An embarrassing fan from Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr's past

In 2005 the $500 a head Ultimate Media Bob Carr Tribute Dinner was held celebrating Bob Carr’s 10^th anniversary as NSW Premier.

The Medich Property Group brought two tickets in order to rub shoulders with this pollie.

Not long after that dinner Carr announced his resignation from state parliament.

Five years later the Managing Director of the Medich Property Group was charged with conspiracy to murder Michael McGurk.

The director is currently on bail for this charge and has appeared as a witness before ICAC regarding that allegation and other matters.
Medich Property Group Pty Ltd was wound up in 2011.

Pacific Highway politics - now and then. According to NSW North Coast MPs and others

Recently Commonwealth-State funding arrangements for Pacific Highway upgrades have been in the news, with the NSW O’Farrell Government waxing eloquent about the alleged unfairness of the Federal Gillard Government.

Even though the NSW Premier has known for at least ten months that funding provisions in the AusLink agreement were going to be enforced by the Federal Government.

A tendency to point the finger, assign blame and pass the buck appear to be prominent character traits of Australian politicians of all political persuasions - as illustrated in the quotes below.

However current and past Nationals MPs Fraser, Gulaptis, Hartsuyker and Causley, both in and out of government, have raised this tendency to an art form - ignoring as they do the terms and conditions of successive AusLink Memorandums of Understanding between the Commonwealth and NSW, commencing during the initial terms of the Federal Coalition Government led by John Howard and the NSW Labor Government led by Bob Carr.

NOW

Here is the NSW Nationals Coffs Harbour MP and Assistant Speaker Andrew Fraser on 22 February 2012 according to that NSW Hansard:

I move:
That this House calls on the Commonwealth Government to agree to maintain the historic 80:20 Commonwealth-State funding formula to ensure the completion of the Pacific Highway upgrade by 2016.

This is NSW Nationals Clarence MP ‘Steve’ Gulaptis popping up in support on the same day:

…Those on the other side should be encouraging their cohorts in the Federal Parliament to agree to the 80:20 split so that we can meet that 2016 deadline. I commend the motion to the House.

While this is Federal Transport Minister Antony Albanese according to ABC Mid North Coast NSW on 1 March 2012:

The New South Wales government says it cannot afford a 50-50 split and the 2016 duplication deadline may have to be shelved.

It wants the Federal government to pay 80 per cent of the project costs.

But minister Anthony Albanese says that's not the deal that was agreed on.

"It's in writing, it's part of the Auslink agreement developed by the Howard government 50-50 funding.”

THEN

The Northern Rivers Echo reporting on NSW Nationals Clarence MP Steve Cansdell on 14 March 2011:

The National Party’s Steve Cansdell has also made a similar promise to have a major upgrade of the Pacific Highway completed by 2016.

On 27 October 2009 NSW Nationals Coffs Harbour MP Andrew Fraser was calling on the NSW Government:

The Pacific Highway is a state road that effectively causes the loss of one life a week. The state government should pour the money it receives from the increased registration charges for heavy vehicles back into regional roads.

While Federal Nationals Cowper MP Luke Hartsuyker was saying in the House of Representatives on 27 February 2006:

I move:

That this House:

(1)

notes:

(a)

that the Pacific Highway is a State road designed, built, owned, and maintained by the New South Wales State Government;

And again on 8 February 2006

The Pacific Highway, of course, is a New South Wales state government road, designed, built, owned and maintained by the New South Wales government. It does receive substantial funding under AusLink…..

With the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority stating in 2006:

The Pacific Highway between Newcastle and Brisbane forms part of the Australian Government's AusLink National Network.

This was NSW Labor Minister for Roads Joe Tripodi  answering a question in the Legislative Assembly concerning the Howard Government’s Auslink agreement on 14 September 2005:

The NSW Government was forced to sign up to the Federal Government s Auslink agreement on roads and transport funding or risk losing Federal roads funding altogether.

(1) and (2) The NSW Government had been trying to negotiate a better deal for the State, but the Federal Government had refused to budge.

The bottom line is that signing this agreement means NSW has to pay an extra $298 million for roadworks but not signing would have cost us $940 million. This is because Auslink means the States have to foot the bills for maintenance and safety works which used to be funded by the Commonwealth.

It was either sign up and get some funding or don t sign and get nothing.

Under the Auslink agreement, the Federal Government reduced funding levels for maintenance, and stops the funding of safety and urgent minor works.

Further back, this was the Federal Nationals Page MP and member of the Howard Government Ian Causley speaking at the Pacific Highway Summit on 13 May 2005 regarding federal government plans to create Auslink and implement the National Land Transport Plan:

Project costs will be shared with the State Government, 50/50 agreement has been requested.

GIVING WIKIPEDIA THE FINAL WORD

Pacific Highway:

The Pacific Highway was never part of the Federally funded system of National Highways. This appears to be because when the Commonwealth funding of the 'national highway' system began in 1974, the longer New England Highway was chosen rather than the Pacific Highway as the Sydney–Brisbane link due to its easier topography and consequent lower upgrade costs.
Yet the highway was undeniably heavily used by interstate traffic and its upgrade was beyond the resources of the New South Wales Government alone. The NSW Government and the Commonwealth Government argued for years about how the responsibility for funding the highway's upgrade should be divided between themselves, only coming up with a mutually acceptable upgrade package just after the 1996/1997 financial year. The Highway is now part of the AusLink National Network and new projects are funded 50/50 by the Federal and State governments.

