And to think that some people think he's premier material. They have to be joking.

NSW Minister for Health John Della Bosca just doesn't get it.

Della Bosca visited Lismore on Thursday and announced 11 new positions for the North Coast Area Health Service (NCAHS). Yes, that's right, e-l-e-v-e-n, 11 positions. No, he hasn't been misreported.

What a hide the bloke has! He has more hide than Jessie the elephant.

Sorry, John, but northern NSW doesn't need any more sick attempts at comedy by persons supposedly responsible for at least maintaining if not improving public health services in that neck of the woods.

Only nine months ago, and under the stewardship of the NSW Ministry of Health, the NCAHS embarked on a program to slash 400 full time equivalent positions from the region's health services.

Ironically, NSW Health has just released a media statement titled Caring Together for Lismore Base Hospital to announce that recruitment is under way for the clinical support officers and pharmacists at Lismore Base Hospital.

And who is the Health Department's first lieutenant on the ground in northern NSW? It's none other than Chris Crawford (pictured below).


Crawford, NCAHS's CEO, has wielded a big stick as he has gone about the demolition job that's being done on local health services. Truly, listening to the bloke on local radio as he goes about attempting to defend the cuts to health services is enough to make you sick.

And where is the NSW Opposition? What does it have to say about what's going on in relation to this sorry saga involving north coast health services?

Sadly, the Opposition is AWOL - there's not a bleep on the radar to indicate that lot is in tune with public sentiment that's running red-hot on this important issue.

It's not as if the Opposition isn't at least faintly aware of the fiasco. One of its front benchers probably hears a bit about it over the breakfast table.

The shadow minister for climate change and environmental sustainability, Catherine Cusack (pictured below), is married to Crawford.

Perhaps Ms Cusack and the current shadow minister for health Jillian Skinner should swap jobs.

Daily Examiner editor leaves the building: don't slam the door on the way out

When Peter Chapman took over as The Daily Examiner editor little was known of him locally in the Clarence Valley except that he hailed from other climes in recent years, was a former television sports commentator and had been rapped over the knuckles by an ABC TV Media Watch program in the 1990s.

I think I can safely say that a number of residents looked forward to having a new editorial voice at the helm of their only local daily newspaper on the grounds that a change was as good as a holiday.

So at first some Daily Examiner readers were puzzled by the odd discordant notes hit by Chapman in his early articles and comments.

Puzzlement quickly turned to something close to outrage in certain quarters, as those odd notes turned into frequent reports and opinion pieces which attempted to either demonise and marginalise segments of the Valley community or blatantly bag various small towns, villages and community facilities.
While an increasing number of so called news reports, whose raison être seems to have been advertising goods or services, tried the patience of many.

What wasn't widely known at the time was the fact that Chapman was using an APN News and Media running sheet benignly called Readers First. [APN version Ewart version Press Council version]

This publishing philosophy calls on editors and journalists to report news which is more responsive to and reflective of the needs and interests of a newspaper's readership, to make advertising an important part of the editorial/news team and have journalists give a less detached account of events or embed themselves in their stories.

However, in Chapman's rather clumsy hands this meant that The Daily Examiner abandoned editorials, began to pander to perceived community bias and prejudice, published blatant advertorials and allowed hearsay or downright gossip to form the basis of a significant part of the news in some issues (with a tinge of racial profiling or chauvinism often thrown in for good measure).

The Clarence Valley reacted in various ways - by simply shrugging shoulders as they turned the page, challenging the editor in the letters column, phoning him directly to refute some of his more outrageous assertions, complaining to senior management, contacting watchdogs, stopping any engagement with the newspaper or laughing outright at claims that newspaper circulation was rising rapidly rather than merely marking time as it has done since the turn of the century.

It was noticeable that some of the goodwill garnered by the 150 year-old newspaper was being needlessly dissipated under the Chapman editorship, but a few locals still tried to support this North Coast icon with news tips even when personal irritation levels were high and rising higher.

After less than fifteen months as editor Peter Chapman officially left The Daily Examiner this week as far as I can tell.
He is heading back to Queensland to take up the position of editor at yet another APN masthead, the Fraser Coast Chronicle.

When Telstra upsets a journalist......

