The water raiders have turned their eyes once more to the Clarence River system

Bumper sticker from the successful 2007 community campaign

The Abbott-Turnbull Government’s ‘100 dams’ plan lives on into 2016.

He said….

The Area News, 11 July 2016:

A Griffith group’s push to send an extra 1000 gigalitres of water down the Darling River is gaining momentum with Bourke Shire Council jumping on board.

The Clarence River Diversion, originally mooted in the early 1980’s by engineer David Coffey and buried by the Hawke government, was resurrected by Griffith councillor Dino Zappacosta and the Build More Dams committee. Cr Zappacosta said he was pleased Bourke council was supporting their campaign for state and federal governments to carry out a feasibility study.

“Bourke Shire Council is fully supportive of the plan,” he said.

“They actually said many years ago they tried to get water from there.”

The scheme, if it went ahead, would see a number of dams built high in the Clarence River catchment, west of Grafton. From there, collected rainwater would run through the Great Dividing Range in an 80-kilometre tunnel and flow into the Dumaresq River before eventually finding its way into the Darling River.

She said….

Email sent to North Coast Voices by Debrah Novak of Yamba, 13 July 2016:

I AM WANTING to point out to Griffith councillor Dino Zappacosta, the Build More Dams committee and Bourke Shire Council if you think you can bulldoze your way into the Clarence Valley and take 1000 gigalitres of water for the Murray-Darling River system you have definitely got a big fight on your hands.

The plan you are resurrecting is over 30 years old however the fact you have had no community consultation with the people of the Clarence and the fact you think you have a right to access our water is downright gob smacking, plain rude and who the hell do you think you are?

Our Clarence River is one of the last remaining wild rivers in NSW and hell will freeze over before our community will let you have one single drop. 

If you divert the Clarence River westward you will not only destroy our regions three greatest economic drivers, fishing, tourism and agriculture you will severely impact the replenishing of the Tweed, Gold Coast and Frazer Coast beaches. You take us on you take them on too.

Earlier this year I invited world acclaimed Australian geologist Dr John Jackson up to the Clarence River Gorge to explain to me how if the Clarence River were dammed or diverted, how it would impact on the lower reaches of our region.

He said " wetlands and fish habitat needed for the very foundation of our entire professional and recreational fishing industry would be destroyed. 

It has taken millions of years for the Clarence River to course its way through the mountains and valleys and then wind its way down to Yamba and then out into the Pacific Ocean. Currents then take all this sand north and in the process has created Fraser and Moreton Bay Islands and the beaches of the Tweed and Gold Coast".

Yes the Clarence River floods almost biannually and thank God it does because during that process it scours out all the chemicals that have built up over time from local industrial and agricultural businesses.

And finally do you think the five Aboriginal Nations for which the Clarence River is their life blood would allow you to divert their water west, sorry but you are dreaming.

The Murray Darling Basin is broken because of greed, a sense of entitlement and the inability for your community to take responsibility for compromising Mother Nature.

We value what we have here in the Clarence River and Valley and I guarantee the 53,000 of us who call this place home would stand shoulder to shoulder to protect her.

A little bit of history....

Excerpt from a North Coast Voices post, 19 October 2010:

Commonwealth Hansard:

Page Electorate: Clarence River 
Ms SAFFIN (Page) (10.57 am)—I have a message on behalf of my community in Page that I want to give to the parliament and everybody who is going to be involved in the Murray-Darling Basin plan and debate. The message from my community, which is home to the Clarence River—and a lot of people seem to be talking about wanting to get their hands on it and are looking at it for diversion—is this: not a drop. Right across my electorate thousands of cars have that on their bumper stickers: not a drop. In effect it is saying hands off the Clarence River.
The idea that the Clarence River can be diverted is one of those issues that have been around for quite some time.
Everybody has raised this issue at different times. In particular, there was some engineering plan that it could be done. My message to the two Tonys is: not one drop will be taken out of the Clarence River. I have also been told, and I do not want to verbal the honourable member for Kennedy, that on the member’s website he talks about those not in favour of looking at some sort of diversion as being political pygmies. While I am not going to comment about my size and whether that is correct, I would say to the honourable member that the people in the Clarence Valley and in Page are certainly not political pygmies. The catchment area of the Clarence River falls within 100 kilometres of the New South Wales coastal strip. Our industries are fishing—we have a huge commercial fishing industry—and agriculture, and the economy is heavily underpinned by that commercial fishing. There is also forestry and tourism. It is all worth a lot to us. This debate is one of those debates that come up every now and then. Engineering wise, we can do anything—we can do marvels—but in terms of the environment and also the viability of the Clarence it would be a disaster. They can look all they like but—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. Peter Slipper)—Order! In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members’ constituency statements has expired.

