Iluka jetty and pontoon: The Glass House revisited?

Almost a year after Clarence Valley Council deferred any decision concerning the proposal to site a new jetty and pontoon on the Iluka foreshore until a formal community consultation was completed; a number of residents in this small but vibrant North Coast community at the mouth of the Clarence River are beginning to mutter about a lack of transparency on the part of both councillors and staff and, the growing smell of an all-mates-together attempt to give the owners of a local waterside hotel cheap year-round access for those weekend and holiday boaties who wish to front the hotel bar without having to worry about tides.

The original quote obtained for a jetty and pontoon (at concept stage and dependent on additional siting costs) was $35,000, which when real sites were actually canvassed quickly blew out to an estimated $100,000 - $135,000.

The first $100,000 for this 36 metre long jetty (plus 10 metre by 3 metre floating pontoon and 11 metre gangway) is apparently to be sourced from a $50,000 State Government Waterways grant and a further $50,000 private donation from the owners of the hotel.
Although given the current economic climate, one wonders just how secure these offers really are.

According to Clarence Valley Council documents, in April 2009 it gave development consent for the jetty and pontoon project. A project which by that stage was firmly constrained by the wishes of the private donor.

Since then the Iluka community has been informed that Council will be obliged to find an additional unbudgeted $65,000 (plus unspecified costs for electricity/lighting) in view of the detailed structural plans now at hand.

At an extraordinary meeting on 29 June this year councillors voted to slip this $65,000 into an already strained 2009/10 budget, having previously outlaid $10,200 on pre-construction work to date.

This makes Clarence Valley residents and ratepayers (through Council and the Clarence Coast Reserve Trust) significant financial contributors to the proposed limited-access recreational facility and, it is highly likely that if the jetty goes ahead costs will have risen further by the time construction commences.
At least one resident is raising concerns that this jetty is a mini-Glass House in the making.

What is also worrying residents is the fact that neither councillors nor council staff seem to have considered ongoing maintenance costs for this timber-piled jetty or factored in the possibility that a predicted increasing frequency for severe adverse weather events may also add to these costs.

An additional concern is that this jetty and pontoon project is being progressed ahead of any completed Iluka Bay foreshore plan of management and, at present this plan's projected objectives are being informally massaged to fit the jetty project in argument put to councillors.

Quite frankly, local government has handled this matter badly from start to finish, having been initially mesmerised by the offer of a private donation and never really taking the time to stand back and consider any legitimate Iluka community priority list before tallyho-ing after the hotelier's dream.

For those locals who like to keep watch, a brief online history of the jetty and pontoon proposal:

Clarence Valley Council Civil & Corporate Committee Meeting,11 November 2008
Clarence Valley Council Business Paper, 9 December 2008
Clarence Valley Council media release, 6 January 2009
Clarence Valley Council Extraordinary Meeting, 29 June 2009
Clarence Valley Council Business Paper for 18 August 2009
Attachment to August 2009 Business Paper

Swell of support for jetty upgrade
Council calamity over Iluka jetty
New jetty will take 28 small boats
Iluka jetty price tag goes up

Photograph from G'day Pubs: Existing private jetty

Memo to Dear Rupert and the Mainstream Media

These past few months I've been reading a lot of online chatter about how mainstream media needs to recoup the costs of providing news, make a profit for shareholders and stop advertising revenue haemorrhaging.

I've also been reading items on the expense associated with researching in-depth news stories and how unfair it is that bloggers apparently get a free ride on the backs of MSM journalists.

Now I can't answer for every other blogger or online news website visitor, but I think that Rupert Murdoch and other print media owners are allowing their financial problems to overly colour commercial responses to emerging trends in how ordinary people access/receive their daily news.

I suspect that part of the reason that traditional media owners are so blinkered is that their own editors and journalists are not being entirely honest with them about how they come by some of the facts which end up in published articles (and it's not just that some journos surf the blogs looking for information or ideas for a story).

