Elite private school sources funds from drug dealer

Being Sunday and the broadsheets not publishing today it's only reasonable that NCV does a bit of tabloid-like blogging.

Cranbrook, an Anglican independent non-selective day and boarding school for boys, located at 5 Victoria Road Bellevue Hill, has found itself in the picture for accepting cash from a drug dealer as payment for school fees.

Today's Sun Herald reports:

Even cocaine traffickers have to pay their kids' school fees. But the Maroubra drug dealer Wayne Cleveland miscalculated when he turned up at Cranbrook on March 12, 2008, with $40,000 in cash.

According to a police statement tendered in the District Court, the school, apparently alarmed at the sight of so much money, declined to accept the full amount owing, taking just $15,000. To add insult to injury, it told Cleveland it might have to report the transaction to authorities because it was more than $10,000.

Somewhat panicked, Cleveland turned to his friend and prominent eastern suburbs real estate agent Glenn Farah, the then chief executive officer of NG Farah, a family business founded almost 50 years ago.

Read more here.

A now defunct Port Macquarie newspaper gets caught out in yet another conflict of interest

The Port Paper shutdown with suspicious alacrity once its connection to The National Party of Australia began to surface.

However, even the quoted paragraph below by The Poll Bludger  on 27 August 2011 and the earlier 
allegations of push polling do not explain why the newspaper’s owner/s folded their tent so quickly or why there appears to be deliberate obfuscation over the company name.

In other poll news, a fortnightly Port Macquarie-based publication called The Port Paper has published results from an automated phone poll conducted by ReachTEL in Rob Oakeshott’s electorate of Lyne showing support for Rob Oakeshott at just 14.8 per cent, against 55.3 per cent for the Coalition and 17 per cent for Labor. This has raised eyebrows on a number of counts. Firstly, the question on voting intention was the last of three put to respondents, after attitudinal questions on carbon tax and pokies reforms (both of which were strongly opposed), which is commonly recognised in the polling caper as the wrong way to get an accurate response. Secondly, the principals behind The Port Paper are very strongly associated with the Nationals. And thirdly, Bernard Keane in Crikey today relates that ReachTEL “proudly announced it was an associate member of Clubs Qld, which has this year been campaigning aggressively against the Andrew Wilkie-led poker machine reform push. The Port Paper story fails to disclose that.”

Perhaps that grave acronym ICAC being publicly coupled with a certain NSW O’Farrell Government Minister (who joined the Solar Bonus Scheme at the then optimum kilowatt hour pricing and whose own electorate abuts Port Macquarie) is what routed this supposedly independent publication - given an associate of the newspaper is also reportedly a policy adviser to this same minister.

The close proximity of yet another Nationals MP (whose electoral office is only approximately four street corners away from the newspaper office and who is a Facebook friend of The Port Paper editor and its website registration contact person aka ministerial policy advisor) probably didn’t smooth the feathers of the publishing company’s handful of unidentified shareholders either.

One has to wonder if they are also connected to the National Party in some manner, as The Port Paper paper often reads like those political campaign leaflets or MP newsletters not uncommonly found in NSW North Coast letter boxes.

At least one of the newspaper's advertisers (also quoted in a prominent anti-Oakeshott article) may possibly be one of these shareholders.

Sunday Snaps

Debrah Novak Untitled

Anna Calvert Clarence River Grafton NSW

John Nalder Reflective Sunset Hat Head NSW

Pet Census

Are you disappointed that the latest census didn't ask about your furry, feathery or scaly friends?
Pet Census 2011 enables some pet owners to provide their loved ones' details, but lovers of goats, handlers of snakes and riders of horses will be disappointed to know they are excluded from the census and can't fill out the form at www.petcensus.com.au .
Sadly, only cats and dogs are included in the census.



The Pet Census is commissioned by Petplan Australasia Pty Ltd which states the census seeks to explore four main areas relating to human-animal relationship, namely, health, finance, social relations and family life. Whilst Australians are already known to be a nation of animal lovers, the findings may show that pets actually play their part in a 'big society' with proof that pets make us more compassionate, happier, healthier and more sociable.

Reminder: Monday 5 September is the last opportunity for people to submit that other Census form online using eCensus. That Census is compulsory for everyone who was in Australia on Census night, Tuesday, 9 August 2011.