Australia - what's wrong with this picture?

Map fromwww.geographicguide.net

Australia has an estimated land area of 7,686,650 square kilometres.
It has a growing population which currently stands at about 21.9 million people.
The majority of Australians live within 100 kilometres of the coastline and, in that narrow strip more people live in major cities and surrounding suburbs than live in smaller towns and villages.
Only around ten per cent of Australia's land mass is arable land suitable for crops or grazing and most of that is in the same coastal fringe. The majority of this arable land is in private hands.

By 2049 it has been estimated that Australia's population will reach 35 million people.
This means that in fifty years time there will be one person for every 0.21 square kilometres of the Australian continent, but most of these people will probably want to live within a total area of less than 1 million square kilometres.

Coincidentally by 2050 the predicted negative impacts of climate change (including prolonged water scarcity and coastal sea water inundation) should be pronounced in this country.

The maths are not looking good and all levels of government are only paying lip service to sustainable planning.

What are you doing to stop your local council and state government from allowing the coast to be developed to death?

That Shape Shifting Australian Internet Mandatory Filtering Scheme or Ministerial Untruths Unchecked

Hardly a month goes past without some mention of government-sanctioned censorship occurring somewhere around the world.

On Wednesday 16 September 2009 Politikin in Denmark published an entire book in that day's edition of the newspaper. It did so to make sure that the government of the day (through its defence and treasury departments) did not manage to censor a new book by a former Danish commando.

The same day Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in the Australian Federal Government, was caught out telling fibs about his 'past' intentions for the proposed mandatory national ISP-level Internet filtering scheme when he denied that he had ever considered censoring peer to peer traffic.

This is what the Minister personally said on a DBCDE official blog in December 2008 ( a similar statement was also attributed to him in a News Ltd report on 22 December):

The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a 'silver bullet'. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative for protecting our children online.
Technology is improving all the time. Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.
Stephen Conroy

and

This is what the Minster said last Wednesday:

As Senator Ludlam well knows, there has never been a suggestion by this government that peer-to-peer traffic would or could be blocked by our filter. It has never been suggested. So for you to continue to make the suggestion that we are attempting to do that just misleads the chamber and the Australian public, Senator Ludlam, and you know better than that. We are not attempting to suggest that the filter can capture peer-to-peer traffic. So for you to continue to make the suggestion that we are attempting to do that just misleads the chamber and the Australian public, Senator Ludlam, and you know better than that. We are not attempting to suggest that the filter can capture peer-to-peer traffic.

Perhaps Senator Conroy's fearless leader might quietly ask him why he chose to tell untruths to Parliament when he rose to his feet in Senate Question Time on 16 September 2009.

Is it any wonder that the Rudd Government is considered by many to have suspect motives when it comes to its Internet filtering plans?

Australian pensions increase effective 20 September 2009 and other changes

On 20 September 2009 a number of changes will occur to Australian government pensions, benefits and allowances.
These changes are likely to apply to most people on Age Pension, Disability Support Pension, Wife Pension, Widow B Pension, Carer Payment, Service Pension or Income Support Supplement and, should be reflected in the first payments received after 20 September.

The Adult Pension Basic Rate for single individuals will rise to $615.80 per fortnight and for couples to $464.20 for each partner.

The new Pension Supplement (which combines the old GST supplement, pharmaceutical allowance, utilities allowance, and telephone/internet connection allowance into one parcel) will also come into effect and will increase by a small amount overall.

On 1 July 2010 the rules about Advance Payments will also change so that an unspecified higher amount can be requested and payments can be accessed more than once each year.

Work Bonus and Seniors Supplement are also new features which commence this month, as well as changes to the income test (this will not affect existing pension recipients).

The Pension Bonus Scheme will also be closed to all new pension recipients after 19 September 2009.

The new annual lump-sum Carer Supplement actually began in June 2009. The next payment is due in July 2010.

These increases will offset the June quarter 2008 to June Quarter 2009 rise in most indicators used in the Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index.

Details from the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.
Dollar values of these changes in index table.
Centrelink pension reform information with audio and video links

Will Malcolm Turnbull ever find the missing pieces of leadership?

Malcolm Turnbull has been Leader of the Opposition for a year since last Wednesday and he is yet to bring the ratbag element in the Coalition parties into line.
The latest unedifying display from his troops was a motion on Tuesday to no longer hear a minister's reply during Question Time, with no hope of winning the vote yet still insisting on a time wasting division. Followed by spurious point-of-order after spurious point-of-order.
This surely can't have been Truffles idea - it's such a bad PR look when shown live on the teev.
But wait, the camera spied Truffles smirking away at the front of the pack. Guess he confuses being head hoon for real leadership - big mistake.

Column 8 is back online - finally, Fairfax sees sense

Fairfax has restored online access to The Sydney Morning Herald's Column 8.

Read it online at the Herald's site here.

Fairfax's archived copies of the column are here. However, the Wednesday 18 September 2009 column is not there. North Coast Voice's presentation of it is here.

Column 8's email address is column8@smh.com.au

Thursday's Column 8 - you'd reckon Fairfax could afford to put this online

Kevin Ryan, of Wahroonga, was in Penrith South a few days ago, and reports driving past a car wrecker's yard. The name of the business? "Khartoum."

"Koel alert! Koel alert!" we are warned by Anne Moore, of Waverley. "Heard on Monday at 6.45am. I think this is even earlier than my reported first koel in Column 8 a couple of years back, Soon there will be no first report we'll have koels permanently in residence."

