Hon. Bronwyn Bishop MP is no more

The Sydney Morning Herald: Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker

Come federal polling day this year Australia will see the last of the Hon. Bronwyn Kathleen Bishop - Senator for NSW for six and a half years, Member for Mackellar for twenty-two years and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 12 November 2013 to 2 August 2015 when her forced resignation from that post resulted in an ignominious return to the government backbench.

The 73 year-old Ms. Bishop was dumped by the Liberal Party as its endorsed candidate in Mackellar on 16 April 2016 after a long but lacklustre political career spiked by periods of controversy.

Most notably when:

in 1990 when she breached Liberal Party conditions that said neither members of parliament nor candidates could accept money on the party’s behalf for their own campaigning;

in 1994 she breached parliamentary funding guidelines in relation to a researcher she had employed who was being paid by FAI Insurance;

her three-year stint as Minister for Aging saw her become known as the Minister for Kerosene Baths after mistreatment of the elderly in nursing homes came to light in 2000;
based on alleged security concerns she ordered that women wearing the burqa or niqab be segregated from others in the visitors' gallery of Parliament House in 2014;

as probably the most-biased politician to have ever occupied the Speaker’s chair she removed MPs from the House of Representatives chamber 400 times over 18 months with 393 of these instances involving Labor MPs (as well as condoning the Liberal Leader of the House openly calling the Leader of the Opposition a c*unt); and finally,

her excessive use and alleged abuse of parliamentary travel entitlements became public knowledge culminating in Choppergate in 2015.

Described as the “unacceptable face of the Liberal Party” and widely disliked both within and without the party, it is unlikely that she will be missed when the 45^th Australian Parliament is formed.

Counting Dead Women 2016: violent death toll reaches 23

Destroy the Joint list of dead women up to 14 April 2016

One violent death every five days

Special Broadcasting Services Corporation (SBS) not trailing clouds of glory on settlement of unfair dismissal dispute

mUmBRELLA, 11 April 2016:

Multicultural broadcaster SBS has reached a confidential settlement with its former sports reporter Scott McIntyre after he launched legal action against the broadcaster claiming it did “not follow due process” when it fired him…..

Asked what he meant by the phrase “vigilantes & hypocrites” Bornstein accused former Communications Minister and now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, News Corp columnist Chris Kenny and former Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson of seeking to “crush” free speech.

“The vigilantes & hypocrites who sought to have Scott sacked and his freedom of speech suppressed after the event included (then Communications Minister) Malcolm Turnbull, (News Corp columnist) Chris Kenny and (Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner) Tim Wilson,” said Bornstein.

“These are people who speak loftily about freedom of speech and when it is inconvenient to them ditch it and try and crush someone whose views they disagree with. They should be ashamed of themselves.”…..

JOINT STATEMENT BY SBS AND SCOTT MCINTYRE

11 April 2016

SBS and Mr McIntyre have now resolved their dispute over the termination of his employment on 26 April 2015.

SBS acknowledges that Mr McIntyre was a well respected sports reporter with SBS for a period spanning over a decade, and SBS is disappointed that it was unable to continue with his services following his Tweets.

Mr McIntyre acknowledges that the views expressed in his Tweets on 25 April 2015 were his views and that they were contentious. Mr McIntyre regrets any attribution of his views to SBS and acknowledges that SBS was drawn into controversy following the expression of his views.

BACKGROUND

McIntyre v Special Broadcasting Services Corporation [2015] FWC 6768 (1 October 2015) – Fair Work Commission Decision:

Conclusion

[43] In this instance the respondent employer, SBS, has made a challenge to an application for unlawful termination of employment which was taken under s. 773 of the Act. The applicant had made a previous general protections application under s. 365 of the Act. The challenge to the application made by SBS relies upon the purported operation of s. 723 of the Act.

[44] I have concluded that in the particular circumstances of this case, s. 723 of the Act does not operate as a jurisdictional bar to the application, as the applicant is not a person who is entitled to make a general protections court application in relation to the conduct that he complains of. Further, I have decided that exceptional circumstances exist such that the time for the making of the application should be extended and the application permitted to proceed accordingly.