The Daily Examiner, 24 August 2009
Click on image to enlarge

Not only in print but online goes the complaint when Telstra can't get its billing right and then charges for the bungle:

But the really galling part of this is that Telstra, having had us jump through hoops, is going to bill us for the privilege of paying our bill. It is sick.
I believe this move started months ago when Telstra sent me a beautifully crafted letter saying how kind it was of them to change their billing period from three months to one. We were quite happy with the three monthly billing and had no choice about the change.
So now we are being billed monthly and being charged $2 a shot to pay the bill over the counter or a percentage of the bill if we pay electronically.
Someone said to me over the weekend it was like a shop advertising an item for $100 but when you went to pay for it you had to fork out an extra $2 for the privilege.
Maybe if enough people complain about this unfair imposition the giant might be forced to change.

In the national media Telstra fares slightly better as it is reported that Telstra post-Truijillo is a much more customer friendly place and, elsewhere that complaints have leveled off (rather confusingly citing that in 2007-08 Telstra received 19,364 customer complaints).

One has to suspect that hard-pressed metropolitan journalists haven't gone much further than the media releases.

According to the Telecommuncations Industry Ombudman's own report, between January and June this year Telstra recorded a total of 62,541 complaints (37.3% of all telco complaints issues), with some recorded along these lines:

You will see in the pages of notes I’ve taken over 4 months that I have made hundreds of calls and spoken to approximately 70 customer service representatives. On one occasion, I was
on the phone to different departments from 9.30am until after 5pm. But to this day we still do not have the landline service that is so paramount, given our child’s situation. I have received conflicting information from Telstra’s representatives. Conversations have ranged from, ‘That staff member is not trained appropriately…’ ‘They shouldn’t have told you that…’ ‘Why
did they do that?’ to comments such as, ‘Don’t panic, there is no reason why we can’t connect you today.’ At one stage I was on a conference call with two Telstra staff from two different
departments, both disagreeing about the information they were giving me.

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman's January-June 2009 public report on Australian telecommunications companies here.

It appears that Telstra is not the only telco which still has a long way to go in balancing service delivery and customer satisfaction.

Hartsuyker gets negative press in his own Cowper electorate

Apparently the Nats are really getting desperate over their lack of relevance and absence of policy impact.
Federal Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker literally resorted to megaphoning his message to the Rudd Government last Tuesday.
Which put a number of his constitients offside, as well as apparently offending the mayors of two local goverment areas who had undertaken coordinated lobbying on behalf of February-March 2009 flood victims in the Coffs and Belligen districts.
It seems that The Coffs Coast Advocate readers are swinging away from Hartsuyker as well.
When I last looked Luke was polling badly when it came down to this local issue.

Snapshot from The Coffs Coast Advocate 27th August 2009

Bureau of Meteorology declares exceptional winter heat over large parts of Australia in 2009

Click on graphic to enlarge

Special Climate Statement 18 by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology National Climate Centre, 26 August 2009:

August 2009 has seen highly abnormal heat over large parts of Australia, especially in the subtropical areas of Queensland, the southern Northern Territory and northern New South Wales....

August 2009 is almost certain to be Australia’s warmest August on record. National maximum temperatures have averaged 3.14°C above the long-term average3 for the month so far, more than a degree above the previous record of +2.06°C set in 2006 (Table 2). It is also possible that August 2009 will break the record set in April 2005 (+3.11) for the largest monthly maximum temperature anomaly ever recorded for any month. Despite the less extreme overnight temperatures, daily mean temperatures (day and night combined) are also running well above record levels.

Full statement, maximum & minimum temperatures list and temperature anomaly map here.

Religion v Science: 'creationist' gets cranky

Religion versus Science: Round MXIV?

This intriguing little snippet turned up on Kwoff the other day. It is sourced from the New Scientist.

How to spot a hidden religious agenda

28 February 2009 by Amanda Gefter Magazine issue 2697

This article was temporarily taken down on legal advice after New Scientist's editor, Roger Highfield, received a letter from a law firm on behalf of James Le Fanu, the GP and author of the book Why Us? Following discussions, New Scientist has now reinstated the article accompanied by a comment from Dr Le Fanu.

Apparently Dr. Le Fanu sees himself as a firm believer in science and, objects to having both his motives questioned and to being lumped in with creationists.

The published article in question is pay for view, however Wikileaks obligingly has a copy of the original up on its whistle blower site.

The following are its closing paragraphs:

Some general sentiments are also red flags. Authors with religious motives make shameless appeals to common sense, from the staid - "There is nothing we can be more certain of than the reality of our sense of self" (James Le Fanu in Why Us?) - to the silly - "Yer granny was an ape!" (creationist blogger Denyse O'Leary). If common sense were a reliable guide, we wouldn't need science in the first place.