A Clarence Valley Protest, 25 November 2007:

Clarence River now safe from water raiders 

The Howard Government was soundly defeated at the Australian federal election last night, with outgoing Prime Minister John Howard tipped to be ousted by Labor in the seat he has held since first entering parliament.
The Nationals look like going into Opposition, along with their coalition partner the Liberal Party, with a reduced number of regional and rural seats.
The NSW Northern Rivers now has two of its three elected federal representatives drawn from the Australian Labor Party which gave a firm commitment earlier this year not to dam and divert waters from the Clarence River catchment area.

To see how the local political battle played out go to North Coast Voices:
northcoastvoices.blogspot.com

Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - who is she?

Like a good many people in Australia I hadn’t really noticed this politician until the fall-out from the U.K. Brexit vote began.

Now as Prime Minister-elect until her swearing in sometime later today, Theresa May is being portrayed in sections of the mainstream media as another Iron Lady.

May is an Oxford graduate with a degree in geography, who worked for the Bank of England from 1985 until 1997 before holding a post at the Association for Payment Clearing Services and, also served as a councillor for the London Borough of Merton's Durnsford Ward from 1986 to 1994 [http://www.tmay.co.uk/biography].

She is alleged to identify as a One Nation Conservative.

Theresa May was elected MP for Maidenhead in May 1997, after which she held several shadow positions, including:

Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Employment 1999 to 2001

Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions 2001 to 2002

Shadow Secretary of State for the Family 2004 to 2005

Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport 2005

Shadow Leader of the House of Commons 2005 to 2009

May was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Women and Equalities 2010 to 2012 and was appointed Home Secretary in May 2010

She was re-elected on 7 May 2015 with 65.8% of the vote in her Maidenhead electorate.

SOME INSTANCES OF THERESA MAY’S VOTING RECORD

2010 voted to raise VAT (consumption tax).

12 October 2011 voted against creating more jobs for young people funded by bank bonuses.

2012 voted for a scheme where employees could sell their rights (among them the right to redundancy pay and the right to not be unfairly dismissed from their jobs) for shares in the company for which they worked.

June 2012 as Home Secretary found guilty of contempt of court.

18 December 2012 announced restrictive changes to the immigration rules applying to non-EEA nationals seeking to bring family members to the U.K.

2013 voted against acting on soaring energy bills and begins to campaign against the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights.

September 2013 voted against calling on the government to get more people into work, against introducing a compulsory jobs guarantee, against standing up for families in the private rental sector, against curbing payday lenders, and against banking reforms.

13 May 2014 voted not to ban estate agents from charging their fees to tenants instead of the person renting out the property.

April 2016 voted against implementing a series of proposals intended to reduce tax avoidance and evasion and against giving the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority duties to combat abusive tax avoidance arrangements.

[See: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/theresa-may-prime-minister-andrea-leadsom-policies-voting-record-human-rights-what-did-she-mean-a7130961.html & Wikipedia]

More details of May’s voting record can be found at: http://myparliament.info/Member/8/Voting.

* Photographs found at Google Images

Yamba Mega Port: nothing to see here, move along

This is the ‘back of the envelope’ mapping done by Australian Infrastructure Developments Pty Ltd for its proposed plan to construct an industrial port on 27.2 per cent of the entire Clarence River Estuary. Neat, tidy and full of unnaturally straight lines.

When asked about impacts on the environment the proposed industrialisation of the Port of Yamba would cause, the spokespeople for Australian Infrastructure Developments usually only have two things to say.

Firstly they point out that the initial environmental advice (which no-one outside the company appears to have sighted) gives the all clear – especially with regard to seagrass beds which supposedly do not exist in the channels to be dredged under this plan.

Secondly they say the Environmental Impact Statement which will have to be produced before they can move forward will be the company’s guideline for development.

