OMG Frank Sartor wants NSW's top job?

This week the spectre of Frank Sartor running New South Wales raised its ugly head once more.
Sartor has the hide to push his - ahem- expertise in planning law and reform as an example of why he has the right fibre for the top job.
Sartor as NSW Planning Minister was bad enough - Sartor as NSW Premier determined to create new planning policy is the stuff of nightmares.
On the NSW North Coast we still have his large development consents languishing for lack of investment money or buyer interest while the same development companies push even more grand plans under the nose of the current minister.
Francesco, you left behind an utter mess last time you held the reins.
The mind boggles at what you would do with a second bite at the apple and before we have to again endure your overbearing arrogance it might be wise if everyone on the coast permanently crosses the nearest state border!

At last we have a new epoch........

Even with our communal love of labelling things and delight in buzz words, this term appears to have been around for the last eight years but doesn't seem to have really taken off.
Perhaps because in creating a new 'age', 'period' or 'epoch' it implies that global warming is here for a long, long time and (although realistic) that is a very uncomfortable thought for many.

Robert Cahalan, climatologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center speaking to Science Daily in May 2008:

"Over recent decades, however, we have moved into a human-dominated climate that some have termed the Anthropocene. The major change in Earth's climate is now really dominated by human activity, which has never happened before."

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica online:

Anthropocene Epoch
geologic time unofficial interval of geologic time characterized by the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere resulting from the onset of organized human industrial activity. Although the modern period of Earth's history is conventionally defined as residing within the Holocene Epoch (11,800 years ago to the present), some scientists have argued that the Holocene terminated in the relatively recent past. They contend that Earth currently resides in a climatic interval during which humans have exerted a dominant influence over climate. The onset of the Anthropocene Epoch, so-named by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, is said to be coincident with the creation of the steam engine by Scottish inventor James Watt in 1784.

Stephen Conroy needs to remember that half-truths are as bad as outright lies

The Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Central Propaganda , Senator Stephen Conroy, has reached the stage where he will say almost anything to shepherd his mandatory national ISP-level Internet censorship into being.

It is hardly believable that he imagines that any sensible person believes that the Rudd Government will spend over $44 million dollars on such a limited filtering scheme (as set out in media quotes below) and the possible re-implementation of a government free filtering software offer.

Given the number of half truths Senator Conroy has already uttered concerning his Internet filtering plan, I would not trust him not to be secretly relying on regulatory provisions to widen his net, once legislation was passed, and implement the wider form of censorship many legitimately fear.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald on 2 June 2009:

Results of the trials are due to be published in July but, in response to a freedom of information request, the Government has admitted that "there are not success criteria as such"...............
The ACMA blacklist of prohibited URLs, which forms the basis of the Government's censorship policy, contained 977 web addresses as at April 30, according to ACMA.
The Government initially planned to censor the entire blacklist but, after widespread complaints that the list included a slew of legal R18+ and X18+ sites, the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, backtracked, saying he would only block the "refused classification" (RC) portion of the blacklist.
According to ACMA, 51 per cent of the blacklist, or 499 URLs, is RC content.
Based on the Government's budgeting of $44.5 million to implement the filtering scheme, this means the policy will cost $90,000 per URL.

Smart Company reports:

Conroy's office also confirmed that "unwanted content" - which the Government previously said it would block under the scheme - will now be blocked on a voluntary basis by internet service providers. The "unwanted content" refers to some material that is rated R18+ or X18+.
"ISPs can offer to filter additional content if they choose to, as an optional service for families," the spokesperson said.
"The Government is also considering optional ISP content filtering products for those families who wish to have such a service."
The decision comes after Conroy said last week in a Senate estimates hearing that the list of sites to be blocked may be submitted to an independent body for regular review, a decision welcomed by the ISP industry.
Conroy's office also confirmed that "unwanted content" - which the Government previously said it would block under the scheme - will now be blocked on a voluntary basis by internet service providers. The "unwanted content" refers to some material that is rated R18+ or X18+.
"ISPs can offer to filter additional content if they choose to, as an optional service for families," the spokesperson said.
"The Government is also considering optional ISP content filtering products for those families who wish to have such a service."
The decision comes after Conroy said last week in a Senate estimates hearing that the list of sites to be blocked may be submitted to an independent body for regular review, a decision welcomed by the ISP industry.

Some of Conroy's misleading statements entered into Hansard about his original plan:

1. On 10 November I released an expression of interest, seeking the participation of ISPs and mobile telephone operators in this live pilot. The pilot will specifically test filtering against the ACMA black list of prohibited internet content, which is mostly child pornography, as well as filtering of other unwanted content.

2. The list could contain 10,000 potentials. When you look around the world at Interpol, the FBI, Europol and other law enforcement agencies and you look at the size of the lists that they are actually using at the moment, 1,300 would not be sufficient to cover the URLs that we would have supplied to us with the purpose of blocking. So let me be clear about this: the pilot will seek to test network performance against a test list of approximately 10,000 sites.

Stop it or they'll go blind!

