When is John Howard going to realise he's dead and lie down?

I'm getting sick and tired of the way former Australian prime minister John Howard keeps popping up in the media giving his totally useless views on current Australian politics and world affairs.

He lost the last federal election for the Coalition - if they don't shut him up he will lose the next as well.
This media tart's irritation factor is 100+.

Maudie's Ex
Yamba

Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.

Is Turnbull concerned about Australia's productivity or his own support base?

This is Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull at the end of this week's media cycle in The Australian:

MALCOLM Turnbull is open to reintroducing individual workplace contracts, insisting that Kevin Rudd's "inflexible" industrial relations laws have reduced national productivity.....

"By reducing flexibility in the workplace they have put, we would say, real constraints on productivity growth," Mr Turnbull said. "We believe that flexibility in the workplace is of enormous importance."

Real constraints on productivity growth looks rather impressive at first glance.

Except.........................................................

Click on images to enlarge

Now I recall that the Work Choices regime was introduced about March 2006 and continued through beyond the November 2007 federal election until July this year. Although certain arrangements made under its provisons will not expire until 2010-14.

Looking at the graphs it seems that a) Australia had enjoyed a steady historical rise in productivity prior to the introduction of the Howard Government's Work Choices (heavily reliant on the idea of individual employment contracts) and b) experienced no high productivity surge after Work Choices began and productivity actually levelled off in 2006-07, with the last growth peak occurring back in 2003-04 and the highest average increase in multifactor productivity recorded between 1993-99.

Once more Malcolm Turnbull appears to have put his mouth in motion before he considered known facts as he courts the Liberal Party heartland.

Indeed he offers no proof that the Rudd Government's industrial relations policy is having a marked negative effect or is likely to have such a negative effect on national productivity.

First graph from Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian System of National Accounts, 2006-07

Second graph from the Commonwealth Treasury, Economic Roundup Winter 2007

Gulmarrad land clearing in the lower Clarence Valley

From The Daily Examiner letters to the editor on 9 September 2009

Gulmarrad land clearing

I found The Daily Examiner's report of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water's failure to prosecute those responsible for alleged illegal land clearing at Gulmarrad very disturbing.

Land clearing is a major contributor to global warming and the decline of virtually all native animal species in Australia and must be stopped.

However, while ever we continue to ignore the dollar value of the eco-services our forests provide, there are those who will continue to break the law for their own financial gain.

Ineffective government regulators who either let these breaches go unpunished or impose little more than a slap on the wrist are therefore complicit in the loss of biodiversity that, if not reversed, will threaten our own existence.

JOHN EDWARDS

South Grafton

Aussie business confidence up with employment prospects growing stronger - will the NSW Northern Rivers benefit?

Manpower Inc has joined Dun & Bradstreet in reporting some positive news for Oz on the business and employment front.
In fact both place this country in a pretty enviable position, with employers expecting profits to increase (Dun & Bradstreet) and the intent to hire employees still being weak but relatively strong when compared to the rest of the world (Manpower).
As zero growth was a common economic prediction at the beginning of 2009, it's good to see so many crystal ball gazers are so wrong.
Australian business confidence is now at a six-year high and job ads in the newspapers and online have started to increase.
Given that Kevin Rudd's popularity in the polls is still going strong, I guess the country credits Federal Labor and its economic policy with much of this good news.
The big question for us in the Northern Rivers is: will all this translate into more jobs in the region?
I suspect that national confidence levels aren't always mirrored locally and business is more likely to be asking if the present predilection for 'staycations' will result in more domestic tourism business in the hinterland and on the coast at Christmas 2009 and in the first quarter of 2010.

Manpower Inc press release
Dun & Bradstreet National Business Expectations Study article
Latest 8th September Newspoll graphic
NSW North Coast tourism industry facts & figures

American multinational tries to lock the gate to is website? Happy little Vegemites around the globe must be laughing

I have to admit that I haven't tried the new Vegemite with added cream cheese. My traditional tummy churns at the mere thought of this almost blasphemous concoction.
However recent Core Economics and Boing Boing posts aroused my curiosity as to why U.S. multinational Kraft Foods doesn't want anyone to link to its official Vegemite website.
Kraft's site states:
Terms of Use, Disclaimer and Copyright Notice
This website (http://www.vegemite.com.au) (the "Site") is owned and operated by Kraft Foods Limited (ACN 004 125 071). Access to and use of this Site is subject to the following terms and conditions and all applicable laws. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, you must not access or otherwise use this Site.
In this Notice, "KRAFT Australia", "we" and "us" means Kraft Foods Limited.
The Site is designed to be useful, informative and fun. We welcome any comments and inquiries in relation to the site.
Er...... I had to access the site to read this notice.
So who's going to knock me off the Internet instantanément?
Does Kraft have a 24/7 cyber bully out there with its finger on a get-outta-here button?
Is its 'competition' to name the new pseudo Vegemite throwing up some abuse from happy little traditionalists or have there been more than a few critics out in the blogosphere over the years causing this attempt to restrict access?
Is Kraft going to send a cease and desist notice to the Wikipedia for multiple linkings, The Vegemite Wife ex-pat for posting images of that spread jar, Australian Flavour for linking to its jingle audio or Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd Weekly Times for linking to the website in para 2 of its 28th August 2009 article?
Want to ask Kraft what this guff is all about - email australia@kraftasia.com. G'arn!

The hills of Coorabell

Coorabell by Rodney Black

Return to Coorabell by Marc Rambeau

Only in America would an argument be mounted that receiving money from the government is bad for your health

A good-on-ya to Peter Martin for unearthing this little bewdy: The Short-Term Mortality Consequences of Income Receipt.
This is an argument for the basic proposition that people on low incomes are likely to die shortly after they receive welfare payments, one-off stimulus payments or tax rebate cheques, because being 'flush' with money they consume more or become more active.
Yeah, and starving people often died immediately after being fed by liberating troops in the Second World War too.
I particularly liked the last para which tends to stick in the craw; "Finally, we noted in the introduction that some health researchers have suggested that a way to reduce inequality in health outcomes across socioeconomic groups is to simply increase income transfers to low income groups. The results in this paper indicate that the benefits of such a policy regime shift are far from certain. There is little evidence to date that cash transfers increase health. In contrast, the results in this paper show that, in the short run, there is a pronounced negative consequence to cash infusions for a wide variety of groups."

This truly earth-shattering research comes from a couple of economists working out of Notre Dame and Maryland universities in America. Figures.