Belligen Readers Writers Festival 23-25 March 2012

For further details
http://bellingenwritersfestival.com.au/

Click on images to enlarge

Quotes of the Week

From Tony Wright, National Affairs Editor of The Age on 15th March 2012:

“TAKE one pinch of asylum seeker, add a spoonful of smuggled handgun, stir with a good ladling of drive-by shootings and a cupful of border protection, and what have you got?

Why, the Abbott-Morrison Patented Elixir for a Pain in the Tax Policy. It might taste like offal and stink worse than last week's bottled carbon emission, but when you're short on ingredients you cook up what's on hand.”

From Bushfire Bill commenting over at The Poll Bludger on 16th March 2012:
Costello has done it again. He’s put himself and his preening expectations at the centre of a divisive shit fight, spitting the dummy one more time over not getting a job he had decided was his by right. Everywhere this bloke goes he causes trouble with his colleagues due to his implacable belief that he should be the boss.

Provest haz teh problems

Geoff I No Nothing Provest, the NSW North Coast MP for Tweed, is having a few problems. Not only is a local business & residents group taking in the him to court, he appears to have been caught taking a suspect political donation.

14  March 2012:

* THE lobby group looking to torpedo plans for a new $8 million Tweed police headquarters on the Kingscliff foreshore want local MP Geoff Provest to front up to a public meeting on the issue later this month. Officials from The Tweed Business and Residents Focus Group, which launched a Land and Environment Court challenge against the proposed headquarters, have invited Mr Provest to the meeting to be held at the Kingscliff Beach Bowls Club on March 27 from 7pm.

Mr Provest, also the Parliamentary Secretary for Police, is one of the respondents served with a court notice as part of the legal challenge to the project…. 

15  March 2012:

* TWEED Nationals MP Geoff Provest has been accused of accepting an illegal political donation says he did not realise the company involved was a property developer.
In question time today, Opposition Leader John Robertson asked Premier Barry O'Farrell what action he would take against the parliamentary secretary for police, Mr Provest, who he claimed had accepted a $2500 donation from developer Power Group. Under NSW laws, donations from property developers are banned, and at the time of the Power Group donation in March 2011 were restricted to a $2000 cap per individual candidate. In a personal explanation following question time, Mr Provest said he had always been "full and frank" with his pecuniary interests. "I did not realise that Power Industries and or (managing director) James Power may have been prohibited donors," Mr Provest said.

16 March 2012:

* In a statement, Mr Provest blamed the blunder on a volunteer.
"I have held myself at arm's length from the financial side of my campaign and relied on my agent to adhere to the new legislation," he said.
"I am disappointed that this has happened and have today revoked the appointment of my agent."
"My former agent was a volunteer within the party organisation and was not an expert in the very complex legal issues surrounding the new legislation.''

* "I did not realise that Power Industries and/or (managing director) James Power may have been prohibited donors," he said. "I'm now seeking advice from the NSW Election Funding Authority and if those donations are not permitted under the legislation they will be dealt with accordingly." He issued a statement yesterday denying the company was a property developer in NSW, but admitted the amount breached the cap.

Yellow Pages online entry at 19 March 2012

'My dirty little secret' is out

ABC Open

WINNERS of the ABC Open project 'Up Close' were announced yesterday, with Wooloweyah photographer Louise Gumb receiving a special mention for her photograph titled 'My dirty little secret'.

The image, a self-portrait of her own feet was the only entry made by Maelstrom Made Design, the design company owned by Louise and her husband Dan Gumb.

[The Daily Examiner,14 March 2012]

Maelstrom Made Design can be found here.

Newspaper nicknames

Readers of newspapers can, at times, be very cruel. For some, all they have to do to get their daily fill is stroll out through the front door and pick the day's copy up off the driveway (if the deliverer has been on target), out of the rose bushes or (and I swear this is true) if the deliverer has it really in for you, off the roof.

Column8 in today's Herald provides further samples of homework it set its readers. The task was simple enough. All that was required of readers was to tell the Herald (aka Granny) the nickname they gave their newspapers. Previously, The Courier-Mail was said to be the 'Curious Snail', The Cairns Post is the Cairns Ghost (it's thin and wispy at times), The West Australian is the Wet Alsatian and the SMH is The Sydenham Awning Herald ("it works better said than read".

Today, the Western Advocate is the Western Abdicate, The Canberra Times is The Crimes and our own local rag, The Daily Examiner, is 'the one minute's silence' (that's how long it takes to read it).

 

Our neighbours are somewhat kinder, they call it the 'Egg Timer' but Elsie, who lives up the street, calls it 'The Daily Exterminator'. At our place it's referred to as 'The Rapper' - most mornings it takes longer to get the plastic wrap off it than it does to read it, but that's nothing to whinge about. In fact, that task can be quite a challenge and test the grey matter a lot more than a Rubic Cube.

Note to DEX editor and staff: don't get your knickers in knots over those comments. DEX is just like our pet greyhound - you're 'family' and we still luvs ya, warts and all.