Religiously motivated authors also have a bad habit of linking the cultural implications of a theory to the truth-value of that theory. The ID crowd, for instance, loves to draw a line from Darwin to the Holocaust, as they did in the "documentary" film Expelled: No intelligence allowed. Even if such an absurd link were justified, it would have zero relevance to the question of whether or not the theory of evolution is correct. Similarly, when Le Fanu writes that Darwin's On the Origin of Species "articulated the desire of many scientists for an exclusively materialist explanation of natural history that would liberate it from the sticky fingers of the theological inference that the beauty and wonder of the natural world was direct evidence for 'A Designer'", his statement has no bearing on the scientific merits of evolution.

It is crucial to the public's intellectual health to know when science really is science. Those with a religious agenda will continue to disguise their true views in their effort to win supporters, so please read between the lines.

From the San Francisco Examiner: New Scientist mystery solved: it's James Le Fanu.

James Le Fanu's hype site.

Picture from Google Images

Herding cats in the Liberal Party

This week Malcolm Turnbull held the line according to his Newspoll results.
With the Nationals partner well off the reservation on the subject of an emissions trading scheme and its own Wilson Tuckey very vocally critical of teh leader, senior members of the Liberal Party must be holding their breath at the thought of what the Coalition backbench will do once Parliament resumes.
Will the boastful claim, that all Liberal MPs aren't bound to the party line in any vote but are allowed to follow their conscience, lead to a WA-inspired debacle gleefully watched by the nation?
Or will party heavies pull the climate change deniers into line behind Turnbull?
Despite all the closed door chest thumping that is obviously underway, I'm betting the latter. There's not a political tiger among the lot and the Bradfield by-election announced yesterday has thrown another spanner in the works.

Newspoll graphic

Brendan Nelson continues parliamentary tradition by treating the electorate as his personal plaything

If there is one thing I hate above all else in Australian politics it is that elected members of parliament appear to think that (after standing for election and entering into a contract which lasts until the next general election) it is best practice if they decide for matters unrelated to their health or family that they will retire early.

Liberal Party MP Brendan Nelson is the latest to treat electors as his playthings and the public purse as his to order, by deciding that he will retire at the end of September from the safe seat of Bradfield ahead of the next federal election saying:

"I would not be returning to the frontbench or the Liberal leadership should I stay, as such it is time to go'' .

Well, tough cheddar Mr. Nelson. It will cost the public purse at least a half million before poll results are called and, it is the height of self-indulgence (obviously endorsed by the most narcissistic of political parties) for you to decide that you have had enough of playing at politics outside of government.

An unnecessary burden on taxpayers in times of national economic uncertainty, by a typical specimen of the political class who will also be putting his hand out for a handsome pension/superannuation payout.

About that garden outside your back door.....

One look at the calendar tells me that Spring is not far away and it's time to take another look at the garden with an eye to surviving Summer, keeping water use to a sustainable level and, cutting back the amount of greenhouse gas the household is responsible for by reducing the number of food items which have to travel great distances to get to the table.

How is your garden going? Yes, I know that many of us these days have woefully small backyards to potter about in and some have little time to spend in them.

However, no matter how small the available area, space can usually be made for a few low maintenance home-grown herbs. With a little more room one or two veggie crops can also be added.

So get out there and turn over a patch, add some decent compost and organise a top mulch this month. Chose a spot that gets a decent amount of full sun during the day, but not so much that the ground bakes and plants require a lot of water to survive.

Next month, go to the local nursery and pick yourself up some parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme plants. Add basil, chives, coriander, lemon grass and dill to the list or whatever else you fancy in your cooking.

If you have the garden space look out for some of that hardy mint our grandmothers used to grow (after all mint sauce is no more than infused mint leaves with a little vinegar and sugar thrown in) and try planting out some rocket for a prolific quick pick alternative to lettuce.

Hunt about for a small variety of chilli bush and find a spot for it among the flowers.

For those wanting to add a vegetable - you can't go past that old staple silver beet for an easy growing and plentiful crop of spring and summer greens and two or three cherry tomato plants will give you a constant supply for months.

Consider making space for spring onions if you are daunted by the thought of tending tomatoes or think about adding a few capsicum plants instead if that takes your fancy.

Towards the end of Summer pick up a few Australian garlic bulbs from the green grocers and do a staggered planting of the individual cloves in March so that next year garlic will be coming up to keep company with the other herbs.