In recent weeks there has been a third claim and that is that the company will cut another “entrance” on the north side of the river mouth so that Dirragun reef can lie undisturbed.

We are told there’s nothing for Lower Clarence communities to worry about at all.

But what do people actually living in the Clarence Estuary know about their river?

Well, firstly locals know that there are sea grass beds along the route the large cargo vessels will take back and forth from the four proposed terminals and, that the seagrass beds from the western end of Goodwood Island down the channel leading to the container terminal will in all likelihood be destroyed by the company’s deep channel dredging. 

They are also aware of the degree of mangrove loss likely to occur and, the saltmarsh that will be eliminated during construction along with roosting & feeding habitat of migratory birds protected under the internationally recognised Japan-Australia Migratory Bird Agreement (JAMBA), Australia-China Migratory Bird Agreement (CAMBA) and Republic of Korea–Australia Migratory Bird Agreement (ROKAMBA).

These three agreements oblige the governments concerned; to take appropriate measures to preserve and enhance the environment of listed migratory species, including the establishment of sanctuaries.

Living as they do in a richly biodiverse region, locals are well aware that the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act also provides for protection of migratory species as a matter of National Environmental Significance.

[Clarence River County Council, Clarence Estuary Management Plan, 2006]

Click on images to enlarge

In fact locals know full well that Des Euen and his backers would have to play merry hell with estuarine and intertidal areas of a wetlands system that eight years ago the NSW Department of Environment was recommending should be placed on the National Reserve System [Clarence Lowlands Wetland Conservation Assessment, December 2008].

Secondly, locals are aware that any genuine Environmental Impact Statement would point to all these risks and more.

Thirdly, there is the puzzling matter of the proposed new harbour entrance which has surfaced.

As anyone can see on the snapshot of part of the NSW Roads and Maritime Services coastal boating map (below), the north side of the harbour mouth is already listed as the safe route for shipping to enter the estuary – the approach leads are clearly marked.

Click on image to enlarge

So where is this new entrance to be cut? Some or all of the 1,280m north breakwater wall built between 1952-1968 under the Clarence Harbour Works Act would have to be removed – and therein lies the rub.

Prior to construction of the entrance works floods caused significant changes to the shape of the river entrance and the location of navigable channels (Soros Longworth & McKenzie 1978) and the partial or complete removal of one or both of these walls is likely to see sand build up in the river between Iluka and Hickey Island as it did in the mid-1800s and/or further inside the smooth water limit of the main channel. Maintenance dredging may have to be an annual event, rather than a probable bi-annual event to keep the proposed new port navigable.

I won’t even go near the loss of a measure of protection in heavy seas and storms for all boats seeking harbour – the evidence of our own eyes during this year’s east coast lows are enough to give most of the population of Yamba and Iluka a fair idea of what to expect.

The Liberal Party blame game begins in earnest

After seven days of blaming Labor, the Greens, GetUp!, Twitter, the unions and/or the stupidity of voters generally, finally someone in the Liberal Party of Australia begins to be somewhat truthful about reasons behind the electorate’s loss of confidence in the Abbott-Turnbull Government.

Although Michael Kroger's naming of just the current prime minister and treasurer in relation to the loss of  possibly 14 seats in the recent federal election indicates a failure to accept that this Coalition Government was toxic from the moment it was sworn in on 18 September 2013.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 July 2016:

Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger has sheeted the blame for the government's disappointing election result to the Prime Minister and his Treasurer, citing a lack of "economic leadership in the country" as one of the key reasons the party failed at the polls.

Mr Kroger also pointed to a period of policy confusion between last September and May when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison floated potential changes to the GST, the ability of the states to raise their own taxes, negative gearing, capital gains tax and superannuation.

Amid the period of policy confusion, Mr Turnbull took to Facebook to publicly deny a Fairfax Media report that he was killing Abbott government's Tax White Paper, and then five months later killed the Tax White Paper. 

"It was a period of absolute confusion for business and for voters," said one senior Victorian Liberal on Saturday.

Speaking on Melbourne gay and lesbian radio station Joy 94.9 on Saturday, Mr Kroger blamed the government's back-flipping on policies for its electoral failure.

"In that period when we were putting things on and off the table and the electorate formed the opinion, 'well if you fellas, if you people, don't know what [you] are doing, that's a problem'," he said.