More on affect/effect, from Anton Crouch, of Glebe (Column 8, Tuesday): "A simple rule is to use 'affect' as a verb and 'effect' as a noun. Then you'll be right 99 per cent of the time in conversation and 90 per cent of the time in writing. If you want real pedantry (as opposed to Keith Binns's partial attempt), both 'affect' and 'effect' can be used as a verb and a noun. There's also a use of 'affect' where it means something like 'to pretend to'. But all this gets too hard - the simple rule given above will suit for most of us." Yes indeed, Anton. Most effective.

"Tuesday's headline 'Vet on receiving end as whipping becomes frenzied', writes Duccio Cocquio, of Hunters Hill, "reminds me of an old one from the Wellington Dominion that read 'Drive to ban horse whipping mushrooms'. Very evocative: was it a mad horse whipping the poor mushrooms or a cluster of cruel fungi hitting the innocent horse?" Hard to say but wouldn't the second interpretation require a hyphen?

"I did particularly enjoy the back page of the Sport section in Tuesday's Herald," writes Allan Roberts, of Marrickville, "where the article on Kim Clijsters wining the US Open stated that 'She scrambled with the agility of a gymnast to her players' box to find her husband, Brian Lynch, a professional basketball'." What does a professional basketball earn, we wonder? It'd be hard work.

Richard Sewell theorises that the birds circling pylons of the Anzac Bridge at night are attracted to insects, which in turn are attracted by the bright lights. We now recall that we raised this subject two or three years back, when birds were going crazy around the Harbour Bridge during a bogong moth plague. And lo and behold, a bogong flew out of our wardrobe this morning. What are we in for?

"I was brought up in Blackburn, Lancashire, UK," writes Robert Heathcote, of Newcastle, "a cotton- weaving town. All the older members of my family were weavers and used the term 'cotton on' a lot to mean 'Do you get the idea?'. (Column 8, Saturday). "But they all acknowledged that it derived from the process in weaving where a thread breaks, and they had to 'cotton on' to resume the job. I think also it could mean to start work, or a new job, but it definitely comes from cotton weaving."

"My wife bought a litre of orange juice from Harris Farm Markets at Bridgepoint, Spit Junction," reports Peter Schramko, of Artarmon. "The label reads '100% SQUIZEED ORANGE JUICE'. Does that mean that someone has had a good look at it?"

Column8@smh.com.au(no attachments please).Phone 9282 2207 fax 9282 2772. (include name, suburb, daytime phone)

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 17/9/09

Monsanto spinning so hard that its head faces backwards?

On 23 July 2008 the Molokai Dispatch published an editorial titled Monsanto Could be its Own Worst Enemy: Using too much water could force the company to downsize.

This editorial pointed out that:

Last November, General Manager of Monsanto Molokai Ray Foster said that the company was sensitive to the island's water needs and that Monsanto had a water conservation program for times of drought.
Last month however, amidst a 20% water cutbacks mandated by the Molokai Irrigation System (MIS), Monsanto is requesting an increase to its water use. However with water supply levels in the Kualapu`u reservoir over 60 million gallons short of where it was this time last year, many are left wondering where the water will come from?
The MIS was built for the Hawaiian Homesteaders which is why the law reserves two thirds of its water for Hawaiians. As the MIS becomes short on water due to dilapidation and drought, Hawaiian Homesteaders are beginning to feel the pressure.
Non-homestead ag-users like Monsanto currently account for 84% of MIS water consumption. Monsanto itself is using almost twice the amount of water of all 209 homestead users combined.

In a previous article titled Homesteaders Confront MIS:Water scarcity and increasing demands raise concerns the newspaper had reported that:

Water demand continues to increase, while supplies plummet. In one month, the Molokai Irrigation System (MIS) reservoir has dropped 50 million gallons, from 19 feet to 17 feet. Despite the Hawaiian homesteader's two-thirds right to water, roughly 80 percent of MIS supplies are allocated to non-homesteaders.

If the reservoir drops another two feet, a mandatory 20 percent conservation reduction will be issued to all non-homestead users. An advisory board would consult the DOA, which manages the MIS, on how to handle homesteader restrictions.

In an attempt to bypass this cutback, corn-grower Monsanto has proposed to pay for increased MIS pumping from Waikolo Valley. Presently, the DOA is checking into the viability of this proposal by conducting hydrology reports and assessing permit restrictions.

Randolph Teruya, DOA asset manager said Monsanto has increased its producing acreage and water usage in the past year. He also said the DOA will ask all non-homesteaders for a water conservation plan for the upcoming summer, but the agencies hands are tied because conservation enforcement is a county responsibility.

MIS board member James Boswell motioned for the MIS to send a letter to Monsanto to stop watering with a cannon during the day, where most of the water evaporates in the hot sun and wind. The MIS will request watering be done at night for efficiency and conservation.

In the Monsanto & Co. blog Monsanto According To Monsanto on 8 September 2009 when accusing a recent The Guardian U.K. article of selectively quoting the Molokai Dispatch editorial the company blithely did what it allegedly so abhorred in the post Monsanto a Water Bully? Not So.

Nowhere in this Monsanto spin was there any mention of the biotech corporation's desire to increase its water consumption in 2008 and the blog's denial of the existence of a new aquifer is used to deflect from this request to use additional water.

Water which is ultimately sourced from a combination of stream water, spring water and at least one well (sunk into an existing aquifer) within Kalaupapa National Park's Waikolu Valley.

Nor does the company blog mention that it sought to expand land under production during the prolonged drought and asked the Hawaii Dept of Agriculture to service this land with irrigation access.
A request which was denied by the department in July 2008 according to the newspaper, which also pointed to the fact that Monsanto had yet to implement a water conservation plan at that time.

Might I recommend that Monsanto employees acquaint themselves with an excellent little book Straight and Crooked Thinking by RH Thouless, with special attention to the thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument.

• Financial and Management Audit of the Moloka'i Irrigation System 2008.