[45] My conclusions have been broadly drawn from a purposive interpretation of the Act cognisant that it is beneficial legislation. In simple terms, I believe that the Act, and s. 723 in particular, should not be interpreted in a manner which would deprive an individual of access to a fair hearing or, as may be euphemistically described, a person’s “day in court”. In the circumstances of this case the applicant does not seek multiple proceedings or remedies but simply seeks to have his day in court.

[46] It is perhaps sadly ironic that many members of the Australian Defence Force lost their lives in the earnest pursuit of the protection of rights and freedoms such as the access to a fair hearing which the applicant is entitled to obtain.

[47] The jurisdictional objection raised by SBS is dismissed, the extension of time for the application to have been made is granted and a certificate shall be issued pursuant to subsection 776 (3) of the Act.

COMMISSIONER

Oh dear........

ABC News, 12 April 2016:

Basic design artwork for the signature side of the new Australian $5 banknote.

Tweet of the Month

BACKGROUND

Over 4,598 retweets in less than 24 hours.

The Guardian, 15 April 2016:

Students pepper-sprayed by campus police at the University of California at Davis have reacted in anger at the “vastly inappropriate” and “insulting” decision by their university to contract firms to systematically scrub mentions of the story on the internet.

The university is being accused of censorship after quietly seeking to hide web references to a widely reported incident in which police sprayed student activists from the then-nascent Occupy movement four years ago.

The photograph and video went viral across the world, prompting a major backlash against the California university and its chancellor Linda PB Katehi, who was accused of using heavy-handed tactics against peaceful activists Students are once again calling for Katehi’s resignation.

Details of the attempt to remove references of the pepper-spraying incident were revealed by the Sacramento Bee, which reported that UC Davis hired a communications firm on a $15,000-a-month contract with a goal of eradicating “references to the pepper spray incident on Google”, including “negative search results” for Katehi.

The information was obtained through a Public Records Act request and is part of a broader investigation by the paper into Katehi’s affiliation with private corporate boards.....

Peace personified......

A Yamba man and his dog found at NBN Weather Shots:

Quotes of the Week

Everyone in the government knows that the past couple of weeks have looked messy; that it was naïve not to realise that the tax debate would be out of control as soon as state officials were briefed; that there should have been a better plan for taking control of the debate back; and that the idea of setting up a photo opportunity of the Prime Minister and Treasurer leaving the building together was a disaster. [Journalist Laura Tingle writing in the Financial Review, 7 April 2016]

The Panama Papers expose offshore companies controlled by the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the king of Saudi Arabia and the children of the president of Azerbaijan. They also include the names of at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the U.S. government because of evidence that they’ve done business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or rogue nations, including North Korea and Iran. [ The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 3 April 2016]

It is hard to remember a government that has gone into an election campaign so ill-prepared to persuade voters to give it another chance.

[Journalist Lara Tingle in the Financial Review, 14 April 2016]

Political Cartoon of the Week

Cathy Wilcox

UNSW Phillip Baxter College residents are sooo sorry they were caught in the act *WARNING: Offensive Language*

Established in 1966 Philip Baxter College is named after UNSW's first Vice-Chancellor who laid the ground work for the university to become the world class institution it is today. It is the largest of the Kensington Colleges and housed 211 student residents and 7 resident academic staff according to The Kensington Colleges website.

On 12 April 2016 ABC News reported this behaviour by a group of Baxter College students:

Students at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have held a protest after a video emerged of a group of young men from the university's Baxter College singing an offensive song while on an regular "Boys Night Out".

In the video, the young men are heard singing a call and answer song referring to women as "little red foxes" and how they would "shoot them in their boxes".

I wish that all the ladies

Were little red foxes

And if I was a hunter

I'd shoot them in their boxes

I wish that all the ladies

Were buns in the oven

And if I were a baker

I'd cream them by the dozen

I wish that all the ladies

Were holes in the road

And if I was a dump truck

I'd fill them with my load.

