Walking the Bendy Bridge to protest against coal seam gas exploration in the Clarence Valley

Grafton Bridge, Sunday 16 December 2012

 

According to CSG Free Northern River’s Facebook page:

 

At the final tally there were approximately.....1,000 people in attendance….a very good turnout in numbers for a quickly organised short notice event…

As the year ends Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's disapproval rating climbs to the second highest in Nielsen poll history

 

Fairfax-Nielsen telephone poll for 13-15 December 2012

Columns left to right: Sept 13-14, Oct 18-20, Nov 15-17, December 13-15

Media reports indicate that 75 per cent of Nielsen poll respondents were aware of the AWU affair
Poll respondents numbered 1,400
Margin of error is +/- 2.6%

 

The Age 17 December 2012:

If preferences are instead calculated

by how respondents say they will allocate them,

the gap between the parties is narrower,

with the Coalition on 51 per cent and Labor on 49.

As 2012 draws to a close Alan Jones is finally forced to publicly apologize for racist remarks which led to a full-scale riot in 2005

 

The text of the forced apology:

 

"On 28 April 2005 on my breakfast program on Radio 2GB, I broadcast comments about Lebanese males including Lebanese Muslims.

"The comments were made following a Channel Nine television current affairs show about the conduct of young Lebanese men in Hickson Road at the Rocks.

"The Administrative Decisions Tribunal has found that my comments incited serious contempt of Lebanese males including Lebanese Muslims.

"Those comments were in breach of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act.

"I apologise for making those comments which I recognise were unlawful.

"I also apologise on behalf of Radio 2GB."

The reason for this apology:

13 In the decision granting leave for the complaint to proceed, the Tribunal characterised the complaint as relating to three comments made by Alan Jones (AJ): Ekermawi v Jones and Harbour Radio Pty Ltd t/as Radio 2 GB [2010] NSWADT 262 at [3]. Those comments are italicised. The immediate context is also included.

 

First comment

 

P: The police obviously can't or won't do anything about it. The politicians are not listening to us as usual. If need be, mate, I'll get babysitters for my kids on Sunday and I'll be down there.

AJ: OK. Now, let me tell you, P, let me just say this to you because - you know I'm the person that's led this charge here. Nobody wanted to know about North Cronulla. Now, it's gathered to this, we really have to be hands off here we don't want a situation whereby there's open warfare between people calling themselves Aussie whites and people calling themselves Lebs or whatever. We have at least alerted the government.

 

Second comment

 

AJ: And the text message urges Aussies yesterday to take revenge and Lebs and wogs. Now it's got pretty nasty when you start talking like this. It says, "Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to support the Leb and wog bashing day . . ."

I do understand what people are saying, let's give the police a chance to do the job. And I can understand the young blokes who've sent that text message yesterday, "Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge", it says. "This Sunday every Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to support the Leb and wog bashing day, bring your mates, let's show them that this is our beach and they're never welcome." Well, now that's not the way, I do understand what you're saying, P, but we've just got to back off a bit here. We're not giving any ground to them. I'm saying backing off and letting, backing off and let the police do the job.

 

Third comment

 

AJ: Yeah, well I've got, I've got a stack of emails in front of me, let me read you this one, "Alan, its not just a few Middle Eastern bastards at the weekend, its thousands. Cronulla is a very long beach and it's been taken over by this scum. It's not a few causing trouble. It's all of them, it's an attitude that you feel whenever you go there, it's just straight out racism against the skippies, it will not go away, the police have their hands tied - I'll come to that later in the program - reduce numbers and powers, I wish there was an answer".

Coal Seam Gas: "the constant noise of drilling went on, 24/7, for months on end...followed by diesel motors rattling away for years to drive the pumps"

Letter to the Editor in The Daily Examiner 10 December 2012:

Democracy inaction

OUR elected representatives appear to have no understanding of the meaning of the word democracy, flippantly rejecting public concerns about coal seam gas mining and the climate consequences of burning it.
Fortunately some media outlets are prepared to publish opinion pieces based on the solid evidence that is available, and bring the facts to the public.
On December 4, The Guardian's George Monbiot summed up the issue with the following comment -
"Preventing climate breakdown - the four, five or six degrees of warming now predicted for this century by green extremists like, er, the World Bank, the International Energy Agency and PriceWaterhouseCoopers - means confronting the oil, gas and coal industry. It means forcing that industry to abandon the four-fifths or more of fossil fuel reserves that we cannot afford to burn. It means cancelling the prospecting and development of new reserves".
At Wednesday's meeting in Lismore, local member Thomas George and minister Brad Hazzard were left in no doubt as to the general public's thought about the way their concerns have been scornfully dismissed.
One lady's statement registered with me above many others: "What I struggle to understand is why my property has to be trashed to provide cheap fuel for China," she said.
As I left the Lismore venue an elderly man told me: "You have no idea how intrusive this bloody awful industry is. I've got a cluster of four wells grouped within metres of each other, just 210m from my home. They were all drilled at different times and the constant noise of drilling went on, 24/7, for months on end. That was followed by diesel motors rattling away for years to drive the pumps.
"It's just endless and we can't get away from it. Yet planes have to stop running overnight, and we can't mow our lawns before 7am on a Sunday because of the noise."
This is what Glenugie residents will have to put up with if Metgasco finds a viable gas resource at The Avenue drill site.
So is it any wonder the workers have been met with abuse and opposition?

John Edwards

South Grafton

More belt tightening on the way for APN newspapers?

 

In recent years the number of press releases (often published almost verbatim with source unattributed) masquerading as news articles has been steadily growing in Australian mainstream media generally and in Northern Rivers media in particular.

 

With little or no critical evaluation of the contents of these releases finding its way into print and journalistic opinion frequently being substituted for investigation; sometimes by the time one reaches page five of any newspaper it almost feels as if the proprietor should be paying readers and not the other way round.

 

APN News & Media, which has an established presence in regional New South Wales, saw its shares hit a new low that immediately wiped an estimated $33 million off its market value after declaring its publishing revenue down 10 per cent in the second half of this year on 13 December.

 

With another $25 million in cost cutting scheduled for 2013, it is hard to see how regional newspapers like The Daily Examiner and The Northern Star will be able to resist the temptation to pad their daily issues even further with the viewpoint of political and industry interests churned out in cost-free publishable form by people paid to further party or corporate agendas.

 

It’s becoming harder and harder to believe that print media has a legitimate future as it begins a slow devolution in the direction of 17th Century propaganda sheets.

Time to turn off more lights?

 

This is an image of Australia at night, created by Canadian scientist Felix Pharand-Deschênes:

 

 

According to The Climate Group, between 30 November - 6 December 2012 the combined greenhouse gas emissions of NSW, Vic, Qld, SA and Tas were 33 per cent above 1990 levels.

Electricity from coal this year to date produced 1.058 million tonnes CO2e in these five states.

How much of the light intensity in this picture would be reduced if Australian businesses turned off all those unnecessary, electrical advertising and architectural lights which blaze from their buildings each night?

Sometimes the young make my heart sing - Part Seven

Jules Rau's Photos