Mr Kroger said backflips on the GST, in particular, hurt the government at the polls. "The electorate got a view that we didn't have a clear idea of where we wanted to take the country in terms of the economy." 

Asked by host David McCarthy if the party had "lost the campaign", Mr Kroger said "it is not the campaign that people should focus on, it's what happened on the period September to May".

In September last year Tony Abbott lost the prime ministership to Mr Turnbull. 

Mr Kroger said the polls showed the Liberal Party had 56 per cent of the vote "when Malcolm came in" and that had fallen to just 49 per cent by the time the election campaign started.

"So it is not the campaign, it is this period September to May, and unfortunately, in that period, we didn't take the opportunity to take control of the economic leadership in the country," Mr Kroger said.

"The Liberal Party's number one brand equity, the reason people vote for the Liberal Party, is because we have a long and distinguished history of being better economic managers than Labor, and that's what the public think."

Mr Kroger suggested the government, through its repeated policy backflips, had lost that trust of traditional Liberal voters.

"Political parties have to take responsibility for their own performance," he said. "The results slid dramatically from a 56-44 result, where we were 12 per cent in front to one where we are either 1 per cent behind or to level. Something happened, something dramatic happened, it wasn't an accident, something dramatic happened."

However for other Liberals it is business as usual in the political blame game......

ABC News, 11 July 2016:

Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne has lashed out at right-wing colleagues who anonymously brief the media, labelling them as "cowards".

Mr Pyne's criticism came as the ABC's election computer determined the Coalition had retained the central Queensland seat of Flynn, taking it to 75 seats, one short of forming a majority government.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's tight election win is expected to embolden conservative elements of the Coalition.

A conservative MP reportedly said right-wing backbenchers would now be able to dictate government policy.

"[The Prime Minister's] theory was to win and win comfortably, so the conservatives would all have to kneel at the altar of Malcolm Turnbull," the unnamed MP told News Corp.

"Well, I think someone else will be kneeling at the conservative altar now."

Mr Pyne said colleagues who snipe anonymously lacked "character" and "wherewithal".

"Whoever said that, if they did really say it, they should put their name to things like that," he told RN Breakfast.

"It sounds very brave and chest beating when you say it anonymously, but I'd love a person who says things like that to actually put their name to it.

"Because without their name it's just cowardice obviously ... cowardly statements in the press from anonymous sources who haven't got the wherewithal and the strength of character to put their names to those kinds of flowery statements."

Australia faces an era of mass extinctions

For decades international scientists have been warning Australia that this island continent would feel the worst environmental impacts of global warming first.

And for just as many decades (with the exception of the years between 2007 and 2013), as both governments and the governed, this country has been ignoring these warnings.

The end result is that Australia now lists 83 species of higher plants, 23 mammal species, 22 species of birds and at least 4 frogs species as having been driven into extinction since 1788. 

There are many hundreds more threatened species and ecological communities. See: C'wealth EPBC Act List of Threatened Fauna.

While we as a nation and people have not yet achieved 100 per cent extinction in certain flora and fauna groups, climate change has arrived to assist in turning this unique landmass and its coastal waters into a barren wasteland. 

This year alone has seen 93 per cent of The Great Barrier Reef experience coral bleaching and 700 kilometres of the Gulf of Carpentaria suffer widespread mangrove dieback with saltmash loss, while the Great Southern Reef lost 100 kms of its giant kelp forests in 2011 leading to the functional extinction of 370sq km of rocky cool-climate reefs, extending down the coast from Kalbarri, about 570km north of Perth, Western Australia. 

Now reputable institutions and senior scientists are giving us another urgent warning about extinctions to come if Australia doesn't stop acting as if the natural environment hasn't changed for the worse in the last 200 years.

SCIENTISTS’DECLARATION: ACCELERATING FOREST, WOODLAND AND GRASSLAND DESTRUCTION IN AUSTRALIA

Australia’s land clearing rate is once again among the highest in the world.

Remaining forests and woodlands are critical for much of our wildlife, for the health and productivity of our lands and waters, and for the character of our nation. Beginning in the 1990s, governments gradually increased protection of these remaining forests and woodlands.

However, those laws are now being wound back.

