It's good news week

Over at Pollytics Possum Comitatus takes a squiz at population, age and two party preferred polling at the 2007 federal election:

"The patterns here are interesting – for seats that received a swing that was smaller in size than the average of 5.4% (which happened to be a majority of seats, as it was a chunk of seats with large swings that drove the average up), the percentage growth in the size of the 65 yr and older population in those seats was, on average close to the national average of the 65+ growth, which was 2.7%
However, in the seats where the swings to the ALP were greater than 5.4%, the percentage growth in the 65+ population increased above the national average as the ALP swing increased beyond its national average.
That black regression line tells the story – it tracks the national average in the growth of the 65+ age cohort until it hits the ALP swing average, than grows substantially as the ALP swing grows..
Further food for thought is that the people that moved into the 65+ demographic aren’t even baby boomers – it will only continue to get worse for the Coalition."

Has Julie Bishop reached her use-by date?

There has been much speculation in the media this week about whether Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Julie Bishop, is about to lose her position.
I'm just surprised that it has taken this long before talk surfaced.

After all, in the boys club atmosphere of the Liberal Party of Australia, her elevation to deputy leader was more a case of PR value in 'matching' Labor's move to place a woman as deputy prime minister.
Such PR always has a use-by date.

Ms. Bishop is no Hillary Clinton. She was never a serious contender for leader, so the jockeying for her second-in-command seat is perhaps beginning in earnest.

Northern Rivers message to Della Bosca - no cuts, no way!

In The Daily Examiner last Monday:

Health protest rallies, such as this one at Market Square in Grafton, were staged throughout the North Coast on the weekend.
On a steamy, hot Saturday afternoon people came out in their hundreds to deliver a clear and unequivocal message to the Rees Labor Government cuts to health services will not be tolerated.
Scores of people, most of whom would never have protested against anything in their lives, braved the conditions to get their message to government.
Grafton doctor Hugh Calvey, who stressed he was speaking as a private citizen and not as a contractor to the North Coast Area Health Service, said there was a clear reality if the Government proceeded with plans to strip 30 jobs from the Grafton Base Hospital and seven from Maclean and that would be a cut to services.
"The reality is that we would lose nursing staff and if that happens you have to shut something," he said.
"We need all the facilities we have got. Whatever they decide to shut will affect you.
"It is a very serious crisis. The immediate effect would be disastrous; the knock-on effect worse."
Rally organiser and Member for Clarence, Steve Cansdell, said the North Coast Area Health Service had been underfunded for a number of years.
"The funding (resource distribution) formula has been ignored for a number of years," he said.
He said the region had missed out on $70 million a year.
"You can understand why the health service is struggling," he said....

Speakers called on residents to write personal letters to the Premier Nathan Rees the premier@www.nsw.gov.au, Health Minister John Della Bosca office@smos.nsw.gov.au, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd via www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm and Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon Nicola.Roxon.MP@aph.gov.au.

Photos from The Daily Examiner and The Northern Star

NSW Parliament: when saying sorry isn't enough

When I opened yesterday's newspaper one of the first things I would normally have expected to see wouldn't have been a piece on Nats MP for Coffs Harbour Andrew Fraser shoving a female colleague in the NSW Parliament on Tuesday night.
Though I have to say there was little surprise in reading that policial argy bargy had again turned to biff.

That's the second time in three years that this NSW North Coast state parliamentarian has become angry and violent.
His physical attack on Joe Tripodi in October 2005 caused his second suspension from the House (being previously marched out by the Serjeant-at-Arms in May 2004) and now he's missed out on a third by a whisker because Parliament is nearing recess for 2008.

Kartrina Hodgkinson may have accept his personal apology just as Tripodi did.
However, saying sorry just doesn't have the same impact with the electorate if you're well on the way to becoming a serial offender.
Especially when Fraser admits that he had been drinking earlier in the night.

The NSW Opposition and the North Coast Nationals need to get their houses in order and Speaker Richard Torbay needs to exercise some control over that self-indulgent kindergarten in Macquarie Street.

Cooee! Calling all international bloggers

The Australian Government intends to impose mandatory national censorship on the Australian Internet.
It will decide what websites and blogs we may read or post comments to in the future.
The ISP-level filtering it intends to impose may slow the Internet so badly in this country that many online sites may no longer be able to reliably publish.

Please join us Down Under and petition the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy so that this draconian form of filtering is not introduced.

Remember your rural cousins on the New South Wales North Coast who already struggle to keep in touch across cyberspace via some of the slowest broadband and dial up systems in the developed world.

Support your fellow bloggers who may be removed from Australian view if they are on hosted sites like Blogger.com if just one of its many, many blogs is deemed to have content of which Senators Conroy and Fielding disapprove.

Go to GetUp! and sign the Save the Net petition here.

There are now 220 lobbyists on the Australian Government register

At least 32 new lobbyists went onto the Australian Government Lobbyists Register since 1 November 2008.
Edelman Public Relations Worldwide Pty Ltd registered on 17 November.

Edelman has a small but seemingly innocuous client list named for the register.
However, it must be remembered that the Edelman group also acts for GM seed giant Monsanto.

It has taken Edelman's over two months to decide to register after North Coast Voices mentioned its absence from this register.

I wonder how long it will take before it decides to fully list its client base in Australia?

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

The Brand Names Gazette, Est 1859

Maud up the Street has been having a word in my ear about a local rag she calls The Brand Names Gazette.
At first I couldn't bring to mind the newspaper she was griping about - then she mentioned the number of advertising inserts falling out of the middle of most issues and I realised she was talking about The Daily Examiner out of Grafton.

Maud like most of us has noticed that the number of 'advertorials' seem to have increased since Peter Chapman became editor - to the point where he is no longer game to label his comment as an editorial.
What really galls however, is the number of news articles which contain clumsy attempts at brand placement or are naked puff pieces on behalf of local real estate agents, developers and businesses.
Though I swear that the birds are worse than the blokes on this moan - Clarencegirl is almost apoplectic when she talks about those puff pieces, although she swears that three retired blokes in Yamba beat her hands down when it comes to loathing how the newspaper reports lately.

While he's busy wrecking an historic regional paper, Chappie is also failing to win friends and influence people in his new home town as this little gem below shows.
What do they say about pets and their owners?

Click on image to enlarge