UNSW said they were "appalled by the sexist and demeaning attitudes and behaviours" directed towards females in the chant.

The university said it had taken steps to investigate the incident and meetings involving college residents, student representatives and the UNSW SRS Women's Collective were convened on Monday night.

James Dunn is house treasurer of Baxter College and was part of the Boys Night Out.

He admitted he probably took part in the chanting, but now realised it was inappropriate.

"The video is pretty appalling," he told 7.30.

"As a leader of this college and me being a part of the group that was likely in the video, for me it is really personal and I have no idea why I did it.

"I'm sort of condemning my own actions at this time and the actions of everyone in the video."

Mr Dunn said he just accepted the behaviour as part of the Baxter culture when he first moved from his country town for university two years ago.

"I walked into the culture that is Baxter and was taught these chants as part of the culture that we have here and something we do as a night out, as a whole college both males and females," he said.

"It has been ingrained in many college societies for too long that those things can be gotten away with."

When reading the new item two points come to mind.

One is that the University of New South Wales has the lowest female to male student percentages of all Australian universities at 46.1 per cent.

Two is that it is highly likely that the apology printed below is merely code for We’re sorry we got caught bellowing out our misogyny at the top of our lungs on a bus during “Boys Night Out”.

Mr. Denmore: "Do keep up now"

The Failed Estate, 3 April 2016:

To be fair, political media is broken because politics is broken – or at least what we call politics – the charade that takes place in Canberra or any other world capital each day featuring people and parties who don’t really believe in anything anymore, but making sure they posture and pontificate in a way that suggests they do. And the media, having so much invested in the semblance of a left-right, blue-red, coke-pepsi contest, is forced to play along with the whole silly game.

The rest of the population senses the breakdown. And not just in Australia. This is a global phenomenon, reflecting the end of a 35-year era in which neoliberal capitalism looked to have destroyed all other contenders. Politicians of the nominal left and right swallowed the consensus whole, leaving them to fight ridiculous and infantile ‘culture wars’ to justify their own sorry existence.

But ironically “the market knows best” people don’t seem to have figured that the wider population understands the issue better than the insiders do. The big problems we face are global in nature – climate change, people movements, adequacy of resources, the impotency of central banks, the dislocations wrought by “free” trade, the rise in the power of stateless corporations at the expense of people, the encroachment of “markets” into every aspect of our lives and the power of well-funded lobbies that sell private interest as public interest and destroy the possibility of people-oriented change.

THAT’S why politics is broken. And THAT’s why the media does not appear to have a clue about what’s going on right now. Oddly enough, this is a much, much bigger story than whether Malcolm loves Scott.

Do keep up now.

With rates of domestic violence & sexual assault higher than the NSW average, the Northern Rivers region remains a target for federal funding cuts

The geographic area of the Northern NSW Local Health District extends from the Tweed Local Government Area (LGA) on the Queensland/NSW border in the north to the Clarence Valley LGA in the south, the Great Dividing Range in the west and the Pacific Ocean coastline in the east. The Northern NSW LHD covers a geographic region of 21,470 square kilometres with a total population in 2011 of 288,241 persons and is made up of seven LGAs and one smaller State Suburb (SSC). [Northern NSW LHD, Fact Sheet 1, July 2015]

This health district population was projected to reach over 300,000 in 2016.

One of the health issues it deals with is domestic and family violence, as do the local courts.

Between October 2014 to September 2015 in NSW the rate of domestic assault incidents per 100,000 head of population was 398.7.

For the corresponding period in the Northern NSW LHD the domestic assault rate was:

Richmond Valley Local Government Area – 550.6

Lismore Local Government Area – 478.8

Clarence Valley Local Government Area – 426.5

Tweed Local Government Area – 401.7

Kyogle Local Government Area – 399.0

Byron Local Government Area – 313.3

Ballina Local Government Area – 246.3

All but two local government areas were above the state average – four were significantly higher.

Five out of seven of these local government areas also exceeded the NSW rate for sexual offence incidents – Richmond Valley, Lismore, Clarence Valley, Byron and Ballina.

