G'arn! Saffin asks a Dorothy Dixer on importing bananas

The Labor MP for Page Janelle Saffin rose to her feet last Tuesday for one of those discreditable parliamentary traditions - the Dorothy Dixer at Question Time .
"My question is directed to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Will the minister please update the House on the domestic and international response to the policy determination regarding the importation of bananas from the Philippines?"
This was wasted effort on the part of an MP who usually does her best for the Northern Rivers region.
Let's hope that in the future she will refrain from this nonsense and only rise to from her seat with legitimate questions.
As for me, despite Ms. Saffin's attempt to support her minister, I won't be buying imported bananas no matter how cheap or numerous they get.

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme 2009 bills before the Australian Parliament [transcripts]

Not since someone convinced the late Billy McMahon that trying to sound like a quavering, falsetto Winston Churchill was a good idea has a politician sounded as false as Kevin Rudd did when uttering his political sh#tstorm comment.

Or so I thought until I heard the Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, on ABC TV Four Corners on Monday night trying to explain the government position on a national carbon emissions trading scheme or as government likes it to be known, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

With remarkable gravitas this politician is wrecking not only the Murray-Darling Basin with her lack of political steel, but is now condemning Australia to repeat the mistakes of others by giving away too many free carbon credits and setting emissions caps too low.

And for what? Why to ensure the comfortable profitability of the big national and multinational companies operating across Australia.

This is what a Senate estimates committee meeting was told on 23 February 2009:
Mr Comley -Senator Milne, the issue here is actually that the ET policy has explicitly two objectives, which is laid out in the policy position, and that is to reduce the likelihood of carbon leakage but also to provide transitional support to these industries. If you only had one of those objectives and it was purely a carbon leakage objective, then, other things being equal, you would have less generous assistance than is provided under the policy. But just to illustrate an example of why that last limb is there, you could have a situation of industry of someone who is undertaking quite a lot of capital investment, they then are faced with a carbon price which they may not have anticipated-some may have; some may not have had-and it may be that they do not change location at all. When you look at studies of carbon leakage all you observe is if that firm moves, but there could potentially be, with no assistance, a significant change in profitability. So the policy is a balance of the pure carbon leakage argument with a transitional argument, which is not uncommon to policies such as tariff reforms where you do not change them overnight. So it is the balance of those two that led into the ET policy.......

Mr Comley-I think the argument that industry is only raising the carbon leakage argument is not the experience I have had in consultations. It is both the carbon leakage and the question of the level of profitability for particular firms.

The Rudd Government through the Department of Climate Change has invited comment on its legislation. If you don't want to see the major polluters laughing all the way to the bank as they do the least emissions reduction possible while increasing price to the consumer at every opportunity, this may be your last chance.

• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 (878 KB)
• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 (1.28 MB)
• Commentary (1.62 MB)

• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 (196 KB)
• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 (640 KB)
• Commentary (552 KB)

• The draft Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority Bill 2009 (83.6 KB)
• The draft Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority Bill 2009 (283 KB)
• Commentary (213 KB)

• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges – General) Bill 2009 (23.8 KB)
• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges – General) Bill 2009 (118 KB)
• Commentary (73 KB)

• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges – Excise) Bill 2009 (23.4 KB)
• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges – Excise) Bill 2009 (118 KB)
• Commentary (72.5 KB)

• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges – Customs) Bill 2009 (23.4 KB)
• The draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges – Customs) Bill 2009 (118 KB)
• Commentary (74.5 KB)

How to make a submission here.

So controlling of your right to make a submission is the Prime Minister and Ms. Wong that they have supplied a 2-page template to be used in making a submission.

International Monetary Fund rains on the Coaltion's parade and other Turnbull woes

Peter Martin said it first and said it best in his post Stop laughing:

This is serious
So says the IMF, consigning the Australian Opposition's proposed recovery program to the dustbin of "neat idea, but..."
Australia's Treasury isn't keen on some of the Opposition's claims either

The International Monetary Fund has given the Australian Government the green light to spend even more to fight recession, taking a swipe at the alternative of tax cuts proposed by the Opposition, declaring its effects "not so dramatic".

In a detailed analysis released in Washington overnight IMF staff find that direct government investment of the kind included in the Rudd government's stimulus packages can boost the economy by as much as $3 for every $1 spent.

By contrast income tax cuts of the kind proposed by the Opposition would boost the economy by just 30 cents for each $1 spent.

Which didn't say much for Malcolm Turnbull's chances of having the Australian electorate take his economic policies seriously either.

Then Crikey's Bernard Keene came forth with a dissection of Turnbull's interview style which exposed a little more political Archilles heel:

Turnbull does a lot of nuance. His economic message on the stimulus packages -- support for the first package then criticising its impact, opposition to the second package but support for a smaller package of tax cuts and infrastructure investment in the event the Senate blocked it -- has more nuance than, well, Nuanced Jack McNuance, winner of this year's Mr Nuance competition.