The State of Queensland has suffered the greatest loss of forests and woodlands. But while stronger laws by the mid-2000s achieved dramatic reductions of forest and woodland loss, recent weakening of laws reversed the trend. Loss of rtinture forest has more than trebled since 2009. In Victoria, home to four of Australia’s five most heavily cleared bioregions, land clearing controls were weakened in 2013, and in New South Wales, proposed biodiversity laws provide increased opportunities for habitat destruction.

Of the eleven world regions highlighted as global deforestation fronts, eastern Australia is the only one in a developed country. This problem threatens much of Australia’s extraordinary biodiversity and, if not redressed, will blight the environmental legacy we leave future generations.

Australia’s wildlife at risk

Already, Australia’s environment has suffered substantial damage from clearing of forests, woodlands and grasslands, including serious declines in woodland birds and reptiles.  Vast numbers of animals are killed by forest and woodland destruction. For example, between 1998 and 2005 an estimated 100 million native birds, reptiles and mammals were killed because of destruction of their habitat in NSW; in Queensland, the estimate was 100 million native animals dying each year between 1997 and 1999. As land clearing once again escalates, so too will these losses of wildlife.

The loss of habitat is among the greatest of threats to Australia’s unique threatened species, imperiling 60% of Australia’s more than 1,700 threatened species. Habitat protection is essential for preventing more species from becoming threatened in the future, adding to our burgeoning threatened species lists. Habitat removal eliminates the plants and animals that lived in it; increases risks to wildlife from introduced predators; impacts surface and groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and fragments habitat so that individuals are unable to move through the landscape. It also reduces the ability of species to move in response to climate change.

The societal costs of forest and woodland destruction

Forest and woodland destruction also causes long-term costs to farmers, governments and society. Removal of native vegetation:

·         Hastens erosion and reduces fertility of Australia’s ancient and fragile soils 

·         Increases the risk of soils becoming saline 

·         Exacerbates drought 

·         Reduces numbers of native pollinators and many wildlife species (such as woodland birds and insectivorous bats) that control agricultural pests 

·         Reduces shade for livestock from heat and wind.

Continued and increasing removal of forests, woodlands and grasslands increases the cost of restoring landscapes and reduces the chance of success. For example, the Australian Government has committed to plant 20 million trees by 2020. Yet many more than 20 million trees are cleared every year in Queensland alone.

Forest and woodland destruction increases the threat to some of Australia’s most iconic environmental assets. Coral health on The Great Barrier Reef has declined precipitously from the effects of high temperatures associated with climate change, poor water quality, and the flow-on impacts it triggers (such as crown-of-thorns outbreaks). Native vegetation removal from catchments that flow into the Great Barrier Reef liberates topsoil and contaminants, reducing water quality and threatening the health and resilience of the Great Barrier Reef. Governments have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this problem, with estimates of the full cost of restoring water quality as high as AUD$10 billion.

Native vegetation is a major carbon sink. Forest and woodland destruction is the fastest-growing contributor to Australia’s carbon emissions, as it transfers the carbon that was stored in the vegetation to the atmosphere. Hence, Australia’s increasing forest and woodland destruction threatens its ability to meet its commitments under four major international treaties: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Heritage Convention, the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Urgently-needed solutions

·         Develop and implement a strategy to end net loss of native vegetation, and restore over-cleared landscapes

·         Recognise all biodiversity, not just threatened species, in policy and legislation for the management of native vegetation

·         Establish clear, transparent and repeatable national reporting of clearing of native vegetation

·         Use rigorous biodiversity assessment methods for assessing clearing requests, accounting for all potential impacts, including cumulative and indirect impacts

·         Identify habitats that are of high conservation value for complete protection

·         For unavoidable losses of native vegetation, require robust and transparent offsets that meet the highest standards and improve biodiversity outcomes

Thirteen years ago, scientists from across the world expressed their grave concern about ongoing high rates of land forest and woodland destruction in the Australian State of Queensland. For a while, the warning was heeded, and the Queensland state government acted to bring land clearing to historically low levels.

The progress made then is now being undone. Forest and woodland destruction has resumed at increasingly high rates. This return of large-scale deforestation to Australia risks further irreversible environmental consequences of international significance.

Today, scientists from across the world (including those listed), in conjunction with scientific societies and the delegates of the Society for Conservation Biology (Oceania) Conference, call upon Australian governments and parliaments, especially those of Queensland and New South Wales, to take action. We call for the prevention of a return to the damaging past of high rates of woodland and forest destruction, in order to protect the unique biodiversity and marine environments of which Australia is sole custodian.