Yet this region remains a target for Abbott-Turnbull Government cuts to services used by victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The Northern Star reported on 8 April 2016:

SHADOW Attorney General Mark Dreyfus and Labor candidate for Page Janelle have backed the Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre's plea to have funding cuts to programs aimed at preventing domestic violence reversed.

They said the Federal Government had announced a third, or $30 million, of commonwealth funding would be cut to the 39 Community Legal Centres around the state as well as the scrapping of $100,000 per year in funding to the Lismore centre, introduced by Mr Dreyfus in 2013.

Mr Dreyfus said the cuts could mean the end of the Lismore-based centre's outreach service in Casino, as well as the possible closure of the Tweed office and the loss of a specialised family violence solicitor.

Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre acting centre manager Fia Norton said it was the biggest challenge in the centre's 20-year history.

"They're (the cuts) going to affect the most vulnerable people in our community," she said……

Ms Saffin said she was concerned the federal funding cuts would impact complimentary services to the State Government's Safer Pathways domestic violence program, a service NRCLS was selected to coordinate in Tweed in 2015.

"Last year the Northern Rivers CLC was selected by the NSW Government as one of five sites to roll out the Safer Pathways reforms for Domestic Violence, an integrated response service to prevent domestic violence deaths and serious injury to women and children," she said.

"But how will the program be impacted when cuts come into effect next year?.....

The cuts are set to come into effect in mid-2017.

May is likely to be an interesting month in 2016

All around the world directors, shareholders, beneficial owners, mob bosses, drug lords, gun runners and owners of stolen art hiding within shell companies in low tax jurisdictions will be marking their calendars…..

AFR Weekend, 8 April 2016:

The ICIJ, which has said it will not provide data to regulators, plans to release the names of more than 200,000 Mossack Fonseca companies, trusts and foundations in May, including names of directors, shareholders and beneficial owners.

Tax authorities can use this data to seek further documents under tax treaties with many jurisdictions....

America begins to imagine Trump as US president

The Boston Globe, 9 April 2016:

The GOP must stop Trump

PDF: A front page in Trump’s America

DONALD J. TRUMP’S VISION for the future of our nation is as deeply disturbing as it is profoundly un-American.

It is easy to find historical antecedents. The rise of demagogic strongmen is an all too common phenomenon on our small planet. And what marks each of those dark episodes is a failure to fathom where a leader’s vision leads, to carry rhetoric to its logical conclusion. The satirical front page of this section attempts to do just that, to envision what America looks like with Trump in the White House.

It is an exercise in taking a man at his word. And his vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page. It is a vision that demands an active and engaged opposition. It requires an opposition as focused on denying Trump the White House as the candidate is flippant and reckless about securing it…..

That’s not a pretty picture. But then nothing about the billionaire real estate developer’s quest for the nation’s highest office has been pretty. He winks and nods at political violence at his rallies. He says he wants to “open up” libel laws to punish critics in the news media and calls them “scum.” He promised to shut out an entire class of immigrants and visitors to the United States on the sole basis of their religion.

The toxic mix of violent intimidation, hostility to criticism, and explicit scapegoating of minorities shows a political movement is taking hold in America. If Trump were a politician running such a campaign in a foreign country right now, the US State Department would probably be condemning him.....

Read the rest of the article here.

Australian Federal Election 2016: why are taxpayers spending so much on political has-beens?

The Sydney Morning Herald: John Winston Howard

The Liberal Party began to roll-out the aging John Winston Howard OM AC last week as part of its fundraising efforts for the upcoming federal election campaign.

But make no mistake, it’s not just Liberal Party supporters who were paying for that 11,000 guest Docklands party in Melbourne and the exclusive dinner at the Pratt family mansion in Kew the following night – the Australian taxpayer is also likely to have been subbing the former prime minister as he sipped his wine and nibbled on canapés.

Since he lost his seat in the 2007 federal election Howard has milked the public purse for $1.82 million in additional entitlements over and above his very generous parliamentary pension.

That $1.82 million pays for a fully equiped modern office including phone & internet, office consumables, domestic air travel for himself and on occasion a family member and  travel in government cars, as well as subsidising the running costs of his own private vehicle¹.

