NSW Nationals Steve Cansdell has egg on his face over hungerstrike protest

NSW Nationals MP for Clarence Steve Cansdell has jumped on the Peter Spencer bandwagon and is spouting the usual inaccurate nonsense. It would appear that there is no political depth too low for this politician to plumb in his efforts to keep his name in print.

This is what Mr. Cansdell told ABC News on 6 January 2010:

A north coast politician has called for people across NSW to support a grazier on a hunger strike over a dispute in a land clearing application.
Peter Spencer today enters day 47 of his hunger strike in a wind tower on his Shannons Flat property outside Cooma, and reportedly does not have long to live.
He is arguing that state native vegetation laws have been used by the Federal Government to lock-up land to meet carbon pollution reduction targets.
Clarence MP Steve Cansdell says farmers across the state are experiencing the same frustration.
"I just hope that Peter gets the support of everyone across NSW to make this Government realise that we have to work together, not against the rural sector," he said.
"He's really there on behalf of all NSW landowners, all of NSW rural industries such as our timber industry, our cattle."

He was more circumspect a day later when quoted in The Daily Examiner:

"While I don't necessarily support Mr Spencer's tactics, it is time for the NSW Government to show some compassion and do something to break the deadlock before a tragedy occurs."

Cansdell is only one of many who are trying to make political capital out of Peter Spencer's situation and his family appears to have had enough.The Spencer family are clearly concerned about antics of the media, certain websites and politicians such as Barnaby Joyce and Steve Cansdell.

This is the public statement the family issued, as reported in The Australian on 9 January 2009:

WE do not proclaim to be speaking on behalf of all of our family, others may certainly feel differently however we do feel that every issue has different opinions so we would like to say the following.

Peter's brother, Graham, is a former farmer who recently sold his dairy farm and retired after 26 years of farming. He was on the board of the Dairy Farmers Association and an active member within his local community. He and other family members had been trying to work with the family members involved to prevent the issue being dragged through the media however we now feel the need to address some issues.

Peter, we love you, and think that it is fantastic that you are trying to help other farmers get due compensation from the government. However, we are concerned by some television, print media and niche internet publications coverage of the issue and its politicisation by various interest groups and parliamentarians to further their own agendas, at the expense of Peter's health and welfare.

Native vegetation laws enacted over 10 years ago by State Governments (and certainly not the ETS proposals and "Carbon Sinks" which are a far more recent development) are not the sole reason for the collapse of Peter's farm, and really have had a very small part to play. For MANY reasons the farm has not been profitable for a long time. Peter spent several years in Papua New Guinea on various business ventures, including an advisory role to the PNG government of the time. During this time he was unable to look after the farm adequately, an issue that was clearly a product of his then circumstance.

Over the years, Peter spent money on trying to develop some fantastic enterprises, including the development of high quality wool and wind farming which unfortunately did not pan out. In order to help Peter, some family members put their financial freedom in jeopardy to use their property as a guarantee for Peter's loan. These family members worked side-by-side with Peter, trying to get the farm up and running.

As any farmer knows, sometimes, despite your best intentions and incredible effort, farming is not always fruitful, especially in a time of drought. Interest payments on the loan could not be made, and faced with bankruptcy, the family had to issue a writ of foreclosure on Peter's farm. The intention is to sell the farm to recover the money from their debts and all remaining money will be returned to Peter. If the family members had not guaranteed the loan several years ago when Peter was facing bankruptcy the banks would have sold the farm only to recover their money and Peter would have been left with nothing. What is so incredibly sad, is that Peter and the family members who guaranteed his loan, were always very close. Now this has torn two families apart. To borrow such a huge sum to help a sibling is a remarkable gift, but to go into bankruptcy for that sibling is surely beyond the call of duty.

We are devastated with the conspiracy theories, innuendoes and utter rubbish sprouted by some members of news forums and websites declaring to support Peter who clearly know nothing about this situation but have taken whatever they have read at face value, and accepted it as gospel. Peter is an amazing, courageous man. But the loss of his farm is not due to governments, big business or climate change. There is no conspiracy by wind companies or any other organisation to rob Peter of his land. What we are concerned about is that certain people may be taking advantage of a vulnerable man faced with losing his property and using him to their advantage. The issues being touted are not wholly true and Peter's situation is a very poor example for any Native Vegetation/Kyoto/ETS/Rudd/Howard/State/Federal concerns and anything else which is being included in the argument. It will do no benefit to any disgruntled farmer's cause by continuing to use Peter as their martyr. If people are genuinely concerned for Peter please convince him to come down. Then find a more suitable way of expressing their concerns. Please remember this is an election year.