Signatories

Scientific Societies

·         The Society for Conservation Biology Oceania

·         The Ecological Society of Australia

·         The Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales

·         The Australian Wildlife Management Society

And 200 senior scientists from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Malaysia, Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom, and United States of America whose names can be found here.

8 July 2016

On the subject of professional journalism - using Leigh Sales as an example of the disconnect between citizens and reporters

Excerpt from Tim Dunlop writing at medium.com on the subject of professional journalism and the very real, deep disconnect between citizens and reporters, 8 July 2016:

These differences are not merely minor quibbles: they point to a fundamentally different understanding of what role journalists play in a democratic society.

And here is a key point: What they point to is not just a disconnect between the expectations of audience and journalists, but to the lack of power that audiences feel in regard to their elected representatives.

This is something that goes much wider than this exchange on Twitter and it is something that I don't think very many journalists really understand, so it is worth lingering on: audiences — citizens — feel powerless. They feel that events are outside their control and that they are forever being manipulated, lied to and pushed around by people with more power and influence than them, and that that includes journalists.

Outside of voting, and maybe the odd protest, citizens feel that they can have very little effect on the political process, and they therefore expect the media — who they see as powerful compared to themselves — to fulfill that role and exercise that power on their behalf. This is a view that is encouraged by journalists themselves when they describe their work as a profession, or boast about their "insider" connections, or when they describe themselves in terms of being a watchdog on power, a fourth estate in the national polity. It is doubly reinforced when voters see journalists and politicians on a first-name basis with each other (as happened in much of the television coverage of election night) or when they see them all attending the same parties.

This is the real disconnect at the heart of the criticism Sales copped on Twitter, that her audience understood her comments to indicate, not just a failure to act properly, but a failure to understand what her job even was. Their own powerlessness — they will never get a chance to question John Howard — turns into a frustration with the profession who they see as having the power to do something about their concerns, and failing to do it. To them, Sales' Tweet was saying, no, that's not our job.

The question that arises is obvious: who is right here? Well, in one sense, there isn't an answer. No-one is right or wrong, both sides just have different expectations about the nature of the job.

But that isn't really good enough. In fact, to leave it at that would be a very journalistic response. It would be to avoid the judgement that I am saying I think is at heart of the disconnect I am trying to describe.

So I don't think there is any doubt. Sales, and any journalist who agrees with what she said, is wrong. The audience is right. Not in any sort of the-customer-is-always-right sort of way, but because what is the point of a journalism that so fundamentally contradicts the expectations of the audience for which it is created?

What a significant section of the audience heard when they saw the original Tweet by Leigh Sales was: I am on his side, not on yours. I have more empathy with his point of view than I do with my audience's. In expressing admiration for John Howard's press conference, she was telling her audience that she approaches her entire job in a way that gives politicians the benefit of doubt and she was confirming what many in the audience feel in their bones, that journalists too often come across as siding with power rather than challenging it.

That mightn't be what she meant, but she and every other journalist needs to realise that that is how it was understood. And that that underlying approach goes to the heart of how they do their job.

It is all very well to say, well, this is just how we do it, but that would be the worst sort of professional hubris, tantamount to saying, we don't care what you, our audience think.

Leigh Sales has one of the most high-profile political jobs in the land, but in Tweeting what she did she was telling her audience that she is maintaining standards and practices that fundamentally contradict their expectations.

She and other journalists can, of course, simply dismiss all this as yet another example of the Twitter "echo chamber" and reassure themselves with declarations that Twitter is not representative of the wider audience, and that the views expressed there can be safely ignored.

But I think that would be a mistake.

Another perspective on the issue from Jim Parker…..

The Failed Estate, 7 July 2016:

There’s a lesson for Australian media here. Journalists need to stop seeing themselves as players. Their job is to represent the public to decision-makers, not the other way around.  We don’t want them to make forecasts; we want to them to demand answers to simple questions. We want them, beyond rare exceptions, to stop reporting self-serving anonymous scuttlebutt and to insist that people go on the record. We would prefer that instead of guessing and surmising and speculating, they just said “I really don’t know what will happen next. But here are the facts.”  And we would prefer their editors to stop asking them to issue “hot takes” on every little brain fart in Canberra and leave them to get their teeth into a story once in a while.

