Clarence Valley Council gets a serve over rates

With Clarence Valley Shire Council seemingly under the thumb of the Grafton business district, most councillors bracing for yet another stoush with the valley community over its rates structure and Mayor Richie Williamson apparently desperate to defer trouble until after the March 2011 NSW general election campaign at which he is standing as an independent, one Yamba resident demonstrates that none of these elected representatives are going to have an easy ride by deferring the coming storm to a committee which will not report to council until 2012:

Get priorities right

CVC's recent decision to place on public exhibition Grafton's estimated $6.6m waterfront precinct plan at a time when the GM Mr McPherson attempted to increase rates above the pegged rate increase on the basis of councils diminished capacity to fund capital works, suggest a council out of touch with mainstream community needs.

It can hardly be said Grafton is doing it tough, $19.2m hospital, $5m Super clinic, $2m south CBD, $8m library, $2m Fisher Park, $78k Hawthorne Park, $50k Pioneer Park, $32k McKittrick Park, $50k rowing club etc.

Many of these facilities have to be matched with council funds as well as requiring extensive maintenance costs. Yet the stupor to this folly is that Grafton's rates are being reduced while the rates of the rest of the shire are being increased to make up the shortfall.

While council keeps records of the amount of rates each community pays, it does not keep records of the amount of services each community receives and therein lies a problem.

It is not suggested each community receives services amounting to the amount of income it provides. What is suggested is that as a democracy, we the people of this shire are entitled to transparent factual information that assists us in determining how we are governed.

That information should include where and how our monies are spent and not compromised by inadequate council records.

There is no excuse for council not disclosing that information. Upon amalgamation, council was provided with the financial records of each of the former councils including Grafton showing it to be living way beyond its means. Had these records been maintained, councillors as well as rate payers would know the present financial status of each of those former council areas.

It can hardly be argued those records would be too expensive to maintain when council can publish a $6.6m plan for a Grafton waterfront precinct.

Ray Hunt

Yamba

A little light relief as an antidote to all this #*#@+** Oz weather!

BOM tells South-East Queensland & Byron to the Tweed to batten down now

Australian Bureau of Meteorology 4.49pm 21 February 2011

Tropfest 2011 Winner monkeying around

Tropfest 2011. Make up your own mind........



Damon Gameau, has won the 19th annual Movie Extra Tropfest - the world’s largest short film festival in front of crowds of 150,000 nationwide and a live broadcast on Movie Extra to hundreds of thousands more film fans.

“Animal Beatbox” was voted in by some of the film industry’s most respected, including well-known feature film director Bruce Beresford, living legend Olivia Newtown-John, Aussie favourite Jack Thompson, Twilight heartthrob Xavier Samuel, director Stephan Elliott, producer Liz Watts, last year’s Tropfest winner Abe Forsythe and Tropfest Founder and Director John Polson.

Surprise judge ‘Shakespeare in Love’ actor Joseph Fiennes weighed in live from Majorca Spain before casting his vote online.

The winning film is a branch into animation by Underbelly and Balibo actor Gameau, with a catchy lyrical and poetic narrative. The film was shot in his mother’s spare room for just $85 and on a liquid detox diet with his girlfriend by his side – somehow they are still together. “I’m quite new to stop animation, but I find it a quick and versatile way to express any idea that may be lurking in my head,” he says.

And this is a biotech company FSANZ takes at its word......

On of the most disturbing facts about methodology employed by Food Standards Australia New Zealand when it 'investigates' new food products or genetically modified food/food additives, is that it takes the so-called research offered in support of produce/product safety at face value when it is presented by biotech multinationals such as Monsanto & Company.

It is almost as though FSANZ is completely blind to a corporate history of environmental damage, deceit and avoidance of responsibility that is the trademark of this multinational.

Apparently choosing to believe that biotech industries miraculously operate differently once they establish themselves in Australia.

This is posted on the Environment Agency U.K. concerning what The Guardian U.K. called in 2007 one of the most contaminated places in Britain:

Between 1965-70 Brofiscin quarry was used as a disposal site for industrial and chemical waste.
The wastes included toxic substances such as solvents, heavy metals, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs.......

We have completed our extensive enquiries to identify those we consider should be held responsible under the contaminated land laws and be held liable for the cost of remediating Brofiscin Quarry. We are at an advanced stage in our consultations with BP, Veolia and Monsanto to provide them with the opportunity to help remediate the land on a voluntary basis. We expect to make further progress on this matter in the next few months. If this approach is unsuccessful, we have the power to carry out the work needed ourselves and recover our costs. The three companies have been identified under the legislation as inheriting the liabilities of companies who were associated with depositing wastes at the quarry.

This is not the only site used by Monsanto which has problems with PCB or other toxic contamination - the company doesn't mind polluting its home country, wrecking the health of its own workers, generally running roughshod over the interest of countries in which it operates and, if the Ecologist is to be believed is not above bullying witnesses to its bad corporate behaviour.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

The cheque really was in the mail

A Yamba resident fought the law and won on Tuesday when he managed to get his fine for driving his unregistered ute overturned.
Documents tendered to the court proved Mr Y (name changed) had paid his green slip, pink slip and posted a cheque to the RTA with his rego papers on May 31, 2010.
After posting the letter thinking he had renewed his registration, Mr Y flew from Ballina to Bathurst on June 1, to visit his sick mother, and returned on June 8.
When he got home, although he had not received his registration papers from the RTA, Mr Y presumed it had been paid and began moving green waste to the tip in his ute.
Police conducting random breath tests on Yamba Road stopped Mr Y at noon on June 11.
When he passed the breath test, police noticed the vehicle’s registration had expired on June 2.
When police questioned Mr Y about the expired registration he replied: “I posted it to the RTA.”
It turns out the mail was stuck in transit for more than a week at Maclean Post Office, not reaching the RTA until Mr Yintervened.
After checking with his bank, which confirmed his cheque hadn’t been presented, Mr Y phoned Maclean Post Office staff, who said they had his letter.
But they hadn’t put it with the shared mail for the council chambers.
After a 45-minute phone call to the RTA customer service hotline pleading to be transferred to the Maclean RTA, Mr Y finally spoke with a Maclean staff member, agreeing to pick up the letter in their lunch hour and process the payment.
Mr Y hand-delivered it to Yamba police station at 5.45pm that day, thinking the matter was over
That was until he found a $506 infringement notice on his doorstep a couple of days later, which he challenged in court.
The Magistrate found Mr Y had done everything he could to pay the registration and dismissed the infringement notice under Section 10 of the Crimes Act.

Source: The Daily Examiner, 19/2/11

Don't look for openess and transparency from the HoR Standing Committee on Regional Australia

After the selective (and still incomplete) publication of submissions ahead of rather hurried interim findings being presented to the Federal Water Minister when there are at least seven more days of evidence still to hear, the House Standing Committee on Regional Australia is beginning to look less like a body conducting a genuine inquiry and more like an example of parliamentary match fixing.

So on a day when the Inquiry into the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in Regional Australia only had a NSW state minister and various senior public servants on its official witness list for a public hearing held in Canberra, it was hardly surprising to find this statement appearing in the transcript not once but twice:

Evidence was then taken in private but later resumed in public—

Says it all really…………..