In conclusion, while there are some fantastic supporters of Peter's who deserve much praise, there are too many others taking advantage of him for their own political causes. We don't know why people want Peter to continue starving himself, and putting his health at such risk. Here is a man with TOO MUCH TO LIVE FOR and we urge the media to properly undertake research and check claims before merely producing them as "news" and encouraging Peter's plight through politicising it.

• Background post "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"

NSW North Coast councils & businesses that just have to lift their game in 2010

Not every local council or business on the NSW North Coast lives up to its promise (or for that matter its promises) and here is a short list of those who could do better this year.
Maud Up the Street wants me to lead this post off with her pet peeve so I'll oblige.

BUSWAYS - contracted by the NSW Government to supply transport across the Clarence Valley this was its inadequate response to holiday travel needs according to its own website:Friday 25th December: No services
Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie had similar bus timetables for the 25th December. Great Lakes had one of its three bus routes operating on Christmas Day. Seems Busways management thinks that people without cars don't deserve to move around on Christmas Day unless they live in Campbelltown, Blacktown or on the Central Coast. The north-east of the state can go hang!

COLES - this large supermarket chain has a captive market in certain NSW North Coast towns because of the absence of any real competition. In some stores it shamelessly rides roughshod over its customers with frequently understocked shelves and an ever-diminishing range of brandnames\goods for sale. Now after years of being presented with bananas stored too long before being presented for sale, The Australian Banana Growers' Council tells us that "bananas must meet very particular length, girth and colour specifications before Woolworths and Coles take them".
It's ROFL time to think that this supermarket chain likes to think it has fresh food standards!

CLARENCE VALLEY COUNCIL - under the leadership of Mayor Richie Williamson and General Manager Stuart McPherson certain council staff have been getting quite lax if mutterings round the traps are any indication. This Daily Examiner story of alleged council negligence is just icing on the cake and as usual council tries to squib out of responsibility.
There is also a persistent rumour circulating that councillors are not always aware that they're possibly allocating trust funds improperly on a regular basis, because management allegedly is careful to refer to funding sources in monthly meeting business paper items only by internal accounting codes in order to rob Peter to pay Paul in an irregular manner without challenge.

'Twas the whalers wot done it!

Peter Alford and Matthew Franklin writing in The Australian at 12am this morning are pretty certain of who hit whom on the high seas in Antarctica:
"Sea Shepherd and the Institute of Cetacean Research, which co-ordinates the Japanese whaling program, have released videos they claim demonstrate the other side was to blame for the dangerous collision.
Both appear to show the Ady Gil moving only slowly when the Japanese vessel swerved towards the speedboat, running over its bow and forcing it down into the water, as activists tumbled over on the deck.
The six crew members - one with broken ribs, according to Sea Shepherd - were rescued. The $2 million vessel, according to Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson, is unsalvageable."
As most of Australia is asleep right now, I wonder exactly which hemisphere is clicking on the article's accompanying poll question "Who do you think is to blame for the collision between a Japanese whaling ship and Sea Shepherd protest boat?"
At the moment the results are almost neck and neck in the blame game.
While over at the Herald-Sun another poll question this morning brings a vastly different response.

Could this mean that Japan's PR team over at Omeka Public Relations prefers to read The Australian first thing in the early hours of the morning rather than the Herald-Sun? I wonder......

When it's raining on the NSW North Coast......

One North Coast Voices reader who has been keeping rain gauge records since the mid-1980s emailed me this week to say that in 2009 he registered a total of 1937.5mm in the backyard rain gauge of his Yamba home and that the official BOM record for 2009 taken at the Pilot Station was 1777.6mm.

Yamba's official annual rainfall appears to have peaked in 1950 when 2716.8mm fell over the space of a year and it experienced its lowest annual rainfall in 1915 with 679mm.