As Russell Marks writes in The Monthly, in perhaps the best analysis of the media’s failures this election, journalists can do us all a big favour by giving up the pretence that they are god-like electoral analysts or judges of spin. Stop the second-hand running commentary on how the management of issues will ‘play’ in the electorate, turn your bullshit detectors up to 10 and start testing the “perceptions” against the facts.

“While intelligent journalists are running themselves ragged acting as unglorified public relations assistants for politicians, they’re not testing statements and checking claims,” Marks writes. “News reportage becomes quite literally a matter of ‘Turnbull said A, while Shorten said B’, which is close to entirely useless without context. In the end, we are told, the voters get it right. But that expression of faith in the democratic process depends on faith in the fourth estate to present political realities so that voters can make sensible choices.”

Journalism is a tough job, even tougher when your resources are constantly being cut, the bosses are asking you to file constantly and social media is bagging you. But journalists can make it a lot easier for themselves by giving up the pretence that they are all-seeing political sages and focus instead on asking good questions, reporting facts, placing those facts in context and admitting that neither they, nor anyone, has any idea about what happens next.

In journalism at least, god is dead.

CSIRO implements Abbott-Turnbull Government's climate change denial agenda?

The latest CSIRO chief executive Dr. Larry Marshall (with the organisation since January 2015) clearly states in this podcast that the type of scientific investigation to be conducted in the future will be dictated by the federal government ("the customer") and implies that the Abbott-Turnbull Government is unbiased when it comes to climate change.......

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ginarushton/secret-tape-reveals-why-climate-change-is-off-the-csiros-age?utm_term=.tjdmAJnAG#.yr3Dy3Eyz

Both an Abbott and Turnbull appointee, Dr. Marshall was previously employed by a Silicon Valley-based private capital venture firm and, was sued in 2015; Shareholders in failed laser technology company Arasor claim Dr Marshall was a central figure in the company’s collapse, alleging he and other directors engaged in misleading and ­deceptiveconduct, as well as ­serious breaches of the Corporations and ASIC acts inrelation to the company’s financial reports and a disastrous $81 million float.

Meanwhile, as Marshall trashes the international reputation of the CSIRO, a newly resurgent One Nation is all set to strengthen the hand of  climate change denialists' in Coalition ranks.....

Independent Australia, 7 July 2016:

Hanson, who leads her own One Nation party, has won election to Australia’s Senate and, as counting continues, she could bring more candidates with her.

But as well as pushing xenophobia and division, the Queensland politician will also take a most extreme brand of climate science denial with her into the Senate.

As I wrote on The Guardian, Hanson’s party has been taking cues on climate science from one of the country’s most enthusiastic and relentless pushers of climate science denial, former coal miner Malcolm Roberts.

Roberts is the volunteer project leader of the Galileo Movement, a Queensland-based project launched in 2011 to fight laws to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions.

Roberts is also standing as a Senate candidate for One Nation and still has an outside chance of being elected, although Hanson is more enthusiastic about his chances than some analysts. The “wacky world view” of Roberts has since been reported by the Courier-Mail and the Sydney Morning Herald.

If you hang around the climate change issue for long enough, then at some point you’ll likely come across the extreme end of science denial and the conspiracy theories that Roberts represents.

It goes a bit like this. Humans are not causing climate change. Government-paid climate scientists and their agencies are corrupt. The United Nations is in league with international bankers to defraud the world. It’s all about control. 

That sort of stuff.

The Galileo Movement was founded in 2011 by Queensland retirees Case Smit and John Smeed.

A year earlier, the pair had organised a speaking tour for British climate science denialist Lord Christopher Monckton — a tour that attracted sponsorship from mining billionaire Gina Rinehart.

Roberts became the project manager. The group pulled together an “advisory council” that includes the likes of Fred Singer, Monckton, Pat Michaels and Richard Lindzen. 

The advisory group once included influential political blogger Andrew Bolt, until the News Ltd writer claimed Roberts had been spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories — a charge the Galileo Movement denied.

The climate policies of Hanson’s One Nation party have been quite literally cut and pasted from the Galileo Movement.

Those policies include calls for investigations into the “corruption of climate science” and the teaching of climate “scepticism” in schools.

