal Police decided the best result was to effectively blow up the site by posting a notice that it was under law enforcement control.

TIM DAVIS, FEDERAL AGENT: Mate are you right to post that message on the forum.

MAN (on phone): Yep.

TIM DAVIS, FEDERAL AGENT: Well if you can do that now that'd be great."

I did idly wonder if there would be a cyber response and thought - "Naw, won't happen".
Then it well and truly did and F-Secure has links to this not so funny episode of counter-hacking, which was the almost inevitable result of all that televised bragging by the boys in blue (this also saw police computer files of actual bank, building society and corporate credit card details exposed to the view of at least one other hacker).

Some of the hacker chatter {A little **** covers words which offend those bluidy filters}:
"After the authorities FINALLY posted their little "ohhh, we have been monitoring this website", we finally said "Enough is enough, we are sick of these f**ks acting like they are hackers, lets see what they really know".
So After writing another FTP report yesterday.. I decided I would move on to getting control of r00t-y0u.org. See what the authorities know about server maintenance.. and how secure they can make stuff.
Lo and behold, their server was windows! I couldn't stop laughing at the sight of this, but I soon moved on. After visiting a 404 page, I instantly noticed that they were using Xampp. Those lazy f***s
can not even just install apache, and php themselves. So instead, they download some application to do it all for them.
Figures.
Now, of course.. they were just SO F***KING SMART, that they left the MYSQL password BLANK! After screwing around with their database, I dumped a vulnerable query into a php file, thus giving me full access to their servers.
After taking a look at the r00t-y0u database, lookie what we find.
User: "h1t3m" (Administrator)
Email: macrobber@gmail.com
These dipsh*ts are using an automatic digital forensics and incident response tool.
They can't do sh*t all themselves, because like I have said before, they have no skill. Anyways, after looking on their win32 machine for a while, I noticed some really awkward stuff. They have credit cards, and bank accounts all on a seperate drive (G:\)."

Four Corners transcript

Pic from Google Images

Obama and Newsmax online polling

There is a rather badly constructed Newsmax poll out there in cyberspace at the moment which is yielding these results concerning U.S. President Barack Obama:

Full 'Obama is the anti-christ' survey results here.

Twitter gets a mention in the House of Reps - does that count as "pointless babble" too?

The Twitterverse seems to be full of bods trying to get in their tongue-in-cheek 40% of babble for the day or commenting on a Pear Analytics critique of these digital conversations.

In the House of Reps yesterday the Aussie Prime Minister apparently hadn't heard that tweets were being dissed as mostly froth and bubble because during Question Time he quoted a David Speers tweet:

• Another messy Coalition partyroom. Much debate over tactics on Renewable Energy Target. Nats angry at Hunt flagging Coalition support.

Here are a couple of speerisms which didn't make our mate Kev's top of the hits list:

• turnbull could get done for enviro vandalism with that branch of wattle he's wearing for Vietnam Vets day
• watching PM give detailed powerpoint presentation at AIG Forum. Some of the best Rudd-speak i've heard

May a plague of ravenous grasshoppers descend on all your front lawns and a horde of hungry mice infest your homes!

The Rudd Labor Government wants to introduce a national emissions trading scheme which doesn't do much to reverse the growing amount of greenhouse gases Australia is pumping out each year.
The Liberals and Nationals are determined to delay the scheme but eventually want any scheme to do even less that Labor's current plan.
The two Independent senators are almost deliriously exercising their power to frustrate the nation, while The Greens are at least consistent in their message that neither major party has put forward an ETS which benefits the country and appear to have good intentions for what it's worth so far.
In last week's wanton self-indulgence by these short-sighted wizened gnats on The Hill, it felt like the rest of us were being slowly nibbled to death by ducks as we waited for the inevitable trashy Senate outcome.
This week we endure endless posturing over the now separate renewable energy legislation.











Up to my ears in climate change
Byron #

Why is the Rudd Government defending the oppression of women with the blood of our troops?

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been enjoying a high level of public approval since the 2007 federal election and part of the reason for this is that he is obviously careful of his public persona.

Mr. Rudd is quick to issue statements and face the cameras whenever there is a serious foreign affairs incident, a overseas terrorist attack or Australian service personnel die on active service in the 'good war'.

However, he is very, very quiet when the Afghanistan Government he continues to support is reported in this manner by Human Rights Watch this month:

Afghanistan's influential international supporters should insist that President Hamid Karzai act to amend the notorious law that formalizes discrimination against Shia women, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch learned today that the amended bill was published in the official Gazette on July 27, 2009 (Gazette 988), bringing the law into force......

A copy of the final law seen by Human Rights Watch shows that many regressive articles remain, which strip away women's rights that are enshrined in Afghanistan's constitution. The law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers. It requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying "blood money" to a girl who was injured when he raped her.

Perhaps Mr. Rudd might care to break his silence and confirm or deny that he has investigated this report and inform the nation of the position his government intends to take if women's human rights are being extinguished in this way.

The new Afghanistan law cannot be condoned on a political, social or cultural basis - it makes all Shia women little better than chattels and married women slaves who can be starved to death.

At the time of writing this post there were 31 separate Google News items concerning this new Afghanistan legislation, starting with the BBC.