Given his obvious sense of entitlement which saw him bill taxpayers over $67,000 in the first half of 2015 (the latest Dept. of Finance entitlement record published) it will come as no surprise to eventually discover his trip from Sydney to Melbourne and return will not be paid by either Howard or the Liberal Party.

Footnote

1.Howard is one of five former prime ministers still receiving these additional entitlements

One member of the Liberal Party and his historical myopia

Herald Sun: Oliver Walsh in 2014

This was the Herald Sun reporting on Oliver Walsh on 24 March 2016:

AN INDIGENOUS services group head says the Darebin deputy mayor should resign for questioning the genocide of Aborigines.

Deputy mayor Oliver Walsh last week said he was “not totally comfortable” with the inclusion of Aborigines in the city’s monument to Victims of Genocide and Genocidal Acts.

“I still have issues with this,” Cr Walsh said at Monday night’s council meeting. “In many ways I have issues with the Aboriginal part, because technically it is not a recognised genocide.”

Cr Walsh’s comments were labelled “disappointing” and “unbelievable” by Victorian Aboriginal Childcare Agency (VACCA) chief executive Muriel Bamblett.

“I think it’s just really disappointing, I think it’s a step backwards and I hope the people that elect people with these values and principles really think about it, and I think we should call for his resignation,” Ms Bamblett said.

“If he insists that his statement is correct and he stands by them then I think his deputy role and capacity to lead are in question……

Apparently Deputy-Mayor Walsh is of the school of thought which argues that if Australian colonial governments didn’t label their own official policies and actions as genocide at the time, then these cannot be called genocide now.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to many that this insensitive man is a member of the Liberal Party, was previously electorate officer for Victorian Liberal MP Graham Watt and also employed as campaign manager for Liberal candidate Kyle Dadleh during the 2010 Victorian state election.

It seems those ‘bright young things’ in the Liberal Party just can’t help themselves when it comes to cultivating a social tin ear and historical myopia.

On the Turnbull-Joyce ticket the old Age of Entitlement endures

On Thursday 24 March 2016, in a week in which the House of Representatives was not sitting and on the eve of the Easter long weekend, Nationals MP for New England and Deputy-Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce decided to go to faux election campaigning by helicopter – slugging very weary Australian taxpayers somewhere between $3,836 and $4,166 for the ride (depending on which of his staffers journalists were quoting).

However, despite his protestations otherwise, this was not the first time Joyce had hopped into a helicopter rather than a car since 2013.

Ah, yes….on the Turnbull-Joyce ticket the old Age of Entitlement endures.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 April 2016:

It was the day before Easter in Drake, a sleepy village in northern NSW, when the peace was interrupted by a helicopter depositing Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce on a sporting field behind the popular local pub, the Lunatic Hotel.

Drake is just a 40-minute drive from Mr Joyce's second electorate office in Tenterfield but his office insists a helicopter was the best option to avoid a four-hour drive from his home base in Tamworth. It was his second chopper ride to the village in less than a year.

After I'm finished I'll have a beer and jump in the chopper and head off to fly over the blueberry farm 

The latest Drake visit, which will cost the public almost $4000, happened two days after the Turnbull government released a long-awaited review into parliamentary entitlements sparked by the "choppergate" scandal that engulfed former speaker Bronwyn Bishop and sent Tony Abbott's prime ministership into a final nosedive.

The review called for clear guidelines so the "use of charter transport must constitute value for money, and in particular that, in the absence of compelling reasons, helicopters cannot be chartered to cover short distances".

Mr Joyce, who has been in unofficial election campaign mode since Tony Windsor recently declared his challenge in New England, arrived in Drake on March 24.

During the three-hour visit he launched a Telstra mobile tower - first announced in June 2015 - and visited the school, a local blueberry farm and inspected a bridge in need of an upgrade.

The Age, 8 April 2016:

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce chartered a helicopter to visit an area less than an hour and a half by road from his ministerial office in Armidale.

