A little Mandarin goes a long way

Photograph from Indymedia

ABC News reported this late last night.

A senior Australian diplomat will be allowed to visit Tibet tomorrow, as a part of a delegation granted access by the Chinese Government.
Australia had requested diplomatic access to Tibet to assess the situation in the region, after a recent Chinese Government crackdown on protesters.
After initially ignoring the request, the Chinese Government has agreed to allow one senior diplomat from Australia's Beijing Embassy to join other foreign diplomats on a trip to Tibet, accompanied by Chinese officials.
The speed of China's approval has surprised the Australian Government.
Before leaving Australia for an overseas trip today, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described the lack of access as a sticking point.
A spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says the Australian diplomat hopes to check on the welfare of four Australians known to be in Tibet.

Clearly an instance where Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith made better ground than might have been possible if John Howard and Alexander Downer were still at the helm.

The Rudd dog whistle exposed

Faced with the reality of office, everytime it comes up against an uncomfortable moment in the media cycle the Rudd Government has been drawing out of the hat that old trick of re-labelling some troublesome behaviour as significant social problems and then telling the world that these were out of control or at 'epidemic' levels.
Coming out from under 11 years of John Howard using this very same tactic, it was easy to spot the political dog whistles.
Teenagers out-of-control, bad parents, addicts.
This was confirmed mid-week when the COAG communique was posted at the Prime Minister of Australia website here.

"Binge Drinking. COAG today agreed on the importance of tackling alcohol misuse and binge drinking among young people. COAG agreed to ask the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy to report to COAG in December 2008 on options to reduce binge drinking including in relation to closing hours, responsible service of alcohol, reckless secondary supply and the alcohol content in ready to drink beverages. COAG also asked the Australia New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council to request Food Standards Australia New Zealand to consider mandatory health warnings on packaged alcohol.

Gambling. COAG agreed to continue to discuss issues related to problem gambling".

A perfect example of sound and fury signifying very little.
Not so easy is it fellas. Just because you are now teh Federal Government doesn't automatically mean you would be able to come up with instant easy-fix answers or allow you to pretend that this focus on binge drinking and gambling was anything other than a beat up.
I look forward to hearing you discover Laura Norder, border security and welfare 'cheats' next week.

Northern Rivers couple star in documentary

Yaegl woman and film-maker Pauline Clague celebrates her parents life in the documentary film When Colin Met Joyce.

Ms Clague told The Daily Examiner that "For us as film-makers it's important to give it back to our community," ---
"This film is a gift to the Clarence River. It identifies Yaegl country really well,"
Pauline said she was excited and nervous about showing the film at Yamba.
"As a writer and producer it's hard to bring it back to my own community, but Mum and Dad have seen it and they're happy with it," she said."

Details of the film here.

When Colin Met Joyce will also be shown on SBS at 7.30pm on 1 August 2008.

Opposition shadow spokesperson for water makes a Laughing Jackass of himself

It's been a long saga and like many other Aussies I have been crossing my fingers and hoping that this nation will finally come to grips with those huge environmental problems in the Murray-Darling river system which have been generations in the making.
However, Opposition spokesperson for environment and water Greg Hunt continues the Liberal's new tradition of counting kookaburras whenever it is brought face-to-face with another instance of cooperative endeavour between the Commonwealth and the States under the Rudd Labor Government.
Yesterday when a real breakthough was announced on management of water within the Murray-Darling Basin, I swear I heard Hunt on the teev repeating a version of his February line about the Murray-Darling being an "defining failure" of the Rudd Government.
Only this time he was calling it "an abiding failure".
After the complete, utter, total, abiding failure of the John Howard-Malcolm Turnbull attempt to bully the states into a collective formal agreement over this dying river system, all Hunt could do yesterday was accuse Rudd of a similar failure.
He has definitely taken to imitating the Laughing Jackass. A real Koo-koo-koo-waa-aah-aah-ah!
This new agreement may not be perfect, but at least it's a fair dinkum attempt.
You remember what fair dinkum means don't you, Greg?
Here is the Murray Darling Basin Reform Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Prime Minister and every Premier and State Minister with territory within the Murray-Darling Basin.

The 2008 Olympiad as a graphic

Telling graphic from Club Troppo's Missing Link.

Don't do it, Nicola!

This week The Age reported that the Federal Minister for Health Nicola Roxon was inviting Liberal opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott to have coffee and smooth things over between them.
Apparently Abbott has been complaining about a lack of bipartisanship in government decision making in areas covered by his Indigenous Affairs shadow portfolio.

That was on Monday. By the next day that ever changeable far-right media tart was saying something different according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

"Opposition indigenous affairs spokesman Tony Abbott has criticised plans for a bipartisan approach to indigenous issues, saying it could lead to "sanctimonious" and unsuccessful policies.

---Mr Abbott, writing in The Australian newspaper, said bipartisanship could make "wrong-headed" policies harder to change."

So don't do it, Nicola. Don't try to smooth things over with Abbott. The man will only see this as a sign of weakness and continue to harass rather than help, because he truly believes the Opposition is the real federal government.

Give Mac Bank the flick & bring back bonds says Motorists Action Group

This turned up in the Inbox yesterday.

It seems that the Motorists Action Group has joined those sending Morris Iemma a message about his planned privatisation of NSW electricity supplies.

 

Draft Media Release

 

Government Bonds Not Selling-off Assets To Fund New Infrastructure

 

The NSW Government has been asked to re-issue once popular government bonds to fund new road, rail and services infrastructure projects instead of selling-off publicly owned infrastructure such as the electricity generation network to pay for such works.

 

Richard Talbot, President of the Motorists Action Group (MAG) & long serving NRMA Director said: "A once off sell-off of publicly owned assets to pay for new infrastructure is not the way to go. Nor is handing over new infrastructure projects to merchant bankers who create debt ridden financial models to hoping they can on-sell these financial basket cases and exit the scene to make a short term profit.

 

"Good government is about providing long term, sustainable and user affordable solutions to this countries growing and changing needs. Government bonds were a traditional way previous generations have funded many road, rail, water & electricity projects. They were very popular with mums & dads investors as a safe way of saving for their retirement as they were government guaranteed. Importantly they were a relatively cheap way of the government gaining access to a large pool of funds without having to go through a middleman.

Government bonds were phased out of existence when the economic rationalists took the helm of successive state governments and conga lines of private sector lobbyists became regular fixtures at expensive political party fundraisers.

 

"We should learn from the mistakes of the past with a number of infrastructure funding failures such as the Cross City Tunnel, Lane Cove Tunnel and the Airport Rail Link. The new transport initiatives such as the North West Rail Link and M7 Extension (from Blacktown to Kariong) can all be funded by giving the public and superannuation funds to directly invest in the projects. Additionally other already built projects can be bought back through such an investment method.

 

"Selling-off the silver wear then handing it over to privateers to extract short term profits is not in the best interests of residents and taxpayers. Gaining the support of the people who'll be using the final product by giving mums & dads a chance to invest in their own infrastructure is in the best long term interests of both governments and consumers".

 

Richard Talbot has written to the NSW Government urging the re-introduction of State Government Bonds.