If you live in a flat, bring home the biggest pot you can purchase and make yourself a mini herb garden on the balcony or place a row of small pots on the kitchen window sill.

Ask the neighbours what they are growing this year - it might be possible to extend the veggie range by acting cooperatively on your street.

There is really no excuse for buying absolutely everything from the grocery store when it is so much more convenient to open the backdoor and gather in from the garden.

Saffin brings home the bacon for Lismore

Federal Labor MP for Page Janelle Saffin again demonstrates that she is an effective advocate for her electorate with the announcement that the Rudd Government is funding eight extra Medical Assessment Unit beds at Lismore Base Hospital.

"This is in addition to over $600,000 recently provided to the hospital for new surgical equipment under Stage Two of the Rudd Government's Elective Surgery program.....

The Commonwealth is providing $4.1 million in operational funds and $5.7 million in infrastructure funds over two years to establish the University of Western Sydney's new Rural Clinical School in Lismore and Bathurst.....

The Lismore Integrated Cancer Centre is a NSW Government project to be located at the Lismore Base Hospital. The centre will include radiation oncology, medical oncology and haematology services. The Rudd Government has delivered $15 million for the Centre to be fast tracked."

After years of being taken for granted by the Nationals when the Coalition last held federal government, Ms. Saffin's ability to keep the electorate and Lismore on the national health agenda is most welcome.

Let's hope that she has as much success with ongoing funding for Grafton Base Hospital and the smaller district hospitals within her bailiwick.

The recent announcement of electoral redistribution may naturally enough have Janelle focusing on the north-west section of Page right now, but she needs to remember that the Clarence Valley and the rest of the coast delivered for her in November 2007.

Transcript of Lismore doorstop interview with Kevin Rudd on 24th August 2009.

National Party of Australia launches a new slogan under the same brand

It will take more than the National Party of Australia's new slogan "Nationals for regional Australia" to restore confidence in this party on the NSW North Coast.

Too many people are aware that the Nationals have not abandoned the idea of turning water from east coast rivers inland and more than a few recall the dismal performances of previous local MPs of that ilk. As well as note the politically hypocritical stance of their only federal MP left on the North Coast, Luke Hartsuyker, who only discovered local problems in a big way once he was out of government and incapable of doing anything about our urgent issues.

With so many in the party either outright climate change sceptics or loathe to rock the agricultural vote, the latest federal council held on 21-23 August 2009 has produced little but green wash when it comes to major climate change or environmental policies.
In part because some policy involves decisions taken by the states, such as the zoning of prime agricultural land.

It unanimously rejected the Rudd Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme but offers only vague promises of amendments when it comes to tackling national greenhouse gas emissions.

According to The Daily on Sunday:

Not all of the Nationals federal council's motions received unanimous support.
There was some minor disagreement between members over the student services fee and adopting a policy to support a gross feed-in tariff for small scale renewable energy systems across the nation, something the Greens have been championing in the Senate.
However, despite some discord, both policies were carried.
The federal council continues on Sunday when members will vote on two motions that were deferred due to disagreement on their wording.
Those motions cover protecting prime agricultural land from future mining and forestry developments, and calls for the federal government to conduct a social impact study on its water buyback scheme.
Another motion the party is yet to vote on but has also drawn concern from the regions is the Beale Report's recommendation to the government to allow the importation of foot and mouth disease virus samples into the country for research purposes.

The National Party of Australia (formerly known as the Country Party) did little but mark time during its decade-long term as part of the federal Howard Government and, has been a woeful loyal opposition in the NSW Parliament since under Fahey's leadership it lost power in mid-1995.

Next year the party will celebrate its 90th anniversary. By that time its irrelevance to Australia's coastal regions may be established beyond all doubt.

Update:

From Antony Green's post The decline of the Nationals 24 August 2009.

Food for thought....

Found at WebDiary during the week:

Recently on SBS's Insight program, Woolworths' Environmental Manager Kane Hardingham confessed to throwing out 65,000 tonnes of food a year. "We know that's a waste," he admitted.

From Peter Martin last Sunday:

The hessian bags that carried the asbestos James Hardie transported were subsequently sold to carpet companies (among others) who used them to make carpet underlay.

Only now, two or three decades later, is that carpet being ripped up and replaced.

The Australian workers or families who rip up their carpets are being exposed to asbestos fibres and a high risk of a painful lingering death.

Spotted on a bumper sticker:

Beware of promises of life where death is prerequisite.