Malcolm Turnbull and his alternative government hardly fared any better in the mainstream media, with his latest essay in The Weekend Australian pointing to the Prime Minister's so-called hypocrisy and snidely congratulating Rudd and Rein on their wealth (while conveniently ignoring his own wealth generated from the same economic free-for-all climate) thudding dully onto the ground without an iota of critical acclaim and little impact in the latest Newspoll which sees him trailing Kevin Rudd by a massive 40 points as preferred prime minister.

To make matters worse for the Member for Wentworth, former federal treasurer Peter Costello is also reported to have a two to one advantage over him when it comes to who Australians might prefer as prime minister and:

On the question of who would make the better Liberal leader, Mr Costello heads Mr Turnbull by 45 to 38 per cent, according to the latest Newspoll survey conducted exclusively for The Australian last weekend.

The Piping Shrike points to another facet of the Rudd-Turnbull contest for hearts and minds:

The main problem with Turnbull’s response is that while it is largely correct on the past, it has nothing to say about what needs to be done now.

But this still doesn't fully explain why is he faring so badly when his principal opponent is a prime minister (with all the charisma of a box of Wheet Bix) saddled with the global financial crisis and half-baked climate change policy?

Is it only the fact that the coalition Turnbull fronts is still in disarray after its morale shaking electoral defeat in 2007?
Or is it the fact that Malcolm always comes across as a man who plots his policy positions as the after dinner port is past around and is only playing at being a politician while he waits for the next 'great opportunity' to come along?

Monsanto hits the digit at 33,333

Last Wednesday Monsanto Inc out of St. Louis became the 33,333rd visitor to the North Coast Voices blog.

To celebrate here is the list of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) being trialled across Australia by the major biotech companies or the CSIRO:

Canola
Indian mustard
Grapevines
Cotton
Maize
Papaya
Pineapple
Wheat
Barley
Sugarcane
Perennial Ryegrass
Tall Fescue
White Clover
Torenia.

The list is getting longer, isn't it?
You can do a local government area search here to see if GMOs have reached your backyard yet.

Northern Rivers artist made 2009 Archibald Prize finals

Angus McDonald, Beyond, portrait of Zoe MacDonnell, 2009

Lennox Head artist Angus McDonald made the short-list for the Archibald Prize this year, which was eventually won by Guy Maestri for his portrait of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu

Angus has had a busy year so far as he was also short-listed for the 2009 Monalto Sculpture Prize.

The Libs 2009: not sleeping - dreaming

Federal Coalition shadow minister for indigenous affairs Tony Mad Monk Abbott denies that he fell asleep and missed five parliamentary divisions because he had drunk too much at dinner on 12 February 2009.
I believe him. I'm sure he was just daydreaming of the return of 'King' Howard.
But just in case, here's a small reminder of a few things which didn't shake the world during that unofficial nap time:
Fighting in south Dafur was reported to have displaced 30,000
The ICC announced that no arrest warrant had been issued yet for President Al Bashir of Sudan
The International Criminal Court in The Hague was reported to be examining a demand by the Palestinian Authority to investigate possible war crimes during Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip
Shoulder pads made a fashion comeback in the U.K. and
The UK Tele ran a photo of Michelle Obama kissing Abraham Lincoln.
Oh, and of course, the Australian Parliament went about the important business of that day which Abbott was elected to participate in.

Pic from www.nma.gov.au

NSW Attorney-General Hatzistergos blunders into a political farce

While everyone is supposedly thundering for the convicted individual's blood, the NSW Attorney-General is managing to make himself a small target over his announcement of the suppression order that wasn't.

A resident on the NSW North Coast was found guilty of sexual assault on a minor and, was give a two-year suspended sentence with a two-year good behaviour bond.
In line with the judge's directions any details which would identify the victim were suppressed and could not be reported in the media.

Then the Attorney-General John Hatzistergos inserted himself into the debate about this sentencing.
On 4 March 2009 he stated in a radio interview with ABC North Coast Mornings (the politically convenient line) that the entire judgment was suppressed and so he couldn't discuss the judge's reasons for the sentence.
At least one member of his staff contacted a local Northern Rivers newspaper saying that any mention of the defendant in the court case was suppressed and it was in breach of an order.

Both the Attorney-General and his staffer were of course wrong.

So what was the outcome of the Attorney-General's attempt to distance himself from the somewhat heated debate over Judge Chris Geraghty's swan song?

Why on 6 March The Sydney Morning Herald's Richard Ackland, in a sincere effort to explain the sentence, released details of the assault which were otherwise unpublished in the area in which the victim lives.
The same day Andrew Bolt in his The Daily Telegraph blog allowed himself another free kick for his boring colour bias.
Then on 7 March The Daily Examiner gave the most left-handed compliment to the defendant's barrister, David Imlah, by implying that possibly guilty people would be lining up for his services.

Well done, Mr. Hatzistergos - you turned a tragic set of circumstances into political farce and probably made the situation worse for one little child.