The flight to Copeton Dam places a question mark over a key plank of the National leader's defence of his helicopter usage, supported on Friday by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, that choppers were used as an alternative to unreasonably long drives.

The 120 kilometre flight from Armidale to Copeton Dam cost $2211 return.

The most controversial helicopter flight in Australian political history, Bronwyn Bishop's $5000 hop from Melbourne to a Liberal Party fundraiser in Geelong, was just 40 kilometres shorter…..

He took a fourth helicopter trip from Armidale to Legume near the Queensland border in February last year, according to parliamentary records for electorate-related travel.

That flight, to announce a $350,000 road upgrade, cost the public $4737.

Confirmation of four helicopter flights forced Mr Joyce's office on Friday to withdraw its statement to Fairfax Media on Thursday that the two flights to Drake were his only helicopter usage since becoming the MP for New England in 2013.

Australian Federal Election 2016: higher education

The Turnbull Government is expected to use this Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) report, Higher Education Loan Program: Impact On Budget, to justify major changes to higher education funding and student loans in its 3 May 2016 budget papers.

The report points to a projected increase in the cost to government of supplying HELP student loan programs (HECS, FEE, VET FEE, SA, OS).

It also notes the contribution vocational education loans (VET) make to the size of the HELP portfolio.

Federal Government VET student loans accounted for 20.1% of new HELP loans from 2010-11 to 2016-16 and The Australian reported on 23 February 2015 that; About 40 per cent of all money lent to students in vocational courses will never to be recovered, according to Grattan Institute modelling submitted to the Senate inquiry into the private vocational training sector. This compared to with 21 per cent lent to university students.

Given the blatant rorting of the VET program by dubious private ‘colleges’ it would be wise of the Turnbull Government to make fulfilling its promise to overhaul vocational student loans a priority – along with restoring funding to the states’ technical and further education sector.

Of course that is not what is likely to happen, as the PBO report will probably be used as an excuse to push ahead with the Abbott-IPA plan to turn higher education and universities into a privileged playground for the sons and daughters of Australian and international elites.

Dear Mr. Morrison........

North Coast Voices was sent a copy of the following letter sent to Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison, with permission to publish:

EMAIL TO TREASURER MORRISON SENT ON GOVERNMENT  EMAIL FORM 8^th April 2016

Dear Mr Morrison

I was interested to hear your interview on Radio National "Breakfast" this morning. 

It was quite astonishing that you rejected the notion of a Royal Commission into the banks given all the shonky behaviour we have seen from all of the "Big 4" in recent years. It's quite obvious that these all-powerful institutions have no respect for the regulators (your cop on the block or whatever you called it) or for the Australian community.  Whenever a new outrage is revealed, we hear sounds of contrition from the offending bank and then some time later there's another outrage revealed.

In your comments criticising the Leader of the Opposition for his suggestion that a Royal Commission be considered, you ignored the fact that there are backbenchers in your Government calling quite strongly for a Royal Commission.  Don't you hear your backbenchers, Mr Morrison?

Don't you understand that there is considerable community concern about the continuing outrageous behaviour of the major banks?

We need a royal commission into the big 4 banks.  Maybe that will result in some improvement in their behaviour.

Yours sincerely

Leonie Blain

8^th April 2016

A sustainable life rocks! Local award nominations open in the Clarence Valley

A sustainable  life  rocks!

Clarence Valley Council  media release, 7 April 2016:

Living Sustainably Awards now open

Residents or organisations who contribute significantly to a more sustainable Clarence Valley are invited to apply for the council’s annual Living Sustainably Awards.

Nominations are now open, with four award categories for individuals, businesses, education and community groups who enhance environmental, economic and social sustainability.

Mayor Richie Williamson said council was looking for nominees who excelled in any aspect of sustainability such as those who reduced energy and water consumption, acknowledged the significance of local culture, provided sustainable recreation, environmental conservation, sustainable economic development, showed leadership within the community and developed innovative ideas.

Nominations are due by 4pm Monday, May 23, 2016 and will be judged by Council’s Climate Change Advisory Committee. The winners will be presented with their awards at a ceremony during Local Government Week, August 1-7, 2016.