The reality is that not all bloggers or online news readers simply take from the MSM without giving back.

Whenever I come across something of significant political, environmental or social interest and, after I have gathered together a parcel of research on same, I often pass it on to journalists at no cost and for no glory.

I do this because I feel the material is important and traditional media still has a readership reach that I, as a small blogger among many millions world-wide, cannot hope to emulate.

It is not unknown for my research to form the body of a Page One or Page Three article in local and sometimes even national newspapers.

I rather suspect that I am not unusual in doing this and, I also expect that Australian bloggers like myself will no longer feel inclined to pass on what has often been many hours of research (including emails/long distance phone calls to confirm documents) if the likes of News Ltd or Fairfax decide that MSM news will no longer be free to view online.

So Mr. Murdoch, be prepared for the possibility of an inexplicable spike in costs associated with news gathering and 'scoops' if you go ahead with user-pays news online. Bloggers may just decide that giving you something for nothing is no longer a good idea.

At least Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters realises that matters are not as black and white as Murdoch suggests when he writes Why I believe in the link economy.

Thoughts of the Global Financial Crisis & Climate Change not bringing you down? Then try NASA's Asteroid Watch

Pic from Astronomy 1307

Thoughts of the Global Financial Crisis & Climate Change not bringing you down?
Feeling rather guilty because there are still some days when you wake up smiling?
The answer is a mouse click away!
The US Government space agency NASA has gone all Flash Gordon over at Asteroid Watch:
"Nuclear explosions and spacecraft impacts are two of the more relatively mature options for deflecting Earth-threatening objects and they have been studied in some detail (for example, see Ref. 1). Another option has been suggested for the small subset of asteroids that might also pass close to the Earth a few years prior to the predicted Earth impact. For these unique cases, the pre-impact close encounter affects the asteroid's motion so strongly that a relatively tiny change in its velocity prior to the close approach will be multiplied several fold during the flyby, thus allowing the asteroid to miss the Earth on the next pass. In these relatively infrequent cases, even the very modest gravitational attraction between the asteroid and a nearby "micro-thrusting" spacecraft (nicknamed a "gravity tractor") could provide enough of a change in the asteroid's velocity that an Earth collision could be avoided (see Ref. 2). Successful mitigation requires that a threatening asteroid must be discovered and physically characterized soon enough to allow the appropriate response; the current NASA Near-Earth Object Observations program is operated with this in mind. But, since the number of near-Earth asteroids increases as their sizes decrease, we are most likely to be hit by the relatively small objects that are most difficult to find ahead of time. As a result, consideration must also be given to the notification and evacuation of those regions on Earth that would be affected by the imminent collision of a small, recently-discovered impactor. However, if the object could be found far enough ahead of time and our space technology used to deflect it from the Earth threatening trajectory, it would be a tremendous demonstration of our space-faring capabilities!"

Yup! Always knew that a hot rock banging on the noggin was a

B-I-G threat to my peace of mind 'n' life and limb.

Don't believe in global warming? Then you may belong to a mere 2.5% of the approximately 17.7 million Australians over fourteen years of age

Roy Morgan Research asked the question; "There's proposed legislation before Federal Parliament for a carbon emissions trading scheme to be introduced in Australia. Do you approve or disapprove of this legislation?" according to a special Morgan Poll telephone survey conducted last Wednesday and Thursday nights (August 5/6, 2009).

Six hundred and eighty-seven people over 14 years of age responded, which is a relatively low number for statistical accuracy.

Some of the poll findings:

A clear majority of Australians (55%) approve of the Government's proposed carbon emissions trading scheme.......

Special analysis by age group shows 66% of 14-17 year olds in favour of the legislation compared to 55% of 18-24 year os, 62% of 25-34 year olds, 61% of 35-49 year olds and just 45% of Australians 50+......