Ballina doesn't have complete rainfall figures for 2009, but in 2008 in had a total of 2353mm and Byron Bay had 2205.6mm of precipitation in 2009.

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"

The playful observation on life Hanlon's Razor is said to go something like this: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity".

It immediately came to mind this week when I read numerous blog posts and online comments concerning one Peter James Spencer who is currently sitting atop a pole after delivering his version of the Jerilderee Letter, the Saarahnlee Entreaty (with supplement), to the former Howard Government then firing off another letter of demand to a new Prime Minister while waiting for the world to deliver him from this current episode of foolishness.

Mr. Spencer's relentless self-promotion and hunger strike have managed to ignite the conspiracy theorists and wingnuts into a veritable passion of, well, wigging out and baying for Kevin Rudd's blood.

Peter Spencer is now seen by many as a victim of unfair conditions imposed on rural land, which robs farmers and graziers of their God-given right to clear native vegetation from any part of their property at will.
With encouragement from Mr. Spencer the finger is also being pointed at the United Nations and the Kyoto Protocol as the reason why he is burdened with debt and about to lose the farm.
To anyone who will listen he asserts that he has been denied just compensation for his alleged loss of property rights, as well loss of carbon storage values worth $35 million.

From what Peter Spencer has written in the past (eg., The war on farmers) or presented to various authorities one can deduce that here was a man with little or no personal farming experience who had a rather romantic notion to rekindle his family's connection with the land.
Something many others in his age group have done in the past, for after all most Australian families of that era are only one or two generations away from the farm.

In 1980 he purchased a block of agricultural land in the Cooma-Monaro district and then left it untended for (if my maths is correct) at least a decade. Somewhere along the line he seems to have leased adjoining lots until the property was in the vicinity of 5,000 to 14,000 hectares, a size which tends to vary depending on who Mr. Spencer is addressing at the time.

When eventually returning to live on the property he embarked on a number of rural business ventures which failed and by the start of the 2000s was finding matters rather difficult.
This again is not an unusual occurrence for a somewhat wet behind the ears farmer - a situation made easier for Peter Spencer to bear because he could point to NSW native vegetation law and blame that particular bogey man for his financial troubles.

However Mr. Spencer was made of stern stuff and, instead of looking facts squarely in the face and taking the avenues open to him which would relieve him of his mounting debts, he decided to soldier on with his 'farm'.

Things unravelled and sent Peter Spencer off on a most unusual tangent, when the shire council successfully obtained a judgment against him in the Local Court in February 2007 concerning the matter of his unpaid rates.

This man then decided to initiate legal action in March 2007 against the council and its solicitor with a claim for pecuniary penalty in the form of a liquidated demand for the lordly amount of $165,000.000 against the Shire Council, and $33,000.00 against Mr Angove - based on his being a victim of crime and the crime perhaps being that he had been asked to pay his council rates. Although he does not seem to have actually identified a crime or criminal conviction of any sort to the obvious puzzlement of the presiding judge.

At about the same time he was seeking a sizable penalty against council he began to initiate a slew of litigation in a scatter gun approach. At one stage seeking an interim payment from the defendants of $5 million and informing the court that no judge appointed and dependent upon any of the defendants for his or her livelihood, can bring a fair, just and impartial mind to this dispute, and consequentially I claim the tribunal of fact introduced into Anglo-Celtic law by the Magna Carta from 1295 [sic] until the present day, derived from the passage in the New Testament of the Gospel of Matthew verses 15-20 and I claim by s 116 Constitution and the appearance of either the word The Queen, or Her Majesty forty times in the Australian Constitution that the Coronation Oath 1688 (Imp) is thereby incorporated into the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, and that the provisions of the Holy Gospels that Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second has agreed to uphold, are by that Act, incorporated into the law of Australia.
Needless to say such sentiments give a fair indication that his legal arguments would result in additional costs being awarded against him over the years.