In The Record Searchlight on Friday:
"[I'm] a proud right-wing terrorist" said by voter at Redding townhall meeting on Obama health care reform.

Are we there yet?

Snapshot Channel 10 Weather by State

Click on map to enlarge

Today at Evans Head the temperature reached 37.4 C at 1.30pm.

I can't remember a hotter winter day on the NSW North Coast, coming as it did off a relatively hot night.

Often accompanied by a very warm wind the unseasonable weather had gardens wilting by midday and some locals nervously wondering how dry summer may actually be this year.

It's now 6.45pm. at the tail end of the day, the temperature is still between 20.5 to 30.5 C across the region and I'm sitting at the keypad in full summer gear.

Am I being superstitious here or is this climate change?

Where is Andrew Bolt when you need him!

BOM Evans Head temperatures for Monday 24 August 2009

Whatever happened to our blogging PM and why is he failing to connect with regional voters online?

If anything clearly points to the fact that the Australian Government still doesn't get the communications revolution it is the fact that, after creating a PM's Blog with a gentle riff of publicity and posting two one-way 'discussion' topics, the blog has gone into dead time.

The Prime Minister as KRudd still uses hisTwitter account from time to time, but those short tweets just remind voters that he is alive - they don't add much to the national conversation on political, social, economic and environmental questions that concern the country.

Kevin Rudd obviously didn't fancy the blog format all that much, because since 10 August 2009 he is now selectively inviting 20 Internet users to have a Web Chat when the mood takes him.

Of course such chats omit so many low income households in regional areas from the conversation as it is obvious that a dial-up connection is not about to get you a timely invitation to 'chat' because all day online is not possible and, yes, rather more understandably those chats are now in dead time also.

The Prime Minister might like to tell the world that he rather likes Twitter, however he doesn't use these tweets to really connect with regional Australia. Today Kevin Rudd is said to be in Lismore on the NSW North Coast as part of his inspection of health facilities across the country, but one wouldn't know it from his public tweets on the weekend.

The fact that he is in the Northern Rivers is of some interest to local voters as our public hospitals are under sustained cost-cutting attack by the North Coast Area Health Service and just last Saturday The Daily Examiner reported that it is on the cards for Grafton Base Hospital to lose another 10 ordinary beds and fail to gain funding for 17 new beds that are part of the promised departmental upgrade.

Hopefully, when it comes to old fashioned face-to-face contact, Kevin Rudd will fare better as the Rudd Government is fast becoming our last faint hope for decent regional hospitals, as one wouldn't know how dysfunctional matters are becoming if one reads the 2007/08 NSW Health annual report and it is obvious that maintaining the health system is getting beyond the capacity of the state governments.

Japan ploughs on with its defence of whale hunting

Photograph: Whales in Antarctic waters, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 2007

Still up on a Government of Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries website:

Thank you for your coming to our web page. We established this page to share the idea of the sustainable use of marine resources with people as many as possible.

As recognized from the page title, the main contents of this page are about the sustainable use of marine resources, especially, cetaceans. Cetaceans are one of the most important marine resources not only for human being but also for all other creatures. These marine resources are complicatedly connected to each other, and then proper managements of cetaceans are critical to keep marine ecosystem healthy. Cetaceans also contribute to our cultural life and economic activities directly and indirectly. You can enjoy great taste of whale meat as well as can enjoy whale watching. Therefore, we are caring all environmental issues concerning cetaceans such as the natural environment, social environment and economic environment. In these contexts, we, the Whaling Section of Japan, understand that only the sustainable use of marine resources can satisfy these aspects.

We realize that the earth be shared by all creatures including human being, not dominated by only a specific group of countries or creatures. It is our brief that we should respect each other, getting over the difference of culture, ethic groups, species, etc. in order to achieve the sustainable world. It sounds difficult? No, it is very simple. Just start recognizing our world is not only for a group of people but also for every creature, regardless the difference of smartness, physical abilities, etc. Why not start with us - the Whaling Section of Japan?

From the Embassy of Japan in Australia:

In Japan, whales have been caught and utilized as food for more than 2 thousand years. The culture of food and eating habits has been formed in the course of history under the specific environment of each country or each location even within a country. People in Australia have made use of many creatures such as cattle, kangaroos and rabbits, or like Hindus, other cultures have never had beef.
We believe it is not appropriate to lightly condemn the behaviors of others as bad, barbarous or primitive, or rather there should be an attitude of respect for the cultures and habits of different cultures.

Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research - media kit, July 2009