Those who disapproved of the legislation were then asked "Why especially do you say that?" The most prominent reasons Australians disapproved of the legislation were: 'Australia should wait for the World to act' (3%), 'Costs too much' (3%), 'Doesn't stop pollution/ carbon emissions' (3%), 'Don't believe in Global Warming' (2.5%), and 'Carbon emissions are not responsible for Global Warming' (2%). Of all Australians, 2.5% disapprove of the legislation because it 'Doesn't go far enough.'

Roy Morgan Research Finding No. 4405

Australian population clock and projections

Australia's Future Tax System Review Panel releases paper on Road and Transport sector tax reform

Commercialisation of the Australian road system will not be as simple as commercialising former public utilities such as power generation. Much more attention needs to be directed at practical issues of implementing such arrangements. [from Summary 6, A Conceptual Framework for the Reform of Taxes Related to Roads and Transport, June 2009]

On the NSW North Coast we have limited access to air, sea or rail freight and so are dependant on state and national road systems being used to supply us with many of life's necessities.

The purchase price of these necessities are frequently higher in regional areas because of added transport costs.

This same limited transportation also means that more of our personal and business travel is conducted on the east coast road network and fuel costs possibly impact more heavily on rural and regional households than they do on metropolitan households.

When Australia's Future Tax System Review Panel released a paper on 13 August 2009 titled A Conceptual Framework for the Reform of Taxes Related to Roads and Transport it is of direct interest to our local communities:

This report concentrates on road transport and the supply of road services. Section 1 provides background to the general tax‐transfer policy problems that arise in relation to road transport; Section 2 discusses partial and general equilibrium methodology issues; Section 3 discusses excises on fuels and other vehicle‐related charges; Section 4 discusses congestion and pollution‐related transport externalities; Section 5 singles out traffic accident and insurance externalities; Section 6 deals with road capital and maintenance issues; Section 7 considers general equilibrium and double dividend issues; Section 8 briefly considers rail, taxi, air services and shipping issues. Section 9 synthesises the main policy issues raised.

PDF download here.

Is nature having the last laugh on Monsanto & Co?

Photograph of Palmer Pigweed from Syngenta blog

This U.S. report from Memphis Online last Sunday:

All across the Mid-South, hundreds of thousands of acres of cotton and soybean fields have been infested with a rapacious, fast-growing weed that's become resistant to the main herbicide on which farmers have relied for more than a decade.

Palmer pigweed, often called "careless weed" by field hands, often is surviving and even thriving despite treatments with the chemical glyphosate -- most commonly sold under the trade name Roundup.

In Arkansas alone, the weed has invaded some 750,000 acres of crops, including half the 250,000 acres of cotton. In Tennessee, nearly 500,000 acres have some degree of infestation, with the counties bordering the Mississippi River hardest hit.

The infestation is cutting farmers' cotton yields by up to one-third and in some cases doubling or tripling their weed-control costs.

The invasive noxious weed Amaranthus palmeri which is doing all that damage in America is also found in Australia and has other cousins here, including the noxious weed Amaranthus blitoides (prostrate pigweed).

Pigweed is not the only pest which has become resistant to glycines and the world-wide list includes a number of other pasture or crop weed species which are found in this country.

The biotechnology industry's boast used to be that the glycine derivative Glyphosate or RoundUp was effective in suppressing 76 out of 78 of the world's worst cropping weeds. This boast appears to be a pale shadow of its former self.

Which leads to the inevitable question - just how long will Australian farmers have before the touted 'benefits' of GM crops disappear into thin air?

Reckless spending! Yada, yada, yada. Early election trigger! Yada, yada, yada.....

Reckless spending! Yada, yada, yada. Early election trigger! Yada, yada, yada. Higher taxes! Higher interest rates! Yada, yada, yada.........
Somehow I don't think Malcom Turnbull's Friday message will resonate over the weekend in the Northern Rivers.
Even The Australian poll question "Do you think Kevin Rudd will use the emissions trading scheme legislation as a trigger for an early election?" isn't getting much attention this morning as we wake to another glorious day.

Snapshots from The Australian online poll,

6.30am 15th August 2009