These are details of some of the court cases which can be accessed online at AustLII Databases:
Spencer v Australian Capital Territory and Ors [2007] NSWSC 303 (4 April 2007) [90%]
(From Supreme Court of New South Wales; 4 April 2007; 71 KB)
Spencer v Cooma Monaro Shire Council Anor [2007] ACTSC 42 (29 June 2007) [90%]
(From Supreme Court of the ACT; 29 June 2007; 11 KB)
Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2007] FCA 1415 (31 August 2007) [93%]
(From Federal Court of Australia; 31 August 2007; 17 KB)
Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2007] FCA 1787 (1 November 2007) [94%]
(From Federal Court of Australia; 1 November 2007; 18 KB)
Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2008] FCA 1256 (26 August 2008) [25%]
(From Federal Court of Australia; 26 August 2008; 214 KB)
Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia (No 2) [2008] FCA 1378 (28 August 2008) [92%]
(From Federal Court of Australia; 28 August 2008; 15 KB)
Spencer v NSW Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water [2008] NSWSC 1059 (10 October 2008) [88%]
(From Supreme Court of New South Wales; 10 October 2008; 55 KB)
Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2009] FCAFC 38 (24 March 2009) [93%]
(From Federal Court of Australia - Full Court; 24 March 2009; 88 KB)
Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2009] HCATrans 95 (1 May 2009) [87%]
(From High Court of Australia Transcripts; 1 May 2009; 10 KB)
Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2009] HCATrans 126 (5 June 2009) [87%]
(From High Court of Australia Transcripts; 5 June 2009; 44 KB)

Now forgive me if I seem to smile at the absurdities found both within this over-hyped situation and amongst the arguments put forward by Peter Spencer's supporters, for no matter how hard I try I cannot see a legitimate figurehead for rural concerns in the person of this man - all I see is a cranky old mount determined to kick the horsestall down just for the hell of it.

Photograph from the Cooma-Monaro Express

Update:

From The Australian on 8 January 2008:

Graham Spencer said his brother owed "more than a million dollars" to a family member after being given a loan to prevent the bank seizing his farm. "Peter doesn't owe money to the bank, but to the family," Graham Spencer said.
"One of the family members lent him the money, and I think the arrangement was he would make the interest payments."
Graham Spencer said the family had made numerous attempts to accommodate Peter Spencer's failure to pay the debt, which had been outstanding for some years.
But in October the family had been forced to seek a writ of possession that could force the sale of the property.
"It's nothing to do with the banks - it's a straight family dispute, and that's where it should stay. Let the family sort this out," Graham Spencer said.
He emphasised that the family wanted only to recover the debt, and said that any extra money raised from the sale of the property would go straight to Peter.

Who's searching for whom on the Australian political scene as we enter the mother of all election periods

Over the next eighteen months Australians will go to the polls across Australia to elect a Federal Government (probably in 2010 but by April 2011 at the latest) and electors will be voting at state level in South Australia (March 2010), Tasmania (May 2010 at latest), Victoria (November 2010), and New South Wales (March 2011).

According to the Australian Elections Timetable the Northern Territory won't hold a state election until August 2012, the Australian Capital Territory is next at the polls in October 2012, West Australia does not have to hold an election before June 2012 at the earliest and Queensland does not go have to go to the polls until June 2012.

All in all, somewhere in the country voters will be having campaign spin forced down their throats (with varying degrees of resistance) for some time to come.

Google Trends comparison of Internet searches for Leaders of Government and their Opposition counterparts - Kevin Rudd & Tony Abbott (Federal), Anna Bligh & John-Paul Langbroek (QLD), Mike Rann & Isobel Redmond (SA), David Bartlett & Will Hodgman (TAS), John Brumby & Ted Ballieu (VIC), Colin Barnett & Eric Ripper (WA), John Stanhope & Zed Seselja (ACT), Paul Henderson & Terry Mills (NT) and Kristina Keneally & Barry O'Farrell (NSW).

Langbroek, Redmond, Hodgman, Ballieu, Ripper, Selselja, Mills and O'Farrell all rate low on a search query scale at home or overseas, but although still battling against an incumbent with a higher profile Tony Abbott tracks fairly steadily against the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and interest in him has shown a spike since he became Leader of the Opposition.

Only in Tasmania and the ACT did there appear to be sustained and vaguely comparable levels of search term disinterest in both government and opposition leaders.

It will be interesting to see if how these politicians trend on the Internet bore any relation to how they fared at the next elections.

From the 2010 Antarctic Whaling Hall of Shame

New Zealander Glenn Inwood of Omeka Public Relations
Allegations here.