And the political point was?

I'm still pondering why Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull thought he needed to share a recent photograph of himself with the Twitterverse - one which had no political or social significance by itself?
Get a life, Mal!

Turnbull gets a serve concerning rights and obligations of Australian public service employees

Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull gets a serve he deserves via this media release from the Australian Public Service Commissioner, Lynelle Briggs:

Media release - Disclosure of information: rights and obligations of Australian Public Service employees

Issued 6 August 2009

'It is extraordinary and quite wrong that comments are being made claiming that it is reasonable for public servants to give Government information to Opposition parties. This isn't normal practice, nor is it usual practice, and it is not whistleblowing,' the Australian Public Service Commissioner, Ms Lynelle Briggs, said today.

'It is not commonplace for public servants to meet with Opposition parties to brief them before Senate Committee hearings, and it should never happen without the knowledge and consent of their agency head or Minister.'

'As public servants, we serve the Government, regardless of its political complexion. That is the simple constitutional reality. It is not part of our role as APS employees to serve the Opposition. By convention this means that public servants should have little contact with Opposition or other non-Government parties and requests for briefings are referred to the relevant Minister's office. This is a key consideration in the way in which we manage official information.'

Ms Briggs explained that 'the integrity of the Australian Public Service (APS) is fundamental to its good standing, its credibility and its legitimacy as an important national institution'.

'The APS is required by law to be apolitical, impartial and professional, and to be openly accountable for its actions. Public servants are also required by law to behave honestly and with integrity and to act with care and diligence in the course of their employment. They must comply with all Australian laws, not provide false or misleading information, and maintain appropriate confidentiality about their dealings with Ministers.'

Ms Briggs noted that these duties are set out in the Public Service Act which contains a strong ethical framework to guide the behaviour of APS employees in their working lives.

The APS Values impose a legally binding duty on all APS employees to serve the Government, to be responsive to its requirements and to be accountable for the way in which the public service helps it achieve its goals.

Explaining what this means in practical terms, Ms Briggs said:

'It means that, as public servants, we do not allow party politics to interfere with giving unbiased and objective advice to Government; it means we implement the decisions of Government irrespective of what our own views might be about them; it means we provide the same level of policy advice, implementation and professional support to every government, irrespective of the party in power.'

Ms Briggs said that public servants who leak information are often confused in the media with whistleblowers. 'A leaker is not a whistleblower.'

The Act makes clear that a whistleblower is a public servant who believes that they have uncovered actions which breach the Code of Conduct and who reports them to an authorised person within the public service, which includes the Public Service Commissioner. Whistleblowers maintain the integrity of the system by seeking to correct perceived wrongs through reporting to authorised authorities.

'Leaking involves the unlawful release of official information and is a breach of the Code of Conduct. Leaking, whatever the motive, destroys the trust between the Government and the public service and makes it harder to carry out our responsibilities. It undermines public confidence in the independence and non-partisan nature of the public service and is unacceptable practice for any public servant', she said.

The Australian Public Service Commission clarified this issue last month in a circular to all Australian Public Service agencies (2009/4: Disclosure of official information).

Contact Officer:
Patrick Palmer
Media Liaison and Group Manager
Corporate

Email: patrick.palmer@apsc.gov.au
Tel: 02 6202 3524

Australia's water future explained?

Graphic taken from An Atlas of the Global Water Cycle

Click on image to enlarge

Australian National University E Press has published an online version of An Atlas of the Global Water Cycle.

This atlas seeks to bring together all the IPCC AR4 Climate Models for comparison and states:

We used the above-noted data to compile maps for the globe and for Australia showing precipitation, evaporation and their difference (i.e., runoff) for the historic period (1970-1999) and for the future (2070-2099). Each set of maps is accompanied by tables that summarise the precipitation, evaporation and their difference, by continent, and then by latitude that is further split into land and ocean components. The tables also summarise the differences between simulations of historic (1970-1999) and future (2070-2099) precipitation, evaporation and their difference.

While these maps and graphs are of some academic interest, there is no certainty as to which model is likely to accurately model rainfall patterns for the next 100 years across the Australian continent.

So average laypersons using this atlas are unlikely to be any the wiser when it comes to deciding on the probable level of future water security in the area in which they live, work or run a business.

Oh, Tweety Pie! Wot haz u dun?

Apparently business bots are alive 'n well and watching Twitter for unfavourable mentions.