Now I've heard everything! The Rudd Government is reducing the Medicare rebate for cataract surgery from $831.60 to $409.60, according to the Minister for Aging and Member for Richmond Justine Elliott.

There are already quite a few worrying out-of-pocket expenses associated with eye surgery for those pensioners without savings or investments (as well as waiting lists which can still see a older person wait up to a year for publicly-funded eye surgery) and now the federal government is about to put such surgery almost out of reach for people living below the poverty line.

Right now if you have the money up front or private health insurance a cataract operation can usually be performed within 6 to 8 weeks on the NSW North Coast (by the same specialists and hospitals which make the poor wait and wait for exactly the same medical procedure), so the health system is already biased against those poor sods with no money in the bank.

Bluddy Kevin Rudd and his merry troop have just made this unfair state of affairs even worse and their piddling little national grant for rural & regional areas will go nowhere.
This counter-productive cost cutting stupidity ranks alongside the Clayton's public dental system - obviously those in power won't be happy until pensioners and those on low incomes are blind as well as toothless!

Federal Labor and Health Minister Roxon crossing a bridge too far

The Federal Minister for Health Nicola Roxon has announced a national health data base which can be accessed by hospitals, doctors, paramedics, dentists and chemists - every Australian will be assigned an individual identifying number attached to their digital medical history.
Eventually a special hi-tech Medicare card will hold an access chip/key.

Access to this data base will only allegedly be allowed with the freely-given permission of the person seeking medical treatment, dental work or a dispensed prescription.

I use the word allegedly because the voluntary nature of this data base access plan will not last more than a day or two after legislation is effected.

Public hospitals and medical practices will in short order insist that a person cannot be seen unless permission is given to access digital medical records and, as the Minister has little or no control over state area health service policy practices she will be rendered impotent.

Indeed Ms. Roxon statements to the media this week indicate that she will enable any bar an individual may have in place to be overriden at will by hospitals and ambulance services.

This scheme is in effect information acquisition and dissemination by stealth, as Ms. Roxon would be well aware that she is unable to contain the genie the Rudd Government is determined to let out of the bottle.
In fact her statement about the voluntary nature of this new health information scheme is almost a bare-faced lie.

So many Labor election promises made in the lead-up to the November 2007 election has either been inadequately legislated, so poorly funded that they are only window dressing, resulted in both new and amended policies either running on the spot or being studious delayed - now it seeks to implement a policy before the next federal election which will eventually see every medical Tom, Dick and Harry trawling though personal health information.

What is it with Labor? Don't they want a second term in federal government? Is it trying to alienate its 2007 support base because the Opposition benches are beginning to look nostalgically oh, so comfortable?

eHealth? eDisaster.

Amnesty International Media Award 2009 winners deserve a mention

2009 Amnesty Media Award Winners

GABY RADO MEMORIAL AWARD
Aleem Maqbool, BBC News

INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION & RADIO
World's Untold Stories: The Forgotten People, CNN, Dan Rivers and Mary Rogers

NATIONS & REGIONS
The Fight for Justice, The Herald Magazine by Lucy Adams

NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS
MI5 and the Torture Chambers of Pakistan, The Guardian by Ian Cobain

NEW MEDIA
Kenya: The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, Wikileaks, Julian Assange

PERIODICALS - CONSUMER MAGAZINES
The 'No Place for Children' campaign, New Statesman, Sir Al Aynsley Green, and Gillian Slovo

PERIODICALS - NEWSPAPER SUPPLEMENTS
Why do the Italians Hate Us? The Observer Magazine, Dan McDougall and Robin Hammond

PHOTOJOURNALISM
No One Much Cares, Newsweek, Eugene Richards

RADIO
Forgotten: The Central African Republic, BBC Radio 4 - Today Programme, Edward Main, Ceri Thomas, Mike Thomson

TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY & DOCUDRAMA
Dispatches: Saving Africa's Witch Children, Channel 4 / Red Rebel Films / Southern Star Factual, Mags Gavan, Joost Van der Valk, Alice Keens-Soper, Paul Woolwich

TELEVISION NEWS
Kiwanja Massacre: Congo, Channel 4 News / ITN, Ben De Pear, Jonathan Miller, Stuart Webb and Robert Chamwami

SPECIAL AWARD
This year's Special Award for Journalism Under Threat was awarded to Eynulla Fәtullayev, from Azerbaijan. Find out more.

Media Watch gets half an explanation from The Northern Star

ABC.NET.AU

Last week Media Watch highlighted "churnalism" in regional media and pointed to an article published in Lismore's The Northern Star on 25th May 2009.
In its right of reply The Northern Star pleaded newness to the position of the Sunday Chief of Staff as the main cause of the no~no of publishing - a supplied press release passed off as reporting.
Now this CoS may be 'new' to his current position, but he has been a Northern Star journalist at least since 2006 (before that editor of the Rivertown Times since about 2003) and definitely would have known the paper's basic editorial policy.
I doubt whether Media Watch would have gone as softly on the newspaper if it had known that it was discussing "churnalism" approved by a seasoned journalist and editor and not by an implied young, wet-behind-the-ears CoS.