Nomination forms are available at www.clarence.nsw.gov.au, or can be collected from the Council offices at 2 Prince Street, Grafton, and 50 River Street, Maclean.

For further information please contact Suzanne Lynch, on 6643 0200 or email suzanne.lynch@clarence.nsw.gov.au.

Australian Federal Election 2016: another one for the FFS! file

The Australian, Kevin Andrews at home with his wife in May 2014

Herald Sun, 4 April 2016:

AS KEVIN Andrews prepares to mark 25 years as the member for Menzies, the veteran Liberal MP says he would be prepared to challenge for the leadership of the Liberal party, and therefore the Prime Ministership, under the right circumstances.

In a wideranging interview with the Manningham Leader, Mr Andrews shed light on his work in the electorate, his past disappointments and the circumstances under which he would return to the front bench.

Malcolm Turnbull’s elevation to the Prime Minister’s office last year resulted in Mr Andrews challenging fellow Liberal Julie Bishop for the deputy leadership of the party.

“There wasn’t anything particularly negative about Julie, but she had been deputy leader under Brendan (Nelson), Malcolm, Tony and I thought, ‘well, there hadn’t really been a contest for the deputy leadership’,” he said…… [my red bolding]

A topical tee shirt

Found on Twitter this week.....

This post is dedicated to Malcolm Bligh Turnbull's investment portfolio.

Counting Dead Women In April 2016 - averaging a violent death each week of someone's daughter, sister, aunt, mother

Posted 16 April 2016 on Destroy the Joint and sadly probably already out of date

Australian Federal Election 2016: what policy areas are important to women?

Women’s Agenda reported a small online survey, 29 March 2016:

Our online poll was pushed out to Women's Agenda readers as well as women on Facebook for five days from Monday the 21st March, and received 430 completed responses. 

Whatever happens this election, women aren't all that confident that we'll be much better off.

And that comes after 63% of us believe we're already 'worse off' since the Abbott Government won power in 2013.

According to our Women's Agenda poll, almost a quarter (24.42%) of us believe women will be 'worse off' following the next Federal election. The majority (70.47%) believe women will be “about the same” while just 5.12% believe women will be “better off”.

As for key policy areas of concern to respondents, climate change came out on top -- with 45% listing it as a 'top three' policy priority area, out of 15 options presented.

This was followed by family violence and education (both on 33%), the gender pay gap (31%), healthcare (30%), same-sex marriage (28%), housing affordability (20%), women in leadership (20%) and childcare (19%).

Asked to list other areas of concern, many noted human rights, the more humane treatment of asylum seekers, elder care, and the environment more broadly (beyond climate change). 

So which of the three major parties have presented the best policies for women? According to those surveyed The Greens come up well ahead (48.37%) followed by Labor (39.30%) and finally the Coalition (12.33%).

When questioned who was their ‘preferred prime minister’ out of Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten, 57% ticked Shorten, while 43% said Turnbull. This particular question prompted feedback from some respondents, noting a ‘neither’ option should have been offered.

We breed 'em tough in the NSW Northern Rivers.....

A couple of years back I told a former director of Elk Petroleum that Metgasco Limited would withdraw from its arrangement with that US mining company and that Northern Rivers communities would win the battle with Metagasco over its mining exploration leases.

I pointed to the region’s long history of coming together to oppose threats to water security and environmental sustainability.

I don’t think he believed me then, but I think he would believe the Knitting Nannas now when locals like Lismore Nanna Clare Twomey are still voluntarily locking themselves on as she herself did to the exit gates of NSW Parliament House at 8.30pm on 31 March 2016 in protest at the Baird Coalition Government changes to protest laws and failure to address the ongoing tension between mining interests and the enduring need for environmental protections.

The Northern Star on 1 April reported that: After 8 and a half hours at the Sydney gates, the Knitting Nanna cofounder, locked off without arrest. She was supported by Greens Jeremy Buckingham, Knitting Nannas and interviewed by Sydney media.

Images From The Northern Star & Twitter