A timely warning from ComputerWorld:
"A Chicago-area woman is being sued for $US50,000 by her landlord over a critical Tweet, the Chicago Sun-Times reported today. The landlord is quoted as describing itself as a "sue first and ask questions later kind of an organization." The tweet in question appeared to go to fewer than 20 friends of the sender.
Listen people, you can get sued for Tweets the same as you can get sued over something you post to a Web site or blog. You may think you are only tweeting to friends, but unless you select "Protect My Tweets" on your Twitter "account" page your tweets are both public and searchable. Facebook isn't safe, either.
Companies are already using bots to mind their Twitter reputations, alerting them when their companies are mentioned in Twitter conversation. Thus, it was only a matter of time before the lawyers showed up."

And other litigation ruffling Twitter's feathers is also alive and annoying in the good ol' US of A.

Another report from Computer World:
TechRadium, a provider of mass notification and emergency alert systems to school districts, municipal governments, the U.S. military and other organizations, has filed a lawsuit charging Twitter with patent infringement........
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, seeks among other things unspecified damages, recovery of attorneys' fees and a permanent injunction against Twitter.

The patents Twitter is allegedly infringing are patent number 7,130,389, granted in October 2006 for a "digital notification and response system"; patent number 7,496,183, granted in February 2009 for a "method for providing digital notification"; and patent number 7,519,165, granted in April 2009 for a "method for providing digital notification and receiving responses."

This litigation will be interesting 'cause Twitter was started in March 2006 and TechRadium only had its first patent granted in October 2006.

Cartoon from Flickr
Snapshot from Twitter
Patent image from Free Patents Online

The plural possessive which sinks Malcolm Turnbull

Image from The Australian

In an effort to extricate himself from a political debacle of his own making Liberal Party Leader Malcolm Turnbull released a series of emails over the last few days.
What is very telling in the email above is the use by disgraced public servant Gordon Grech of the term "we".
It points to longer contact than Turnbull admits to when it comes to details of the OzCar project and a comfortable relationship between both parties to the correspondence.
Big Mal claims he was duped, but this "we" clearly shows that he was already in a Conspiracy of the Willing.

Neither Turnbull or Senator Abetz are seen as credible in their protestations of innocence since Grech was exposed as a probable long-term Coalition mole within Treasury.

Time for both to do their party a favour and resign?

Otherwise Utegate will be a monkey on the party's back right through to the next federal election.

Pic from dumville

Hallam speaks out against latest push to raid Clarence River catchment water

From A Clarence Valley Protest this week:

Jack Hallam comes out with a fighting "No" to new Clarence water diversion proposal

Former NSW Labor Minister for Agriculture & Fisheries and current Uki resident Jack Hallam (who started his career as a Riverina rice farmer) has come out strongly against the latest push to divert Clarence River catchment water, according to ABC News today:

But a former state agriculture and fisheries minister says the proposal would be a total disaster.Jack Hallam, who served on the front bench for the Wran Government, rang ABC Local Radio today after hearing of the latest campaign by the Murray Darling Association.Mr Hallam says floodwaters play a key role in maintaining one of the coast's most important fisheries."Flood is a good thing," Mr Hallam said."We are concerned about the damage of floods very often because of extremely bad planning 30 and 40 years ago, but if you don't have these events you don't have the fish spawn," he said."The fish, the prawn fishery, other major fisheries are totally dependent on these flood events," Mr Hallam said."It (the diversion plan) would be an absolute total disaster," he said.

Well said, Jack.

Photograph from the Tweed Shire Echo

Australian Communications Minister prepares to rig results of Internet filtering trial?

Hello? The Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and his department contracted with Enex TestLab to undertake a live pilot of national ISP-level Internet filtering and prepare a report to government.

Now this week IT News reports that:

Senator Conroy has committed to the public release of a report based on the data gleaned from the Federal Government's trial of ISP-level internet filtering.

"The Government has committed to publicly release the trial report prepared by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy on the results of the live pilot trial," a spokesman for the Communications Minister told iTnews.

The report will be prepared internally by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) and based on data collected by Enex TestLab during the trial it has conducted with nine Australian internet service providers (ISPs).

Does Senator Conroy really imagine that no-one will harbour dark suspicions that the first draft of the report Enex presented did not meet his expectations and fear he is now preparing to spin the data?