After gaining enough votes to secure her own seat, Hanson told The Saturday Paper:

“This whole climate change is not based on empirical evidence and we are being hoodwinked. Climate change is not due to humans.”

Elsewhere, One Nation also reflects Roberts’ paranoia over United Nation’s policies to support environmentally sustainable development — known as Agenda 21. In the eyes of One Nation, Agenda 21 morphs into a sinister control program leaving “no person outside of its reach.”

Australia Infrastructure Development doesn't know its rivers

The Message from Iluka....

Clarence Valley Independent, June 2016:

Ed,

I read with some bewilderment that a “summit” had been held in Casino last week by AID (Australia Infrastructure Development) for the development of a mega port to accommodate massive ships in the Lower Clarence River.

Thought I’d Google here to see what is going on: www.aid-australia.com.au.

This proposal would completely destroy the lower Clarence.

It would appear to be a box ticking exercise as part of a formal application process to government.

Ticking the “community consultation” box.

Community consultation indeed!

This company has completely failed to consult the right communities.

Surely the business people and residents of Iluka, Yamba, Maclean, Grafton and all the smaller villages and islands along the river should have been the target audiences?

One would think the company’s “summit” might have been held in one of the fine clubs that are at Iluka, Yamba, or perhaps Maclean or Grafton, rather than Casino over 100kms away.

And hey, not even the right river! Casino is on the Richmond River. Go figure.

Perhaps AID just had some bad advice about matching the right town/s to the right river.

Or is this just being a tad sneaky? Trying to keep us all in the dark until the paperwork has been lodged.

Or worse still, trying to bluff us and the government that AID conducted extensive “community consultation”.

Either way, there will be huge opposition to this MEGA PORT proposal if it is ever considered.

Tony Belton, Iluka

The Message from Grafton....

The Daily Examiner, Letter to the Editor, 8 Jul 2016:

Ugly transformation

THE Yamba Port and Rail proposal first raised its ugly head three or four years ago, and now the promoters, Australian Infrastructure Developments, and Deakin Capital Pty Ltd, are ramping up the pressure, promoting their multi billion dollar, 36sqkm obscenity, which would completely transform the lower Clarence into an export port facility to rival Newcastle.

Gone would be the fishing, sugar and tourist industries that are the current economic drivers, replaced by heavy industry and its associated noise, air and water pollution, as huge freighters, tankers, and container ships, spewing their poisonous bilge sludge into the river as they go, replace the current pleasure craft and fishing vessels.

Gone would be the quiet relaxing retirement destination described in a series of Government development strategies over the past 20 years, as coastal villages of Iluka, and Harwood, along with communities on Palmers Island and elsewhere, are decimated to allow for the widening and dredging of the river estuary, to four times the current depth.

Gone would be the culturally significant Dirrangun Reef, sacred to the Yaegl people, as part of that massive dredging.

Gone would be the supposedly protected significant agricultural land on the delta, replaced by endless kilometres of wharfs and warehouses, and massive holding pens for the proposed live cattle export, their stench wafting over the urban centres of Yamba and Maclean.

And don't forget border security, with the proponents making provision for a naval base that, in the event of conflict, could see the area become an enemy target.

There are of course the obvious obstacles to such a scheme; the sacred reef, the unstable delta soils which will collapse into the river as a result of the dredging.

There are regular floods that will require mountains of fill to raise the entire project area above flood level, a barrier that is bound to divert those flood waters across Yamba, causing even worse flooding there.

Then there is the added problem of climate change and rising sea levels. Even a modest .75 of a metre within 80 years will see most of the land proposed for the industrial complex inundated at high tide, a situation that will worsen even further with the passage of time.

It's hard to take such a proposal seriously, but over the years we have heard reports that politicians, state and federal, various northern NSW councils, including some of our local councillors, meeting with the scheme's proponents. The Northern Star's report featuring a happy Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, with arms around the proponents smiling for the cameras, adds a worrying dimension to this abhorrent proposal.

It's time for our leaders to come clean, tell us exactly what has, and is still being discussed behind closed doors, and if this proposal is pie in the sky, then to inform the proponents of that fact, and tell them to back off and put their foreign investment into something useful, like renewable energy.

John Edwards, South Grafton

The Message from Yamba....